How long does it take to learn to cane travel? How long does it take the average person (either sighted or blind) to learn to use the guide cane successfully for mobility purposes?

Source: Lions.

Because required training times will depend on many individual specific factors, such as willingness of the subject to undergo an arduous training program, age, possible additional disabilities, IQ/education etc., the best answer would be an average training time in a group of subjects that learned to use the cane from scratch (i.e., naive subjects at the start of the study). Ideally, it would be an answer expressed in hours of training time, because some measure expressed in weeks or months cannot easily be translated in how much time was actually spent on cane training. For example, the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) of extreme cases (very swift learners and non-learners), but anecdotal sample cases telling me that person A mastered it in a few weeks and person B not at all, isn't too helpful, unfortunately (I would like to refer to numbers in a manuscript I am preparing).

Ideally, the source should be a scientific publication, or obtained from a credible source, such as the NFB. I have been searching quite a bit, but without success.

Short answer
Generally, a few months of active, guided training.

Background
Based on an article from a guide cane instructor who is a cane traveler himself, I can answer the question as follows:

First off - it depends on at least three important variables;

The student's background;
The student's aptitude;
the amount of time available to the student.

Ad. 1 : If the student is planning only to use the cane in already familiar environments, the process will be easier. Fear of traffic, or unfamiliarity with it may complicate the learning process.

Ad. 2. The level of independence is important; an older persom who has been used to be guided by another, sighted person for years will have a hard time replacing those two eyes with a cane. A youngster, on the other hand, will likely be able to learn faster, be more motivated and more daring than an old person. The elderly may be less mobile and possibly afraid of falling, have balance disorders etc.

Ad. 3. Time should be measured in two ways: the number of hours per day and week, and the number of months to be filled with this schedule. The author of the cited article below started as a student spending fifteen to twenty hours a week in guided practice and that worked well for her. The author says to have known people who made good progress with four to five hours of guided practice in a week, anything under three hours per week is probably getting rather thin; and these hourse refer to specific skill practice, besides using the cane wherever and whenever possible.

The author spent an intensive six weeks on travel to reach a satisfactory level of skill. Most people he knows who worked steadily for several hours a week, plus out-of-class everyday use were able to gain sufficient skill to cane travel in two to three months when starting as a beginner.

Reference
- Bickford, Future Reflections (Winter 1996); 15(1)


Why do very different people attract each other? I have noticed than many couples are very different from each other but yet they fell in love in spite their differences. I was wondering about the psychology behind this.
Why would someone want to be with someone that has different likes

Concepts like love and attraction are not only poorly defined, but in this context are too complex to discuss meaningfully, if a scientific answer is what you are after. It is also hard to quantify 'different' when it comes to people - there are just too many variables to compare.

But, there is actually some principles and models that could be part of a more complete answer.

Total Free Energy

Both the TOTAL1 model (an extension of the famous TOTE2 model), or the free energy principle3, assert the following:

  Us humans constantly form predictions that serve as expected state, and then compare them to the actual state of the world/body (via senses).

This applies to both micro levels (say, communication between neuron layers) and micro level (consciousness).

It then goes:

  When the predicted state matches the actual state, nothing to do. When there is incongruity, we must either change our predications (models/goals) or the world (by acting).

In this view, the brain is largely a differential processor - rather than processing stimuli all the way bottom-up, it generates top-down predictions and only left with validating them against stimuli.

This is a hugely efficient optimisation strategy for the sake of metabolic economy.

It also goes to explain:

Why we stop perceiving mechanical clocks after spending some time in a room.
Why new objects (shoes, houses) excite when new but hence after peter out.
Why relationships tend to cool-off over time (and in turn why some people cheat on their partner).

In extremely general terms - that that doesn't change doesn't excite.

Now back to Friston:

  For survival sake, all living things strive to minimise surprises by forming and updating a model of their environment.

Things get interesting when survival is no longer a concern...

Diversity

Taking into account the said above, picking someone who's different from you in many aspects means your mental models are challenged more often, which could yield excitement.

I think a good example is dating someone of different nationality, say a Westerner dating an Easterner. Differences can go both way (good and bad), but it is exciting nevertheless.

1 Wang, C. and Mukhopadhyay, A., 2012. The Dynamics of Goal Revision: A Cybernetic Multiperiod Test- Operate-Test-Adjust-Loop (TOTAL) Model of Self-Regulation. Journal of Consumer Research, 38(5), pp. 815-832.

2 Miller, G.A., Galanter, E. and Pribram, K.H., 1986. Plans and the Structure of Behavior. Adams Bannister Cox.

3 Friston, K., 2010. The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?. Nature reviews neuroscience, 11(2), p.127.


How do thoughts work at the neuron level? How does thought work at the biological level of individual neurons? I believe there are many neurons which are active in the brain at the same time. For example, our senses are constantly taking in sensory information on a continual basis. However, most of the neurons activated by sensory input are not capturing our attention, and as a result, our thoughts are elsewhere. I believe that thought, an "active cognitive process," is a collection of neurons which are responsible for engaging our complete attention. This collection of neurons shifts as our attention shifts. But this does not explain what is responsible for controlling our attention at the neural level. Can't find any answers to this question.

It has been proposed that spontaneous cortical activity may have a lot to do with cortical processing not related to external sensory.

  Within a spontaneously active network, we observe the sudden “ignition” of one out of many possible coherent states of high-level activity amidst cortical neurons with long-distance projections. During such an ignited state, spontaneous activity can block external sensory processing. We relate those properties to experimental observations on the neural bases of endogenous states of consciousness, and particularly the blocking of access to consciousness that occurs in the psychophysical phenomenon of “inattentional blindness,” in which normal subjects intensely engaged in mental activity fail to notice salient but irrelevant sensory stimuli.

The spontaneous cortical activity itself has been studied at a more reductionist level where they've been separated into multimodal functional motifs.  Perhaps these functional motifs form the basis for the nature of stray thoughts.


Any review articles on behavior change psychology? I'm interested in behavior change and looking to apply its principals in order to design programs and services in healthcare. I'm most familiar with BJ Fogg's B=MAT model and his principles.
But I'd love to get suggestions that let me go deeper into this topic and how it can tie into applied work.

What are good review articles on behavioural change psychology?

Elder et al (1999) provides a review of behavioural change theories in the context of health behavior change in primary care. They mention several, for example:

  Models and theories such as the Health Belief Model,
  Cognitive/Information Processing, the Theory of Reasoned
  Action, Social Cognitive (Learning) Theory,Social Support
  Theories, Behavior Modiﬁcation, and Kanfer’s Parallel
  Self-Management Model guide much of current health-promotion reFsearch and practice. The
  Transtheoretical or “Stages of Change” Model presents a cognitive-behavioral
  change process not grounded in a speciic health behavior theory.

Green (1984) provides a very general review of health behavior modification.

Stokols (1992) presents a theory around healthy environments.

References

Elder, J. P., Ayala, G. X., & Harris, S. (1999). Theories and intervention approaches to health-behavior change in primary care. American journal of preventive medicine, 17(4), 275-284. PDF
Green, L. W. (1984). Modifying and developing health behavior. Annual review of public health, 5(1), 215-236. PDF
Stokols, D. (1992). Establishing and maintaining healthy environments: toward a social ecology of health promotion. American Psychologist, 47(1), 6. PDF


What does speaking in third person denote? Is speaking (or preferring to speak, even if not actually doing it) about oneself in third person a symptom of any specific mental condition?

I can remember a person in an IRC role playing chat room who preferred to speak this way. But apart from this specific case, I am also asking in a broader context.

Speaking about oneself in the third person is known as illeism.

It is not a symptom of any mental condition listed in the DSM. As Wikipedia notes, it is sometimes used in speech and literature for stylistic reasons.


Is the condition Pathological Intoxication recognised as real? The plot of the movie Final Analysis revolves around a murder committed by a person diagnosed with Pathological Intoxication.

The following study confirms the:

  probable existence of a discrete syndrome of pathological reaction to
  alcohol without reference to the amount of alcohol consumed.

The Diagnosis of Pathological Intoxication
Barry M. Maletzky
Volume 37, 1976 > Issue 09: September 1976
Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

However there are doubts as raised by the following article.

  The existence of pathological intoxication as an entity must remain in
  doubt unless the disorder can be reproduced under controlled
  conditions.

Pathological intoxication--is there such an entity?
Hollender MH.
J Clin Psychiatry. 1979 Oct;40(10):424-6.

I can see other conflicting articles; What is the latest position on Pathological Intoxication?

Pathological Intoxication was removed as a diagnosis from the DSM-IV (the psychiatric diagnostic manual used by American psychiatrists) when it was published in 1994, but was left in the ICD-10 (the diagnostic manual published by the World Health Organization) which was published in 1992. The decision to remove the disorder from the DSM-IV was based on literature reviews indicating there was no evidence for a separate syndrome of pathological intoxication (Salloum & Mezzich, Psychiatric Diagnosis: Challenges and Prospects, 2009, John Wiley & Sons, pg. 123). The disorder is not included in the DSM-5, which was published in 2013. The ICD-11 draft redirects searches of "pathological intoxication" to the "alcohol intoxication" entry; pathological intoxication is listed as a narrower term, but no additional information is provided (http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd11/browse/f/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f1339202943).

A 2012 review (Fuelner, T., The minotaur defense: The myth of the pathological intoxication defense, American Criminal Law Review, 49(i4), pp.1969-1999; https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=264897) provides an overview of the historical and current medical and legal definitions of the condition. The author concludes that the concept has largely been discredited in psychiatry, but has some continued support in legal circles. However, the author argues the use of the condition in criminal defense should be eliminated.


systems of thinking - how to relearn According to Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow), we have two types of thinking:

I. fast, instinctive and emotional
II. slower, more deliberative, and more logical

I found interesting Kahneman's remark that IQ score represents a person's System II ability (it does not measure System I nor the subject's ability to apply them appropriately).

