How can psychologists define 'mental health' when we know quite little about complexities of human life? Erich Fromm in his The Sane Society (1955) argued that mental health should not be defined merely in terms of the person's harmony with his/her society. He believed that a society, as a whole, could be mentally ill. He said that all humans share a common human nature, with which some cultures are not in accordance.

Maybe that's the cause of the collapse of some civilizations in the past.

One big problem here is the complexity of human brain and human life which make predictions difficult. For example, in the 60s and the 70s a sexual revolution occurred in western countries. Psychologists today consider some sexual behaviors normal/healthy which were traditionally discouraged. But in comparison with the age of human civilization on earth, these changes in norms are very recent experiments, about the results of which we may not be able to be sure.

We can see the same problem in economics, which is, in some sense, based on psychology. As an example, since the 80s neoliberalism has been the predominant economic theory in western countries, but now some big names in economics state that it is a failed experiment, causing many problems like deep inequality and the rise of populism.

Although you are correct in thinking, mental health is not defined merely by what others feel, it is a lot more personal. If I am understanding your question correctly, you believe that mental health is based on predictions. While predictions are necessary for defining a lesser known disorder, ones such as major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder are quite common and have been so for long enough that diagnosing them is relatively easy. In addition, it can be widely agreed upon that behavior such as suicide and self-harm are abnormal. A persistent change in mood is another indicator of a cognitive error. Lastly, hallucinations and delusions are also clearly indicative of an underlying problem. All of these symptoms must be present without the use of drugs, obviously. Any other behavior or thought pattern that interferes with daily life and/or is societally unacceptable should be a reason for alarm. These symptoms are clear and require no similar cases to diagnose an "issue with mental health" Aside from common, well-known disorders, evidence of other cases must be present in order to label such as a specific disorder. What I cannot prove are the disorders that are few and far between, and seem highly implausible. Regardless, if one seems "different" for an extended period of time and does not seem to be improving, it would be wise to seek help. Hope this makes sense, it was a fun question to answer;)


Eating disorders and childhood sexual abuse It is my understanding that extreme eating disorders such as bulimia are very intertwined with childhood sexual abuse. Just how strong is that link?

I have a relative who is killing herself with binge drinking and vomiting after almost every meal. If something doesn't give (and soon) she will be dead. I've asked her point blank (as in, "who molested you and when?") but she denies it. What are the odds that I'm barking up the wrong tree?

You can never deduce the cause of any disorder from it's mere presence.

A review (Connors, 1993) found that

  "around 30% of eating disordered patients have been sexually abused in childhood, a figure that is relatively comparable to rates found in normal populations."

Patients with eating disorders have been victims of childhood sexual abuse just as often as non-patients. So you might just as well say that not having an eating disorder was caused by sexual abuse! Sexual abuse simply does not distinguish patients with eating disorders from the rest of the population.

The review continues:

  For some patients there may be a direct link between sexual trauma and eating pathology, but in general sexual abuse is best considered a risk factor in a biopsychosocial etiological model of eating disorders.

In some cases the eating disorder might in fact have been caused by sexual abuse. But in most cases the patients were either not abused at all, or the sexual abuse was only one of the contribution factors that allowed an eating disorder to develop. Examples for other such factors are certain personality characteristics or genetics.

Advice

What you did – forcing someone to admit to childhood sexual abuse – is highly unhelpful, especially if this person has acutally suffered through it.

What you can do to help this person is help her get professional help. And again: Don't force anything on her. Suggest it, find addresses and telephone numbers, if that research seems to put her off, find reports of patients who have profited from a therapy, if she does not believe in a positive outcome or does not recognize her problem, propose to accompany her, if she is afraid to go, help her keep her appointments and adhere to the treatment (medication, eating rules etc.). But remember: therapies only ever work if the patient herself is motivated to go through it. Force is counterproductive. You can only offer support, and if that offer is declined, there is little you can do.

Sources:

Connors, M. E. (1993). Sexual abuse and eating disorders: A review. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 13, 1-11. doi:10.1002/1098-108X(199301)13:1<1::AID-EAT2260130102>3.0.CO;2-P


What are the laws of female physical attractiveness? Though sometimes beauty is in the eye of the beholder there must be certain physical traits that humans consistently find attractive. What are these physical beauty traits for women in modern developed countries? An example is large eyes. Ethnicity or country of origin doesn't matter. Provide your sources if possible.

There is an excellent paper at Evolutionary considerations of facial attraction which you may find useful. Neoteny is also a useful discussion.

My off the cuff summary would be that humans do appear to have retained much of their juvenile characteristics in comparison with other primates. Across cultures female faces with more neoteny (more childlike) are considered more attractive. As a general rule, the less masculine, the more feminine, so you can negate the masculine markers, i.e., larger jawbones, more prominent cheekbones, thinner cheeks, to increase femininity perception. That would, of course, include less facial hair, since that is a general neoteny character that would be more attractive. My recollection of several studies of so-called "baby face ratings" might pertain also, in that larger eyes, more prominent eyebrows, smaller chin, are typically perceived as innocent or less threatening, so I would guess that would also fall into the normal feminine perception category.

In general terms, symmetric faces are more attractive (right hand left hand comparison on the midline), so that would apply to women also. Averageness, surprisingly, is also more attractive, in that the more closely a face resembles the majority of faces is perhaps a sign that the person is less likely to have deletrious alleles.  Facial averageness seems to be associated with medical health. Skin color is also a measure of perceived health. Typically pallor is perceived as possible illness. Texture of facial skin is a marker, smoother being more attractive.

There is an interesting paper Cosmetics as Extended Phenotype that examines how cosmetics may be used to exaggerate cues to sexual dimorphism. Another paper, Face is not an empty canvas discusses how the morphology of faces is more desirable when it tends to heighten the expected emotions for the particular sex role, for example, the rounded baby face with larger eyes is perceived as more approachable and warm and more feminine generally. Finally, this article Aspects of Facial Contrast Decrease with Age and are Cues for Age Perception discusses how aspects like wrinkling and loss of luminance contrast between the eyes and surrounding skin and the lips and surrounding skin increases the perception of aging and decreases the attractiveness of female faces.


How does the timing work out for dopamine to affect the development of long-term potentiation? I just recently learned (indirectly from this source) that long-term potentiation/depression only takes place when you have large/small amounts of dopamine present at the relevant synapse. However, my understanding is that early in the process of learning behavior, dopamine isn't released until after a reward is received. If I'm a monkey who has to look one way or the other to get some juice, by the time I drink the juice and get the resulting dopamine, the neurons I used to move my eye are presumably not firing any more, right? So then how does this work? Is it that:

There's a slow bootstrapping process. Something like: first the
monkey has to learn that the taste of juice leads to the reward of
sugar. Then the monkey has to learn that the sight of juice
correlates to the taste, and extend the chain one step further,
etc., etc., such that by the time you actually have the monkey in
the lab there's a very small inferential step needed to plug into a
larger reward chain.
The neurons don't actually stop firing. There is some sort of
system in play that keeps the neurons firing afterwards, waiting for
fluctuations in dopamine level to tell it whether or not it should
increase or decrease long term potentiation.
Something I haven't thought of?

The ability of dopamine to work on different time scales is discussed by Schultz. More generally, the basic idea of prediction error reinforcement based learning and DA is that the prediction error signal "propagates back in time". There is some doubt for how temporally precise this DA signal actually is, and if DA is fast enough to support RPE TD learning.

Does that answer the question?


Can stress be sustained without reflective thought processes My question is whether the feeling of stress goes away progressively in the absence of reflective thought.

Example: you notice someone looking at you and think "maybe I have something on my face". Let us assume that this produces stress. If you do not use your internal dialog or any kind of visualization etc., is there any way that the stress can continue/grow or will it inevitably subside?

Has there been any research on this?

In your example, you are describing social stress. I think you are right that social stress is mainly driven by reflective processes. Also, social stress without reflective processes sounds quite implausible to me.

However, we should keep in mind that stress can come from various sources, some of which are non-social. For example, one common way to induce stress in psychological experiments is to use a physiological (as opposed to a psychosocial) stressor. In the classic cold pressor test, participants are instructed to put their hand into ice water. This starts a stress reaction, as measureable for example by increases in cortisol. I think it's pretty safe to say that reflective processes are not the driving factor here.

For a review on different methods to induce stress in the lab, see for example:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181831/


Scientific name for the phrase: "The first image is the image that stays" I've always heard about an effect that is entitled: The first image is the image that stays. It comes from a translation from a portuguese phrase, I don't know if it's properly translated.

It seems that this is some kind of effect in which the way you present yourself to other person in the first meeting is the one that works as an anchor. It's a very popular saying where I live.

My curiosity is: Does this effect really exists? I mean, has someone studied this effect?

There is another common expression: "You never get a second chance to make a first impression."

The stability of first impressions is empirically sound:

  Once formed, first impressions tend to be stable. A review of the
  literature on the accuracy and impact of first impressions on
  rater-based assessments found that raters' first impressions are
  highly correlated with later scores, but it is unclear exactly
  why. One study tested stability by asking participants to form
  impressions of people based purely on photographs. Participants' opinions
  of the people in the photographs did not significantly differ after
  interacting with that person a month later.

One possible explanation is a well-known and empirically supported cognitive bias called the "anchoring and adjustment heuristic".  It seems that people form initial impressions (anchoring), then on subsequent evaluations only make adjustments to the initial impressions, and these adjustments tend to be insufficient.  The cause of anchoring is also not well understood.

