Stella Massimo, Zaytseva Anna
Complex Science Consulting, Lecce, Italy.
i4Helse, University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway.
PeerJ Comput Sci. 2020 Mar 2;6:e255. doi: 10.7717/peerj-cs.255. eCollection 2020.
Reconstructing a "forma mentis", a mindset, and its changes, means capturing how individuals perceive topics, trends and experiences over time. To this aim we use forma mentis networks (FMNs), which enable direct, microscopic access to how individuals conceptually perceive knowledge and sentiment around a topic, providing richer contextual information than machine learning. FMNs build cognitive representations of stances through psycholinguistic tools like conceptual associations from semantic memory (free associations, i.e., one concept eliciting another) and affect norms (valence, i.e., how attractive a concept is). We test FMNs by investigating how Norwegian nursing and engineering students perceived innovation and health before and after a 2-month research project in e-health. We built and analysed FMNs by six individuals, based on 75 cues about innovation and health, and leading to 1,000 associations between 730 concepts. We repeated this procedure before and after the project. When investigating changes over time, individual FMNs highlighted drastic improvements in all students' stances towards "teamwork", "collaboration", "engineering" and "future", indicating the acquisition and strengthening of a positive belief about innovation. Nursing students improved their perception of 'robots" and "technology" and related them to the future of nursing. A group-level analysis related these changes to the emergence, during the project, of conceptual associations about openness towards multidisciplinary collaboration, and a positive, leadership-oriented group dynamics. The whole group identified "mathematics" and "coding" as highly relevant concepts after the project. When investigating persistent associations, characterising the core of students' mindsets, network distance entropy and closeness identified as pivotal in the students' mindsets concepts related to "personal well-being", "professional growth" and "teamwork". This result aligns with and extends previous studies reporting the relevance of teamwork and personal well-being for Norwegian healthcare professionals, also within the novel e-health sector. Our analysis indicates that forma mentis networks are powerful proxies for detecting individual- and group-level mindset changes due to professional growth. FMNs open new scenarios for data-informed, multidisciplinary interventions aimed at professional training in innovation.
重构一种“思维模式”及其变化，意味着捕捉个体如何随时间感知主题、趋势和经历。为此，我们使用思维模式网络（FMN），它能够直接、微观地了解个体如何从概念上感知围绕某个主题的知识和情感，比机器学习提供更丰富的上下文信息。FMN通过心理语言学工具构建立场的认知表征，如来自语义记忆的概念联想（自由联想，即一个概念引发另一个概念）和情感规范（效价，即一个概念的吸引力）。我们通过调查挪威护理专业和工程专业的学生在为期两个月的电子健康研究项目前后如何看待创新和健康来测试FMN。我们由六个人基于75个关于创新和健康的线索构建并分析了FMN，得出了730个概念之间的1000个联想。我们在项目前后重复了这个过程。在调查随时间的变化时，个体FMN突出显示了所有学生对“团队合作”“协作”“工程”和“未来”的立场有了显著改善，表明对创新的积极信念的获得和强化。护理专业学生改善了对“机器人”和“技术”的认知，并将它们与护理的未来联系起来。一项群体层面的分析将这些变化与项目期间出现的关于多学科合作开放性的概念联想以及积极的、以领导为导向的群体动态联系起来。整个群体在项目后将“数学”和“编码”确定为高度相关的概念。在调查持续的联想时，这些联想表征了学生思维模式的核心，网络距离熵和接近度被确定为学生思维模式中与“个人幸福”“职业成长”和“团队合作”相关的关键概念。这一结果与之前报道团队合作和个人幸福对挪威医疗保健专业人员（包括新兴的电子健康领域）的相关性的研究一致，并对其进行了扩展。我们的分析表明，思维模式网络是检测因专业成长而导致的个体和群体层面思维模式变化的有力代理。FMN为旨在进行创新专业培训的基于数据的多学科干预开辟了新的前景。