I assume that it is possible to prioritize the System I early on in one's life because it is a fast way to the end.
(Example: In elementary/high school Maths, many tasks can be solved somewhat intuitively since they are simple reoccurring problems. And instead of real deep understanding of the rules, the problems can be solved by application of problem-solving patterns. This applies especially to situations when competition is promoted, thus speed is rewarded.)

Now, Is it possible (how?) to (re)train oneself to apply more of the System II?

2) Yes, I think so. If you think of your systems as a pattern recognizer, and continuously exposing it to more complex patterns and associated solutions, you can literally invoke your system 2 more easily, for example, in higher level math, you can prove properties and theorems in certain way that is efficient and effective, which depends on experiences to know what's the best method. Proving is certainly an act of system 2, it's complex and logical. Another example, meditation can be used to identify negative thoughts, once you recognize that you are being bothered by your own thoughts, you can immediately ignore them, this takes training of recognizing the pattern and let your system 2 focus your attention on other more important things than the negative thoughts brought up by your system 1. One more example is recognizing your own logical fallacies and cognitive biases. The key is to know the existence of the patterns, repeatedly recognize patterns, and correct/solve the patterns.


Name needed for psychological practice which uses objects that represent humans [dolls/pictures/etc.] during patient treatment What is the name of practice/method (if such exists) where psychologist uses a doll (or any other form of human-being representation) for patient to talk to?
I believe I have seen it in a movie or had read in a book (not exactly sure)
My guess would be that it could be used for patients that feel more comfortable talking to not alive objects that have human form or that portrait a human-being but that cannot respond (subconscious security for a patient that an object will not be judgmental towards patients issues or something like that..)
P.S. If such practice/method exists, which implications it has for the patient?
Example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWvxoEM41Ss
Movie: What about Bob?
forward to 1:40

EDIT:
What I found:

"Puppets allow a child to displace feelings from the significant
persons with whom they were originally connected. In doing so, puppets
offer physical and psychological safety that, in turn, invites greater
self expression."

Source: link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01875812#page-1
Thanks to caseyr547 for Play therapy term

It's often referred to as "doll therapy" or "play therapy" and applies to adults as much as it does to children. For example, this new product, the "Inner Critic Doll" enables adults to hold a physical manifestation of their inner critic and start a dialogue with it. It has a zipper mouth which can be zipped shut to physically silence this inner voice.

The doll enables adults to confront an otherwise "formless" part of their psyche and has proven to be highly effective.
It's used frequently by writers, artists, those suffering low self-esteem, etc., and I've even seen family members address each other on challenging topics via their inner critic doll, as it was easier than talking face-to-face.


Why is Biological plausibility in Machine Learning important? I have found that many authors of machine learning papers, that employ the Hebbian learning rule, refer to the biological plausibility of it, as one of the arguments to use it instead of the well known back-propagation algorithm
(Whittington & Bogacz, 2017; Pugh, Soltoggio, & Stanley, 2014; Burms, Caluwaerts, &
Dambre, 2015) (I imagine the same argument is used for other biologically plausible algorithms).

But why, in actual fact, is biological plausibility important in the first place?
Why do so many sources qoute such argument, and what are the advantages of biological plausibility, when related to machine learning applications?

I have searched a lot, but haven't really seen anyone answer this specifically.

They're mentioning biological plausibility, because they think biological constraints are important for intelligent systems. Also, biologically constrained systems could be easily applied to understanding the brain. Whether biological plausibility is important or not to developing intelligent systems and understanding the brain is a matter of debate.

On one hand, there's the argument that since the brain is the only form of intelligence we know, we should probably imitate it to develop intelligent systems. Also, at the same time, we would learn to understand the brain!

On the other hand, there's the often-repeated argument that we did not get airplanes from imitating birds, but from understanding the principles of aerodynamics. In turn, the principles of aerodynamics were then applied to bird wings and feathers.

For better introduction to this debate applied to understanding the brain and creating scalable intelligence, try reading "Marr's Attacks: On Reductionism and Vagueness" by Eliasmith et al.


Is there a test that measures gender dysphoria? Gender dysphoria according to wikipedia is

  [T]he distress a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. In these cases, the assigned sex and gender do not match the person's gender identity, and the person is transgender.

Other sources, such as WebMD and the APA basically agree that people with gender dysphoria

  [F]eel strongly that their gender does not match their biology.

Is there a test that measures gender dysphoria? I am interested in making an adaptation to such a test into Spanish.

Short answer
Yes.

Background
A cursory Google Scholar search with the key terms Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire brought up

  The Gender Identity/Gender Dysphoria Questionnaire for Adolescents and
  Adults.

If you wish to search for more related inventories you can look further using keywords like 'gender dysphoria' + 'inventory' / 'test' / 'diagnosis'.

References
- Deogracias et al., J Sex Res (2007); 44(4): 370–9
- Sing et al., J Sex Res (2010); 47(1): 49-58


How to take advantage of the withdrawal symptoms of antidopaminergics? So this may be a stupid question as I am not trained in neuroscience or psychology at all, but I had an idea about a somewhat counterintuitive approach to psychotropics and was wondering whether if it was at all scientifically sound and feasible.
To distill my theory, it's basically that in the same way prolonged cocaine abuse can make you chronically unhappy and apathetic, could we encourage some sort of controlled antipsychotic abuse to make you chronically happy and energized? My thinking is this:
Since the mechanism of antipsychotic drugs in an oversimplified sense is just to decrease dopamine, naturally when you withdraw your brain would respond by having an increase of dopamine. More specifically, since your brain overreacts to the antipsychotics it starts dramatically over sensitizing your brain to dopamine. So it seems to me that the reverse effect of the withdrawal is way more powerful than the direct "purpose" of the drug (this is in a sense how I understand the condition of tardive dyskinesia).
My thought is that this approach is particularly advantageous for the long-term use of physiatric drugs since in the long term the use of physiatric drugs has very little effect (and can sometimes even entrench mental illness further). Because of the fact that when dependence is developed the brain's structure and functioning in response to the ongoing presence of psychiatric medication is changing, it seems that developing drugs whose intended effects come from withdrawal would help resolve issues surrounding tolerance (as protracted withdrawal can sometimes last for years after the last dose of a drug was taken).
Is it viable to use a drug originally meant to suppress dopamine transmission to induce tolerance and thus increase dopaminergic effects to treat another disease where more dopamine is needed? For instance, can we use the anti-dopaminergic compound haloperidol to induce tolerance to address lower concentrations of dopamine transporters in people with ADHD, as opposed to using amphetamines?

Short answer
Taking dopamine antagonists leads to serious side effects, and stopping taking them leads to other, equally nasty side effects. None of them include happiness or feeling energized.
Background
So basically, based on our discussion in the comments, I think you are after the following:

Is it viable to use a drug originally meant to suppress dopamine
transmission to induce tolerance and thus increase dopaminergic
effects to enhance dopaminergic transmission to enhance mood and happiness after stopping the drug to reap the benefits of long-term 'withdrawal' symptoms?

First off, drugs targeting the dopaminergic (DA) system are associated with serious negative side effects. To step into the class where you are after, the classical anti-psychotics that inhibit DA signaling are associated with the following side effects (taken from the page on haloperidol from WebMD):

dizziness

lightheadedness

drowsiness

difficulty urinating

sleep disturbances

headache

anxiety

in rare cases sometimes permanent tardive dyskinesia, a nasty side effect marked by stiff, jerky movements of the face and body, muscle twitches, eye blinking, tongue thrusting, uncontrollable shaking, or arm waving.

rarely neuroleptic malignant syndrome occurs including: fever, muscle stiffness or muscle pain or muscle weakness, tiredness, confusion, sweating, fast/irregular heartbeat, dark urine, and kidney problems.

And the list goes on, and on, and on (see also Drugs.com)

Long term-use may lead to drug-induced Parkinsonism, which is actually the second most common cause of Pakinsonism in older people, after Parkinson's syndrome (Thanvi & Treadwell, 2009.

Now fast forward to your withdrawal state that should make you happy, as dopamine transmission may indeed be exacerbated. The tolerance to haloperidol comes, at least in part, because D2 transmission is enhanced in the striatum in the brain (Ginovart et al., 2009)0. This leads to the dreaded tardive dyskinesia.
Abrupt stopping haloperidol intake after chronic use results in side-effects on their own in psychotic patients (apart from re-inducing psychotic states), namely (Bronson, 1993):

nausea and vomiting
sweating
as well as a relapse into psychosis characterized by anxiety, depression and internal chaos. Interestingly, the authors conclude that the so-called relapse into psychosis may actually be caused by withdrawal instead of the underlying disease state .

In all, happiness doesn't seem part of the deal of acute withdrawal from a well-investigated dopamine antagonist, unfortunately. Taking them is a pain, and stopping them abruptly is also not a pleasant thing to do either. When you slowly decrease dosage the withdrawal side effects will be less severe.
References
- Bronson, Life Sci (1993); 52(16): PL129-33
- Ginovart et al., Neuropsychopharmacology (2009); 34: 62–671
- Thanvi & Treadwell, BMJ (2009); 85(1004): 322


What tools are available for EEG analysis on the R platform? I'm starting some EEG studies on attention, and would really like to use R for preprocessing (filtering/artifact rejection), visualization, and analysis, but I can find very little in the way of tools. If there isn't a standalone package, what packages might be useful?

