Javier Alvarez

Many contemporary theories of human cognition focus on the biochemical mechanisms that lie beneath the mind’s operations, while neglecting the historical and developmental aspects of the human mind. This article argues (1) that a processual form of thinking has been developing since the Modern Era. Furthermore, it maintains (2) that this particular form of thinking is intrinsically connected with the historical phenomenon of the scientific revolution. The paper studies Günter Dux’s innovative historico-genetic approach to the development of thought in historical process. It also analyses the processual form of thinking under specific conceptual aspects of Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. The present study also reveals (3) the connection between the developmental and the historical aspects of the evolution of thought. Overall, the study found (4) that there is an anthropological cognitive mechanism behind the historical forms of thought usually related to the elaborated figure of explanation.

The incipient mind argument is the central argument of Evan Thompson’s solution to the so-called mind-body problem. This paper challenges Evan Thompson’s (and Francisco Varela’s) assumption of a pristine form of subjectivity, as well as of interiority in unicellular life forms. I claim that this assumption makes sense only as a useful strategy for an absolutist account of mind. In this paper, I argue that Thompson’s thesis is erroneous at the object-level, as well as at the meta-level of his argumentation. By paying greater attention to the meta-level of his exposition, I show that Thompson’s assumption of an “incipient mind” obeys an absolutist, two- sided pattern of thinking and, therefore, that his argumentation fails to give an accurate account of the systemic generation and development of mind. After demonstrating this, I suggest an innovative action-based approach to mind in order to accurately give an account of its real-constructive development.

Background. The study of entrepreneurial activity has undergone intense development in recent decades. Traditionally this topic has been addressed from three approaches: economic, sociological and psychological. In the study of enterprising personality, two fundamental perspectives stand out: the use of general personality traits, like the Big Five, and the use of more specific traits related to entrepreneurial spirit, such as self-efficacy, autonomy, innovation, optimism, and others. The objective of this study is to provide validity evidence for a new instrument for measuring eight specific dimensions of entrepreneurial personality (BEPE). Method. The sample was composed of 1,170 adults from the general population (59.9% women). The average age was 42.34 years with a standard deviation of 12.96. Of the sample, 13% were self-employed. Internal factorial structure and reliability of BEPE were examined. The relationships with other variables and the discriminative capacity of the BEPE between different groups of workers were analyzed. Results. First order factor analyses show the essential unidimensionality of each of the eight proposed sub-scales, with factorial weights ranging between 0.341 and 0.825. A second-order factor analysis was carried out, obtaining a general dimension of entrepreneurial personality. With regards to reliability, the eight BEPE sub-scales gave high alpha coefficient values, between 0.825 and 0.899, as did the total battery (0.97). BEPE sub-scales show a high canonical correlation with the Big Five personality factors (.795), and with the sub-scales of the Measure of Entrepreneurial Talents and Abilities questionnaire (.815). Conclusions. The BEPE questionnaire for the evaluation of the eight fundamental specific dimensions of the entrepreneurial personality presents adequate psychometric properties. Its relationships with other measures of personality traits are in line with what is expected. Therefore, the BEPE is a new measurement instrument that can be used with confidence both in the applied field and in research.

The coronavirus disease pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perceived stress, positive affect and psychological flexibility. Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of prosocial behavior were similar across regions.

En los estudios sobre la racionalidad aparece con frecuencia una oposición entre los mecanismos que se dice que caracterizan la elección racional y otros procesos que se suponen vinculados a nuestras emociones, a nuestras capacidades cognitivas y, en particular, a nuestra capacidad de ser sujetos agentes. Oposición que me parece inadecuada y que es preciso superar. Me parece posible defender una perspectiva complementarista o sintética de la racionalidad. No basta con hablar, por un lado, de la racionalidad instrumental y, por otro, de la racionalidad expresiva, sino que, haciendo uso de una metáfora textil, parece conveniente comprender la racionalidad como el resultado de un proceso conformado tanto por la trama de la racionalidad instrumental como por la urdimbre de la racionalidad expresiva. Al esclarecer los elementos de integración y complementariedad tratamos de formular un agente integrado, más adecuado en sus aspectos descriptivos, con mayor complejidad normativa y predictivamente más preciso. Me parece que en algunos aspectos es una posición no demasiado alejada de la que algunas veces ha defendido Marcelo Dascal

