Raven Progressive Matrix: why's my chosen square wrong? Source: Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009). pp. 7-8.

  The example that the problem-solver must follow is set up by the two figures in the top row of the left panel. The figure at the left in the bottom row then specifies what has to be transformed in order to solve the problem. The six figures on the right correspond to the answer alternatives. The solution of the problem requires you to notice that the figure in the upper left of the left panel is a diamond and the figure in the upper right is a square. This tells you that the answer has to be a square. Then you must notice that the bottom half of the upper diamond is divided into two, with the left portion in black. The fact that the left half of the figure on the right is also black tells you that the corresponding portion of the square on the bottom right must match the corresponding portion in the lower left diamond-that is, the entire bottom half must be black. Then you notice that to make the top right figure, one of the bars has been removed from the top left diamond while symmetry of the bars has been preserved. This establishes that you must remove one of the bars of the square at the bottom while preserving symmetry. Now you know that the correct answer must be the square at the bottom right of the answer panel.

My attempt

Between #1 and 2, 2 orange lines remain, the blue is removed, and nothing is added. So in #3, the 2 orange lines remain. #3 has no blue middle line that can be removed. So how can the right answer be #5, where the green line has been added to #3?

As the text you provide explains, there is a flow of thinking involved:

diamond-diamond / square - ? (answer: square - you got that one right)
bottom half becomes filled (you got that one too)
one stripe removed above

All this added yields the picture at the bottom right. You didn't notice, interpret or actioned on the stripe removal, perhaps.


How fast is the visual system? I've heard that the visual system is one of our slowest sensory systems.

How fast is the visual system, and how does it compare to other sensory systems (auditory, mechanosensory, pain, etc.)? For example, how long does it typically take for a visual stimulus from the external world to cause a neuron to fire in the V1 region of the cortex?

researched with "sensory cortex latency" on google:

according nowak et al, latency in macaque v1 is ~75 ms, although there are cells with latency as short as 30 ms.  according to camalier at al, latency in macaque A1 is more like 15-25 ms.

Also, see shriki et al for a computational perspective on latency coding in V1.

There is research into the latency of population responses recorded at the skin called "evoked potentials", reviewed by Nuwer. He says that there are evoked potentials over somatosensory cortex 20 ms after stimulus, whereas the potential over V1 is more like 100 ms after stimulus.  All taken together, it does seem that the visual system is slower


What research gives insight into the terms "low status" and "high status"? Folk explanations of human behaviour often refer to "high status" or "low status", and the phrase sometimes pops up in more formal contexts (e.g. this question).

However, one of the most cited sources cited as exposition of these concepts is a popular book on improvisational theatre rather than a research publication.

What body of research, if any, addresses these concepts more rigorously?

This is a really broad question - what you seem to be asking is: what research addresses social hierarchies, competition, and neurological/psychological/physiological effects of perception of social status.

It's interesting to note that social status signals likely developed before language, as they are a means of non-verbal communication (language is quite new, evolutionarily-speaking).

In the most broad sense, the answer to your question is that research on social psychology and social neuroscience, particularly that related to hierarchy, dominance, and perception of social standing, is what you're looking for.  This is the 'body of research'.

Past this point, I'm not sure what you're asking...  Are you wondering in what brain structures this type of behavior appears to originate?  Or are you more interested in the cognitive processing going on behind the scenes when people mentally alter their internalized social standing?  Or are you looking for a jumping off point?

If you are particularly looking for the neural basis of this behavior, check out the links below.  All relate to the neurological basis of social processing in the human brain.

Original answer:

I'm at work so I don't have a lot of time to put together a comprehensive answer, but here are some articles:

Perigenual anterior cingulate morphology covaries
with perceived social standing
Know Your Place: Neural Processing of Social Hierarchy in Humans
The Cultural Neuroscience of Person Perception
Using neuroimaging techniques to explore the relationship between social status and health

Neurobiological Correlates of Social Conformity and
Independence During Mental Rotation
Neurobiological Pathways Linking Socioeconomic Position and Health

For the record, the Google search used to find these was neural correlates of perceived social +status


What happens in the brain when conscious awareness is changed during dreaming onset? I've long been interested in dreaming and there's a peculiar phenomenon of the very start of the dreaming process. Different people experience it differently, but even for the same person there's anecdotal evidence of different experiences during dreaming onset.

One of the most dramatic examples is the "wake induced lucid dreaming" transition, where the subject experiences intense hallucinations. These could be sight, sound, feeling of presence, falling, buzzing, etc. As these hallucinations subside, they are replaced by dream imagery.

There are other kinds of transitions as well.

What interests me is if these phenomena have been studied using modern neuroimaging techniques. Does science know what happens in the brain when the persons perception shifts from the real world to dreaming mentations?

Here is the first study with fMRI, EEG and eye-video simultaneously recorded while subjects were performing a task (Poudel et al., 2014).

"fMRI analysis revealed a transient decrease in thalamic, posterior cingulate, and occipital cortex activity and an increase in frontal, posterior parietal, and parahippocampal activity during microsleeps. The transient activity was modulated by the duration of the microsleep. In subjects with frequent microsleeps, power in the post-central EEG theta was positively correlated with the BOLD signal in the thalamus, basal forebrain, and visual, posterior parietal, and prefrontal cortices. These results provide evidence for distinct neural changes associated with microsleeps and with EEG theta activity during drowsiness in a continuous task."

Poudel, G. R., Innes, C. R., Bones, P. J., Watts, R., & Jones, R. D. (2014). Losing the struggle to stay awake: divergent thalamic and cortical activity during microsleeps. Human brain mapping, 35(1), 257-269. doi: 10.1002/hbm.22178.