Things I want to do:

Condition categorization according to events, and comparing all subsequent analyses by condition
Power spectral density in specific frequency bands (SMR, theta, beta, alpha, etc.)
Event-related potentials
LORETA (low-resolution electromagnetic tomography)

Antoine Tremblay has just released an advanced analysis toolbox: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/psyp.12299/abstract

It's missing about half the features on your list, although fundamentally, spectral density is a simple task and LORETA is a stand-alone package anyways (although similar approaches, e.g. general CSD estimation, are implemented in many packages). Basically, once you got the EEG data read into R and cleaned of artifacts, ERPs (simple averaging) and spectra are fairly basic tasks and LORETA is an external toolbox agnostic of where it's getting its data from.

Alternatively, I would propose to use either one of the two standard MATLAB-based solutions (EEGLAB or Fieldtrip), or MNE in one of its iterations (e.g. the one in Python). All of these will handle the tasks you're talking about.


What is understanding of natural language and how can we test or measure it? What is the definition of the understanding of (written) natural language and how can we test or measure this understanding?

Natural language understanding is neglected part of natural language processing in computer science. Exact definitions and tests of understanding are necessary for producing artificial general intelligence (AGI) - e.g. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-41649-6_13 article argues that artificial general intelligence (e.g. software piece) should learn and self-modify itself but such development is possible only if AGI can estimate the quality/fitness of the new self-modification - whether this self-modification is better than existing version of AGI and whether this self-modification can be applied? Obviously - if we want to apply machine learning and AGI to understanding of the natural language then we should be able to test and measure the understanding.

There is article https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-41649-6_11 about understanding specifically but it is somehow narrow minded to the particular QA task. Maybe cognitive science have better tests?

For the reference - there are some AGI systems of "cognitive architectures" under development (wikipedia has list of them) - like OpenCog, NARS, Soar and some others.

Natural language understanding systems can be based on discourse representation theories, which represent the meaning of English sentences as first-order logical predicates. Attempto Controlled English is one example of a natural language understanding system that relies on discourse representation theories.

Similarly, there are several implementations of semantic parsers that convert natural-language texts into formal representations of their meanings.


Trying to understand equations in Karl Friston article I am trying to understand a neuroscience article by Karl Friston. In it he gives three equations that are, as I understand him, equivalent or inter-convertible and refer to both physical and Shannon entropy. They appear as equation (5) in this article (PDF; DOI 10.1007/s00422-010-0364-z). Here they are:

Energy minus entropy: $F = −{\ln p(\tilde s,Ψ|m)}q + {\ln q(Ψ|μ)}q$
Divergence plus surprise: = $D(q(Ψ|μ)||p(Ψ|\tilde s,m)) − \ln p (\tilde s|m)$
Complexity minus accuracy: = $D(q(Ψ|μ)||p(Ψ|m)) − {\ln p(\tilde s|Ψ,m)}q$

The things I am struggling with at this point are:

the meaning of the || in the 2nd and 3rd versions of the equations
the negative logs

Any help in understanding how these equations are actually what Fristen claims them to be would be greatly appreciated. For example, in the 1st equation, in what sense is the first term energy, etc.?

As mentioned in the definitions section on page 2 of the paper, $D(q||p) = <ln(q/p)>_q$ is the Kullback-Leibler divergence or cross-entropy between two densities.

The reason for the negative logs is that is the convention when discussing entropy in the context of information theory.  This allows information to be combined additively. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(information_theory)#Rationale)


What would explain an intense feeling of being extremely present, for no reason? What would explain an intense feeling of being extremely present, randomly and for no reason ?

The feeling is not tied to any behavior, thought or action. It comes out of nowhere, when doing a usual remedial task, like driving or walking somewhere. Also, it is not periodic (could happen once or twice in a life time).

..and is there a name for this?

(It shares some similarities with peak experience but seems different than flow, in that flow it is based on an activity and incorporates polarized emotions, enjoyment, etc).

Edit -
To clarify as asked in the comments:

This feeling of intense present can be analogous to the moment of having a dream full of action and chaos, then all of a sudden awaking to a dead silent and still bedroom. Or another example; one is sitting in a library and a large air conditioning system is running but not consciously noticed. Then, all of a sudden it switches off and there is a feeling if intense quietness and stillness and awareness of its absence. (These are analogous moments, where there is that dramatic switch in state... that is the subject in question but in this case not tied to any external event or dream.)

Or perhaps just feeling really awake or effortlessly alert more than usual. It also is ABSENCE of any conflict, tiredness, negativity and/or tension. In addition, it is of a neutral disposition- not happy and not sad, just extreme sense of being.

Apparently I have a proclivity for long answers, but I thought I'd respond given the viewership on this question.

We can whittle your question down to a more general form: Can my subjective experience be categorized?  The answer to that basic question is of course! You made a categorization of how you felt in that moment, and you concluded that you had a feeling of "being extremely present."

But why did you make this categorization? And would others agree with you on it?  Would others understand what you mean when you talk about the feeling of being present?  Would they make the same categorization?

Conceptualization

In brief, you categorized your internal state on the basis of (1) conceptual knowledge that you had accumulated from past experience combined with (2) your perception of the present situation (e.g., Barsalou, 2009; also here). With this information, you cohered all of those disparate and ambiguous elements of your subjective experience into a single concept of "feeling present." And now you're able to reflect on it more easily, act on it more easily, and talk to us about it more easily. Pretty cool!

The Anger Concept

To understand this a bit better, consider a prominent emotion theory (Barrett, 2014), which holds that the sociocultural knowledge we accumulate about emotion categories (e.g., anger, fear) allows us to categorize our own experiences, categorize others' experiences, and communicate those experiences.  So as you learn about the concept of "anger," for example, you develop the capacity to categorize your angry experiences ("I'm angry"), others' angry experiences ("She's angry"), and communicate those angry experiences (see, e.g., Caron, Caron, & Myers, 1985; Widen & Russell, 2008).   Over time, you learn to make this anger categorization automatically and often unconsciously (cf. Barsalou, 2009).

We know that in many countries, anger is a concept that most people would understand (although even then, there may be differences in definition and understanding; e.g., for the word "happiness": Oishi et al., 2013).  However, it's not clear whether most would understand your concept of "feeling extremely present."  After all, it's not a traditional Western idea, nor does it fit into a traditional taxonomy of feeling states.  Moreover, it's not entirely clear that you can communicate its contents effectively (which is true for many feelings we have).

Other Definitions?

We can look at research that has operationalized feelings of presence and compare them to yours.  For example, one well-known study defined feeling present as a focus on momentary experience (Farb et al., 2007), which they validated in an fMRI study.  Would the experience they defined match up with yours?

Streams not Boxes

I can't really speak to whether the feeling you described has a name or is well-known. However, the important thing to note is that subjective experience isn't carved up neatly into boxes.  It only seems that way because humans have a natural tendency to constantly categorize things (see again, Barsalou, 2009), which, as you can imagine, is very useful.

Instead, we might describe subjective experience as a "continuous stream." Anywhere along that stream, we can make some arbitrary division. "This part of my subjective experience, and all related instances, will be called anger." "I'll categorize this part as feeling present." And so on. There are virtually infinite ways of categorizing your subjective experience, and so we can't possibly come up with names for all of them.  But as you've done, we can try our hardest to communicate our feelings, and most of the time, it won't be in vain!


Conditioning/training value of objects in experiment In visual attention and decision making, how do experiments teach participants the value of specific objects (high vs low vs none)?

Does anyone know of studies that done this which go into reproducible levels of detail about their procedure/paradigm?

Subjective value is most often manipulated using some sort of incentive structure in attentional studies. Most commonly, the reward is in the form of time or money earned either directly or through 'points.' This is a very simple and common thing to do, so I don't know what you mean by "reproducible details" -- most studies will report little more than having creating experimental conditions along these lines, because that is sufficient. I will try to give a more detailed example, however.

In an unpublished study of eye movements and attentional capacity during a visual memory task, we would manipulate the weights of certain shapes by rewarding the participants with different amounts of points for different shapes. Thus, in one condition, circles would award 90 points, while triangles would award 10 points. Participants were taught this through audio feedback, and were aware that they had to accumulate a certain amount of points to complete the experiment. (The study was not published because a subtle critical error in the experiment code was discovered near the end of data collection.)


Does eye contact improve attention and learning? I remember having read a article in The Economist's Science and Technology section that presented evidence to the effect that attention and learning benefits from some forms of eye contact. If I am not mistaken it cited some academic work where probands had to complete a cognitive task on a computer screen and results improved if they saw their friends' eyes on the screen as well.

Can somebody please point me to this missing article and the cited academic work?

This is a great question on a highly fascinating topic for which evidence seemingly abounds among many species. From the standpoint of an evolutionary approach, the fight or flight stress response would be informed based on eye contact and movement - gauging the level of activity present in a potential predator's facial attributes.

Here is a cool link on the evolutionary aspect: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938403001562

Here is one on social signal processing as per the specific structure in the brain: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/9/598.short


Is it possible to do multiple internal monologues in parallel? Internal monologue is also called as self-talk.
It is clear that a person can speak one word at a time. No one can speak two words in parallel. It is because of the reason that a person got a single mouth. In the case of two or more persons, there can be two or more words in parallel.
In this context, is it possible to do parallel self-talks (being a single person)?

No one can speak two words or can sing two songs in parallel.