A more general explanation is "confirmation bias" (anchoring, self-fulfilling prophesy, and the halo effect are all subtypes of this bias), where people form initial impressions, and then confirm their impressions on subsequent evaluations by focusing on information that supports them, and avoiding, ignoring, forgetting, and distorting any information that does not.  This is a very empirically robust bias.


What is the average amount of new vocabulary adults retain when learning a second language? What are the realistic/optimal (or maximal) number of words of vocabulary that can be learned (retained and later successfully accessed) by an adult learner of a foreign/second language? (Unit: per day, week, or year.)

Initial research:

Read the Wikipedia article - result: Only focuses on children and their native language acquisition (as many articles do) vs. adults, who train conscientiously!
Google search: Which search terms would you recommend? Results from "vocabulary acquisition" and "amount of words/vocabulary" (+daily) are in review.
I did not find much yet, see below..
Google Scholar: In progress... ("vocabulary acquisition" and "adult vocabulary acquisition speed")

Unverified statements found from Google search:

"I am a student at the Defense Language Institute. We are required to learn about 80 words a day." (Source) - I tried to access the DLI / DLIFLC website to verify this, but the website was down yesterday (31.08.2012, 1:30 am, GMT+9)

Try keywords like: "second language learning number of words per"

Some suggest 3-6 words per hour of reading, which is afterwards used for calculation of average per week, month, year. References of studies to support this claim are missing though:
http://ip-173-201-189-182.ip.secureserver.net/archives/sla/waring120304.pdf

Several times I found references on this study: Miltion and Meara (1995).

  A longitudinal study by Milton and Meara (1995) found that adult
  learners of English as a second language could learn 2650 base words
  per year. more at:
  http://iteslj.org/Articles/Cervatiuc-VocabularyAcquisition.html

I remember it should be 7 words a day. If it is not, it should be at least divided into blocks of this size. If you google this number, it is mentioned on several sites, I do not remember the book I got it from.

I would be careful using these numbers, it is likely that they depend on the techniques that students and teachers tend to use.


Endogenous Neural Activity Could someone explain to me what exactly is endogenous neural activity? I am reading a lot of research papers, and I want to understand things thoroughly. Thanks for the response in advance.
This is the current paper that I am reading: https://www.nature.com/articles/pr199992

Quoting from the paper you refer to:

These connections form before the retina can respond to light, but at a time when retinal ganglion cells spontaneously generate highly correlated bursts of action potentials. Blockade of this endogenous activity

By "endogenous" here they are referring to the spontaneous activity generated before sight begins mentioned in the previous sentence, which organizes the circuitry for vision. It's endogenous because it's not triggered by an external stimulus like light, it's internally generated.
More generally, people tend to refer to "endogenous" activity that is not specifically related to stimulus-evoked activity that an experimenter can manipulate. Sometimes this is also called "noise" though there is debate about whether this term should be used (not that the people using it actually think it's truly noise).


Why do I perform better at rhythm games after a long period of not playing? Every once in a while I decide to play Phase Shift (very similar to Guitar Hero). I might go weeks or months between plays, but when I return, I often break a high score within the first few songs I play, even on songs I've played tens of times before. After about half an hour of play, my skill seems to drop off and I get average to low scores.

To me it appears that practice in the distant past (> 1 week) increases skill, while practice in the immediate past (< 1 hour) decreases skill.

Is there any proposed explanation for this effect? Are there studies that measure it, and if so, what activities were used?

I don't play any musical instruments, so I'm also curious if this happens for real music as well.

Short answer
Long-term memory formation (consolidation) takes weeks, or even years.

Background
Unfortunately my observations haven't been published yet, but an interesting thing I see with listening tests in noise is that people are systematically performing better when they come in a week later for a re-test.

Now I'll add some background information about types of memory as a general answer (Fig. 1).

The most relevant type here is long-term memory. There are a number of sub-types but one is most relevant for your question:

procedural memory (Pitel et al., 2014)

  is defined as the memory system in charge of the encoding, storage,
  and retrieval of the procedures (rather than episodes) that underlie
  motor, visuospatial, or cognitive skills

It includes such arbitrary matter of understanding the test (listen and repeat sentences / play a game) and other when subjects perform a certain task for the first time.

Now an important part of long term memory is consolidation (Miller, 2008), which is

  Memory consolidation is defined as a time-dependent process by which recent learned experiences are transformed into long-term memory, presumably by structural and chemical changes in the nervous system (e.g., the strengthening of synaptic connections between neurons).

Consolidation stabilizes memories after initial acquisition. Synaptic consolidation is the same as long-term potentiation and occurs within the first few hours after learning. Systems consolidation is the process where hippocampus-dependent memories become independent over a period of weeks to years.

After a while of playing and being past your peak, you may simply get tired, bored, or loose focus for other reasons, which reduces performance.

References
- Miller, Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference
(2008); 1: 53–3
- Pitel et al., Handbook of Clinical Neurology (2014); 125: 211-25

Fig. 1. Types of memory. source: The Human Memory


Reading and understanding difficult material I am not an university graduate but I have a passion for learning. I want to learn computer science and I keep on searching some good reference material. Recently I found some lecture notes on TOC of a well known teacher although he has explained things in detail but I am having hard time to grasp the material. One of the reason being is that they assume that you have a good mathematical foundation and other is you have the TA and professor to help when needed.

Now, for the first reason I have a good mathematical background but sometimes it may not suffice to the expectation. Second, I am a self learner hence I don't have the luxury to clear my doubts and ask questions.

What I am doing is try to study the material normally 2-3 pages and re-read it until it makes sense or I get frustrated, next day I try to feel positive and try again, I am making progress but it feels slow.

The questions are:

I will be able to change my brain's wiring by such constant effort?
How to judge that I know the material? by doing exercises? but I don't have solution?
How to be motivated in such situations?

Definetly yes! Even if you feel frustrated at the beginning, thinking and learning about a topic has an impact on your brain. See for example Robert Greenes book "Mastery" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_(book)), where he describes the lives of various geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci and Charles Darwin. They all spent a lot of time becoming masters of their field.
Theoretical Computer Science is a very abstrct topic. I would recomend you to participate in some online class. See https://www.coursera.org/courses?languages=en&query=computer+science for example. There you can do excercises that get peer reviewed by others. So you know if you did well or not.
Increase you motivation by:

Learning in groups like on Coursera.
Setting clear goals. What do you want to achieve? Get a better job? Write it down. Hang it on the wall.
Taking small steps. If you take steps that are too big, you might feel overwhelmed.


Why is schizophrenia a thought disorder and bipolar a mood disorder? Examining two major mental illnesses that are,  loosely, grouped by mood and thought.

Schizophrenia is regarded as an illness associated with thought disorder.

Bipolar is regarded as a mood disorder.

Both conditions can lead to a psychotic break and behavioral disturbance. Hallucinations can occur in both.

Bipolar is characterized by depression with the occurrence of, at least, one episode of mania.

Schizophrenia is characterized by phases. An active phase, where psychotic symptoms peak and the negative phase, when the personality has little affect.

Given that both cause behavioral problems and changes to mood. That psychosis is based on false beliefs, and beliefs are thoughts. What is the scientific and the psychiatric basis for regarding schizophrenia as a thought disorder and bipolar a mood disorder?

In this paper, the authors note that bipolar disorder and schizophrenia share many abnormal resting state network connections. But some connections are specific to bipolar disorder and others are specific to schizophrenia.

I think to really describe the two illnesses, one must look at specific biological data. Fuzzy terms like "mood disorder" and "thought disorder" are used without any concrete meaning. If somebody looked at the fmri data he would be able to tell the difference between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia (without knowing any psychiatric terms). At the same time, I think looking solely at fmri data can be too abstract without being informed by psychology and psychiatry. A good book on this subject is Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.

There is also some evidence that time perception may be altered in various mental illnesses. So one may distinguish bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in terms of differences of time perception.

Source

Differences in resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging functional network connectivity between schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar probands and their unaffected first-degree relatives.
Meda SA, Gill A, Stevens MC, Lorenzoni RP, Glahn DC, Calhoun VD, Sweeney JA, Tamminga CA, Keshavan MS, Thaker G, Pearlson GD.


Studies of how people learn to solve puzzles I would like to build a cognitive model that is able to learn how to solve a complex puzzle such as the tower of Hanoi based off of limited feed-back (set of valid moves, closer to goal, farther from goal). I have found some references for learning the Tower of Hanoi and the performance of schizophrenics, but I was wondering if there was a particular name for the type of learning I'm looking for (advanced reinforcement learning?) and if there are further studies on how people learn these types of puzzles.

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but the big umbrella term in the literature for puzzles like the Tower of Hanoi is problem solving.

A Google Scholar search for "tower of hanoi" and "problem solving" generates ~5000 hits. Another related puzzle is the Tower of London, and that Scholar search generates an additional ~5000.


Brain areas active while learning hierarchical structure of a problem There are multiple examples in the machine learning literature of trying to learn the hierarchical structure of a reinforcement learning problem, however have there been any papers tying this learning to neurological activity in the brain?

The type of evidence I would like some indication of a neural substrate indicating some type of activity when learning a hierarchical structure is necessary to solve a problem vs. when a simple problem is attempted.

According to "Frontal Cortex and the Discovery of Abstract Action Rules" by David Badre, Andrew S. Kayser, and MarkD'Esposito:

  ... the rostro-caudal axis of frontal cortex support rule learning at
  higher levels of abstraction. Moreover, these results indicate that
  when humans confront new rule learning problems, this rostro-caudal
  division of labor supports the search for relationships between
  context and action at multiple levels of abstraction simultaneously.

