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Dissertação de Mestrado em Marketing apresentada na Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais do Instituto Politécnico de Viana do Castelo Nos últimos anos, o rápido e explosivo desenvolvimento das redes sociais alterou a forma como as pessoas comunicam entre si. As chamadas redes sociais ou social media, tornaram-se, não só, facilitadoras da distribuição de informação, em tempo real entre os utilizadores espalhados pelo Mundo, como também, originaram um crescimento exponencial das chamadas Fake News, precursoras de graves surtos de desinformação online. O combate a essa desinformação apenas será possível se compreendermos como as Fake News são detetadas/tratadas e o seu peso no comportamento dos utilizadores portugueses, temáticas estas retratadas no âmbito da investigação a que nos propomos. As Fake News, a sua propagação nas redes sociais com especial enfoque na rede social Facebook, como são detetadas/tratadas e o peso no comportamento dos utilizadores portugueses são pontos fulcrais para todo o desenrolar desta investigação. Com esse intuito, procedemos ao estudo da forma como os utilizadores portugueses interagem com as notícias falsas e que métodos seguem para contrariar a sua difusão através do uso da metodologia Questionário Online. Segundo os resultados obtidos no inquérito, os visados consideram que as Fake News têm influência no grau de credibilidade que estes têm da comunicação das marcas, uma vez que, na maior parte dos casos, estes confirmam sempre ou quase sempre a veracidade dos conteúdos partilhados pelas marcas na rede social Facebook usando os sítios oficiais (website, loja) das mesmas, demonstrando dúvidas quando a fonte não é fidedigna. No entanto, as suas respostas não traduzam, totalmente, essa assertividade. In recent years, the rapid and explosive development of social networks has changed the way people communicate with each other. The so-called social networks or social media have become, not only facilitators of the distribution of information in real time between users spread around the world, but have also caused an exponential growth of the so-called Fake News, precursors of serious outbreaks of disinformation online. Combating this disinformation will only be possible if we understand how Fake News are detected/treated and their weight in the behaviour of Portuguese users, themes that are portrayed in the scope of the research we propose. The Fake News, its propagation in the social networks with special focus on the social network Facebook, how it is detected/treated and its weight in the behaviour of Portuguese users are key points for the entire development of this research. With that purpose, we proceeded to the study of how Portuguese users interact with fake news and which methods they follow to counteract its diffusion through the use of the Online Questionnaire methodology. According to the results obtained in the survey, the targets consider that Fake News have influence in the degree of credibility they have about the brands' communication in most of the cases, mosto f the time they confirm the veracity of the contents shared by the brands on the social network Facebook using their official sites (website, shop), showing doubts when the source is not reliable. However, their answers do not fully translate that assertiveness.

Este manual de apoio à aprendizagem foi elaborado com o objetivo de dar suporte às unidades curriculares relacionadas com temas avançados de reabilitação dos ciclos de estudos de Licenciatura e Mestrado em Terapia Ocupacional da Escola Superior de Saúde do Instituto Politécnico do Porto, podendo ser igualmente utilizado noutros ciclos de estudos nas áreas de Terapia e Reabilitação e de Fisiologia Clínica. Consiste num guia compreensivo sobre a utilização da estimulação transcraniana por corrente contínua como ferramenta de intervenção para a prestação de cuidados de saúde e reabilitação na doença mental e neurológica, abrangendo os seus fundamentos básicos, procedimentos de aplicação prática e segurança, parametrização de protocolos (incluindo a utilização de modelos computacionais) e evidência atualizada sobre a sua eficácia.

The current study aims to examine the association between beliefs in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and psychotic-like experiences within the community, while also addressing the role of other contributing variables such as sociodemographic information (sex, age, education), psychological outcomes (e.g., stress, affective states) as well as other pandemic-related factors (e.g., isolation conditions, health concerns, etc).