PHYSIOLOGICALLY
There's something called polyphonic singing, which overtine singing is a form of. Here's a demonstration of overtone singing and a demonstration that also includes undertone singing, so it's possible both physiologically and cognitively.
For verbal communication, some languages require just little enough use of parts of the mouth and/or throat such that it's possible to produce sounds in parralel that can build up words.
Overtones and undertones are not the only techniques that can be used to produce muliple sounds at the same time that are enough to communicate in a verbal langauge. For example, beatboxers produce multiple sounds at the same time. It depends on the language. For example, some language requires a certain pressure in the lungs to produce some of it sounds such that other sounds cannot be produced at the same time, while in others that is not the case, while some require so much that no sounds can be produced in parralel that are a part of verbal languages, , as far as I know, such as whistling languages (and possibly clicking languages but I'm not fully certain about that).
There's also non-verbal communication that can be done. In this case, single-handed sign language can be done with 2 hands at the same time. This might limit communication, but, again, it depends on the language.
In addition, other physical communication can be used for conversing.
COGNITIVELY
I do not know enough about neuroscience to answer this, except for what I heard in documentaries from some researchers (and I don't have citations nor links for that) that the human brain can retain only about 3-7 "small" pieces of information at the same time (I've heard an estimation in bytes, too, however I don't know how relevant and/or accurate it is, as meaning can be encoded to very large and very small amount of bytes), and I do not know enough about how language processing works in the brain to answer you that, and self-conversation also requires processing of the own self, so it's not only the language processing part(s) of the brain that will need to be involved, as there will be needed to be some feedback loop that takes own-produced information as stimuli for processing - something that is usually done serially, and not in parallel.
So I do not think that we have enough cognitive capabilities for that, but like I said, I'm not an expert in the field.


Q&A vs headings format I am wondering, is there any research or just reasoning over whether a human perceives text easier if it is in questions and answers format or if it is structured with headings and sub-headings.

Questions and answers is close to the natural dialogue communication between two people, which is what we have been accustomed to for ages. One sided communication - text-to-reader is a very recent novelty, evolutionary speaking.

At the same time, I have this obscure gut feeling, that Q&A format, even if combined with headings, does not look "authoritative" enough. I cannot explain why, this is just the way I am feeling it.

The specific occasion for coming up with this whole question is that I am writing a job ad. And I have the feeling that if I use Q&A format, it won't look serious, won't be memorable, or something like that.

I've seen somewhere that declarative headings in PowerPoint presentations are more effective. From a straight-on cognitive load standpoint, having to decipher a question and pick out the relevant topic words from among all of the different possibilities would certainly increase the extraneous cognitive load required to understand the material. So, my hypothesis is that heading format is better.


Analysis of RTs when speed-accuracy trade-off leading to ceiling accuracy has occurred I know that it is not desirable for behavioural data to show a (within-subjects) speed-accuracy trade-off, as it can lead to e.g. the wrong interpretation of a single subject's decreased RTs as meaning improved performance, when in fact if one looks at error rates, one can see the increased speed came at the cost of increased error rates.

However, what I don't understand is why, assuming that subjects are instructed to respond slowly enough so that their error rates approach zero (so not the usual speeded responses paradigm), why would it not be correct to then analyse the group RTs, which will probably show wide between-subjects variations and can thus offer meaningful interpretations? This way, it would not matter that all subjects will have traded speed for accuracy, as it is precisely the amount of "slowing" that becomes the dependent variable.

Hope the question makes sense, thanks!

You may be able to reduce errors by telling participants to react slowly. However, by adding this instruction, you may also dilute the response time differences that your are trying to find (whether between or within subjects). If you are lucky, you are just adding random noise, however it is more likely that you will add confounds or tap into different mental processes (occuring at a later time).

Another option to tackle this problem is to hold the speed more or less constant, by giving participants a very narrow time window to respond (which can also be tailored to their speed). As a result, they will produce more errors, which now become the dependent variable (see Draine & Greenwald, 1998, who have introduced this technique).

References

Draine, S. C., & Greenwald, A. G. (1998). Replicable unconscious semantic priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 127, 286–303.


Are there any fMRI decoding papers examining the relationship between attentional cueing and activity in V1? I'm interested in reading on the influence of exogenous attention on cortical representations in early visual areas, but so far my google-fu seems to be failing me.

There seems to be some literature involving endogenous attention (Kamitani & Tong 2006, for instance), but nothing involving cueing, for instance.

Does anybody know of any papers demonstrating either of the following?

fMRI decoding of the effects of attentional cueing on V1?
fMRI decoding of (cued) attentional effects on V1 activity using at-threshold stimuli?

Thanks very much in advance!

Edit:  Okay, so I found two that hit the topic center-mass:

Kok et al., 2011  Less Is More: Expectation Sharpens
Representations in the Primary Visual Cortex
Kok et al., 2012  Attention Reverses the Effect of Prediction in Silencing Sensory Signals

Anything else?

Ha, I was going to mention the Kok Neuron paper :) The Cerebral Cortex one does not use decoding however.

This one may also be of interest to you:
Vetter, P., Smith, F. W., & Muckli, L. (2014). Decoding Sound and Imagery Content in Early Visual Cortex. Current Biology, 24(11), 1256-1262.

Lars Muckli is in general someone who might have more of the same.

I also know this lab does decoding and attention and V1, so maybe some of those publications will capture all three.

I'll edit later if I think of something else.


How to compare IAT (Implicit Association Test) results of two different groups? I already have the recommended algorithm to analyse IAT data. It allows to compare within-subject differences in response latency in the  congruent versus non-congruent condition.
However, in addition to analyzing the within-subject differences, I also need to know if the differences between two groups are statistically significant. How should I go about it?

I assume IAT gives you a score for each person.

I imagine you could just do an independent groups t-test to assess whether the means of the two groups significantly differ.


Analysis of parameter estimates from Ratcliff diffusion model I would like to analyze a dataset in which subjects' reaction time and error rate have been recorded. In order to account for potential speed-accuracy trade-off I am planning to make use of the Ratcliff's diffusion model. My data is a within-subject repeated-measures design with two sessions per subject (drug & placebo) with multiple measurements in each session (around 80).

While reading some papers regarding this topic I found a nice report by Wenzlaff et al. (2011). First they fit the diffusion model for every subject and then take the estimated parameters to an ANOVA. However I was confused by their approach: it seems they select the best fitting model for every subject and in this way are fitting models with different parameters for the subjects. My understanding was that it is not a valid approach to put together estimates from models with different parameters?

My questions are:

Would it be a valid approach to first fit the diffusion model
separately for every subject and then take the estimated parameters
to a group-level analysis (e.g. repeated-measures ANOVA)?
Prior to ANOVA of parameter estimates: is it - in the above context -
better to fit the same model to all subjects or to select the best
fitting model for every subject?

  Wenzlaff, H., Bauer, M., Maess, B., & Heekeren, H. R. (2011). Neural characterization of the speed–accuracy tradeoff in a perceptual decision-making task. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31(4), 1254-1266.

Using Parameters Estimated from an Individual in a Group Analysis

In a way this is exactly what usually happens when we calculate the mean reaction time across all conditions for a group of participants. When we normally calculate mean reaction times we assume that some process (P) takes t milliseconds to complete plus some Gaussian distributed noise. We want to estimate this parameter (t) across conditions, to make some statement about how the treatment effects processing. Then we calculate this set of parameters for a number of participants to ensure that we are looking at something interesting at the population level.

However, we can adopt more sophisticated models with more parameters that better represent how reaction times actually vary. Take the simple case of the ex-Gaussian distribution. This distribution is the combination of an exponential distribution and a Gaussian distribution. The shape of an ex-Gaussian is much closer to a distribution of observed reaction times than just the Gaussian alone. Reaction times modelled with an ex-Gaussian involve fitting two parameters; one for the Gaussian and one for the exponential components of the model. So in this case we would calculate these parameters for each condition and participant. Then we would enter these sets of parameters into two repeated measures ANOVAs; one for the Gaussian parameters and one for the exponential parameters. Then we can assess whether the treatment alters how the reaction times vary. The problem with the ex-Gaussian is that the two parameters have no psychological basis, so there is no meaningful interpretation of the treatment effect on these parameters.

This is where diffusion models are useful because the parameters in the model are psychologically meaningful, allowing us to make interesting inferences from changes in the parameters across conditions.

Same Model or the Best Model or each Participant?

I'm no expert with diffusion models, but I would expect that the same model should be applied to each participant. Not doing so would mean that you are assuming a different model for your reaction time distributions across participants.


Why do we like stories? Almost everyone likes a good story, the way in which it is delivered matters, but most people love a good story in one form or another, whether it's delivered through conversation, a book, a video game, a movie, or even if it's just them trying to make sense of how a shoe got into a swimming pool (That's right, it's ok if the story is created in your own mind, it's still a story, so we seem to like telling stories as much if not more than we like hearing or reading them).

So why do we like stories at all? Why do some of us like stories to the point of obsessing over them?

How does this happen? And is this something that can be controlled (i.e. could you make someone who prefers violent stories prefer switch over to preferring romance stories? Can someone be conditioned to not be interested in any stories at all no matter what they may be about?)

Why is it also that once we start with a story, it can be hard to stop because you want to know what happens next or want to know how it ends? Why do some of us care if people "spoil" the ending for us by telling us what happens before we see or read or hear it, while some of us seem not to care?

Has any real research been done on this?

I'll try to roughly answer your question. It's not an easy one, and by no means does it have a narrow answer. Scientists have suggested, like you mentioned that stories show a lot about the basis of human thought

So why do we like stories at all?

