The noticeable differences in the theoretical and operative definitions of envy across studies and approaches have produced a fragmentary representation and understanding of the envious emotion. The present dissertation aimed to clarify the inherent nature of the construct of envy through the integration of findings from three independent studies. We focused on malicious envy, and investigated it from both a dispositional and an episodic perspective. Studies 1 and 2 investigated the dimensionality of envy as a stable individual characteristic and an episodic emotional state, respectively. In order to elicit episodic envy, a scenario-based experiment was conducted. Results indicated that, in both its dispositional and episodic facets, envy is a bidimensional construct composed by an inner-directed dimension of inferiority and helplessness, and an outer-directed dimension of feelings of anger and ill will. Moreover, findings from Study 1 allowed to establish boundaries between envy and competing constructs that have often been included in conceptualizations of envy. The psychometrically validated definition of envy provided by Studies 1 and 2 represents a valuable contribution to empirical research. Implications for envy research concern the promotion of a shared operationalization of envy in future studies, which will arguably facilitate the comparison of findings between studies and between approaches. Study 3 examined the mechanisms through which dispositional envy affects individuals’ social adjustment and psychological wellbeing. Findings revealed that the detrimental effects of envy on perceived social support and subjective well-being are mostly mediated by other personal characteristics, such as neuroticism and self-esteem. By reducing global self-esteem, the envious disposition may damage supportive social networks via antisocial direct and indirect behaviors that may arise from envy and that are likely to drive others away. On the other hand, by damaging both emotional stability and self-worth, dispositional envy leads to reduced subjective well-being. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.

No description available.

For decades, researchers have been trying to understand how the human mind/brain processes rhythm and time in general. Within this framework, many studies have explored the influence of long-term musical training on the neural and behavioral correlates of rhythm processing. Some pieces of evidence point to enhanced rhythm processing in musicians as one of the consequences of the structural and functional changes in many brain areas involved in auditory processing, motor synchronization and cognitive control. Yet there is still more controversy than consensus on this field. Indeed, several behavioral and neural studies report opposite results and describe contrasting effects associated to rhythm perception in musicians and non-musicians. The aim of the project described in this thesis was to shed new light on the effects of long-term musical training on the behavioral and neural correlates of rhythm processing. First, I addressed whether musical expertise influences rhythm processing when this is not task-relevant. Next, I expanded the investigation to the ability of musicians to orient efficiently attention in time. I explored these questions by looking at behavioral and electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates associated to the detection of auditory deviant stimuli. Chapter 1 is a general introduction to the current knowledge on rhythm processing. After a description of the most influential theories of temporal elaboration, it introduces some of the electrophysiological correlates associated to regularity violation. Then, it provides a detailed description of the neural and behavioral changes triggered by a long-term musical training, focusing on rhythm processing. At the end of this introduction, the aims and hypotheses of each experiment are presented in detail. In Chapter 2, I describe two behavioral experiments that explored how the processing of different temporal structures (rhythmical, non-rhythmical) influences the detection of deviant stimuli (Experiment 1), and addressed the role of a refined metrical representation in musicians and non-musicians (Experiment 2). The results revealed an overall superior performance of musicians in all experimental conditions, thus pointing to an enhanced auditory perception as consequence of their musical training. The results also highlight a large-scale processing of rhythm, independent of musical expertise. Furthermore, the results on response speed indicate a refined metrical processing only in musicians. Thus, the first part of the thesis demonstrates that long-term musical training