What is the test-retest correlation for HEXACO personality? I am wanting to get estimates of the test-retest correlation for the six HEXACO domains. I'm curious to obtain estimates of test-retest correlation over various time frames (e.g., 1 month, 1 years, 2 years, etc.).

I have not yet found HEXACO domain estimates. I've had a lock through the main articles listed as references on http://hexaco.org/references but they seem to focus more on internal structure.

However, the HEXACO-PI is quite similar to the the NEO-PI in terms of number of items per domain and the general approach to trait measurement. Thus, I would expect that NEO-PI stability would provide a ballpark of what to expect. The following is a summary of few studies from the Wikipedia article on the NEO-PI.

  The test retest reliability of an early version of the NEO after 3 months was: N = .87, E = .91, O = .86.[14]
  The test retest reliability reported in the manual of the NEO PI-R over 6 years was: N = .83, E = .82, O = .83, A = .63, C = .79.
  A 2001 study by Kurtz and Parrish[15] on the short-term test-retest reliability yielded coefficients of α = .91–.93 for domains and α
  =.70–.91 for facets after a one-week interval. ...
  A 2006 study by Terracciano et al.[16] on the long-term test-retest reliability yielded coefficients of α = .78–.85 for domains and α =
  .57–.82 for facets after a 10-year interval.

SOURCE

References

McCrae, R. R.; Costa, P. T. (1983). "Joint factors in self-reports and ratings: Neuroticism, extraversion and openness to experience". Personality and Individual Differences 4 (3): 245–255. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(83)90146-0.
Kurtz J. E., Parrish C. L. (2001). "Semantic response consistency and protocol validity in structured personality assessment: The case of the NEO PI-R". Journal of Personality Assessment 76 (2): 315–332. doi:10.1207/S15327752JPA7602_12. PMID 11393463.
Terracciano, A.; Abdel-Khalek,et al (2005). "National Character Does Not Reflect Mean Personality Trait Levels in 49 Cultures". Science 310 (5745): 96–100. doi:10.1126/science.1117199. PMC 2775052. PMID 16210536.


Is there a reliable memory-retention guidance chart? As discussed here reliability of some charts are dubious. I would like to use such a chart for studying purposes and am looking for something peer-reviewed or as factual as possible. Does it exist?

I think you can use this graphic:

It is taken from an article from WIRED, Want to Remember Everything You'll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm. It talks about Piotr Wozniak and his spaced repetition software SuperMemo.


What adjectives can be used to describe emotional intelligence competences? After reading the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, I'm having a difficult time comparing emotional intelligence (EQ) with Intelligence Quotient (IQ).

When talking about someone's IQ we use adjectives as: intelligent, genius, fool, stupid, brilliant, etc.

What adjectives can we use to describe the competences of:

being able to recognize and name one's emotions
being able to recognize and name other people's emotions
being able to understand the root cause of certain emotions
being able to keep calm in the middle of strong emotions

Note: I'm not really sure if this question belongs to Cognitive Science Stack Exchange, if not please point me in the right direction.

Thanks

These are the best words I could find using the atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour (Mobbs, 2020).

being able to recognize and name one's emotions: self-aware, self-observant, reflective, contemplative.
being able to recognize and name other people's emotions: empathic, compassionate, understanding, sensitive, sympathetic.
being able to understand the root cause of certain emotions: wise, perceptive, insightful, discerning, astute.
being able to keep calm in the middle of strong emotions: self-governing, self-restrained, temperate, level-headed, dispassionate, balanced.

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877


Mental illness vs mental condition vs mental disorder I posted this at English.SE, but I'm wondering if you guys can also shine some light here.

Is there perhaps a distinction between mental conditions that are disruptive and mental conditions that just are (and require managing)?

Eg. Someone might argue 'I have depression and this requires curing' (much like cancer requires curing). Someone else might argue 'I have ADHD, and this is just a part of my personality'.

Can someone help shine some light on the distinction between these terms?

To answer those questions, first, we need to define the above-mentioned terms:

  A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically
  significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion
  regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the
  psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying
  mental functioning (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

  Mental illness is  characterized as “maladaptive responses to
  stressors from the internal or external environment, evidenced by
  thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that are incongruent with the local
  and cultural norms, and that interfere with the individual’s social,
  occupational, and/or physical functioning (Townsend, 2015).

Furthermore, no books or reliable sources differently defined medical condition and medical disorder  so, let's assume that these terms are synonymous.

By definition, medical disorder is any disturbance in a person's mental functioning that can affect his daily routine. Yes, there are medical conditions that are disruptive like patients with psychotic disorders, depressive disorders, substance-related disorders. The latter are considered disruptive in terms that they can harm themselves or others. They require therapies like psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, etc.
Moreover, there are also medical conditions like personality disorders, human sexuality and gender dysphoria, somatic disorders, etc. that are less likely disruptive but can also affect the person's mental functioning. They can either function well in the society or unable to perform activities of daily living.

But still, all mental disorders need treatment whether disruptive or not. It is not about how harmful or peaceful the condition is; it is all about the person's mental capacity and functioning without any maladaptive adaptations

Book Source:
 1. Townsend, M. (2015). Psychiatric mental health nursing: concepts of care in evidence-based practice (8th ed.). FA Davis Company: Philadelphia, PA.


Is there a validated questionnaire on consumer well-being? I am conducting a study comparing different cigarettes in terms of their relative toxicity. As a side analysis, I wish to see if a novel cigarette, purportedly less toxic, is similarly pleasurable.