From "The Storytelling Animal" (Jonathan Gottschall)

  “Some thinkers, following Darwin, argue that the evolutionary source
  of story is sexual selection, not natural selection. Maybe stories,
  and other art forms, aren’t just obsessed with sex; maybe they are
  ways of getting sex by making gaudy, peacocklike displays of our
  skill, intelligence, and creativity—the quality of our minds. Thumb
  back a few pages to that image of the Kung San storyteller on page
  19. Look at the young woman sitting to the storyteller’s left—very pretty, very rapt. That’s the idea.

  Or maybe stories are a form of cognitive play. For the evolutionary literary scholar Brian Boyd, “a
  work of art acts like a playground for the mind.” Boyd suggests that
  the free play of art, in all its forms, does the same sort of work for
  our mental muscles that rough-and-tumble play does for our physical
  muscles.

  Or maybe stories are low-cost sources of information and vicarious experience; maybe, to modify Horace, stories delight in order
   to instruct. Through stories we learn about human culture and
  psychology, without the potentially staggering costs of having to gain
  this experience firsthand.

  Or maybe story is a form of social glue
  that brings people together around common values. The novelist John Hardner  expresses this idea nicely: "Real art creates myths a society can live by instead of die by."
  Go back again to the Kung San storyteller. Look how he has brought his people together skin against skin, mind against mind.

Why do some of us like stories to the point of obsessing over them?

  “Fiction, like cocaine, is a drug. People may invent high-minded
  aesthetic (or evolutionary) justifications for their fiction habits,
  but story is just a drug we use to escape from the boredom and
  brutality of real life. Why do we go to see a Shakespeare play, or
  watch a film, or read a novel? Ultimately, from Kessel’s point of
  view, it is not to expand our minds, explore the human condition, or
  do anything else so noble. We do it for kicks.

  Many evolutionary thinkers would agree with Kessel’s position. What
  are stories for? Nothing. The brain is not designed for story; there
  are glitches in its design that make it vulnerable to story. Stories,
  in all their variety and splendor, are just lucky accidents of the
  mind’s jury-rigged construction. Story may educate us, deepen us, and
  give us joy. Story may be one of the “things that makes it most worthwhile to be human. But that doesn’t mean story has a biological purpose.
  Storytelling, in this view, is nothing like the opposable thumb—a structure that helped our ancestors survive and reproduce. In this view, story is more akin to the lines on your palm. No matter what your fortuneteller claims, the lines are not maps of your future. They are side effects of the flexion of the hand.”

How does this happen? And is this something that can be controlled?

I couldn't find any experiment that, like you mentioned, discussed whether you can change someone's preference of what kind of stories they like. If someone finds any study, please mention it in the comments!

Why is it also that once we start with a story, it can be hard to stop because you want to know what happens next or want to know how it ends? Why do some of us care if people "spoil" the ending for us by telling us what happens before we see or read or hear it, while some of us seem not to care?

From this source, an excellent article on storytelling.

  Suspense works just as well as you’d expect

  The “cliffhanger” just may be the oldest trick in the writing book,
  especially writing for television, but there is a reason why it’s used
  so often…

  It works!

  Despite our numerous exposure to this method, our brain just can’t
  “get over” suspenseful moments: it’s a relationship that just won’t
  die, we will always want to know what happens next.

  In fact, suspense works so well that the hotly debated Zeigarnik Effect
  would have you believe that it’s the best way to kill
  procrastination.

  Research in that area seems to point to humans being much more
  inclined to finish something that has already been started
  (researchers interrupted people doing “brain buster” tasks before they
  could complete them… nearly 90% of people went on to finish the task
  anyway, despite being told they could stop).

  Suspense in stories really allows you to create an addictive
  narrative, as long as the suspense appears early enough to capture
  interest, and doesn’t keep people hanging on forever

Has any real research been done on this?

I might elaborate on this further. I don't want to comment without first exploring the research I have quoted to see whether they are good studies. If anyone else knows of any experiments related to this field, please mention it in the comments.

Co-creating stories: Collaborative experiments in storytelling
Management Learning November 2010 41: 507-523, first published on June 28, 2010

Sources:

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
(ISBN-13: 978-0547391403    ISBN-10: 0547391404)


CBT approach and why we generate unrealistic thoughts On reading about Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
 I encounter

  But, if you feel sad after a friend cancels your lunch plans and you
  begin to think there’s obviously something seriously wrong with you
  and no one likes you, this is problematic because this thought is
  extreme and not based on reality.

This makes sense because concluding that none likes you from canceling lunch is overestimation.

But my question is different: how or why are we generating these unrealistic thoughts in the first place? Especially given that after some challenging these thoughts, we can correct them ourselves. So if we can correct them ourselves after challenging them, why do we generate these unrealistic thoughts in the first place, and not the correct ones?

Another way to phrase these questions would be:

Why do humans feel fear and anxiety?
Why are humans particularly sensitive to potential losses See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

In the broadest terms, the answer is that we evolved to have these mental characteristics because they probably gave our ancestors a survival and/or reproductive edge over their contemporaries. In the past, humans needed to be socially accepted in a small tribe; exclusion meant actual death as it was too hard to survive alone. Hence, we evolved to be hyper-sensitive to signs of social exclusion.

Your final question might be:

How come we can't control our feelings with our thoughts?

See the first point above. It didn't help us survive to be calm and at peace.


What is the purpose of dead end neurons in this diagram? I was reading over some sources about ANNs, and here I found this diagram of a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN, the source calls it a feedback neural network).

I noticed that a few neurons in this diagram lead to other neurons that are dead ends (have no connections to other neurons). For example, neuron U5 leads to no other neurons, and U9 has a connection to U4, but U4 doesn't have a connection to any other neurons.

Is there a purpose for U5 and U4 to even exist?

Or am I missing something bigger here?

As said in the comments, $U_4$ and $U_5$ are not used to compute the values of the output neurons.

However, in some cases one may allow the connections between neurons to change over time, in which case $U_4$ and $U_5$ may be later used to compute the values of the output neurons. Seanny123 gives biology as an example. For another example, you may want to look at the  literature on neuro-evolution, i.e. optimization of neural architectures with evolutionary algorithms, which may allow changing the connections between neurons over generations (e.g. that's what I did for my master thesis:  Franck Dernoncourt. "The medial Reticular Formation: a neural substrate for action selection? An evaluation via evolutionary computation.". Master's Thesis. École Normale
Supérieure Ulm. 2011., though I may have coded the mutation and crossover operators in such a way that dead-end neurons don't appear, I don't recall).


Why can't subjective utilities take probabilities into account? If my understanding of expected utility theory is correct,

it is rational for a decision maker to have subjective utilities for objective consequences.  For example, it can be rational for a decision maker to value 5 dollars twice as much as 4 dollars
however, it is not rational for a decision maker to value a 100% chance of 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars

That is, probabilities must be "outside" of- not taken into account by- subjective utilities.

Is this understanding correct, and if so, why is the theory structured this way?

Note: My understanding is based on Hastie & Dawes (2010), Rational Choice in an Uncertain World.

You certainly did not understand it correctly, because the statement that the second case is either rational or not cannot be stated based only on the information you provided.

The rationality of the second statement depends on the specific decision-maker's attitude to risk only. It is not possible to infer it based only on the information you are providing.

1) Let's consider the first case: "You value 5 dollars twice as much as 4 dollars"

A possible decision situation would be a day in which you are so starving that you might well eat one hamburguer as two. However, one hamburguer costs 4 dollars in the store where you are; but there is a promotion in which you can buy two hamburgueres for the price of 5 dollars.

You could represent this situation stating that you value the same:
a) 4 additional dollars, in relation to your current status quo;
b) as the 1 additional dollar, in relation to the moment after receiving the previous 4 dollars.

In this situation, there is no uncertainty involved about the consequences of your decision. If you pay 4 dollars, you eat one hamburguer. If you pay 5 dollars, you eat two hamburguers. In certain situations, you can model your preference by means of a value function (rather than an utility function).

A value function measures only how much you value (i.e. how much you consider attractive, desirable, preferable) distinct consequences, so that consequence levels with higher values mean that you prefer them in relation to consequence levels with lower values.

Utility not only measures this value, but it also measures your attitude in relation to uncertainty (risk). Since this is a certain situation, your utility function is exactly the same as your value function.

2) Now for the second case: "Why is not also rational to value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars"

This situation is distinct from the previous one, because now one of the alternatives is uncertain, there is only a 80% chance of occurring.

A possible decision situation would be the case in which the store has offering a promotion in which you could take a 20% chance of eating your first hamburguer for free, but if you lose you would have to pay 5 dollars for it.

The only possible way that you could "value 5 dollars twice as much as 80% chance of 5 dollars" is if you are indifferent between:
a) paying 4 dollars for eating one hamburguer (as in the previous case);
b) or accepting this new promotion.

If you are indifferent, then IT IS RATIONAL that you value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars! In this case, it is said that you are risk-neutral, and once more, your utility function is exactly the same as your value function.

If you prefer choice a) then it means you are not willing to risk having to pay 5 dollars for the hamburguer. Then, you no longer value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars! You now value 5 dollars MORE THAN TWICE AS an 80% chance of 5 dollars! In this case, it is said that you are risk-averse, and now your utility function is distinct from your value function.

Likewise, If you prefer choice b) then, once more, you no longer value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars! You now value 5 dollars LESS THAN TWICE AS an 80% chance of 5 dollars! In this case, it is said that you are risk-seeking, and again your utility function is distinct from your value function.