The project described here encompasses two major studies. The goals, hypothesis, and analysis plan for each study will be separately described, although data collection procedures were shared by both studies. More information about this project can be found at https://osf.io/hmtz9/. Study 1. Untangling Self-Reported Interoceptive Accuracy and Attention: Evidence from the European Portuguese Validation of the Interoceptive Accuracy Scale and the Body Perception Questionnaire Interoception, broadly defined as the perception of the body’s internal states (Craig, 2002) has been widely associated with several domains of cognitive and emotional processing (e.g., Barrett, 2017; Critchley & Harrison, 2013; Damasio, 1994; Marshall et al., 2018; Pereira et al., 2019; Seth & Friston, 2016) and implicated in a wide range of psychiatric disorders (e.g., Khalsa et al., 2017; Murphy et al., 2017). These findings have led researchers in the field to propose different frameworks to address the challenges of measuring individual differences in interoception (e.g., Ceunen et al., 2013, Garfinkel et al., 2015, Khalsa et al., 2017), although proposed taxonomies only focused on the different measurement methods (i.e., questionnaires vs. experimental tasks). More recently, Murphy et al. (2019) proposed a 2 x 2 factorial framework to categorize individual differences in interoception: Factor 1, differentiates what is measured (interoceptive accuracy, the ability to accurately perceive interoceptive signals vs. interoceptive attention, the degree to which interoceptive signals are the object of attention); Factor 2, distinguishes how interoception is measured (via self-report measures assessing an individual’s beliefs regarding their interoceptive ability vs. objective measures, that assess performance on objective tests of interoception). Subsequently, Murphy et al. (2020) provided further evidence for this framework, finding that self-report measures of interoceptive accuracy such as the Interoceptive Confusion Questionnaire (Brewer et al., 2016) and the newly developed Interoceptive Accuracy Scale (IAS) were uncorrelated with the Body Awareness subscale of the Body Perception Questionnaire (BPQ; Porges, 1993), a widely used self-report measure of interoceptive attention. These results support a distinction between self-report interoceptive accuracy and attention, although this should be ideally replicated in other samples to further strengthen the validity of the 2 x 2 factorial model of interoception. Finally, it is also important to highlight that studies exploring the psychometric proprieties of self-report questionnaires of interoception are still scare. For instance, although the BPQ was developed over 25 years ago and has been widely used since then, there is only one recently published study exploring its psychometric properties (Cabrera et al., 2018). Moreover, the IAS was validated quite recently and also requires further psychometric testing (Murphy et al., 2020). Thus, Study 1 has the following main goals: 1. Translate, validate, and assess the psychometric properties of the European Portuguese versions of the IAS and the BPQ. 2. Investigate the association between self-reported interoceptive accuracy and attention (measured by the IAS and the BPQ Body Awareness subscale, respectively). Study 2. Dissociating Cognitive and Affective Empathy in Psychopathic Phenotypes: The Role of Interoceptive Attention and Accuracy According to the Triarchic Model (Patrick et al., 2009), psychopathy reflects the convergence of three etiological phenotypes: boldness, characterized by fearlessness, invulnerability to stress, social influence, and dominance; meanness, defined by callous self-interested pursuit of resources, reduced empathy, and social closeness; disinhibition, characterized by lack of behavioral restraint, poor planning, and impaired emotional regulation. Boldness and meanness share low fear as their etiological pathway, while both meanness and disinhibition are associated with externalizing vulnerability. As this model is fairly recent and widely debated, further insights about the mechanisms underlying each phenotype are needed. Empathy can be a key construct to disentangle these phenotypes. Recent frameworks suggest that empathy encompasses two main domains (Stietz et al., 2019): cognitive empathy, defined as the ability to make inferences about or represent the mental states of others, and affective empathy, defined as the isomorphic sharing of the affective state of another person. There is evidence suggesting that these empathy domains are differentially associated with psychopathic phenotypes (e.g. Almeida et al., 2015; Stanley et al., 2013; Sellbom & Phillips, 2013; Paiva et al., 2020). Meanness has been associated with empathy deficits including both affective and cognitive domains. Boldness has been positively associated with cognitive empathy, while results regarding affective empathy are inconsistent. Although disinhibition seems positively associated with affective empathy, it is not clear whether cognitive empathy is negatively associated or unrelated to this phenotype. Despite these findings, little is known about the underlying mechanisms that drive the dissociation of empathy domains across psychopathic phenotypes. Interoception (perception of the body’s internal states) may