They found this by contrasting fMRI signals collected while the subject performed two tasks, one requiring a hierarchical, abstract rule and one requiring a flat, basic mapping.


Handwriting analysis by profession (muscular control) - Athletes, musicians, etc Is there any scientific study on handwriting by profession? In the whole world, the people with the most control of their muscles are athletes. Or pianists, who have extremely good control of their fingers. So perhaps their handwriting will be different from the average person?

Short answer: Not really, because a) handwriting style is generally individual-dependent and not occupation-dependent, and b) the fine-motor skills responsible for handwriting legibility are specific enough to be near-independent of the muscle control that mandates one's success in athletics and/or music.

Detailed answer:

It is probably difficult to say anything definite about the variance in style of handwriting among profession, as handwriting style is something subjective. Furthermore, one's handwriting style is typically well-formed before the time of their occupation.

In terms of the objective nature of handwriting -- i.e. its legibility and general readability -- there tends to be a greater relationship with fine motor coordination. However, even then, the motor coordination is fairly specific to handwriting or letter generation. The ability to generate written text is largely dependent on orthographic-motor integration [1] and finger sequencing. [2] The latter variable may be practiced by musicians or certain athletes in specific sports, but these variables are by-and-large specific to handwriting and letter generation. In general, a greater indicator in how legible one's handwriting will be is how 'automatic' one's handwriting is. Thus, interventions that promote higher orthographic-motor integration tend to improve the 'automaticity' of one's handwriting, thus leading to better legibility and readability in their handwriting. [1] Again, these interventions are specific to handwriting, and general fine-motor skills typically do not affect this area.

You might also be interested to know that there is a field of study called graphology that attempts to analyze handwriting based on personality or personal characteristics, such as profession. However, it is largely regarded as a 'pseudoscientific' field due to its lack of reproducible research thus far. I mention this because a lot of the resources I found when looking up more information on this question came from books on graphology, and so I could not use them as scientific resources. :)

Sources used:

[1] Jones, Dian; Christensen, Carol A. (1999). Relationship between automaticity in handwriting and students' ability to generate written text. Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 91(1), 44-49.

[2] Berninger, V.W.; B.J. Wolf (2009). Teaching students with dyslexia and dysgraphia: Lessons from teaching and science. Baltimore, Maryland: Paul H. Brooks Publishing Co. pp. 1–240.


Brain Dynamics at the Edge of Chaos I've repeatedly come across the claim that brain dynamics operate near the edge of chaos, but usually they do not give any useful sources on how we actually know this.

I'm also aware that there are theoretical models that such dynamics are optimal in terms of information transfer, memory storage, etc and I find it plausible that evolution would try to get us somewhere in that region to the extent possible.

But what precise evidence do we have from brain measurements or realistic brain models that the dynamics are actually near the edge of chaos?

Dynamical systems (basically all of them) display a wide repertoire of dynamics when tuned close to criticality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_phenomena). In this range, organized patterns of activity emerge, close to those that we find when looking at statistical dependencies between time series recording (at least partially) brain activity.

Long range correlations also emerge in this phase.

So, it's true that dynamical models tuned close to criticality better fit brain activity. On the other hand saying that "brain activity is critical" is a logical fallacy, since we are giving to the modelled system properties of the model.

(chaos is a close concept, stressing the dependency on initial conditions, but in this case I think that criticality is more relevant).

See, among other things, this scientific yet accessible paper

Beggs, J. M., & Timme, N. (2012). Being Critical of Criticality in the Brain. Frontiers in Physiology, 3. doi:10.3389/fphys.2012.00163

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2012.00163/full


Can a person "self-induce" the placebo effect? Despite a recent dubious claim that placebos don't require deception (critiqued here), placebos appear to function on the basis that a subject believes X will have effect Y. Without knowing too much detail, we say that the subject's mind/body will assist or attempt to achieve Y upon the perception that X causes Y.

Can a person, without self-deception [1] and with knowledge of the placebo effect, induce a placebo response? Or can a person knowledgeable of the placebo effect induce the same "reactions" that a placebo can normally be used to induce?

Consider a silly example.

Persons A and B each have a headache. They are told that balancing a spoon on one's nose eliminates headaches with very high success rates by conducting electricity via the sinuses. Person A believes the claim. Person A balances a spoon on their nose, and their headache is eliminated.

Person B, having a background in medicine, doesn't believe it at all. Person B, to prove the point, balances the spoon on their nose and remains in pain.

At this point, is there any way for Person B to "simply decide" that this ritual, which he knows to be an attempt at a placebo, to start working?

Would there be a difference using a pill instead of something purely ritualistic?

[1] self-deception. [for the purpose of this question,] any mental activity in the general category of suspending one's "participation" in the full body knowledge they normally possess.

Not an answer, because I couldn't find any studies, but too long for a comment:

Placebos aren't arbitrary. You are not given chocolate chips as a placebo treatment for a cold. The placebeo has the form of a "real" treatment for the illness or disorder, e.g. a pill without an agent.

This means that in your experiment your subjects must treat themselves with what looks like a real treatment but isn't. It must look like it could work.
Placebos are not administered without the knowledge of the sick person, e.g. while that person sleeps. Placebos are administered in what is effectively a ritual: you go visit an expert, the expert speaks some magic words (the latin names of your organs and illness), the expert gives you a magic potion (the sugar pill), and touches you and transfers some of his or her power to you. Well, of course he doesn't, but the similarity between religious and magic rituals and what a doctor does are striking and have been studied by ethnologists.

This means that in your experiment your subjects must explicitly treat themselves and not just eat breakfast and decide after the fact that one of those chocolate chips was the placebo. They need to plan how, with what, and when they want to treat themselves, and then administer the treatment in the way it was designed.

If, in this way, you consider what a placebo actually is – a ritualised administration of a faux treatment – it becomes immediatly apparent that this treament contains several psychologically powerful elements that must certainly have some kind of effect.


Does medication to treat Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder reduce associated cognitive deficits? Some studies point to existence of cognitive deficits in OCD (it seems that these deficits are not comorbid but have the same neurological roots as OCD). Unfortunately I found no studies with positive effects of medication (SSRI etc.) on cognitive deficits/impairment in OCD patients. I found only one study about cognitive-behavioral therapy and improvement of cognitive deficits symptoms in OCD.

Is there any research that indicates medication used to treat OCD (such as SSRIs) can mitigate these cognitive deficits?

Related articles:

  http://www.steveseay.com/ocd-cognitive-deficits-obsessive-compulsive-disorder
  Fenger, M. M., Gade, A., Adams, K. H., Hansen, E. S., Bolwig, T. G., &
  Knudsen, G. M. (2005). Cognitive deficits in obsessive-compulsive
  disorder on tests of frontal lobe functions. Nordic journal of
  psychiatry, 59(1), 39-44.
  PDF
  Purcell, R., Maruff, P., Kyrios, M., & Pantelis, C. (1998).
  Neuropsychological deficits in obsessive-compulsive disorder: a
  comparison with unipolar depression, panic disorder, and normal
  controls. Archives of General Psychiatry, 55(5), 415.
  LINK

Look up Jeffery Schwartz. He has done decades worth of scientific studies with hundreds of OCD patients. In his book "You Are Not Your Brain" (worth a read) he mentions this bad brain wiring or cognitive deficits are the culprit behind the "Deceptive Brain Messages (OCD).

His studies show that self directed neuro-plasticity make the most corrections in brain wiring - and that the medicine can be an aid in the self directed steps. These self directed steps rely on the mind to alter the physical brain.


Is is possible to "delete" a memory permanently? If cognitive memory is compared to computer memory, then is it possible to purposefully and permanently forget a specific memory, using known technologies and methodologies?

There is still much that is not completely understood about the process of memory and forgetfulness, and the following is what I have been able to find out.
It is understoood that physiologically, the establishment of long-term memory involves a process of physical changes in the structure of neurons (or nerve cells) and their synapses in the brain, through a process known as long-term potentiation (LTP). (Mastin, 2018; Science Direct, 2018a).
Short-term memory can become long-term memory through the process of consolidation, involving rehearsal and meaningful association (strengthening the physical structure of neurons and their synapses). Unlike short-term memory (which relies mostly on an acoustic, and to a lesser extent a visual, code for storing information), long-term memory encodes information for storage semantically (i.e. based on meaning and association).
The opposite to LTP is long-term depression (LTD) (Dharani, 2015), whereby the neuronal and synaptic structures are weakened, and forgetfulness develops, after a certain triggering activity. (Science Direct, 2018b).
There are several forms of LTP and LTD classified by their mechanisms and their mode of induction (Hammond, et al. 2015), and LTD can be temporary or permanent.

LTD synergistically functions with long-term potentiation (LTP) to generate a balanced, stable memory mechanism. Although LTP plays a major role in the associative type of learning that occurs in the hippocampus and neocortex, LTD is a major player in the error-driven learning that occurs in the cerebellar cortex. Recent studies have revealed complex signal transduction processes underlying LTD. In the long run, LTD may lead to a loss of synapses, or to preservation as silent synapses that have recently been found to prevail in the cerebellar cortex (Ito, 2009).