boosts meter processing, whereas (some form of) rhythm processing appears to be overall present in all individuals. In Chapter 3, I report an EEG experiment which was aimed at exploring the effects of long-term musical training on the neural correlates of auditory deviance violation (Mismatch Negativity – MMN and Middle Latency Responses - MLRs), by inserting deviant stimuli in rhythmical (at strong and weak metrical positions) and non-rhythmical structures. Deviant stimuli within rhythmical structures elicited larger MMN compared to non-rhythmical ones in all participants. Moreover, the MMN was also modulated by meter as showed by the smaller amplitude for deviants at strong than weak positions. Interestingly, a deeper investigation of the neural modulations associated to the strong positions revealed a stronger response in musicians than non-musicians. This demonstrates the prevailing effect of stimulus salience (strong metrical positions and frequency deviant at these positions) over the effect of prediction for musicians. Finally, effect of long-term musical training modulated the MLRs for deviants within rhythmical structures. Taken together, these results indicate an effect of musical expertise at early and late stages of deviance perception, as evidenced by modulations of the MLR and MMN responses. Chapter 4 reports the results of a cross-modal cueing experiment aimed at investigating the influence of long-term musical training on the ability to orient attention in time using external cues. Besides behavioral and ERP responses, here I examined a particular neural response associated to entrainment: the steady state evoked potential (SS-EP). The results showed that auditory cues greatly facilitate attention orienting in time. Furthermore, targets preceded by short intervals were highly expected and this was visible both at the behavioral (high efficiency and more anticipations) and neural (larger CNV and reduced P300 amplitude) levels. Effects of musical expertise were present only in behavioral data and only when considering the mostly trained sensory modality (audition). Finally, musicians were less synchronized to the rhythm than non-musicians (reduced SS-EPs). In sum, these results indicate that the auditory modality better guide temporal orienting than the visual one, and that this effect is magnified for musicians. Finally, weaker synchronization to rhythm in musicians may mirror the ease with which they process rhythm. Chapter 5 is a summary of the main results and of their interpretation.

Il comportamento di faking è un problema trasversale che riguarda la ricerca sul comportamento umano in molti contesti quali la psicologia (Hopwood, Talbert, Morey, & Rogers, 2008), le scienze sociali (Van der Geest & Sarkodie, 1998) ed economiche (Crawford, 2003), la psichiatria (Beaber, Marston, Michelli, & Mills, 1985), la medicina forense (Gray, MacCulloch, Smith, Morris, & Snowden, 2003) e le frodi scientifiche (Marshall, 2000). Esso è un problema importante sia perché va ad alterare l’affidabilità di un test quando lo si usa per le decisioni in ambito inferenziale, sia perché i dati così raccolti perdono di validità e quindi le relazioni tra variabili misurate perdono di significato. Diversi studi hanno dimostrato che istruendo a dovere i partecipanti a un questionario, essi sono in grado di modificare le risposte fornendo risposte più estreme (es, Furnham, 1986; Hesketh, Griffin, & Grayson, 2004; McFarland & Ryan, 2000; Viswesvaran & Ones, 1999). Gli effetti conosciuti del faking da un punto di vista psicometrico agiscono sulla struttura della covarianza delle scale distorte. Generalmente si è visto che i punteggi che hanno subito una manipolazione da faking, in una situazione in cui i soggetti venivano motivati, tendono ad avere una varianza più piccola e una minore affidabilità (Eysenck, Eysenck, & Shaw, 1974; Topping & O’Gorman, 1997; Ellingson, Smith, & Sackett, 2001; Hesketh et al., 2004). Allo stesso tempo però è stato osservato che quando è stato chiesto ai soggetti di mentire intenzionalmente, questo aumenta il grado di covariazione tra gli item manipolati (Ellingson, Sackett, & Hough, 1999; Gali?, Jernei?, & Kova?i?, 2012; Pauls & Crost, 2005; Zickar & Robie, 1999; Ziegler & Buehner, 2009). Il lavoro del capitolo 3 è stato il primo a iniziare e a essere terminato esso ci ha permesso di risollevare il problema dell’identificazione dei fakers e di definire quale riteniamo essere la motivazione principale della poca efficienza degli indici di fit individuale (PFS), cioè una non discriminazione tra i fakers e gli onesti sulla base della likelihood. Le somiglianze con altri tipi di manipolazioni contenute nella parte di review contenuta nello stesso capitolo (par. 3.2) ci hanno