Participants will only smoke one cigarette, so I would like to use a validated questionnaire of instantaneous well-being and satisfaction. Are there any?

There are many consumer satisfaction tests available, see for a somewhat dated but informative review Westbrook & Oliver (1981). Most often, simple, single-item rating scales are employed. Reportedly, there is little uniformity in the number of scale steps used and in the anchoring. They often range from 3-point labeled rating scales (e.g.., good - neutral - bad) to 10- and 11-point variants labeled only at the extremes and midpoint (e.g., 0= bad; 5 = neutral; 10= excellent).

An interesting consumer questionnaire I found was devised by Lou et al. (2007). It was devised for assessing people's satisfaction with drinking water and consisted of a general part I with personal information (Fig. 1), and a part II specifically testing consumer satisfaction (Fig. 2). Because the authors targeted specifically the defining characteristics of drinking water based on the Water Taste and Odor Wheel you might want to adapt certain questions in part II to match your specific needs.

Fig. 1. Part I. General information. source: Lou et al. (2007)

Fig. 2. Part II. Consumer satisfaction. source: Lou et al. (2007)

References
- Lou et al. J Environmental Management (2007); 82(1): 1-12
- Westbrook & Oliver, Advances Consumer Res (1981); 8: 94-99


What theory explains where motivation to do something depends on perception of others' input? I'm trying to read up on the phenomena where one person's desire/motivation to do a certain task or obligation within a system of process is influenced by whether he thinks others in that process are also doing their job.

For examples:

"John's willingness to report a crime to the police is low because he feels the cops in his town are incompetent. He thinks his efforts will just be wasted"
"Mike's desire to recycle is high because he sees how serious the city council are in collecting and separating the waste"

Currently I'm thinking Ryan & Deci's Self-determination Theory might fit to explain this (the competence part or the 3 SDT pillars), but SDT only concerns with the individual's sense of achievement/competence. My angle is more like "I will do [won't do] my part because I know someone else down the line will do [won't do] their part to achieve the objective", so there is a social/systems element to it.

I'm also thinking maybe it's literature around scepticism, but that concept is closer to James Randi-esque 'scientific scepticism' rather than what I'm going for. Pessimism doesn't really work as well, since it deals mostly with personal/internal factors as opposed to external..

Any ideas what theory/literature talks about this?

Edit: answered my own question below.

I've found if not an answer then at least a good starting point to this.

The theory of trust in management literature explains that in a contractual situation, the actors may be motivated to fulfil their end of the bargain based on the trust they place to the actor on the opposite side. Specifically, there's two types of trust:

Competence trust = perception that the other party is able to fulfil their end of the contract.
Goodwill trust = perception that the other party will fulfil their end of the contract.

Even though this discusses it in a formal contract setting, I feel this applies to 'social contract' context as well, i.e part of why a person is willing to spend effort on something like fill up tax reports is because he trusts that his effort will not be reciprocated by the tax agency who will then handle the money and make use of it properly.

The paper is here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114.3411&rep=rep1&type=pdf


What is the difference between psychosis and neurosis? Given such a sentence by a Test of English as a Foreign Language textbook,

  Mental disorder include psychosis and neurosis.

I googled and found a page

In introduction, the pages says,

  Psychosis and neurosis are terms used to describe mental conditions. Sometimes these words are used interchangeably to refer to the same condition.

Only what I clearly could deduct from the page is psychosis is brought about particularly by the use of alcohol and illicit use of drugs and their withdrawal.

Could anyone support me to distinguish these two symptoms more clearly ( and hopefully in a simpler way? )

Short answer
Psychosis can result in a loss of a sense of reality. Neurosis leaves the person suffering in contact with the here and now. Further, neurosis is an old term and was used as an umbrella term. Now its use has declined and rather more specific diagnoses are used.

Background
 - Psychosis is according to Medicine Net:

  [A] mental illness that markedly interferes with a person's capacity to meet life's everyday demands. [It is] a thought disorder in which reality testing is grossly impaired. Symptoms can include [hallucinations, such as] seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting things that are not there; paranoia; and delusional thoughts. [...] Psychosis can occur as a result of brain injury or disease, and is seen particularly in schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.

Neurosis is according to Indiana University:

  [A] disturbing psychological disorders that still let the sufferer remain in contact with reality. This term plays a central role in Freudian psychoanalysis. In Freud's theory "neurosis" means "a personality or mental disturbance not due to any known neurological or organic dysfunction [brain or body problem]" (Reber, 1985). Freud used it as a label for a group of related symptoms of psychological problems that are distressing and painful. Unlike psychoses, which are psychological disorders that severely distort reality, neuroses leave physical, psychological and social reality intact. According to Freud, neuroses reflect poorly resolved unconscious emotional conflicts, which lead to psychological defense mechanisms that attempt to protect the person from consciously experiencing these conflicts but result in the observed behavioral and psychological symptoms.

  Neurosis takes many different forms, including

  anxiety disorders: excessive severe worrying.
  phobias: abnormally intense fears with no objective cause.
  obsessive-compulsive disorders: repetitive acts, such as repeatedly checking whether doors are locked, oven is turned off, etc.;
  repetitive handwashing and intense concern about "germs," etc.
  hysterical disorder (not the everyday meaning of intense over-excitement), such as: conversion disorder: psychological problem
  showing up as a "physical" disorder that cannot be result from
  physical pathology (e.g., "glove anesthesia" is apparent lack of pain
  perception from the hand, which cannot happen as a result of damage to
  the nervous system). dissociation disorders: multiple personalities
  (real cases are much rarer than the "celebrety cases" that reflect the
  intense interest people have in this peculiar condition);
  depersonalization in which a person no longer feels "real" and feels
  that his/her experiences are not real, to the point of feeling an arm
  or a leg is abnormally small or not even a part of one's own body.
  Factitious disorders: physical symptoms, such as dizziness, rash,
  vomiting, fever, etc., and psychological symptoms, such as
  hallucinations and memory loss, that turn out to be under the
  sufferer's control.