PS: Note that utilites (and values) are always subjective, so the term is redundant (that's why I did not mentioned it at all)


Is Apple's iPhone Retina Display really accurate to human eye resolution? Apple based their Retina Display on the following claim, as cited by Wikipedia:

  The display has a contrast ratio of 800:1. The screen is marketed by Apple as the "Retina Display", based on the assertion that a display of approximately 300 ppi at a distance of 12 inches (305 mm) from one's eye, or 57 arcseconds per pixel is the maximum amount of detail that the human retina can perceive.

However some have stated that the resolution of the human retina is significantly higher than Apple's claim:

  Soneira stated that the resolution of the human retina is higher than claimed by Apple, working out to 477 ppi at 12 inches (305 mm) from the eyes, or 36 arcseconds per pixel.[44]

My impression of the human eye's "resolution" has been that it's significantly higher than the "Retina" display.

Is there any objective evidence that supports or refutes Apple's claim that the Retina display matches human eye resolution? Have any studies specifically been done to determine whether humans can differentiate "Retina" displays and higher resolution displays at the same distance?

Until peer-reviewed data on the topic is published, all we have to go on is blog posts from vision and display researchers. The best posts I've seen so far are:

  Artal, P. (2012) Is the display resolution of the new iPad adequate for the eye?
  Artal, P. (2012) What have in common the Apple “Retina” display and our retina? Probably, only the name.
  Soneira, R.M. (2012) New iPad Display Technology Shoot-Out

To summarize: Some people can see the difference in some cases.


How to compare brain waves? I'm a Java developer completely naive of brain waves and such. Could anyone tell me how to compare them?

For instance, how can I compare:

and this:

What fields of study should I focus on? I understand there are some Pattern Recognition involved. Other than that, what else?
Related Questions:

Is EEG brain-computer interface reliable?
https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/8628/brain-computer-interface?rq=1

The field of study you should focus on is the one for which you have already identified in your paragraph above which is EEG based "brain-computer interface".
EEG signals are compared by their "features". Each of the signal you have provided above have different features. These features can be mean, variance, frequency, kurtosis, skewness of each of the signals (statistical parameters which also includes fractal dimension, Hjorth parameters, common spatial pattern, fano factor... ...) or power as computed through frequency space algorithms such as fast fourier transform.
More sophisticated techniques such as blind source separation, empirical mode decomposition and wavelet coherence (a phase domain approach) should yield additional insights but these are more reserved for research purposes.
The most common algorithm for post processing is the wavelet transform which plots the energy as a function of both time and frequency.
During a seizure, the wavelet transform will display a clear high energy periodic signal at the lower frequency. While highly efficient in pin pointing exactly where and how the seizure is happening, the wavelet transform is highly advanced (challenging to implement) and runs at O(n^2) for a naive implementation and O(nlogn) for a fast implementation. It is quite computationally expensive.

What you need to implement is a real time seizure detection based on EEG features.
(offline)
This is done first by grabbing the EEG signal when he has a seizure using EEG headsets or through research, estimate what the characteristics of this type of seizures are. (this can be done even with a single electrode).
(real time)
Once this done, hook the patient with the EEG headset and compute the features of the seizure signal at every other other second worth of samples as they stream into a computing platform. The features are constantly compared to the threshold features. When all these features are have their respective threshold (A and B and C and D all meets threshold). Send alert that a seizure is happening.
The threshold approach is a basic one, but because our brain continuously changing and EEG depends on many many external variables, what is commonly used in practice are the detection of seizure through artificial neural networks (ANN) - it will not only tell you when a seizure is happening but could in fact PREDICT when a seizure will occur! (*)
One challenge I can see with what you are attempting to do is that the patient will be constantly hooked up with a headset in order to perform real time seizure prediction. The distance between your USB and the headset will be a hard constraint. The headsets needs to be recharged frequently. Emotiv EPOC (one popular headset) contains 16 electrodes which can be quite burdensome when worn. Wet electrodes provides better data but requires delicate preparation which can take a long time. If worn constantly, I would pick a headset containing a few electrodes at key places like the frontal-polar lobe (since seizure is more easily picked up than other EEG patterns, we don't need many electrodes) and would choose one that is aesthetically pleasing (one from Neurosky or one of the recent headset from Emotiv i.e. insight) and has a long battery life time
Good luck
(*) Prediction of seizure onset in an in-vitro hippocampal slice model of epilepsy using Gaussian-based and wavelet-based artificial neural networks. - A. Chiu


Does the retina encode visual information like a Bitmap or an SVG? I heard recently that a scientist has developed a retina prosthesis. So I think this is a question that has an answer.

Does the retina encode information like a Bitmap image or an SVG image?

(A Bitmap is a grid of pixels. An SVG image is vector based, so that it defines a shape and says 'in this region, it's green, in that it's red', so to speak.)

Short answer
The retinal image corresponds more to a bitmap, than a vector-based image

Background
The retina contains a layer of about 100 million photoreceptors that are topographically organized. In other words, each photoreceptor codes one specific pixel in the field of view. In turn, the nerve fibers running from the eye to the brain are also topographically organized in the same way the retina is (retinotopy is maintained up until the higher brain centers and is lost only in the inferotemporal cortex). Hence, yes, basically, but grossly oversimplified I agree with @Krysta that the retinal image more closely corresponds to a bitmap than a vector-based image. Nonetheless, colors, contrasts and edges are coded in the retina.

Here is a picture on retinotopy. Basically a 1:1 topographic representation of the retina can be found in the primary visual visual cortex:

source: University of Leeds and Sydney

Retinal implants are devices that replace the lost photoreceptors in the retina in patients with retinitis pigmentosa or other retinal degenerative diseases. Retinal implants typically consist of a grid of electrodes (60 - about 1500 in commercially available systems) that are placed on (Argus II) or below the retina (alpha-IMS).

Here's a fundus photo of an Argus II implant:

The electrodes directly stimulate the surviving neruonal cells in the retina. Retinal implants make use of the retinotopy. An electrode in the center of the retina will elicit a spot of light (a phosphene) in the central fielfd of view, whereas a more peripherally situated electrode will generate phosphenes more eccentrically. Hence, camera images (in the Argus II device) are simply downsampled and projected onto the electrode grid as intensity-coded stimuli. In the alpha-IMS system the intra-ocular part consists of a grid of photosensitive diodes coupled to small amplifiers. Hence, in this device it is, quite literally, a photosensitive chip thrown on the retina. In both approaches, brighter areas in the image receive higher electric currents and result in brighter and/or larger percepts.

Reference
Stronks et al. Exp Rev Med Dev;11:23-30


How does masking work? Masking occurs when the delay between the target and the mask is less than a threshhold (say 50 milliseconds). If sensory data passes from lower to higher visual cortices/processing regions as in a linear one way street, how can the mask (which comes later) influence the perception of the target (which moved ahead of the mask)?

So does this mean masking works because the neuro-network consists of nested connections folding back and forth on itself? If so, at what scales do they operate? Do they occur both within higher regions and between higher and lower regions? Do we understand how they work in detail in the case of masking?

I learned that masking is often used as a research tool for subconsciousness/unconsciousness. But maybe neuro-feedback disruted using masking is just one of the many ways subconscious perception can occur? If so, shouldn't we reserve some qualms about general conclusions about subconsciousness/unconsciousness drawn using the masking method?

Apparently your question is on backward masking, which means that the masker follows the stimulus (probe) in time. Backward masking generally occurs at higher levels, typically the cortex. In case of visual stimuli this can be the primary visual cortex, or V1 (Mace et al. 2005). Ongoing processing of the probe is then thought to be interfered with by the subsequent presentation of the masker, as long as the masker-probe interval is not too long. The PNAS article by Covaks et al., 1995 shows this nicely at the cortical level: neurons working on the stimulus change their response patterns when a masker is presented afterwards. So although there may be connections folding back and forth onto themselves, a serial 'one-way' route where the processing of a stimulus changes upon arrival of the masker is the most parsimonious, and experimentally supported explanation. Cortical processes are often affected by consciousness (alertness/vigilance) so the presence of backward masking effects can be interpreted as a marker of cortical higher-level processing.

Forward masking, and simultaneous masking, on the other hand, work at the neural level through adaptation processes. Although the effects of forward masking can be observed at the cortical level as shown by Brosch & Screiner 1997, forward masking is caused by processes occurring in the periphery (e.g., the cochlea or auditory nerve in hearing) and are unaffected by mental state. Hence, the presence of forward masking indicates that the neural process under investigation reflects a peripheral process that can also occur subconsciously, whereas the presence of backward masking generally point towards a higher-level neural process that is typically affected by mental state. Hope this helps.


What are the main causes of whether a person becomes introverted or extraverted? Genetics is obviously an important cause of whether someone becomes extraverted or introverted. But what percentage is genetics and what percentage is the environment? What factors in the environment are most important in determining this trait?

Heritability estimates of Extraversion (and other Big 5 factors)

The introduction section of  Loehlin et al (1998) provides a narrative review of heritability estimates of big 5 personality traits (i.e., one of which is extraversion).
A brief extract gives a flavour of some of the research that has been conducted:

  A recent heritability analysis of the Big Five dimensions as measured
  by the Revised NEO Personality Inventory of Costa and McCrae (1992)
  used a total of 660 monozygotic (MZ) pairs and 380 dizygotic (DZ)
  pairs from pooled Canadian and German twin samples (Jang, McCrae,
  Angleitner, Riemann, & Livesley, 1998). For all five traits a simple
  model involving only additive genes and nonshared environment fit the
  data. Estimates for the heritabilities of factor scales for [Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness,
  Neuroticism, and Openness] were .50, .48, .49, .49, and .48, respectively. These
  estimates are obviously very similar—in partic- ular, the heritability
  of Agreeableness is quite in line with the rest.