To answer your question

is it possible to purposefully and permanently forget a specific memory

It seems possible, and Hammond, et al. (2015) discusses induction of LTD, however induction of LTD to forget a specific memory would be impossible at this present time that I can find.
References
Dharani, K. (2015). Chapter 3 - Memory. The Biology of Thought: A Neuronal Mechanism in the Generation of Thought–A New Molecular Model p.53-74. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-800900-0.00003-8
Hammond, C., Goaillard, J-M., Debanne, D. & Gaiarsa, J-L. (2015). Chapter 18 - Synaptic Plasticity. Cellular and Molecular Neurophysiology (Fourth edition) p361-389. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-397032-9.00018-2
Ito, M. (2009). Long-Term Depression: Cerebellum. Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, p533-539. doi: 10.1016/B978-008045046-9.00807-X
Mastin, L. (2018). Long-Term Memory [Online]Retreived from: http://www.human-memory.net/types_long.html
Science Direct (2018a). Long Term Potentiation [Online]Retreived from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/long-term-potentiation
Science Direct (2018b). Long Term Depression [Online]Retreived from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/biochemistry-genetics-and-molecular-biology/long-term-depression


Using the median for non parametric (Likert) data, when it gives you a decimal place My colleague and I are working with non-parametric Likert data.

We have been taking the median, but just realised that we are still getting values of say 2.5 or 1.5. Our justification for using the median over the mean was that values which lie between our Likert data points do not have strong meaning.

We are unsure if we should run our analysis again, always taking the minimum value or...?

Thank you.

You are using the wrong justification for using the median. The only reason you can even consider using a median or mean with Likert data is because there is meaning to values between Likert items. If you have "Agree" and "Strongly Agree" there is definitely the possibility of some value where someone agrees more strongly than agree but less strongly than strongly agree.

However, you lose a ton of information when you calculate the median of a Likert-like item, and it can be dangerous to do so when the shapes of the response distributions vary. Let's consider a case where you have 5 levels. These two count vectors give you the same median '3':

A = [5 5 50 20 20]

B = [20 20 50 5 5]

but the distributions are quite different and the median is not very informative about that difference.

You may consider using the "interpolated median" which treats a Likert item as indicating the interval between adjacent items, for example a "3" really means "somewhere on the interval [2.5 3.5]."

For the cases A and B above, the interpolated medians are:

mintA = 3.3

mintB = 2.7


Is there an evolutionary psychology explanation why children have high pitched voices? I have come across purely mechanical reasons that explain why children have piping/high pitched voices - length of trachea etc.  However, I find myself wondering whether there isn't a deeper evolutionary reason why the mechanics evolved that way.  Is there a Kinderschema type explanation for this?  I have attempted to find information on the subject and turned up nothing - perhaps because I am simply not searching for the right thing.

Children have high pitched voices relative to adults because their vocal folds are shorter and physics demands that short vocal folds result in higher pitches. The format frequencies of children are also higher than adults due to shorter vocal tract lengths.

I think your question is, is there a speech communication reason for the vocal folds and vocal tract of children to be shorter than adults to which I would argue that it is unlikely. While it is possible to be grown with adult sized features (e.g., the inner ear and the middle ear ossicles), generally babies are smaller than adults. There would need to be a strong evolutionary advantage to being born with a really long vocal tract. Second, from what I can piece together, (e.g., this article) a shorter vocal tract is desirable for suckling. Therefore I would conclude that evolutionary speaking babies have shorter vocal tracts because they are smaller than adults and if the vocal tract was longer it would make it harder to feed.


How long should I work before taking a break? I'd like to work as effectively as possible for 8-9 hours a day, whether at work or studying.

At some point in completing my major in psych I remember hearing about the importance of taking breaks while doing work (e.g., Trougakos and Hideg, 2009 on momentary work recovery). Gopher et al (1995) discuss  ultradian rhythms and working for 90 minutes for every 15 minutes of break. Some methods like the pomodoro technique suggest 25 minutes of work for every 5 minutes of break, with a 15 minute break every 4 cycles.

Is there recent, widely-accepted research on what work-break rhythms work best? (Even if the research was done for specific tasks or for specific populations.)
How does the optimal work-break rhythm vary by task, context, or other moderating factors?

References

Gopher, D., Lavie, P., & Zomer, J. (1995). Ultradian Rhythms in Prolonged Human Performance.
Trougakos, J. P., & Hideg, I. (2009). Momentary work recovery: The role of within-day work breaks. Research in occupational stress and well-being, 7, 37-84.

It appears extended working days, such as, 16 hours are counterproductive.
(1) Safe working hours - doctors in training a best practice issue examines the effects of extended working hours on performance for doctors. It is recommended that a 7-8 hour working day is more productive than extended days. One issue being the sleep deprivation that accompanies extended working days.

There is research on optimal work-break rhythms. It has been found that work performance is optimized  in 90 minute time slots. This is improved by dividing this into 25 minute time slots, with short breaks. With relation to the type of work, it is suggested that breaks be taken away from the working environment, optimally, within an altogether different environment.

This is consistent with natural ultradian cycles:

Image taken from The origin of the 8 hour work day and why we should rethink it a blog by Leo Widrich

I have quoted extensively from the following article:
(2) Best Rest Practices for Optimal Productivity and Creativity.
This addresses your questions comprehensively and also confirms that an extended working day is counter productive.

Timing of natural working rythms

  Rossi champions the 20-Minute Break in his book of the same name for
  peak performance. And Anders et al studied in 1993 a group of
  violinists and discovered that the best performers practiced in
  90-minute intervals and learned not to over-practice.

  We can break down that 90-minute rhythm even further into 25-minute
  spurts. Most people can pay attention to a talk for 25 minutes (hence,
  the brilliance of TED Talks’ 17-minute limit).

  Hence, another client, a highly reputed novelist and short story
  writer, wisely writes in three 25-minute periods—each divided with a
  timer. At the end of the third period, she takes a walk or switches to
  another activity

....

Breaks away from the workplace

  I recommend to clients they remove themselves from the work
  environment if possible.

  For a corporate client, I recommended he schedule a walk to another
  part of his vast office quarters, glance out a floor-to-ceiling
  window, and then return to his office room, sit in a comfortable sofa
  normally reserved for clients, and remember the last time he was
  outdoors working on his ranch—one of his favorite activities.

  Step outdoors if you can. I suggested that one client who gets
  overwhelmed with multiple tasks in the afternoon to step outdoors and
  sit in her garden for fifteen minutes and simply observes the colors,
  textures, sounds, and smells. Ideally, she would weed for fifteen
  minutes as the physical activity more likely will let her processor
  mind incubate some of her creative problems.

  Or step away from your work space, and read four pages from a book
  that brings you delight.

  If you can jog or bicycle for 20 minutes, even better—as you’re also
  increasing the chances of your hippocampus forging new neurons in your
  middle-aged gray matter, according to Fred Gage of the Salk Institute
  and other researchers who’ve examined the benefits of intentional,
  enjoyable cardiovascular exercise.

...

Techniques to combat fatigue

  DISTRACTION CAN RE-BOOT LONG-TERM FOCUS. () Here’s a mind-twister:
  Atsunori Ariga and Alejandro Lleras of University of Illinois at
  Urbana-Champaign, United States questioned the assumption that loss of
  focus came from, say, fatigue or lack of attention. In 2010, their
  study published in Cognition concluded that a deliberate distraction
  or introduction of a second task actually can increase vigilant
  attention on the first task.

....

Utilising multi tasking to break mental fatigue.

  Pay attention to when you need to introduce a quick second task. Maybe
  sending off an email or text message will free up mental bandwidth and
  get you re-committed to the high-thinking task. Do this in tandem with
  the “Break with Rhythm” suggestions above.

....

The benefits of a daily nap

  Some students took no naps. Some students took catnaps. And some
  students took full-fledged 90-minute naps complete with REM
  dreams...//...    students who took the full REM-level naps showed
  boosts in creative problem-solving performance.

....

The concept that a longer working day is counter-productive

  Schedule non-digital time in the evenings, especially 45 minutes
  before sleep. Set up a bi-weekly schedule of evening rhythms: One
  Monday as “reading night,” One Tuesday as “date night,” et cetera. If
  you must work some evenings, schedule work evenings. Make them the
  exception instead of the rule.

 (1) Safe working hours - doctors in training a best practice issue
ANDREW LEWIS
Andrew Lewis is Senior Industrial Relations Adviser with the Australian Medical Association Victoria
(2) Best Rest Practices for Optimal Productivity and Creativity
How and when to break from creative work.
Published on April 30, 2012 by Jeffrey Davis, M.A. in Tracking Wonder
The Seattle Longitudinal Study  K. Warner Schaie, Ph.D. and Sherry L. Willis, Ph.D. UW Medicine
Life In The Middle  Life in the Middle: Psychological and Social Development in Middle Age
 edited by Sherry L. Willis, James B. Reid
Recovering from Work: Interview with Sabine Sonnentag
Brief and rare mental ‘‘breaks’’ keep you focused: Deactivation
and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements
Atsunori Ariga, Alejandro Lleras
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
 The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
K. Anders Ericsson, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer
Psychological Review
1993, Vol. 100. No. 3, 363-406
Copyright 1993 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0033-295X/93/S3.00


Study about addiction to placebo I was wondering if anyone knows about a study where people were given a placebo, then told over and over that it was addictive and would have terrible trouble coming off of it. It would be nice if these studies involved a brain scan as well.

I don't want to complicate this post, so I won't give my reason for asking this, but if you're interested I'll add it to the comments.

I'm not aware of a more systematic study, but I'm aware of some (old) case reports, best summarized in this 1978 1-para letter-to-the editor (of AJP):

  SIR: I would like to comment on the interesting paper ‘‘A
  Note on the Addictive Personality: Addiction to Placebos”
  by Ira Mintz, M.D. (March 1977 issue). Dependence on placebo
  might not be rare. As far as I know, I published the first
  case report nine years ago (1). Similar descriptions by Czech
  authors followed (2, 3). Dr. Mintz’ patients and my patient
  were schizophrenic, but the other patients never have been
  psychotic.