Note that the term neurosis has fallen out of favor, and that the subtypes mentioned above are taking hold. In general, Freudian analysis has lost its hold on in psychiatry. Now neurosis is divided into finer pieces, like panic disorder, social anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (source: NY Times)


Are the receptive fields of bipolar and retinal ganglion cells directly stimulated by light? I know this is a basic question, but I can't find the answer anywhere. How can a cell that is not photoreceptive (eg LGN and retinal gangion cells) have a receptive field that is stimulated by "light" (as most textbooks explain it). Isn't it truer to say that they are stimulated by incoming neuronal inputs - in which case, how can they have a "circular surround"? Clearly I'm lost here, so all help appreciated! Thanks!

The (visual) receptive field of a neuron is the relation between the light that falls on the retina and the change in activity of that neuron, regardless of what happens in between the light and the neuron. Therefore, RGC, LGN, V1, or even higher order visual cortical neurons all have some sort of receptive fields. Not because they respond directly to patterns of light, but through cascade of signals that originate from the photoreceptors. So, yes, many LGN neurons would have center-surround receptive fields.


Term for incentives working without conscious awareness Is there a term that captures the idea that incentives work even when people deny their choices have been swayed by them?

For example, an individual amazon book reviewer may deny that a recent improvement in their rankings caused them to spend 10 minutes writing a review instead of 5.  They may be honest that they weren't consciously aware of the connection in a single act.  But statistically it might (by some well-controlled experiment) be evident there is likely a causative correlation, over time, over many participants.

Or changing scoring models on StackExchange might change behavior more than explainable by conscious decision.

Or a crowded store gets better sales due to social influences.

Of course perverse incentives and competing incentives (social, financial) will complicate, but I want a term to capture the concept that incentives influence choice to a degree more than the participants are aware.

So I'm not asking for argument how much or little this works, but for a well-accepted term for it.

Annoyingly, it depends what area of the research literature you happen to find yourself in. In the perception literature, the distinction lies between subliminal and supraliminal. In the memory and learning literature, the distinction lies between implicit and explicit. In dual-process decision-making theories, the distinction lies between automatic and controlled. The former terms broadly refer to "unconscious processing" while the latter terms refer to "conscious processing," but I wouldn't say unconscious/conscious is a well-defined distinction.

There is some general cross-overlap, but of these three distinctions and areas, the distinction that sees the most use in the other two areas would have to be explicit/implicit. They differ mostly in what stage of the process in the mind the researcher is interested in: perception, memory or thought. There is, to my knowledge, unfortunately no term which broadly captures all unconscious processing from input to output AND maps to the literature.

If you want the term to map to the literature, I think you'll have to commit to one or another. If it's for a lay audience, "implicit X" is fine, where X is whatever you think best fits the intended meaning.


Parallel arrangement of capacitor and resistor in leaky integrate-and-fire model I have read from several sources that in the leaky integrate-and-fire model of a single neuron resistor (leakage) and capacitor (membrane potential) are arranged in parallel. Look at the following RC circuit, taken from the book Neuronal Dynamics:

The author says:

  The cell membrane acts like a capacitor in parallel with a resistor
  which is in line with a battery of potential $u_{rest}$.

But I think capacitor and resistor are arranged in series. Can anybody please explain why it is said that they are arranged in parallel?

I see your confusion is caused by $u_{rest}$. Indeed that diagram is somewhat confusing because $u_{rest}$ is not the main source relative to which to consider the topology of the circuit. The main source is actually a current source designated by $I(t)$ in your diagram. With respect to that source R and C are in parallel. If that's not convincing enough, consider another (information) source which presents a different (but still leaky) integrate and fire model, sans a $u_{rest}$:

In the latter diagram, $I_{dc}$ is the equivalent of $I(t)$ in yours. In the alternative circuit, the firing actually comes from a voltage-controlled switch, which is indeed in series with the RC circuit (to the left of it).


Fusiform Face Area (FFA) for within class recognition? Is there any evidence (papers, studies, etc) that the Fusiform Face Area is used for any other type of recognition besides facial recognition? I remember hearing or reading a long time ago that experts activated the FFA when doing within class classification in their areas of expertise, but I don't know where to find this evidence.

Yes. The idea that the fusiform face area (FFA) is domain-selective for faces is the dominant hypothesis, but a competing hypothesis is that the FFA is recruited for fine discrimination in visual stimuli of any type in which we are experts.

In a famous study, Gauthier et al. (1999) taught participants to categorize fictitious Greebles (see image below). Subjects were brought in for several sessions and, as their accuracy increased, activation in the FFA increased as well. The authors concluded that "expertise seems to be
one factor that leads to specialization in the face area."

In another study, Gauthier et al. (2000) tested bird and car experts on identifying birds, cars, faces, and objects. They found that bird experts elicited more FFA activation for birds compared to cars, while car experts showed the opposite pattern (see below, right).

