University of Trento

About: University of Trento is a education organization based out in Trento, Italy. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Context (language use). The organization has 10527 authors who have published 30978 publications receiving 896614 citations. The organization is also known as: Universitá degli Studi di Trento & Universita degli Studi di Trento.

Depeche Mood: a Lexicon for Emotion Analysis from Crowd Annotated News

Abstract: While many lexica annotated with words polarity are available for sentiment analysis, very few tackle the harder task of emotion analysis and are usually quite limited in coverage. In this paper, we present a novel approach for extracting – in a totally automated way – a highcoverage and high-precision lexicon of roughly 37 thousand terms annotated with emotion scores, called DepecheMood. Our approach exploits in an original way ‘crowd-sourced’ affective annotation implicitly provided by readers of news articles from rappler.com. By providing new state-of-the-art performances in unsupervised settings for regression and classification tasks, even using a naive approach, our experiments show the beneficial impact of harvesting social media data for affective lexicon building.

Tax Evasion and Moral Constraints: some Experimental Evidence

Abstract: SUMMARY Tax evasion has been mainly studied as a problem of choice under uncertainty; like any portfolio manager, the taxpayer has to allocate her/his fixed gross income between two assets a risky asset, tax evasion, and a safe asset (with a zero return), tax payment. As suggested by the portfolio theory, the taxpayer's choice will be affected by her/his preferences — mainly by her/his attitude towards risk-taking — and by the return on the risky asset determined by the tax structure, which includes both the tax rate and the penalties in the case of evasion However, the pure gamble model appears unsatisfactory on various grounds. Among these and most importantly for our purpose, it neglects the psychological aspects of the decision to evade tax because it rules out any feeling of shame about evading or being detected and punished, and it ignores any intrinsic pleasure from successful evasion In other words, the pure gamble model does not take full account of the moral constraints involved in the tax evasion decision. The main objective of the experiment presented here was therefore to investigate the role played by moral constraints in determining the decision to evade taxes. The experimental evidence supports the thesis that the taxpayer's decisional process involves not only monetary elements but also psychological and moral factors. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Die Steuerhinterziehung wurde bisher uberwiegend als Problem von Entscheidungen unter Unsicherheit untersucht Wie jeder Portfoliomanager muss auch der Steuerzahler sein Bruttoeinkommen zwischen zwei Anlageformen verteilen eine risikoreiche Anlageform. Steuerhinterziehung, und eine sichere Anlageform (ohne Gewinn), Steuerzahlung. Nach der Portfoliotheorie wird die Entscheidung des Steuerzahlers von seinen Praferenzen beeinflusst — vor allem von seiner Risiko-bereitschaft — und von der Gewinnaussicht der risikoreichen Anlageform, die vom Steuersystem abhangt, d.h. vom Steuersatz und den Strafen bei Steuerhinterziehung. Dieses Lotteriemodell ist jedoch aus mehreren Grunden unbefriedigend: es vernachlassigt die psycholgischen Aspekte der Steuerhinterziehung, weil es jegliches Schamgefuhl bei der Steuerhinterziehung bzw. der Entdeckung und Bestrafung ausschliesst und ein intrinsisches Vergnugen bei erfolgreicher Steuerhinterziehung ignoriert. Das Lotteriemodell zieht also nicht in Betracht, dass moralische Restriktionen die Entscheidung zur Steuerhinterziehung beeinflussen konnten Das hier vorgestellte Experiment wollte daher in erster Linie untersuchen, welche Rolle moralische Restriktionen bei der Entscheidung zur Steuerhinterziehung spielen. Die Ergebnisse des Experiments bestatigen die Hypothese, dass der Entscheidungsprozess des Steuerzahlers nicht nur durch monetare Elemente beeinflusst wird, sondern auch durch psychologische und moralische Faktoren. RESUME L'evasion fiscale a ete principalement etudiee en tant qu'un probleme de choix dans des conditions d'incertitude, comme n'importe quel gestionnaire de portfolio, le contribuable doit repartir son revenu brut fixe entre deux actifs un actif risque, l'evasion fiscale, et un actif sur (avec un taux d'interet zero), le payement des taxes. Comme suggere par la theorie du portfolio, le choix du contribuable sera affecte par ses preferences — principalement par son attitude vis-a-vis du risque — et par le benefice determine par la structure fiscale qui inclut a la fois le taux de taxation et les penalites prevues en cas d'evasion Cependant, le modele pur de jeu apparait insatisfaisant pour plusieurs rasisons Parmi celles-ci, le modele neglige les aspects psychologiques de la decision, limitation specialement importante pour notre objectif, puisqu'il ecarte tout sentiment de honte associe a la decouverte de l'evasion et a la punition ou encore il ignore le plaisir decoulant d'une evasion fiscale reussie. En resume, le modele pur de jeu ne prend pas pleinement en compte les contraintes morales qui influencent la decision. L'objectif principal de l'experimentation presentee ici etait d'analyser le role joue par les contraintes morales dans la prise de decision d'evasion fiscale. Les resultats confirment l'hypothese que le processus decisionel du contribuable depend non seulement des aspects financiers mais egalement des facteurs psychologiques et moraux.

Task-dependent organization of brain regions active during rest

Abstract: The human brain demonstrates complex yet systematic patterns of neural activity at rest. We examined whether functional connectivity among those brain regions typically active during rest depends on ongoing and recent task demands and individual differences. We probed the temporal coordination among these regions during periods of language comprehension and during the rest periods that followed comprehension. Our findings show that the topography of this "rest network" varies with exogenous processing demands. The network encompassed more highly interconnected regions during rest than during listening, but also when listening to unsurprising vs. surprising information. Furthermore, connectivity patterns during rest varied as a function of recent listening experience. Individual variability in connectivity strength was associated with cognitive function: more attentive comprehenders demonstrated weaker connectivity during language comprehension, and a greater differentiation between connectivity during comprehension and rest. The regions we examined have generally been thought to form an invariant physiological and functional network whose activity reflects spontaneous cognitive processes. Our findings suggest that their function extends beyond the mediation of unconstrained thought, and that they play an important role in higher-level cognitive function.