  REFERENCES

  Vinar O: Dependence on a placebo: a case report. Br J Psychiatry
  115:1189-1190, 1969
  Boleloucky Z: A contribution to the problem of placebo dependence:
  case report. Activ Nerv Super(Prague) 13:190-191, 1971
  Honzak R, Horackova E, Culik A: Our experience with the
  effect of placebo in some functional and psychosomatic disorders.
  Activ Nerv Super(Prague) 14:184-185. 1972


Is learning to do a task automatically an example of intuition? I'm looking for some examples to understand what people call their intuition at work when making their decisions.

For example:

We learn to type and then after some time we begin to type
by automatically knowing position of alphabet on the
keyboard.
We learn to ride a vehicle and then after some time we ride it without
having to think.

Are these the examples of what we call our intuition? If not, how do they happen?

No, these are not examples of intuition, but examples of procedural memory (or automaticity). Procedural memory is the ability to perform certain tasks without conscious awareness.


Do eyes accommodate to color? I've heard that our eyes accommodate between colors too far from each other in the visible spectrum. I imagine it's not a true focal point accommodation, but rather linked with how brain processes the information. Is this true?

What I'm trying to find out is, whether using color for emphasis, for example both blue and yellow (which are fairly far from each other in the spectrum), for text underlining, doesn't make the brain focus only at one color at once.

Like when you're looking for some object on your messy table, thinking it's of blue color and not noticing it's right in front of your eyes, because it was red.

Another example would be a document with some emphasized words in blue, some in yellow - and let's say the author wanted to make sure both colors are regarded as important (just in different context). Now question is, can the eye/brain focus on both colors at once? I don't mean if we can do it deliberately by trying hard, but rather if it's more likely for the brain to focus only at one color at a time, unconsciously.

By what I've heard, if I understand it correctly. If we want to use two different colors for emphasis, we should use colors that are close to each other in the EM spectrum (while still making sure, they are high contrast in regard to the background)

Refer to the two paragraphs taken from wikipedia I stylized.

I'd summarize the question like this. Is there difference in how we regard those two paragraphs? Are we more likely to skip some words when they are highlighted with colors too far away from each other in the EM spectrum, therefore, is it better to use colors closer to each other?

EDIT: I changed the luminance of the colors to be the same for all of them (70%, used HSL Color Picker). As pointed by John, the different luminance might have played a part in the perception.

View of the relative EM wavelength spread (images taken from Gimp)

I don't think it is a matter of color/hue. Do you have a source for this hypothesis? If you were able to measure this effect then I would think it happens because of the importance rating a reader develops for a certain group of highlighted words, e.g. "all blue highlighted words are important to me."

The user Pete made a good comment in my opinion by pointing out the contrast issue. The attention of humans is foremost guided by luminance contrast. Then comes hue and then saturation. The colors you chose have a different luminance value and therefore attract attention differently.

Here's a link to compare the (relative) luminance values of your color sets.


is it possible to be severely autistic yet not being "visibly autistic"? It is common problem for many "mild" (ASD level-1) autistics to be criticized as "you do not look autistic" or some of its variants. Also sometimes seen in social media that moderate autistics (level-2) (claimingly) facing similar issues to disclose their diagnosis.

By "visible" I mean the publicly considered easily observable disabilities, such as extreme intellectual disabilities, visibly heavily motor nonfunction or totally unable to move, saliva dripping from mouth, complete nonverbality or observably distorted voice and language, disfigurement or birth-defects, inability to hold urine or stool,  etc. Usually the known to be severe (level-3) autistics have at least one of these "publicly perceived as disability" symptoms.

Incidentally, autism is not itself a visible condition at all, and the intellectual disability is not itself autism, its sometimes a co-morbid condition with autism but it is not identical to autism, rather autism is basically the impairment in social cognition. Also some of the symptoms of autism may be actually visible or easily observable but these are commonly mistaken as intentional inappropriate behaviour or lack of morality or as some mental illness instead of cognitive difficulties or social disablilities.

Now my question is; Is it possible that someone has level-3 (severe) autism yet on superficial look or talk the disability does not appear?

Theoretically it seems to be very possible that a severely autistic person may lack all of the publicly believed stereotype on disability, also can lack intellectual disability, moreover can apply sharp observations and observation to mask and fit-in, yet can have tremendous problem in social aspects. In such case a level-3 autistic too may face "you don't look autistic" situations. And probably all the observable symptoms will be imsinterpreted as mood or behaviour issue.

But does that happen in reality? or all of the severe (level-3) ASD have also some publicly believed stereotype of disability?

  Note: See also Autism "severity" levels

  Screenshot:

What you propose

Is it possible that someone has level-3 (severe) autism yet on superficial look or talk the disability does not appear?

is nonsense by the usual (DSM) definition of autism, which is based on several criteria which are behaviorally defined, i.e. from an observer's standpoint, to start with

a child must have persistent deficits in each of three areas of social communication and interaction (see A.1. through A.3. below) plus at least two of four types of restricted, repetitive behaviors

Nowhere in there is that presupposed to be just "basically the impairment in social cognition" that may not even be manifested.
(Somewhat of an aside here; DSM-5 has tried to be less "atheoretical" than its III/IV predecessors, but in the end the differences in that regard are minor.)

Now if you want a bit of a deep[er] dive here, the DSM-5 acknowledges that some compensatory behaviors exist and should even be considered in assessing the (actual) severity of the diagnosis.
And a bit of digging through recent research finds a controversy in (re)defining (of sorts) "true" autism to mean Theory-of-Mind-deficits instead of [DSM] behavioral-autism... or at least (thus) identifying "camouflaged" or "highly compensated" autism (understood as ToM-deficits). This is quite a complicated discussion because ToM is multidimensional (or at least its measures are--and some correlate better than others with DSM-autism), and so (varied) are compensatory mechanisms for its deficits. The latter are surprisingly used by "normal" people as well, with perhaps only "shallow" compensation strategies specific to autism.
In the realm of personalities, you have prominent researchers on both sides of this dispute, e.g. Happé (responding to) Fombonne's (editorial). (h-index > 100 for both.)
I'm guessing you've read & bought the ToM-deficits view of autism when you say "autism is not itself a visible condition at all" and "is basically the impairment in social cognition". Frankly if you look at Happé's last piece I linked, she (and her group) are cautious not to take that extreme position, although I'm sure it came off like that in some popsci article (the BBC at least has an article on people discovering their "hidden autism" thanks [or at least in relation] to Happé's research.)
As a final (recommended) reading here, which may help put this in context, some piece from Allen Frances who was quite involved with
the previous editions of the DSM on the conflicting views on mental illness diagnosis standards in general (e.g. is clinical impairment needed) is also relevant here.


Can humans really successfully multitask? It seems to be a quality parents want to instill in their children, as well as i.e.- teenagers bragging about having music playing, texting, video chatting, all while doing homework, they claim is the best possible atmosphere; for getting their school work done....

"Trying to do two things at once is usually a recipe for doing both badly, according to a long line of research. We’re slower and less accurate when we try to juggle two things."

Generally, it is thought that multi-tasking is just the brain rapidly shifting its focus from one matter to another instead of doing both (or several) things simultaneously. This is very straining and distracting for the brain, and so it ends up doing less well on both tasks than it would if the tasks were done separately.https://www.apa.org/research/action/multitask.aspx

However, there is an interesting article that says there might be more going on that that. The article explains 2 studies done that seem to indicate that our ability to perform a task might depend on the context in which we learnt to perform the task. E.g. " If you’re typing while listening to a conference call, maybe you’re less likely to make mistakes if you were equally distracted when you originally learned to type."
https://hbr.org/2015/01/the-curious-science-of-when-multitasking-works


How did Hermann Ebbinghaus conduct memory experiments on himself? I was reading about Hermann Ebbinghaus. He became interested in experimental psychology which led him to conduct memory experiments on himself which then resulted in the publication of his book: "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology" in 1885.

He discovered the forgetting curve and the spacing effect. How did he do so? I'm aware that he had a list of 2300 "nonsense syllables" to memorize but I have no idea what his process was like. Did he play with different intervals for the review of the material? Things like that. Is the process explained in the book?

I'd like to look at the details to see the connection between his work and the now available software employing spaced repetition algorithms.

Ebbinghouse indeed only tested on himself, limiting the generalization of his findings.

Your question is a really good one; given the time of his writing, the now so familiar structure of a standard journal paper (Abstract, Introduction, M&M, Results, Discussion) is not present in his monograph. However, tucked away in the text on p. 51 of 100 in this pdf version of his book he describes the following:

  The investigations in question fell in the year 1879-80 and comprised 163 double tests.
  Each double test consisted in learning eight series of 13 syllables each [...] and then in relearning them after a definite time. The learning was continued until
  two errorless recitations of the series in question were possible. The relearning was
  carried to the same point; it occurred at one of the following times, -- namely, after about
  one third of an hour, after 1 hour, after 9 hours, one day, two days, six days, or 31 days.

As far as I understand, hence, he learned a sequence of syllables and then he basically tried to re-learn those sequences after a series of fixed times and see how his scores were the second time.


Is it possible to measure the working memory of a non-human animal? Is it possible to measure the working memory of a non-human animal? And if so, have there been any studies that have quantified the working memory of animals, and that have compared that to the working memory of humans? Or are the two not comparable?

Sure. For example, working memory can be assessed using the delayed match to sample task. Here are examples from monkeys, rats, pigeons, and bees.

The problem with comparing them is that the actual stimuli used for each species are different (e.g. odors for bees, shapes for monkeys) and this is known to affect the results.