References

Gauthier, I., Tarr, M. J., Anderson, A. W., Skudlarski, P., & Gore, J. C. (1999). Activation of the middle fusiform'face area'increases with expertise in recognizing novel objects. Nature neuroscience, 2(6), 568-573. PDF

Gauthier, I., Skudlarski, P., Gore, J. C., & Anderson, A. W. (2000). Expertise for cars and birds recruits brain areas involved in face recognition. Nature neuroscience, 3(2), 191-197. PDF


How can psychometric or behavioural tests be used in banking to evaluate creditworthiness? Suppose an entrepreneur or borrower with little credit or business history goes to a bank or some financial institution to borrow money.

Banks can use, as an alternative to a credit or business history, 'psychometric' or 'behavioural' tests.

What are some 'psychometric' or 'behavioural' tests used to gauge creditworthiness of a potential borrower with limited credit history? Where can I read more about these (eg some articles, what kind of articles or journals, keywords to google)?

Not really my area of expertise, but I find that a very interesting question and googled a bit for answers.

EFL (Entrepreneurial Finance Lab) is a for-profit company claiming to be the market leader in psychometric loan scoring. The company has been spun out of a research project of the Center of International Development at Harvard University. EFL's method has been covered in a number of media reports (e.g., here and here).

The basic idea is to apply psychometric data as the basis for determining whether to give micro-finance loans to would-be entrepreneurs in developing countries. In such emerging markets, traditional credit scoring used in industrialized nations are either not available or less reliable. If it works psychometrics might help to give loans to entrepreneurs who are less likely to default and thereby fight poverty in a more efficient way.

Given that this is a proprietary test, it is difficult to get detailed information about the kind of data that is used. According to the news reports and the company website, they assess fluid intelligence, certain attitudes and beliefs that are predictive of entrepreneurial success (e.g., locus of control), concrete business skills, and ethics and honesty. Part of these data rely on self-report questions, others seem use more behavioral data (e.g., performance in intelligence tasks or risk games).

To predict creditworthiness, they use Bayesian hierarchical modeling. From what I gather, initially, they used data from meta-analyses of predictors of entrepreneurial success as input (e.g., Rauch & Frese, 2007). Now, they seem to use their own data for model-building.

A source for more information on how this works may be a book that has been published by the founders of EFL (Klinger, Khwaja, & del Carpio, 2013). Citing from an abstract of chapter 2 of the book:

  Regarding the Big 5 personality traits, extroversion is found to be strongly related to higher profit levels, with weaker relationships for
  agreeableness (positive) and conscientiousness (negative).

  Interestingly, integrity is found to have a weak negative relationship with profits: the most honest entrepreneurs aren't the most honest (sic). Conversely, when considering default risk, the lowest risk entrepreneurs also tend to score higher on the integrity assessment, as well as register higher levels of conscientiousness.

  Digit span (fluid intelligence), controlling for level of education, is negatively related to profit levels, but is not related to default risk.

  When combined, these relationships with conscientiousness, honesty, and level of education have an AUC (a common metric of credit score predictive power) of 0.57 – 0.66, which is not extraordinarily strong when compared to credit scoring models in high - information countries and market segments, but it is sufficient to add significant value to the risk analysis task facing banks lending to SMEs in emerging markets.

  We show that for one of the sample banks, risk of default for low-scoring clients is 50% higher than it is for high-scoring clients. Furthermore, we show that these results can be improved by customizing models to each country and financial institution, which isn't surprising given the cultural differences between Peru, Colombia, Kenya and South Africa. While traditional methods of model building suffer challenges of doing this customization without large amounts of data, new methodologies such as Bayesian methods are shown to offer promise to improve results even further, making customization without over-fitting possible and further strengthening the case for using psychometric tools for credit risk analysis.

An obvious question is whether this type of assessment can be gamed by malicious borrowers and loan officers (who tell their customers how they think they should answer to get the loan). EFL says they take various measures to prevent that (e.g., checking whether certain loan officers cause unlikely patterns of responses for their clients, randomization of responses, analyzing questions that have no obvious "right" answer, etc.).

The company claims to by highly successful in improving the quality of loan decisions by presenting a series of case studies. Nevertheless, given that this is a for-profit company and all analyses take place behind closed doors, it might be prudent to take this information with a grain of salt.

References

Klinger, B., Khwaja, A. I., & del Carpio, C. (2013). Enterprising Psychometrics and Poverty Reduction. SpringerBriefs in Psychology. New York, NY: Springer New York. Retrieved from http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-1-4614-7227-8

Rauch, A., & Frese, M. (2007). Let’s put the person back into entrepreneurship research: A meta-analysis on the relationship between business owners’ personality traits, business creation, and success. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 16, 353–385. doi:10.1080/13594320701595438


fMRI images: In-plane resolution, slice thickness I have a set of fMRI images (.nii.gz). Now I want to infer the in-plane resolution and the slice thickness. Can this information and perhaps additional information be retrieved with FSL or Matlab? And yes, how?

Or can I calculate it somehow?

The information you seek is contained in the header of the image file. Matlab has open source tools for reading the header information. e.g., http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/29344-read-medical-data-3d

If you want an even more open source option, NiBabel is an open source python library for reading .nii files (header and image). I think the command  print(header.get_data_shape()) will return the image dimensions. See http://nipy.org/nibabel/nibabel_images.html#the-image-header for instructions.


Are there detectable differences in brain activity when thinking about people of different degrees of closeness? Once upon a time I read an article (or perhaps study/paper - I don't know) regarding different brain activity when referring to / thinking about different people:

You
Your close people, like family
Your not-so-close people, like friends or the keeper of the shop you usually go to
People you don't know like, say, politicians and celebrities

There is a chance that I read just crap from the internet (again) [Edit: I struggled trying to find the article on google but couldn't], but I'd like to know if there is any reliable source for that claim (a peer-reviewed-and-not-yet-dismissed paper, say).