They also mention other twin studies, with heritability estimates for Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness respectively as:

                       E    A    C    N    O
Waller (1999):        .49  .33  .46  .42  .58
Riemann et al (1997):  60  .57  .71  .61  .81

Thus, in summary, it seems that such estimates for the heritability of extraversion are around 50%.

Side Point

While inventories like the Myer-Briggs Type Inventory often categorise individuals, into categories, I find a continuous approach to personality traits provides a more accurate description of an individual. Using such an approach, people have a score on an extraversion dimension that is roughly normally distributed (or at least continuously distributed) in the population.

Limitations

I realise this only partially answers your question. It doesn't discuss the dynamic environmental-genetic interactions that cause personality traits , nor does it take a critical perspective on issues related to the measurement of extraversion, and the estimation issues related to heritability. Hopefully, it is a useful starting point.

References

Jang, K. L., McCrae, R. R., Angleitner, A., Riemann, R., & Livesley, W. J. (1998). Heritability of facet-level traits in a cross-cultural twin sample: Support for a hierarchical model of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1556–1565.
Loehlin, J.C. and McCrae, R.R. and Costa, P.T. and John, O.P. (1998). Heritabilities of common and measure-specific components of the Big Five personality factors. Journal of Research in Personality, 32, 4, 431-453. FREE PDF
Riemann, R., Angleitner, A, & Strelau, J. (1997). Genetic and environmental influences on
personality: A study of twins reared together using the self- and peer report NEO-FFI
scales. Journal of Personality, 65, 449–475.
Waller, N. G. (1999). Evaluating the structure of personality. In C. R. Cloninger (Ed.), Personality and psychopathology (pages 155-197). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press. FREE PDF


Accuracy of psychopy keystroke duration measurement I am using Psychopy and this code for measuring keystroke duration as suggested in this answer for my previous question:

from psychopy.iohub import launchHubServer
io = launchHubServer()
keyboard = io.devices.keyboard
count = 0
keyinfo = ""
duration = 0
key = ""

io.clearEvents('all')

print 'begin'

while key not in ['escape', 'esc']:
    key_info = keyboard.waitForReleases()[0]
    count += 1
    key = key_info.key
    keyinfo = key_info
    duration = key_info.duration
    key = key_info.key
    print 'round number:' , count
    print key_info
    print 'Press time was', key_info.duration
    print 'key', key_info.key

The first tests look promising, but I was wondering if there is a difference in accuracy between iohub or pyglet function in Psychopy? Or if there would even be a more accurate solution than using one of theses two? And how is the measurement of the keystroke duration. I've been searching for it but haven't found any data for windows. The only thing I found are these tests
Has someone stumbled across a publication regarding the accuracy?

Moreover I don’t know how good RAM and CPU would need to be, right know I am using an ASUS notebook with Intel Core i7 2.6 GHz and 16GB RAM, (Bluetooth, Ethernet. Wi-Fi, Mobile and other kind of connections disabled; desktop visual effects disabled; antivirus, software updates, background programs, and other kind of asynchronous events sources disabled) and the last version of PsychoPy2.

I tried to do preliminary tests to measure the accuracy of my test and to measure the keystroke duration with Psychopy and my keyboard simulating device. Before renting more expensive equipment, I've tried to pretest the accuracy with a 60 fps camera recording the moment of touch and without touch to the device and measuring with Psychopy at the same, to be able to compare these to values to have the accuracy. The 60 fps means, that in between frames there are 16.67 ms. My cheap camera pretest showed, that most of the processing time would be a maximum of approximately 8ms, so that I think I will achieve even lower values with better recording equipment with a higher framerate. But approximately every tenth measurement I have 24-36 ms signal processing.

My questions summarized:

Does anyone know, what the reason might be that approximately every tenth measurement has higher signal processing times?
How could I make the measurement of the keystroke duration more accurate?
Has anyone measured the keystroke duration accuracy of psychopys2 different functions (e.g iohub and pyglet) in windows himself or stumbled upon literature about this?

In the Psychopy forum I have received some advice:

One would be to change the code: take out the print command, no
redefining of variables
USB, USB device, the python and system
libraries should be the newest and fastest, if possible, because
these could have an influence on the accuracy.
And that Psychtoolbox forum could have the solution, but so far I haven't found it.


What tasks is Spaun 2.0 able to perform? According to "A Large-Scale Model of the Functioning Brain" by Eliasmith et al., Spaun 1.0 was able to perform 8 distinct cognitive tasks:

Copy Drawing: Given a randomly chosen handwritten digit, Spaun should produce the same digit written in the same style as the handwriting.
Digit recognition: Given a randomly chosen handwritten digit, Spaun should produce the same digit written in its default writing.
N-arm bandit task: Spaun should perform a three-armed bandit task, in which it must determine which of three possible choices generates the greatest stochastically generated reward. Reward contingencies can change from trial to trial.
List memory: Given a list of any length, Spaun should reproduce it.
Counting: Counting. Given a starting value and a count value, Spaun should write the final value (that is, the sum of the two values)
Question answering:  Given a list of numbers, Spaun should answer either one of two possible questions:

i. What is in a given position in the list?

ii. Given a kind of number, at what position is this number in the list?
Rapid variable creation Given example syntactic input/output patterns (e.g., 0 0 7 4 → 7 4; 0 0 2 4 → 2 4; etc.), Spaun should complete a novel pattern given only the input (e.g., 0 0 1 4 → ?)
Fluid Induction Spaun should perform a syntactic or semantic reasoning task that is isomorphic to the induction problems from the Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) test for fluid intelligence

In "Spaun 2.0: Extending the World’s Largest Functional Brain Model" by Xuan Choo, it is written:

  The final Spaun 2.0 model consists of approximately 6.6 million
  neurons, can perform 12 cognitive tasks, and has been demonstrated to
  reproduce behavioural and neurological data observed in natural
  cognitive agents.

What novel cognitive tasks does Spaun 2.0 add? Reading the thesis, I've only been able to identify:

Adaptive arm control: Given a force field applied to Spaun's arm, Spaun should adapt to the force and continue to be able to draw in spite of the changing environment dynamics.
Stimulus matching task: Given an example image from ImageNet, match other images of the same categories.

Hypothetically, instruction following could be considered as a task, but it seems like more of a meta-task, since it defines how Spaun can combine tasks to create new tasks without any architecture changes.

Counting task numbers in Spaun becomes somewhat meaningless due to it's instruction following capabilities. However, the missing task was the stimulus response task, wherein given an image from ImageNet, classify it according to it's given identifier.


Are there already models for planning and goal-directed behaviour? I'm interested in planning and how one is able to take action and plan ahead at the same time. I could imagine one could make observations and project these into the future using past experiences. The reward system could then sort out favorable outcomes which one could aim for, taking the necessary steps.

However I don't know if this is really how the reward system works (I wasn't able to find resources especially for "future" reward) and I can also see difficulties in terms of interference with control of the current situation - planning would have to be handled as some sort of suppressed action.

So are there already cognitive models that try to explain planning and how planning and action could work in parallel (although interacting)?

Reward systems are one of the most actively studied topics in (cognitive) neuroscience and prediction error - that is, deviations from expected "future" reward - play a big role in that. Since you're particularly interested in models, I recommend checking out the work of Matt Botvinick and Nathaniel Daw. Here are a few papers that might be good starting points:

Glascher, Daw, Dayan, & O’Doherty (2010). States versus Rewards: Dissociable Neural
Prediction Error Signals Underlying Model-Based and Model-Free Reinforcement Learning. Neuron, 66, 585-595.

den Ouden, Friston, Daw, McIntosh, & Stephan (2009). A Dual Role for Prediction Error in
Associative Learning. Cerebral Cortex, 19, 1175-1185.

Solway & Botvinick (2012). Goal-directed decision making as probabilistic inference: A computational framework and potential neural correlates. Psycholological Review, 119, 120-154.

Botvinick & Plaut (2004). Doing without schema hierarchies: A recurrent connectionist approach to routine sequential action and its pathologies. Psychological Review, 111, 395-429.


Do alpha waves vanish when I open my eyes in a dark room? Alpha brain waves show up in your EEG when you close your eyes.

Do they vanish when I open my eyes in a dark room?
To put it in a different way: Is it necessary to have your eyes shut or that you don't see anthing?

Yes they do.

That is to say, light conditions do not generally affect alpha waves, only the eyelids do (and other factors).  This has led to alpha waves being interpreted as reflecting an active inhibitory process in the visual cortex (relaxation) rather than a reduction of stimulus (resting).

The following image is from an Israeli study published in 2013 called "The dark side of the alpha rhythm":

Notice how all the graphs show no significant difference between light and dark conditions in both eyes open and eyes closed cases.

Mounting evidence from studying blinking, saccades, and stimulating the retina from behind the eyelids (through the oral cavity) suggests that closing the eyes initiates an inhibitory process that actively blocks visual processing (rather than passively relying on darkness), so darkness is not necessary, only shutting the eyes is sufficient.


Terminology for deep-seated feelings? I'm interested in human emotion. Particularly, we have many words for different emotions, such as love, hate, etc. The issue arises that I have not found words for some of the emotions I've heard my friends describe and which I too have felt. These feelings do not appear to be accessible to everybody, because I have spoken with numerous people and only two of them so far have not met me with a blank stare or tried to fit my description to commonly described emotions like 'love' or 'anger'. Generally, the emotions are much more complex than the behaviours those words entail

For example, one of these feelings is the sensation of something missing, the sensation that there's more to life, and which embodies itself as a sense of vague, omnipresent dissatisfaction. Both I and a friend of mine have had this sensation and when we are happy, it is still there. If we think about it, it easily sobers the sensation of happiness, but at the same time, it is 'deeper', for lack of a better term, than standard emotion because it does not exclude other emotions.