In humans, if you run similar tasks, just with small verses large sets of possible stimuli, for example digits verses general words, you can get very different results. Even if you did try to use the same stimuli set, the result will probably not be "subjectively" equal to that of a different species. Think of yourself trying to do the odor task of the bees; it's not a fair game.

Other seemingly small changes in the paradigm can also affect the results, for example a delay between the trials, etc. So the only way to seriously compare them would be to conduct the same experiment, by the same lab, of different species. I personally don't know of any research that was directly aimed at comparing them. Maybe someone using (lesioned) animals as a model for dementia would know more.


Is fear of parasites an explanation for trypophobia? Trypophobia is the

  alleged pathological fear of objects with irregular patterns of holes, such as beehives, ant hills and lotus seed heads.

I find some sample pictures that relevant to trypophobia sickening, because they remind me of a human flesh infested with some parasites.

Thus, I wondered whether there can be an evolutionary formed reflex making people feel disgust when they see a certain geometrical patterns, to prevent them from being infested.

Does this sound like a sensible explanation for the reasons behind trypophobia?

Intuitively, I would also see disgust or fear of contamination as a plausible pathway. However, the explanation that has been discussed in the literature is that trypophobia-eliciting stimuli have basic visual characteristics that are also found in highly poisonous animals (Cole & Wilkins, 2013). Quoting their abstract:

  Phobias are usually described as irrational and persistent fears of certain objects or situations, and causes of such fears are difficult to identify. We describe an unusual but common phobia (trypophobia), hitherto unreported in the scientific literature, in which sufferers are averse to images of holes. We performed a spectral analysis on a variety of images that induce trypophobia and found that the stimuli had a spectral composition typically associated with uncomfortable visual images, namely, high-contrast energy at midrange spatial frequencies. Critically, we found that a range of potentially dangerous animals also possess this spectral characteristic. We argue that although sufferers are not conscious of the association, the phobia arises in part because the inducing stimuli share basic visual characteristics with dangerous organisms, characteristics that are low level and easily computed, and therefore facilitate a rapid nonconscious response.

(emphasis added)

There is not much research on this phobia though, so it may still be that contamination fears are also a contributing factor.

Source

Cole, G. G., & Wilkins, A. J. (2013). Fear of holes. Psychological Science, 24, 1980–1985. doi:10.1177/0956797613484937


At what time in a psychophysical test are catch trials preferably presented? I am designing a tone-in-noise detection task (specifically a high frequency N0Spi task). For various reasons I need to use a yes-no paradigm and the method of constant stimuli. I am severely limited on the number of trials that can be presented (total of 20 trials) and the presentation order must be the same for all subjects. The subjects will be completely naive and be unfamiliar with the stimuli.

I was thinking of giving them two "practice" trials: one with a clearly audible signal (if they knew what the signal sounded like) and one that is noise alone. I would provide feedback on these trials in the case of an incorrect response. Is there any literature on if the signal or no signal trial should come first? In a run of 20 trials, is there an optimal number of catch (no signal) trials? Is there an optimal place in the track to put these catch trials?

Short answer
Based on the experimental restrictions provided in the question and comments, my best bet would be to include 6 catch trials and to randomly present them from trial 6 and onward. Trials 1 & 2 are reserved for training purposes, trials 3 - 5 I would reserve for above-threshold stimuli.

Background
First a problem breakdown as I understand it from the question and the comments:

A Yes/No task is performed using method-of-constant stimuli;
Dynamic stimulus range is known and expected outcomes are available;
The detection rate is important, whereas a 50% threshold or psychometric curve are not of interest;
Zero-stimulus ('catch') trials are a necessary component to validate the method in the normal-group;
No pilot experiment can be performed to validate the methods in a small group of controls;
Two practice trials are needed (stimulus-tone alone; noise-alone);
Critical bottle neck: 20 trials per run

So - here is my suggestion, based on my experiences.

First off, in a yes/no task there's anything possible from correct rates from 0% to 100%. To have a reasonably estimate of the correct rate at a certain constant stimulus, multiple trials are necessary. With one trial you only get 0% or 100% correct - such a binary approach may make sense, but it will add substantial jitter. With four trials, you basically end up with correct-rate increments of 25%. Not too bad, but not pretty either. One subject error and the outcome will be substantially affected. With 8 trials, you are left with steps of 12.5%. From my point of view, 8 trials is the least you should have to have a reasonable estimate with some precision and to allow the subject to make an error without too much of an affect on the outcome.

From a more practical standpoint, you are left with 18 trials per run per subject (?), namely 20 trials minus two practice runs. At the minimum, from my stand point, you should use 3 stimulus levels: zero-intensity (catch trials) and two above detection-threshold stimuli to spread your chances of finding a statistical difference. I would recommend one far-above detection threshold ('High' condition), where also your impaired group will reach correct rates >50% and one low level ('Low) where your impaired group will score <50% to have a condition that will make a positive outcome (difference control-impaired) guaranteed.

This means 18 trials for three conditions: 'Catch'; 'Low'; 'High'. That means 6 trials per condition, leaving you with correct-rate increments of 16.7%. Not too bad.

Now, where to put those catch trials into the picture?

I would personally enforce the paradigm to start with the two practice trials (first the tone, then noise) and then have at least the first two or three trials above threshold; best thing to do is have the 'High' condition first for two times, then the 'Low' and start randomizing from there. Again, this is all personal opinion, based on my experience that dis-ambiguating the test protocol is paramount. There's nothing worse than a confused subject. By having 2 well-above detection threshold stimuli (the same as training trial #1 I guess) the task is clear cut. If you start off with a catch trial after training they will likely be confused ('I didn't hear a tone!?' ; 'Should I press the button?').


An Overview of Priming in Psychology I am looking for a comprehensive overview of priming literature in psychology and cognitive science. A survey article or a book would be a great start. More specifically, I am interested to learn about different types of priming, stimuli, and applications in which priming is used, in addition to some common methodological practices in this field. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Update for those who think this question is not specific enough: Which book do you recommend to a person interested in learning about priming in depth?

This should be rather easy to find on google scholar, especially with the recent replicability crisis in social psychology. In particular, Bargh and Cesario has a few things to say in 'defense' of priming.

You can start with Bargh's article, which is a response to this article by Bower.

Cesario's article is here, and for an overview of the whole issue surrounding priming and replicability, you can try Pashler and Wagenmaker's article.


How higher/lower taxes can affect reward system and overall satisfaction of someone I'm curious about how the tax system affects the reward center in the brain and how that influences the perception of happiness with one's life.

My hypothesis is that subject A would make \$3500 a month doing something he/she loves in a city he/she likes, etc. The subject pays a 20% overall tax in order to receive the \$3500, so the actual value before tax would be \$4200. Subject B makes the same amount of money, doing exactly the same in the same city, etc. What I'm interested in is in isolating the tax variable, so in this case Subject B would pay 50% tax (that would make it $7000 before tax).

So both subjects have the same life-style and make the same amount of money, but what I'm guessing is that A feels more rewarded than B, and if so, Subject B would feel more entitled to pursue more money (reward) because he feels that the reward is lower than what he should be getting. By pursuing this extra reward then, Subject B would fall into the trap of constantly struggling to feel rewarded (because of the high tax value marked on his payslip and this alone). On the other hand, to prove that Subject A was "happier", we could actually launch a second hypothesis where A would make \$3000 and B the same \$3500, and A would again feel more rewarded because of the lower tax rate he paid to get his salary (20% on A vs. 50% on B).

This in turn would open a bunch of other interesting questions, like how to navigate the thin, invisible line that might trigger minor/major complaints on people about the feeling of being happy with their salary/government.

My question then is: has this been studied in depth before (I imagine so), and if so, where can I read about it?

This is pretty close to being a classic example of a framing effect (wikipedia), originally described in the literature by Tversky & Kahneman (1986).

In essence, our subjective valuation of a choice or outcome isn't invariant, as economic theory says it should be, but instead is influenced by contextual effects, such as riskiness, and if the outcome is seen as a loss or a gain.

I don't know much specifically about framing effects and framing effects and taxation, and haven't time to do any research, but a Google Scholar search for the terms throws up this and this, among other articles, which seem to cover what you're talking about (although they may be behind a paywall, I don't know).

Looking back at your question, your hypothesis seems about right: while both people end up with the same amount of money, person B will perceive a greater loss due to taxation, and so, when both are thinking about their earning from this perspective, should be less satisfied.

However, if decades of research have shown us one thing, it's that high-level cognitive effects like this are extremely context dependent. What happens when both individuals aren't thinking about their income in terms of taxation, but with reference to the minimum, or average, wage in that region? Or what if the comparison happens in a context where public services, like education, are salient? Would person B be happier, because they feel they have contributed more to their community? Where I'm going with this basically that psychology can be very very hard, and that context always matters.


Which branch of psychology deals with decision making under stress? Our decisions are usually based on a system of perspectives, which in turn are based on one's own set of values. However there are traumatizing situations where this system of perspectives is turned completely upside down forcing us to make decisions that may look irrational (or that are really irrational due to emotional and other mental factors eg. panic).

Which branch of psychology deals with the subject of how different unexpected inputs affect our decision making process?

Decision-making or decision theory is its own subdiscipline under cognitive science (also often studied by statisticians, philosophers, economists, and faculty in business schools). Within this discipline, understanding how stress affects your behavior is very important and not understudied area. For a recent survey with a neurobiological focus, see:

Starcke, K., & Brand, M. (2012). Decision making under stress: A selective review. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 36(4), 1228-1248.