dato conferma, almeno a nostro avviso, che l’SGR si inserisce di diritto all’interno delle manipolazioni dei dati. Oltretutto non si limita al faking, consideriamo il faking solo uno dei possibili impieghi, basta utilizzare un adeguato modello manipolativo a seconda della specifica situazione. Se da un lato la simulazione per individuare i fakers è stata piuttosto robusta e approfondita (par. 3.3), dall’altro la parte conclusiva riguardo lo studio della likelihood (par. 3.4), purtroppo, è stata trattata più velocemente solo attraverso esempi e la generalizzazione a tutti i questionari solo dedotta. Probabilmente sarebbe interessante approfondire quella sezione per farla diventare un robusto lavoro indipendente. Nella stesura della simulazione era già emerso il concetto della mixture, cioè che il comportamento del mentitore sia coerente all’interno del pattern di risposte e che il campione si suddivida in sinceri e fakers, ma non ulteriormente formalizzato. La situazione migliore per il mentitore è quando mente su quasi la totalità degli item, cercando di creare pattern menzogneri, ma coerenti e questo comportamento gli crea un vantaggio nel non essere identificato (figure da 3.1 a 3.4) rispetto al mentire solo a metà degli item. Rimanendo però con l’idea della non-indipendenza tra item, con l’obiettivo di innovare l’utilizzo della struttura SGR fino a quel momento utilizzata, ci siamo resi conto che un questionario di molti item è difficile da analizzare perché le combinazioni di risposte sono esponenziali al numero di item. Quindi abbiamo scelto di ricominciare il percorso analitico da due item per non perdere il nostro assunto di interdipendenza nelle risposte. La decisione di questo "passo indietro" si è mostrata vincente perché ci avrebbe successivamente permesso l’esplorazione matematica delle distribuzioni di probabilità nel caso bivariato. Purtroppo resta ancora difficile applicare le formule (cap. 4) a casi reali per la difficoltà a ipotizzare i veri modelli di manipolazione e la quantità di soggetti faker, ad esempio, per cercare di ricostruire i dati originali (formula 4.16). Nonostante i limiti empirici a livello campionario, lo studio matematico ha permesso lo studio a livello di popolazione e mostrare che gli effetti del faking possono diventare facilmente invasivi nell’esisto di una ricerca gonfiando o diminuendo correlazioni o, addirittura, invertendone il segno. In particolare, i nostri risultati si possono sovrapporre, almeno parzialmente, a quelli di Loken e Gelman (2017). Nell’articolo gli autori parlano di errore casuale di misura, il quale può modificare la dimensione dell’effetto principale, anche accentuandolo nei piccoli campioni. Siamo arrivati a conclusioni simili quasi contemporaneamente; anzi il nostro tipo di “errore” di misura è più evoluto e rappresenta un comportamento complesso, strategico e non indipendente (attraverso gli item) dei soggetti. In particolare gli autori ci servono su un piatto d’argento la giustificazione di tutte le ore di lavoro che abbiamo dedicato a questo progetto: "The situation become more complicated in problems with multiple predictors, or with nonindependent error " (pg. 585). Il faking potrebbe essere, appunto, un esempio di errore non-indipendende. Ovviamente buoni presupposti non sono garanzia di un ottimo risultato, ma sono almeno un buon punto di partenza.

This thesis collects a set of research articles and working papers produced during my doctoral program. Overall, they refer to: (i) the general problem of collecting measures for the dynamic processes underlying human rating tasks (section Models, methods, instruments) (ii) the proposal of new statistical methods to analyse data structures arising from the dynamic rating measurements (section Statistical techniques). The section Models, methods, instruments contains three chapters on models and methods designed to represent the dynamics of rating evaluations together with some relevant applications. In particular, the latter refer to two different contexts, namely Likert-type questionnaires (Chapters 1 and 2) and two-choice decision making (Chapter 3). Finally, the section also describes two new measurement instruments for dynamic ratings, DYFRAT (Chapter 1) and DYFRAS (Chapter 2). In a similar way, the section Statistical techniques contains three works on novel statistical methodologies to run data analysis in the context of structured data€ , namely fuzzy numbers (Chapters 4 and 5) and interval-valued data (Chapter 6). The justification for structured-data comes directly from the treatment of the dynamic rating components in the sense that such a kind of data can offer a simple and flexible formal representation to model the information related to the rating properties.