Is there any reliable source (peer-reviewed & non-dismissed research paper - you all understand this matter better than me) regarding that topic?

This domain is extensively explored as a "self-referential processing"
The largest difference between self vs. non-self is higher activation for self-relatad activation of medial posterior and frontal regions
(e.g., https://davidcjohnson.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/self-ref-vs-valence.png?w=694&zoom=2)
Those two regions are part of the Default Mode Network.

One of the most prominent researchers is Georg Northoff:

https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=-w-9zOQAAAAJ&hl=en
You can check his reviews and found references to many additional studies.


Name for compulsive need to mimic another's symptoms of illness? I'm trying to research a particular issue that arises as a side effect of anxiety and depression. I'm finding it tricky to get information, mostly because I'm not sure what it's technically called (if it has a term, or if it is documented at all).

The subject has a compulsive need to appear to be experiencing the same symptoms of illness of an important loved one, in particular symptoms that are difficult to disprove (e.g. pain, soreness). For example if the subject's partner has a cold and complains of a sore throat, the subject will immediately claim to also have a sore throat. The subject will also have a compulsive need to take the same medication or treatments as the loved one. The subject will claim all of this fiercely, and will take great to offence to mistrust.

It seems strikes a similar chord with Münchausen syndrome, but the subject does not specifically want care from medical professionals and it only occurs to mirror a key loved one's symptoms. I'm not entirely sure if it is issue of attention seeking, due to attention being cast on their loved one instead; or if it's fear of severe illness and death of another, and by both being ill makes it easier to cope somehow?

The overall cause is not especially relevant, and probably impossible to reckon without further counselling. But the overall compulsion to mimic symptoms of illness - is this a documented disorder? This is a fact finding mission, so any information would be greatly appreciated.

Siblings as children do this alot. Most people grow out of it. I would think these symptoms reflect a kind of hypochondriasis which is a factitious disorder with an underlying dependant (or inverse dependence) disorder. It could also be an incorrect empathic response due to a narcissistic disorder. The aggressive features as a response to others doubts definitely is a little paranoia and tends me to lean to some kind of narcissistic attention getting type thing. In rare cases it could be a full blown extreme factitious disorder. Faking tests and everything. They had an entire episode of house (s5e18) dedicate to the lady who publically urinated green and faked a seizure to get House interested in her fake illness.


Why is Potassium(K) important to neurology & the brain? When researching the pharmacological mechanisms of action and interactions that various psychotropic drugs, poisons, neurotoxins, etc. have on the brain:

I frequently see off-hand references to the element Potassium(K); in the context of matters concerning neurons, neurotransmitters, neurotransmission, and so on.

Why is Potassium(K) relevant/significant/important to neurology & the brain?

The main cell of the brain is the neuron. The neuron has a semipermeable membrane that under specific circumstances lets potassium through. Another common cell is the glia cell, which only has potassium channels. Potassium, K+, has a positive charge and it can pass across the membrane at specific channels, depending on their state (open/closed). The channels are ion specific as the amino acids that make up the channels (proteins) have different charges and configurations.

Different membrane ion channels have different roles. K+ is mainly found in the cytoplasm during resting state with an equilibrium potential of -75mV. In the typical neuron model, this potential is larger than that of Na+ or Cl-.

Ions seek out an equilibrium where they do not have to move because positive and negative charges repel each other. However, the cell is determined to manage this laziness and to avoid a stand-still, it has a negative potential.

When K+ exits the cell, the relationship between positive and negative ions changes, leading to an increasing voltage difference between the inner cytoplasmic and the outer extracellular ions. The negativity in the cell increases and two things happen: a chemical driving force from K+ and an electrical driving force - resulting from the voltage difference. As the K+ exits the cell, neighboring channels increasingly adopt the same pattern and this gives rise to a domino effect along the cell membrane, which travels through the axon. As this switch from -/+ to +/- occurs as K+ passes the membrane the outer charges ++++ switch to ----. This results in a voltage +- that grows along the axis ++--, +++---, ++++----, but this is mediated by Cl-, resulting in a cycling of the potential - and it moves:

------, +-----, ++----, +++---, +++++-, -+++++, --++++, ---+++, ----+, ------

(Kandel et al., Principles of Neural Science, 5th ed., p.126-129, p.144)

The potassium drives the action potential and that is why neurons can "talk to each other" and signals can reach their destination. This is why potassium is important for the nervous system.

Above, +++--- implies the outer charge and thus the cell membrane has the voltage:

+ + + - - -
- - - + + +


IQ, Intelligence and Critical Thinking I consider myself to be a very critical and analytical thinker. I can't help obsess over every little detail, consider various perspectives, use-cases, etc. I've been programming since a young age (self-taught). At the same time, I have ADHD and a bad working memory.

If I master something, I find that I can think critically and outside the box much better than someone else. I can utilise it better, build upon it better, etc.

Because of my bad short term memory, I assume i will do generally bad in IQ tests and this is not surprising.

Because of my bad memory, it might take me longer to master something than someone else.

Do IQ tests measure critical thinking ability at all? Or just working memory? IQ and working memory are highly correlated.

There are a variety of "IQ" tests which attempt to achieve a particular goal (culture-fairness, isolating specialized aspects of cognition, etc.).

"Raven's Progressive Matrices" is a popular type of test that was originally developed in search of an IQ-metric that was "culture-fair" (that is, scoring well did not rely on any cultural background).

In the same vein, it's possible to find specialized IQ tests which selectively measure verbal reasoning, spatial reasoning, and/or memory in isolation. The following website is a battle-tested resource for these sorts of metrics:
https://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/

The results can be mapped back into "IQ" space by matching the percentiles (conveniently, with the aid of this table: https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx ).