Another such emotion, which does not seem to have a name is one I have experienced. It is a strong sensation of attachment to a girl who I used to date. We broke up, but remained friends, and I weathered through the resentment to keep the friendship because she thinks in a similar way to me. The sensation is very strong and brings to mind the idea that, regardless of what happens, I want her to be happy, whether we date again, remain friends, or become strangers. It is not an urge or compulsion to action, and like the sense of dissatisfaction, is omnipresent. It is also not linked to her presence or absence. Perhaps empathy or respect is the best word for it.

I'm curious about the terminology for sensations that exist only in relation to a mental concept and nothing tangible. Largely, it seems that language is inadequate to convey feelings of this kind, but I'm intensely interested in the terminology that may exist for these sensations. There are more of them, and they generally correspond to simpler emotions and concepts, but they have a very distinct and complex nature when compared to both the sensations and behaviours associated with those simple emotions.

Are there words to communicate these feelings without grossly simplifying and misrepresenting them?

Angst seems to fit your first example about as well as I could imagine any one word fitting. Angst is somewhat complex and ambiguous because it's used in many contexts with different connotations. It's roughly a combination of smoldering frustration and creeping anxiety as I understand it. It's more of a latent restlessness than an overt, clear emotion – somewhat more trait-like than most emotions, which are generally more transient states. Its use in existentialism particularly suits the global feeling of incompleteness you describe. IMO, it's a more cognitive or conative term than most emotion words too, in that it is sometimes thought to arise from unresolved cognitive dissonance regarding one's identity and meaning in life. Emotions are more often automatic reactions to present circumstances, generally speaking.

As I understand this contrast, the usual emotions may occur on a somewhat different level of conscious experience. The ordinary emotional level fluctuates and cycles like the stimuli and routines that provoke them, somewhat like echoes of the stimuli. One may focus on them, or choose to let them pass, depending on the extent to which they hold one's attention, I suppose. The more cognitive side of experience is somewhat more stable. In some ways, people are built to resist changing their minds in response to every new stimulus. To be fair, most don't want to have a strong emotional reaction to every stimulus either, but the resistance is stronger with respect to beliefs and attitudes, or schemata in general. (I've described this resistance somewhat further in my answer to, 'Can attention be improved to reduce the frequency of mistakes?')

Schemata are more heavily involved in emotions about the self and life in general. Arguably, these emotions about subjects are attitudes, and thus subsumed partially within schemata as a broader class...but I haven't got a citation for that; it's just my understanding of how these concepts intertwine. (See also my answer to, 'Is there a precise definition of "attitude"?') IMO, it explains why feelings like angst, which often reflect discontented attitudes toward oneself or life at large, don't fluctuate as much and resist attempts to cheer up. The problems these attitudes indicate generally can't be resolved by just having a little fun or forgetting about them, as people often do to cope with simpler, more circumstantial, negative emotions. These problems tend to require attitude change to resolve, which surely is a deeper process. I see no problem with referring to this as "deeper" BTW; depth psychology and existential psychology both use this term extensively to differentiate higher-level (i.e., more complex or developmentally advanced) motivational content from the simpler stuff people are more used to discussing casually, atheoretically, or from folk psychological perspectives.

As for your second example, companionate love from Sternberg's triangular theory, or storge from John Lee's / Hendrick & Hendrick's theory of love styles would seem to fit equally and more or less synonymously. Again, it's more of an attitude about an enduring identity (hers, rather than yours, or that of life itself) than an emotional reaction to present, transient circumstances, so relative stability and independence from daily fluctuations in emotional states is to be expected. I would say empathy and respect are components of the emergent property of companionate love, especially the intermediate component of intimacy (one half of companionate love, according to Sternberg). Here's the diagram:

 by Lnesa, I think...

Feel free to comment or edit if I've missed your point by addressing your examples too specifically or narrowly. If you have other feelings that need classifying, I'd be happy to see more questions like this.


What is the reliability of GPA? I'm in the process of performing a meta-analysis that includes Grade Point Average (GPA) as one of the variables. For some purposes, it might be useful to have an estimate of the reliability of measurement for GPA.

What has empirical research estimated the reliability of GPA to be?
What factors influence the reliability of GPA measurement?

Additional points

I'm looking for specific coefficient values that I could use in a meta-analytic context. I am not interested in personal opinions about the value of GPA.
I can also see that reliability would vary based on how you define reliability.
I imagine that GPA would be more reliable and valid when it is obtained from a group of students at a single university. I can also see that GPAs based on more units of study would be more reliable.
I can also see that in some contexts GPA is an end itself, and therefore it would not be appropriate to adjust for reliability.

Bacon and Bean (2006) discuss the issue of the reliability and validity of GPA.
They report the results of two studies that looked at the reliability of GPA in samples of business students at the same university.

Average intercourse grade correlations were typically between $\bar{r} =.18$ and $\bar{r} =.38$.
Estimates of reliability for GPA ranged from .67 to .94.
There is a simplex structure to GPA whereby correlations between GPA for a given year correlate more highly with GPAs of other years that are closer in time (e.g., correlations between consecutive year GPAS from years 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to 4 where .74, .79, and .74 respectively. In contrast the correlation between GPA year 1 with year 4 was .60.
Average intercourse correlations within disciplines tend to be higher than across course correlations.
In general, reliability increased as more courses/subjects were included.

The above estimates are based on correlations that use "+/-" system of grading. Universities that use straight letter grades should have lower reliability and those that use a 100 point numeric grading system should be more reliable.

References

Bacon, D.R. & Bean, B. (2006). GPA in research studies: An invaluable but neglected opportunity. Journal of Marketing Education, 28, 35-42.


What topics are included in theoretical cognitive science? What topics would fall under theoretical cognitive science, if there could be such a term? I am referring to the more mathematical, foundational topics vs. topics dealing with specific cognitive phenomena.

I would imagine that artificial intelligence and any other kind of cognitive modelling of behaviour or the brain would fall under that category. Essentially, anything that isn't about directly describing human behaviour, but is about modelling it computationally.

Look up the research on Theoretical Neuroscience, it's really quite fascinating. There is also an going project about literally building a brain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project

It's really neat stuff.


Is Altmann's memory-for-goals model valid for higher-level multitasking? Altmann's memory-for-goals model models goal-directed cognition in terms of the general memory constructs of activation and associative priming (Altmann 2002). From reading the paper I understand the model predicts response times during very low-level subgoal switching, like intermediate steps when solving a tower of Hanoi.
I have seen this paper being referenced by many multitasking and interruption studies within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (e.g., Adler, 2012). These types of studies are generally interested in more real-world knowledge work, such as interrupted office work by telephone calls where one's attention needs to be directed to the incoming call.
I'm skeptical as to whether this model and implementations of it using ACT-R (Anderson et al. 2004) is applicable to such higher-level knowledge work. Some of its implications seem relevant, like the problem state bottleneck. Are there any grounds for assuming the two are related?
References
Altmann, E. M., & Trafton, J. G. (2002). Memory for goals: An activation-based model. Cognitive science, 26(1), 39-83.
Adler, R. F., & Benbunan-Fich, R. (2012). Juggling on a high wire: Multitasking effects on performance. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 70(2), 156-168.
Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., & Qin, Y. (2004). An integrated theory of the mind. Psychological review, 111(4), 1036.

Short answer:
Altmann's model is hierarchical and allows for "higher-level" goals and "lower-level" goals, but a goal is ultimately a goal―higher level goals are just sets of lower level goals, at least as far as I understand it. Given its ability to predict performance on solid laboratory tasks like the Tower of Hanoi, there is no reason to think that goal-activation/memory-for-goals theory wouldn't apply to "higher-level" multitasking.

Altmann's theory does not appear to be implemented in ACT-R. The relationship between the two instead appears to be that Altmann borrowed ACT-R's forgetting function for his model.

Longer answer:
Goal-activation theory relates to real-world work in the sense that real-world work often requires juggling multiple goals. Such higher-level multitasking often requires the worker to temporarily stop working towards a goal in order to pursue another. Goal-activation theory helps explain this by accounting for this inhibition of the ongoing task and shifting to the new task. In order to do so, the worker must encode, store and retrieve different goals from memory depending on contextual salience and retrieval history.

The paper Jeff quotes in his comment, by Trafton, Altmann, Brock & Mintz (2002), proposed two mechanisms for how different goals reach the top of the goal pile and actually become activated: prospective goal encoding and retrospective rehearsal. Both rely on the effect of retrieval practice, and possibly (but not explicitly stated) retrieval-induced forgetting.

Participants were either interrupted during a task with no warning or an 8-second warning prior to interruption. They found that participants in the warning condition were able to improve their responses to interruption. This suggests that the goal-activation model's ability to explain inhibitory performance on Tower of Hanoi can be generalized to real world tasks.

(As an aside: Methodologically speaking, the Tower of Hanoi in particular is a generally well validated task for measuring executive inhibition across task domains. It has an impressive clinical/practical empirical pedigree that is readily available by, for instance, forward searching Miyake et al. (2000). I don't see why performance on a Tower of Hanoi task would be considered "low-level" or meaningfully different from "real-world knowledge work," at least in terms of aspects that might relate to goal-activation.)

References

Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive psychology, 41(1), 49-100. Chicago.
Trafton, J. G., Altmann, E. M., Brock, D. P., & Mintz, F. E. (2003). Preparing to resume an interrupted task: Effects of prospective goal encoding and retrospective rehearsal. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 58(5), 583-603.