Noise is ubiquitous in nature. For this reason, it makes up a widely investigated topic. Taking into account experimental physics, whatever the measurement process under investigation, noise, defined as a random fluctuation of the measured signal, is usually considered to be detrimental. Thus, many techniques have been developed to reduce its impact: for example, the most common post–processing procedure to improve a noisy measurement consists in averaging the measured signal over repeated sessions. Rather surprisingly, the opposite, non–detrimental effect has been also observed: the response of a nonlinear system to a weak input signal is, under suitable conditions, optimized by the presence of a particular, non–vanishing noise level. In the last decades, the wide spectrum of such phenomena has been referred to as stochastic resonance. With regard to neuroscience, noise can be considered ubiquitous also in the brain processes. Theoretical considerations, as well as a robust experimental evidence, demonstrate its role in many phenomena occuring at different levels in neural system: for example, firing rate of neurons is not predictable by reason of their intrinsic variability [1, 5, 6]; measurements of brain activity with imaging techniques, like EEG, MEG or fMRI, are always affected by inner, noisy mechanisms. Recently, neuroscientists put forward the idea that stochastic fluctuations of neural activity have a functional role in brain dynamics. However, this functional role has been thus far observed in very few experimental situations. Regarding the human behaviour, decision making (representing our main field of investigation) is also influenced by several noisy processes. Also in this case, random fluctuations of brain processes typically have a detrimental role, limiting, for example, the possibility to exactly predict the human behaviour not only in everyday life, but also under controlled conditions, such as psychophysical experiments. Aim of this work is to gain insight into the problem of how noise influences the decisional mechanisms. In this framework, two different kinds of noise were investigated, namely endogenous and exogenous. The endogenous noise refers to stochastic fluctuations that are present within the neural system whereas with exogenous some form of enviromental noise, external to the perceptual system, are meant. These two distinct types of noise define two indipendent research fields, that were both investigated by means of behavioural experiments. In other words, we were interested in investigating how noise acts on human behavior, in particular in case of discrimination processes. To this purpose, psychophysical experiments were carried out, addressing both the acoustic and the visual modality. To investigate how a proper amount of exogenous noise can act positively on human perception, improving performance in detection experiments, – an effect that, as mentioned above, is interpreted as an occurence of stochastic resonance – we carried out experiments in the acoustic modality. This is the topic of the first part of this work. In particular, we used a detection paradigm where pure tone stimuli were superimposed with different levels of noise and subjects were requested to signalize the presence of the tone. Usually a sufficient noise level masks the signal. However,what we observed was a tiny, yet statistically significant improvement of stimulus detection ability in correspondence to a specific noise level. The used experimental approach – “Yes/No†experiments – is usually interpreted in terms of Signal Detection Theory (SDT). The two most important SDT parameters are the sensitivity d′ and the decisional criterion. Since improvement of detection ability driven by noise is, if any, a tiny effect, all the ingredients combined to formulate a decision must lay under the experimenter’s control. In particular, in addition to the stimulus detectability, also the knowledge of the decisional strategy at any time is crucial so as to achieve reliable data. In other words, the demand of criterion stability, and more in general the problem of its dynamics, turned out to have a critical role and urged us to focus our attention to the specific topic of criterion dynamics. The scientific literature on the possibility to condition the subject’s criterion and reconstruct its dynamics with the highest possible time resolution (the single trial) is extremely scant: the only two works on this subject do not provide robust methods to tackle the issue. The second part of the dissertation is completely focused on our theory of criterion setting dynamics and the related experimental evidence. An ad-hoc experiment involving the visual perceptual modality allowed to test a model for trial–by–trial criterion dynamics based on the theory of feedback. Feedback loop were implemented by informing the subject, after each trial, relatively to his/her performance. When requested to maximize the rate of correct response in an orientation discrimination experiment, subjects showed the ability to continuosly change their internal criterion. More in detail, the optimal criterion position oscillates at a certain frequency, set a-priori by the experimenter; we observed that subjects were able to modify their decisional criterion in order “to follow†the optimal position. Two main assumptions of our model are that the subject stores information coming from previous trials, and is willing of in improving his/her performance. One of the most important assumption of SDT is that the adopted strategy, i.e. the criterion positioning, by an observer performing a task is completely indipendent from his/her discrimination ability. We implemented this consideration in a model for criterion dynamics so that this parameter turns out to be completely indipendent from d′. The possibility to disentangle sensitivity and criterion allows the experimenter to force the subject’s inclination to be more liberal or conservative, indipendently from his/her ability in performing the task, and monitor at each trial the result of this conditioning. The problem of how the human neural system set and maintain a decision criterion over time is still an open question. This problem recently received particular attention, within the more general context of the neural mechanisms underlying the decision process. Our approach, based on behavioural experiments, provides an novel investigation tool to tackle the issue.