Lottery question, why do we people think this is logic? For a project we did a small survey, one of the questions was about the following scenario.

  Last week the lottery was won by a ticket with the numbers x x x, this week you can make one choice. Pick a ticket with the numbers from last week or pick one that is different.

More then 95% of the persons we asked answered they took different numbers as reasoning they give that its unlikely that the same numbers win in a row.

Mathematically it has the same odds but why are we not seeing this as logic?

It is a variation of a classical fallacy:

  The gambler's fallacy, also known as the Monte Carlo fallacy or the
  fallacy of the maturity of chances, is the mistaken belief that, if
  something happens more frequently than normal during a given period,
  it will happen less frequently in the future. It may also be stated as
  the belief that, if something happens less frequently than normal
  during a given period, it will happen more frequently in the future. (Source: WikiPedia)

The fact that the number was advertised as having been a winning number makes it salient to the respondent, just as if it would have won multiple times in a row. So, judging through the fallacy above, the number is less likely to win again.

We rarely judge mathematically or logically if we are not prompted or educated to do so, we rely judgements on heuristics instead.


Is acrophobia connected to falling in dreams? I'm interested in the link between phobias and related nightmares.
Specifically, is acrophobia (i.e., irrational fear of heights) connected to falling in dreams?

Dreams and nightmares often relate to thoughts, worries, and concerns that a person has during waking hours. Various theories both describe this phenomena and suggest reasons for this (e.g., activation of memories, memory consolidation, discarding information, working through issues). Thus, it seems plausible that someone with a particular phobia would be more likely to have dreams related to that phobia (i.e., fear of heights accompanied by dreams about falling).

Muris et al (2000) discuss some of the research on children looking at fears, worries, and scary dreams. They cite Amaya-Jackson and March (1995) as evidence for links between traumatic events and frightening dreams.  They also mention research by Bauer (1976) which suggests that the contents of children's dreams and fears may change with age and that such changes co-occur both in daily fears and in scary dreams (e.g., fewer monsters and more fears about bodily injury/illness with age).

However, in addition to associating a phobia with dream content, you might also want to look at the baseline prevalence of any given type of dream. There is a sleep and dream database you can look at.
In a survey of 2992 participants 48% reported having had a dream of falling (Bulkeley - database - Q9).
Given the relatively high prevalence of dreams of falling, there may be other reasons, perhaps related to the nature of dreaming that induces them. For example, dreams of being unable to move can readily be explained by the paralysed state of body while dreaming. Perhaps a similar argument could be made about falling (e.g., a body sensation while dreaming is interpreted in a way that links with the fear of falling, thereby inducing the nightmare).

References

Bauer, D. H. (1976). An exploratory study of developmental changes in children's fears. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 17(1), 69-74.
March, J. S., Amaya-Jackson, L., Terry, R., & Costanzo, P. (1997). Posttraumatic symptomatology in children and adolescents after an industrial fire. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 36(8), 1080-1088.
Muris, P., Merckelbach, H., Gadet, B., & Moulaert, V. (2000). Fears, worries, and scary dreams in 4-to 12-year-old children: Their content, developmental pattern, and origins. Journal of clinical child psychology, 29(1), 43-52. PDF


Automatic pseudo-randomization of stimuli in R I was wondering if it's possible to automatically pseudo-randomize stimuli in R? If so, I would be very grateful for any help.

You can use the "sample" function: https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/sample.html
Start with a list of the stimuli you want to present. For example, if you have two stimuli that should be repeated 4 times each, your list would be c(1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2)
If you take 8 samples from this distribution without replacement, you have a random permutation of the list. This is the default behavior if you just give the original list, like this:
sample(c(1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2))


complex name - surrounding you with inferior (less talented) people What is the name of the complex of surrounding oneself with inferior (less talented) people to avoid being eclipsed or overcome?

I have a vague memory that it was a Greek naming or one from classic literature, but I cannot conjure it up.

It's not greek, but... Wills classified this as a group behavior, and called it downward social comparison. The gist of the theory is that a person attempts to feel better about him-/herself by socializing and comparing with someone considered performing poorer in areas important to him/her.

Wills, T. A. (1981). Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulletin, 90(2), 245-271.


Can depression be faked? Can depression be faked, and for what reason would someone do this? Is there a more accurate way of diagnosing it to tell when someone is just putting it on?

Although depression comes in many forms and presents itself somewhat differently in different individuals, one of the key features of major depression, as opposed to merely feeling sad, is that it literally slows down the brain's processing and reaction speeds. A heavily depressed person is not only down, but sluggish; and this sluggishness cannot simply be removed using a joke or other short-term positive stimulation. On a related note, a normal person could without too much trouble learn how to act like he or she has schizophrenia, but a real schizophrenic (without medication) could not act like a normal person very effectively, regardless of how hard it were tried.

One of the problems with diagnosing based on reaction times and other measurable features is that these measurements differ quite a bit from individual to individual. You would need historic data from a particular person to use for comparison to present measurements. Some people, after all, were basically born depressed while others were basically born manic.

Personally, I absolutely agree that the industry (and society) could really benefit from having real testing methods involving objective measurements rather than subjective observations and hunches.

Edit: To answer your question more directly, yes a person could fake depression. However, the quality of this impersonation, if you will, would depend on the knowledge and experience of the performer; and the quality of recognising this faking would depend greatly on the observer. As for reasons for faking, there are many possibilities -- this all depends on the person's agenda.