Objective: Illness perceptions are important predictors of emotional and behavioral responses in many diseases. The current study aims to investigate the COVID-19-related IP throughout Europe. The specific goals are to understand the temporal development, identify predictors and examine the impacts of IP on perceived stress and preventive behaviors.Methods: This was a time-series-cross-section study of 7,032 participants from 16 European countries using multilevel modeling from April to June 2020. IP were measured with the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Temporal patterns were observed considering the date of participation and the date recoded to account the epidemiological evolution of each country. The outcomes considered were perceived stress and COVID-19 preventive behaviors.Results: There were significant trends, over time, for several IP, suggesting a small decrease in negativity in the perception of COVID-19 in the community. Age, gender, and education level related to some, but not all, IP. Considering the self-regulation model, perceptions consistently predicted general stress and were less consistently related to preventive behaviors. Country showed no effect in the predictive model, suggesting that national differences may have little relevance for IP, in this context.Conclusion: The present study provides a comprehensive picture of COVID-19 IP in Europe in an early stage of the pandemic. The results shed light on the process of IP formation with implications for health-related outcomes and their evolution.

Victory is the ultimate aim in high performance sports; when it comes to team sports, the goal is the key that allows players to achieve that victory. This is the case with futsal which, due to its internal structure as well as the speed in the development of its game, makes the achievement of a goal not an isolated event, but rather more than one goal must be scored to achieve victory. The aim of the present study is to analyze the construction of offensive sequences that have resulted in goal-scoring in the two main European futsal leagues, the Spanish and the Italian, as well as to identify the patterns relating to offensive actions that have ended with a goal being scored. Observational methodology was used to develop the research and an ad hoc observation instrument was developed for this purpose. The data was analyzed using inferential statistics as well as sequential analysis of delays in a diachronic analysis to identify the patterns of offensive actions. The results obtained enable recognition of a league’s idiosyncrasy patterns in goal-scoring in each of the leagues studied. The results obtained will allow experts to have a better understanding of how goals are scored and how to establish more specific training tasks, in both attack and defense.

With the advent of COVID-19, a sudden, unexpected, and forced shift has been produced in the field of psychotherapy. Worldwide, many therapists closed their offices and started to deliver psychotherapy online through a screen. Although different media started to be incorporated, videoconferencing is undoubtedly the most common way in which therapists are doing therapy these days. This is catalyzing a rapid change in the practice of psychotherapy with probable lasting effects and deserves to be carefully reflected upon. Therefore, in this paper our aim is to outline the main challenges for a medium that may have arrived to stay. In that sense, we review the literature to describe the state-of-the-art regarding the main aspects of videoconferencing psychotherapy as well as to suggest possible avenues for future research and practice.

According to a growing body of studies, people’s ability to forecast future emotional experiences is generally biased. Nonetheless, the existing literature has mainly explored affective forecasting in relation to specific events, whereas little is still known about the ability to make general estimations of future emotional states. Based on existing evidence suggesting future-oriented disposition as a key factor for mental health, the aims of the current study were (1) to investigate the relationship between negative (NA) and positive (PA) affective forecasting biases and perceived psychological well-being, and (2) to explore whether positively biased predictions are associated with resilience and foster one’s skills to cope with stressful events. To do so, we asked 85 undergraduate students to forecast PA and NA over two weeks, as well as to report their daily affect through a web-based Ecological Momentary Assessment. According to the results, positively biased PA forecasting (i.e., overestimating positive emotional states) was associated with greater perceived psychological well-being and higher resilience. When high levels of stress were experienced, participants holding an optimistic, yet biased, estimation of future PA were more likely to successfully manage stressors, thus maintaining lower levels of NA and higher levels of positive emotions. We suggest that positively biased PA forecasting is an adaptive cognitive distortion that boosts people’s resilience and mental health, thus opening new avenues for the promotion of psychological well-being.