Of course, stress and decision making is not restricted to humans. It is also studied in a purely biological setting. For a survey focusing on predation, see:

Lima, S. L. (1998). Stress and decision making under the risk of predation: recent developments from behavioral, reproductive, and ecological perspectives. Advances in the Study of Behavior, 27, 215-290.


Recent Peer Review Studies on How Many Have Narcissistic Personality Disorder Are there any peer-reviewed studies that show what percent of the population are believed to have Narcissistic Personality Disorder that have been published within the past ten years? I have read about studies that list the percent of people with NPD, but all of them came out on or before two thousand ten and may no longer be accurate and some of them weren't even peer-reviewed.

While not a peer-reviewed study per se, but the DSM-5 says that the prevalence of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the population is 6.2%, or approximately one out of sixteen members of the population (6.25%). The DSM-V was published in 2013 and is a peer-reviewed text, so it is within the 10 year criteria you mentioned and this fact is mentioned in more recent sources like an article for Psychiatric Times published in 2016. Another study from 2019 doesn't mention Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but does mention how approximately 3% of the population has Antisocial Personality Disorder, another disorder that is a common dual-diagnosis with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Then, there is a 2020 study that shows 1.6% of people have borderline personality disorder or BPD, which can be associated with a lack of empathy and lead to behaviors that can be mistaken for NPD. This is similar to Histrionic Personality Disorder (which doesn't cause people to suffer from a lack of empathy like with NPD, but can appear that way due to how it is difficult for those with HPD to recognize the emotions of others and thus lack emotional intelligence) that affects less than or equal to 2% of the population according to the  University of Arizona College of Medicine.


The current recommended text for statistics in behavioural sciences I have an old book: Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences (4th ed.) by Gravetter & Wallnau. I want to transition my textbooks to eBook format, but this book doesn't come like that (as far as I can tell).

The book is comprehensive in explaining each statistical technique using psychological experiments and has exercises for the reader to complete.

I'm afraid I've lost touch with the cutting edge of stats for behavioural sciences, so I don't know what the best book is.

What is the current recommended equivalent text book?

Here's my basic overview of the psychology - statistics textbook market.
In general, I think the choice of textbook (where you have a choice) depends on a few factors:

Applied versus statistical theory (e.g., do you have immediate needs to analyse data)
Whether and which software package you want to use (e.g., SPSS, R, etc.)
Which techniques you want learn (e.g., basic bivariate statistics; multivariate stats; etc.)
How much mathematical rigour you want; if you can handle it, you'll probably get more out of a book pitched at statistics students.

There are also a number of reasonable online options:
E.g., hyperstat for similar material as Gravetter and Wallneau.

Introductory undegraduate textbook

Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences Gravetter and Wallneau : This remains popular with many students in psychology as an introduction to statistics. It assumes only that you can do very basic algebra. It has lots of pedagogically helpful components. That said, once you move beyond analysing toy datasets for lab reports and so on, you'll want a more advanced and applied book.
When it comes to data analysis it focusses on SPSS.
Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (and now Discovering Statistics Using R): Andy Field does a great job of making statistics fun and accessible. It's also fairly practical in the way that it is grounded in using and interpreting analyses in SPSS (and now R).
SPSS Survival Manual: This one is more of a cookbook for doing data analysis in SPSS that is suitable for someone analysing their own data in psychology who has only basic training in psychology statistics. It is very applied.
David C. Howell Statistical Methods for Psychology: This book is substantially more sophisticated than Gravetter and Wallneau however it does provide an overview of many of the basic techniques. However, it goes into a lot more detail about various factorial designs. It also leaves the student with a much more sophisticated understanding.

Multivariate textbook

Tabacknick and Fidell Using Multivariate Statistics: This is a well established book in psychology for teaching multivariate statistics (e.g., multiple regression, factor analysis, ANCOVA, MANOVA, and a little bit of SEM). I think it provides a good introduction for typical psychology students. It focusses on interpretation more than mathematics, but there are still some formulas.
Hair et al Multivariate Data Analysis: This is another popular multivariate book in the social sciences. It is very light when it comes to mathematics and focuses a lot more on interpretation and processes for conducting data analysis. This may either be a good or a bad thing depending on your mathematical background.


Are there official guidelines to provide "mental first aid" to people attempting suicide? I wonder if there are any official guidelines on how to act in case of an attempted suicide as a civilian (i.e. trained in first aid, but untrained in rescue, mental health etc)?  How should a regular person react in order to prevent the suicide attempt? Obviously -

By not endangering myself
By calling 911 (or a local equivalent)

being the obvious first steps. However, WebMD as an example is pretty bland about the rest one can do. I have also learned that keeping them talking and asking open questions about the suicide thoughts.

However, there must be some official guidelines (that I just couldn't find).

I should point out that this is not about suicide prevention, put about what to do when one witnesses a suicide attempt (so the plan has already been made and is currently starting to be put into action, i.e. the patient is already standing on the roof-top about to jump or starting to take other means of committing suicide

This is a good question as according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. (WHO, n.d.)  Calling the emergency services via 911 (or a local equivalent) is the first thing you should do when discovering someone is about to attempt suicide.

Emotional First Aid (EFA)

The first time I heard about any kind of "mental first aid" was around 2010 when some training courses on Emotional First Aid (EFA) were made available, run for 6 three and a half hour sessions over a 6 week period.  Built on a foundation of systemic thinking and humanistic principles, EFA seeks to dispel the myth that mental health means mental illness; and so EFA was designed to help a child or young person experiencing emotional distress, before any professional help is sought.

Other Training

As members of the International Association for Suicide Prevention (IASP), there are also formal training courses run by Samaritans (UK and USA).

Psychological First Aid (PFA)

For an informal approach to learning about the subject, there is a guide for field workers written and provided in many languages by the World Health Organisation (WHO) through their Mental Health Gap Action Programme (mhGAP) called Psychological first aid: Guide for field workers (WHO, 2011).  The guide is not specifically aimed at suicide prevention. It is aimed at providing guidance for Psychological First Aid for any possible reason, and therefore, the guidance can be followed whilst dealing with suicidal people.

Some Key Points (Among Others)

The prime responsibility you have is for your own personal safetyHelping the suicidal person should never endanger your own personal safety.  If you get seriously injured whilst trying to help, you are not being helpful and it could add to the list of reasons the suicidal person may carry through with it.
Psychological first aid (PFA) is is not counselling or psychotherapyso you don't need to be trained in any of the related mental health fields. Even if you are trained in any related mental health fields, you are not to treat it as counselling or psychotherapy.
Don’t force help on people, and don’t be intrusive or pushy. (WHO, 2011)One of the things which some people might think they should do is to insist that they stay with the suicidal person and force them to talk. Not only is this going against their human rights, but someone who is suicidal because they feel they are not in control of their own lives can be pushed into carrying through with their suicide attempt with this approach.
Make it clear to them that even if they refuse help now, they can still access help in the futureIf they refuse and ask you to leave them alone, you can say that you will stay nearby and if they change their mind, just call out and you will be there.  The fact that you are there can be enough support.
Be aware of and set aside your own biases and prejudices.You may have strong beliefs which may affect how you feel about that person once they tell you something.  You need to be mindful that you can inadvertently display the fact that you don't approve of something which can be detrimental to the process.
After it is over, be sure to look after yourself.Dealing with suicidal people can lead to Vicarious Trauma.  Be aware of how you are feeling and how the incident has affected you.  Seek emotional help for yourself where needed too.

If there is a strong chance you may be in the situation where you have a suicidal person you need to help, I would recommend at least reading the WHO guide for field workers, however it may be more beneficial to undertake some form of formal training in Psychological First Aid either through the Samaritans or a similar organisation.

References

WHO. (n.d.) Mental Health - Suicide Data.Retrievable from: http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/

WHO. (2011). Psychological first aid: Guide for field workers. Retrievable from: http://www.who.int/mental_health/publications/guide_field_workers/en/


Psychology of betting against a desired outcome as “compensation” I’m a pretty rational person. Maybe that’s why I don’t bet often (I can count my bets on one hand...)
But whenever I have bet, I usually bet against what I want to happen (e.g. my favourite football team winning), so I get some “compensation” for something I didn’t want to happen.
I have Googled this phenomenon quite a bit but not found any info (problem is, you mostly reach betting sites!)
Is there any psychological research into “betting against what you want, to gain “compensation””?

This is related to the concept of utility of outcomes, as well as the idea of hedging in gambling. When you have a favorite sports team that you want to win, it's very similar to implicitly placing an emotional "bet" - if your team wins, you gain positive utility, while if they lose, you get negative utility. By betting against your desired outcome, you are hedging the bet, which is a way of betting on both outcomes such that you can guarantee a profit, or at least minimize your losses.
By betting for your favorite team, you have an all-or-nothing outcome - you'll either be happy with the outcome and win cash (both good), or be unhappy with the outcome and lose cash (both bad). By betting against your favorite team and hedging your bet, you'll have a more moderate outcome no matter what - you'll either be unhappy but win cash, or be happy and lose cash. Whether hedging a bet is worthwhile will come down to your level of risk aversion, as well as the utility you assign to the cash, a win, or a loss.


Can intense multitasking improve fluid intelligence/working memory? The Dual N-Back task is the only task I'm aware of that has empirical support showing that it improves working memory. It appears to improve working memory through multitasking, although this multitasking must fit certain criteria, namely that you can't learn the task so well that you can eventually "automate" it without going into working memory.

Thus, I'm wondering whether other forms of multi-tasking such as playing Starcraft II (see my earlier thoughts) and driving with a cellphone can also improve working memory?