The general aim of the present dissertation was to participate in the progress of our understanding of how sensory input and sensory experience impact on how the human brain implements categorical knowledge. The goal was twofold: (1) understand whether there are brain regions that encode information about different categories regardless of input modality and sensory experience (study 1); (2) deepen the investigation of the mechanisms that drive cross-modal and intra-modal plasticity following early blindness and the way they express during the processing of different categories presented as real-world sounds (study 2). To address these fundamental questions, we used fMRI to characterize the brain responses to different conceptual categories presented acoustically in sighted and early blind individuals, and visually in a separate sighted group. In study 1, we observed that the right posterior middle temporal gyrus (rpMTG) is the region that most reliably decoded categories and selectively correlated with conceptual models of our stimuli space independently of input modality and visual experience. However, this region maintains separate the representational format from the different modalities, revealing a multimodal rather than an amodal nature. In addition, we observed that VOTC showed distinct functional profiles according to the hemispheric side. The left VOTC showed an involvement in the acoustical categorization processing at the same degree in sighted and in blind individuals. We propose that this involvement might reflect an engagement of the left VOTC in more semantic/linguistic processing of the stimuli potentially supported by its enhanced connection with the language system. However, paralleling our observation in rpMTG, the representations from different modalities are maintained segregated in VOTC, showing little evidence for sensory-abstraction. On the other side, the right VOTC emerged as a sensory-related visual region in sighted with the ability to rewires itself toward acoustical stimulation in case of early visual deprivation. In study 2, we observed opposite effects of early visual deprivation on auditory decoding in occipital and temporal regions. While occipital regions contained more information about sound categories in the blind, the temporal cortex showed higher decoding in the sighted. This unbalance effect was stronger in the right hemisphere where we, also, observed a negative correlation between occipital and temporal decoding of sound categories in EB. These last results suggest that the intramodal and crossmodal reorganizations might be inter-connected. We therefore propose that the extension of non-visual functions in the occipital cortex of EB may trigger a network-level reorganization that reduce the computational load of the regions typically coding for the remaining senses due to the extension of such computation in occipital regions.