be a putative candidate to explain this complex interaction. It has been suggested that atypical affective experience plays a critical role in empathy deficits in psychopathy (Blair et al., 2005; Brook et al., 2013). Interoception has been widely linked to affective experience, contributing not only to the processing of our own emotional information but also to our ability to perceive and share the emotional states of others (e.g., Barrett, 2017; Seth & Friston, 2016; Fotopoulous & Tsakiris, 2017; Ondobaka et al., 2017). This suggests that empathy deficits in psychopathy could be explained by impaired interoceptive processing, as low interoceptive sensitivity may preclude subjects with high psychopathic traits from perceiving somatic sensations that signal the emotional valence of situations (Gao et al., 2012; Hoppenbrouwers et al., 2016). Until now there are only a handful of studies exploring the link between psychopathy and interoception (Lamoureux, 2019; Lyons & Hughes, 2015; Nentjes et al., 2013; Zwets et al., 2014) and most of them were conducted in criminal samples. Also, there are not any studies exploring the association of interoception with the triarchic psychopathic phenotypes. Finally, neither of the previous studies applied a formal theoretical framework to measure individual differences in interoception. There is recent evidence supporting a bifactorial model to evaluate interoception (Murphy et al., 2019; Murphy et al., 2020). This model distinguishes what is being measured (interoceptive accuracy, defined as the ability to accurately perceive interoceptive signals vs. interoceptive attention, the degree to which interoceptive signals are the object of attention) and how is it being measured (self-report vs. objective measures). Thus, Study 2 has the following main goals: 1. Investigate the association of psychopathic traits with empathy domains (cognitive and affective) and interoception (self-reported interoceptive attention and accuracy). 2. Examine the association of psychopathy with empathy and interoception using the psychopathic phenotypes suggested by the triarchic model (boldness, meanness, and disinhibition) as well as the classical factor structure of psychopathy (primary vs. secondary). 3. Investigate the association between empathy domains (cognitive and affective) and interoception (self-reported interoceptive attention and accuracy). 4. Test whether the associations between psychopathic traits, empathy and interoception are retained after controlling for alexithymia. 5. Explore whether interoceptive attention and/or accuracy mediate the association between psychopathic traits and cognitive/affective empathy.

Murphy et al. (2019) proposed a 2 x 2 factorial framework to categorize individual differences in interoception: Factor 1, differentiates what is measured (interoceptive accuracy, the ability to accurately perceive interoceptive signals vs. interoceptive attention, the degree to which interoceptive signals are the object of attention); Factor 2, distinguishes how interoception is measured (via self-report measures assessing an individual’s beliefs regarding their interoceptive ability vs. objective measures, that assess performance on objective tests of interoception). Subsequently, Murphy et al. (2020) provided further evidence for this framework, finding that self-report measures of interoceptive accuracy such as the Interoceptive Confusion Questionnaire (ICQ; Brewer, Cook, & Bird, 2016) and the Interoceptive Accuracy Scale (IAS) were uncorrelated with the Body Awareness subscale of the Body Perception Questionnaire (BPQ; Porges, 1993), a widely used self-report measure of interoceptive attention. A recent exploratory analysis using the dataset from Murphy et al. (2020) suggested a putative quadratic association between self-reported interoceptive accuracy and attention, whereby both high and low levels of self-reported interoceptive attention (as quantified by the BPQ Body Awareness subscale) are associated with higher self-reported interoceptive accuracy (measured by the IAS and the ICQ). This quadratic association was significant whether the long or short version score of the BPQ Body Awareness was used in the model. Whilst this quadratic association supports the assertion that these measures may assess different constructs (accuracy and attention), it suggests that they appear to be differentially associated at different degrees of attention. The question remains, however, as to what is driving this association; this quadratic association between self-reported interoceptive accuracy and attention may represent a true nonlinear relationship between both constructs or could also be explained due to differences across the questionnaires (e.g. the different internal signals assessed varies across measures). Thus, the present studies have two major goals: 1. Describe the findings from the exploratory analysis examining the quadratic association between self-reported accuracy and attention, using pooled data from several studies reported in Murphy et al. (2020). 2. Confirmatory testing of the quadratic association between self-reported interoceptive accuracy (measured by the IAS and ICQ) and attention (measured by the BPQ Body Awareness), using two new samples that are currently being collected in different countries (Portugal and United Kingdom).