A possible follow-up question: if not, what differentiates the type of multitasking found in the Dual N-Back task from other types of multi-tasking?

In general, I'd hypothesise that "memory-training" programs will not lead to domain-general increases in fluid intelligence nor working memory.

As general background, you might want to check out the literature on expert memory.

Practice is very effective at improving performance on the practised task. Transfer is real and does exist, but it is often small in effect.

Let's take the study by Ericsson, Chase, and Faloon (1980). After 230 hours of practice a participant, SF, was trained to increase their digit span (i.e., the sequence of random numbers they could recall) from 7 to 79 numbers. One might think that SF had increased his working memory. However, talk aloud protocols suggest that SF was using sophisticated domain specific mnemonic strategies (e.g., linking running times to random numbers). The skill did not generalise to other memory stimuli.
The expertise literature is filled with examples of experts seemingly defying the limits of human ability. Yet, such achievements tend to be domain specific and achieved through substantial practice. For an excellent review of the expertise literature, see Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer (1993).

It is very difficult to modify very large domain general abilities.

Thus, my general advice is for people wanting to improve their working memory or fluid intelligence is to instead focus on what domain specific ability they want to improve and focus on practicing that.

References

Ericsson, K. A., Chase, W. G., and Faloon, S. (1980). Acquisition of a
memory skill. Science, 208(4448):1181-1182. FREE PDF
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, T., and Tesch-Romer, C. (1993). The role of
deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance.
Psychological Review, 100:363-406.


Is it possible to improve reading speed and visual comprehension by doing exercises? Background

I'm trying to capture detailed information from the images in my visual memory, mainly text.  My daily life requires reading many documents on varying topics. I want to increase my reading speed and comprehension so that I can see text blocks as a whole; that is I see them not as meaningful text, but an image to be processed later. Perhaps then I would be able to iterate over the images in memory faster than I can with my eyes.

However, when I need to remember the details of a topic, I can visually remember the location of the text in the document, but I can't recall details such as whole sentences.

I'm trying to improve my visual memory by this simple exercise:

chose a random image from flickr
have a look at it for a few seconds
eyes closed, try to rebuild the image from memory

but normally I can not remember many of the details from the image, even if it's not very detailed.

When I try this exercise with text blocks, I mostly end up "reading the block". It's hard to treat a text block as an image without reading it. So I normally fail at visualizing it in my memory.

Questions

Is it possible to improve reading speed, reading comprehension, and visual comprehension through visualisation exercises like those above?
If not with the above exercises, are there other exercises that can improve such skills?

There's a general discussion of speed reading methods on Wikipedia, but let's look at some specific articles and see what they say about reading speed and comprehension.

Bell's review of the reading speed and comprehension literature

In Bell's (2001) review of the empirical literature, he makes a number of points, which seem reasonable to me:

A few studies have shown that you can increase reading speed with various "speed reading techniques" (e.g., Hill, 1981, Richard, 1982).
However, "techniques ... employed on speed reading courses ... tend to cause readers to suffer lower levels of reading comprehension..." This is a within-person phenomena. People who read particularly slowly often have low comprehension, but this is not relevant to the question of whether an individual should increase or slow down their reading speed.
Several authors recommend reading at the right speed, neither too fast nor too slow (e.g., Coady, 1979).
Part of being a skilled reader is about adapting reading strategies, particularly with regards to the speed / comprehension trade-off, to the nature of the text and the reading goals in the situation.

Discussion of reading expertise

There is a massive literature on reading comprehension.
For example, take Pearson et al's (1992) list that states that expert readers:

  Search for connections between what they know and the new information they encounter
  Monitor the adequacy of their models of text meaning
  Take steps to repair faulty comprehension once they realize they have failed to understand something
  Learn early on to distinguish important from less important ideas in text they read
  Are adept at synthesising information within and across texts and reading experiences
  Draw inferences during and after reading to achieve a full, integrated understanding of what they read
  Sometimes consciously, and almost always unconsciously, ask questions of themselves, the authors they encounter, and the texts
  they read.

The key feature of this list is that expert readers employ strategies related to constructing meaning. They don't pertain to exact strategies for moving the eyes over the page and the process of visualising text, and so on.

Implications for increasing reading speed

On the basis of the above, I don't think trying to integrate whole blocks of text visually would be a useful training exercise for helping a person achieve his or her reading goals.

When it comes to reading, I think it's more important to think about your goals than to focus on reading speed. Why do you need to read the text? What are you hoping to get out of the text? How will this information be used?

References

Bell, T. (2001). Extensive reading: Speed and comprehension. The Reading
Matrix, 1(1). PDF
Coady, J. (1979). A psycholinguistic model of the ESL reader. In R. Mackay, B. Barkman, & R.R.
Jordon (Eds), Reading in a second language (pp 5-12). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Hill, J.K. (1981). Effective reading in a foreign language. English Language Teaching Journal, 35,
(pp 270-281).
Pearson, P., Roehler, L., Dole, J., and Duffy, G. (1992). Developing
expertise in reading comprehension. What research has to say about
reading instruction, 2:145-199. PDF
Richard, W. (1982). Improving Reading Speed in Readers of English as a Second Language. JALT Journal, 4, (pp 89-95).


Skin conductance responses to emotional stimuli The skin conductance response (SCR) is said that cannot be reduced to one specific stimulus (Boucsein, 2012). Does this mean that if the participant is presented with stimuli of different emotional content, separated by pause, there would be no specific response to the emotional stimuli?

References
Boucsein, W. (2012). Electrodermal activity: Springer.

Electrodermal activity is an index of sympathetic activation and a skin conductance response can occur in many situations. It is therefore a very general response and can arise as a result of stimulus novelty or “significance” (whether you want to call this an affective response is up to you but it seems very different from common sense notions of what an emotion is).
You can however measure phasic responses specific to a stimulus in the sense that even a single presentation can be followed by a skin conductance “spike”. The shape of the response will however not be specific to a class of stimulus or narrowly defined content (there is no obvious characteristic “fear” or “happiness” signature, no “audio” or “visual” skin conductance response).
There are some attempts to discriminate positive from negative emotions based on skin conductance and also quite a lot of research using machine learning techniques to classify emotional responses based on physiological measurement but usually not on a single signal, and without much success for electrodermal activity alone.
Skin conductance is often interpreted as some sort of physiological arousal but that's a notion Wolfram Boucsein would probably have considered too simplistic. I don't think you need to over-analyze a single sentence to find an answer to your question, it should be quite clear from the whole book and, implicitly, from the fact that Boucsein did not discuss patterns of skin conductance responses associated with discrete emotions (which he would have if well-established results on this existed).
If you dig into the psycholophysiological literature, you will find that sophisticated approaches try to disentangle the activation of various part of the autonomic nervous system and deal with things like the defense or orientation response, preparedness to conditioning, fight-or-flight, etc. None of this maps neatly to subjective/expressive emotion categories like “fear” or “anger”.
Regarding the Q-Sensor, I have never actually used it but I have read a few papers and seen work from Rosalind Picard's lab at conferences and the like and I was under the impression that a big part of this research was concerned with skin conductance level, not responses (i.e. tonic responses, things like being relaxed or excited by an activity over a period of several minutes, but not phasic responses to a single picture or audio clip). If you follow Boucsein, it's not even clear you could get a clean measure of phasic responses with a sensor that's not firmly attached to the body on one of the spots with many sweat glands (palm of the hand or foot).
Some other references:

Cacioppo, J. T., Klein, D. J., Berntson, G. G., & Hatfield, E. (1993). The Psychophysiology of Emotion. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland (Eds.) Handbook of Emotions (pp. 119-142). New York: The Guilford Press.
There is a chapter on the topic in every edition of the Handbook with a slightly different constellation of authors each time but I don't have the references at hand. The one from the second edition (2000) contains a meta-analysis of studies on the discrimination between discrete emotions through physiology.

Dawson, M. E., Schell, A. M., & Filion, D. L. (1990). The Electrodermal System. In J. T. Cacioppo, L. G. Tassinary (Eds.) Principles of psychophysiology: Physical, social, and inferential elements (pp. 295-324). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Again, the chapter has been updated in later editions of the book (published under the title Handbook of psychophysiology starting with the second edition) and is worth checking out.


How would a psychopath deem their actions? I understand that a psychopath experiences diminished or non-existent empathy and remorse as well as dis-inhibition meaning that they have a certain 'meanness' and a poor impulse control.

I am interested in how they would deem the actions that they perform as a result of their condition. Would they justify their actions as being morally correct? The right thing to do, so to speak.

No, usually they are smart and know that their actions are considered morally incorrect, but they just don't care.


Are there third party providers of Mechanical Turk psychology experiment services? For various reasons it can be difficult to run a Mechanical Turk experiment (i.e., you don't have the technical expertise, you don't reside in the United States, etc.)

Have any third-party providers arisen with the express purpose of managing the delivery of psychological experiments using Mechanical Turk?

Update: Ideally, I'd like to know not just about how to get around the United States restriction. I'm also interested in services which manage the process and are specifically set up with behavioural science experiments in mind or at least offer a suite of services, one of which is tailored to behaviour science experiments.

I would like to acknowledge the contributors to this post on stackoverflow.
Using Amazon MechanicalTurk if location != US?.

This question was posted a few years ago, but this answer is current.

Houdini is a third party platform for MTurk, designed for non US users.

This question also leads to Houdini enabling non-US based businesses accessing mTurk.

At this stage, I have not found other providers, let me know if you'd like me to investigate further.

I have provided a link of crowdsourcing services similar to mTurk.