Il presente lavoro si è proposto di indagare il concetto di razionalità limitata nel contesto delle scelte mediche. Sono stati reclutati 80 adulti, senza una storia clinica particolare a cui è stato dapprima somministrato un test virtuale che richiedeva di prendere delle decisioni su alcuni trattamenti e, successivamente, è stata somministrata una intervista semi-strutturata per approfondire il tema della scelta. I principali risultati: in primis, le persone adottano l’uso di euristiche veloci e frugali. In particolare, le persone adottano l’euristica del “Prendi il meglio” considerando, per ogni scelta, un numero limitato di caratteristiche. In secondo luogo, l'uso di euristiche è legato a una razionalità ecologica che adatta le strategie decisionali alla struttura delle informazioni disponibili del contesto ambientale. In questo contesto, se il consiglio del o le informazioni rispetto ai rischi/effetti indesiderati sono disponibili allora essi saranno sempre valutati perché sono caratteristiche fondamentali del processo di scelta. Il consiglio del medico è espressione della fiducia tra medico e paziente. La fiducia è rappresentata da segnali semplici e onesti che il medico è capace di trasmettere e questi segnali formano un canale di comunicazione tra le persone. Infine un altro risultato riguarda la comprensione del rischio associato al consumo di un farmaco che è risultato di difficile comprensione e rappresentazione. / This research aimed at applying the concept of bounded rationality in common medical choices in order to analyse the process by which laypersons make decisions in the field of health. Eighty adults, without a particular disease history were recruited and they were asked to manage both some virtual situations of medical choices and to discuss face to face about their past experiences in medical choices.Three major findings emerged. Firstly, people often use fast and frugal heuristics. In particular, people adopt the rule of the ‘take the best” considering, for each choice, a very limited number of elements to make their decisions. Secondly, the use of heuristics is related with the principle of ecological rationality in which strategies are chosen in connection with the available information of the environmental context. In this context, if “doctor’s advice” as well as “side effects information” are available, they will be always considered because they represent fundamental features of the decision making process. Doctor’s advice is expression of the trust between patient-doctor relationship. Trust is represented by simple and honest signals that the doctor communicates and these signals form an unconscious channel of communication between people. Thirdly, we found that risks associated with treatments are not easy to be conceived by laypersons. It was that people have not in mind a clear definition of the risk implied by medicines and treatment and they show, in average, a scarce interest in risk comprehension.

In this work we provided a contribution in the specific context of verbal humor generation, focused on computational creation of humorous texts. The goal consisted of the design and implementation of a tool for the automatic generation of short humorous expressions. We focused on humorous puns generated through the variation of familiar expressions, performed via lexical substitution. Phonetic and semantic features are employed to select the appropriate substitution. We have chosen a corpus-based approach, in line with a tendency prevailing in the computational linguistics field. A number of textual corpora and dictionaries were employed. We have developed some of these resources (WordNet-Affect and Affective-Weight) in an early stage of the research. The system can be used as a testbed for the empirical investigation of various aspects of verbal humor. More specifically, it can be used to study the correlation between linguistic parameters of humorous expressions and appraisal dimensions that are part of the cognitive process of humor understanding. In the last phase of the work, we developed two exploratory applications: a prototype was developed as a first component of a system in which task-oriented assistance and humorous feedback can be integrated to achieve frustration reduction. The other application developed is a tool for the collaborative creation of puns. In this system, the pun generator is integrated with a graphical user interface based on a dynamic graph, helping the exploration of different creative solutions.

Human beings must constantly adapt to an uncertain and mutable world by generating efficient behavioral strategies to pursue their goals. The complexity of this task increases in interactive contexts, where the outcomes of our actions depend also on the choices of other agents. When the environment does not provide reliable feedback, the effectiveness of behavioral strategies rests on the ability to handle available knowledge: agents have indeed to extract relevant information from noisy signals and build an exhaustive representation of the set of potential actions and outcomes available to themselves and to others. Individual differences in the implementation of these information- processing operations may underlie behavioral heterogeneity in several judgment and decision making tasks. Here we report three eye-tracking studies revealing the existence of distinct information-processing strategies in different individuals. Study 1 explores inter-individual differences in the generation of relational representations of interdependent contingencies. In Study 2 and Study 3, we move towards social contexts to investigate the mechanisms of strategy generation underlying strategic behavior in interaction. Our findings indicate that gaze data can disclose individual differences in the process of spontaneous strategy generation in both individual and interacting settings. We also report results suggesting that the emergence of unsophisticated information-processing strategies is associated with cognitive style. Moreover, we show that the attentional mechanisms sustaining the generation of unsophisticated strategies can be reconsidered and updated under the impact of endogenous and exogenous cues revealing the existence of alternative information-processing behaviors.