Which ready-made programs can I use for running a preference-rating experiment? I'd like to run an experiment in which 64 images are presented (1 at a time) and participants rate their preference for the image on a slider scale, and I'm wondering what the best and cheapest way to do this is? Are there some good, free software programs that I can use? I've looked at things like SurveyMonkey and Question Pro but have not found something that seems to work. I don't have any coding knowledge so I'd prefer not to build it from scratch.

I have been using TRUE and it seems quite fine. There is free access to
TRUE online version.


What effect does the colour of an "Open" sign have on people's behavior? I am in the process of designing a nice OPEN sign, and I noticed that the vast majority of them are red. This seems bizarre to me, yet green open signs look odd. I just wondered if anybody knew why red seems to be the chosen colour, and what effect this is hoping to have on the viewer of the sign.

To clarify, I am talking about an OPEN sign which will be placed in a sandwich board and stand outside a shop. But it can refer to any sign that indicates a retail establishment is open for business. I would also like to use the image on the website, though obviously in a smaller size, to be shown during the opening times.

Here is a for instance:

If you Google "open sign" and look at the images, you will see that the most common colour is red. The green ones you see tend to be signs instructing you to push to open. The most common sign for open for business is red.

It's a conscious choice, so to truly know why, you'd probably have to ask the sign designers themselves...but I can speculate a bit on reasons one might want to choose red. Red is often associated with appetite, impulsivity, and excitement, all of which a merchant might want to encourage in potential customers. Here are some excerpts [emphasis added] from one of many research articles relating color to emotion (Kaya & Epps, 2004; this site may raise security warnings with your browser):

  It is widely recognized that colors have also a strong impact on our emotions and feelings
  (Hemphill, 1996; Lang, 1993; Mahnke, 1996). For instance, the color red has been associated with excitement ...Red, symbolically known as a dominant and dynamic color, has an exciting and stimulating hue effect. It has both positive and negative impressions such as active, strong, passionate, warm, but on the other hand aggressive, bloody, raging and intense...Choungourian (1968) found that the colors red and blue were the most preferred colors among American subjects, but were less preferred in other cultures...Warm colors (e.g., red, yellow, orange) are seen as active and stimulating (Ballast, 2002)...As cited in Lang (1993), Grandjean made observations about the effects of color on perceptions of room size and psychological response noting that...warm colors such as red, orange,
  and yellow make a space less spacious, while increasing stimulation. Furthermore, people exposed to red and yellow colors reported higher levels of anxiety than did people exposed to cool blue and green colors (Kwallek, Lewis, & Robbins, 1988, Mahnke & Mahnke, 1993). However, in other studies, no relationships have been found between the individuals' mood states and colors (Ainsworth, Simpson, & Cassell, 1993; Kwallek, Lewis, Lin-Hsiao, & Woodson, 1996)...

  [From this study's own results] About 80% of the responses to the principle hues, including red, yellow, green, blue, and purple were positive...Only 17.8% of the responses to the principle hues' were negative...The color green attained the highest number of positive responses (95.9%), closely followed by yellow (93.9%)...Among the principle hues, the next highest number of positive response was given for the color blue (79.6%), followed by red and purple (64.3% each)...The color red prompted both positive and negative emotional reactions. Red was seen to be positive because it was associated with love and romance, while the negative aspects of red included having associations with fight and blood as well as Satan and evil.

It seems like green might be a good choice too (this article had more to say about green than I've copied here), especially outside of USA, but red certainly isn't a bad choice for attracting interest, according to these references. Many of these associated emotions involve arousal of interest and activity, which might encourage a person to act on any impulse to gain something by entering. Any increase in anxiety or fear might also snap a person out of complacency if that person is on any level worried about passing up an opportunity or losing something by not entering. However, the opposites may be true too: red might encourage a person to continue pursuing other passions that preoccupy the person's attention before viewing the sign, even if the sign captures attention momentarily. If a person is afraid to enter for whatever reason, associating the store with anxiety, fear, evil, or of course Satan himself would certainly seem a likely disincentive. Nevertheless, positive responses seem more frequent in general, so a red sign might do a store more favors than harm overall, regardless of whether it's the best choice.

Edit: @DominicLloyd found a cool article on colors in marketing that includes an interesting infographic:

(source: netdna-cdn.com)

Not quite sure what evidence there is to support these claims, but the original source is KISSmetrics, so maybe one could follow up with them for details.

References

Ainsworth, R. A., Simpson, L., & Cassell, D. (1993). Effects of three colors in an office interior on mood and performance. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 76, 235-241.

Ballast, D. K. (2002). Interior design reference manual. Professional Pub. Inc.: Belmont, CA.

Choungourian, A. (1968). Color preference and cultural variation. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 26, 1203-1206.

Hemphill, M. (1996). A note on adults' color-emotion associations. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 157, 275-281.

Kaya, N., & Epps, H. (2004). Relationship between color and emotion: A study of college students. College Student Journal, 38(3), 396-405. Available online, URL: https://nzdis.org/projects/attachments/299/colorassociation-students.pdf. Retrieved January 27, 2014.

Kwallek. N., Lewis, C. M., & Robbins, A. S. (1988). Effects of office interior color on workers' mood and productivity. Perceptual & Motor Skills, 66, 123-128.

Kwallek, N., Lewis, C. M., Lin-Hsiao, J. W. D., & Woodson, H. (1996). Effects of nine monochromatic office interior colors on clerical tasks and worker mood. Color Research and
Application, 21(6), 448-458.

Lang, J. (1993). Creating architectural theory: The role of the behavioral sciences in environmental design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Mahnke, F. (1996). Color, environment, human response. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Mahnke, F. H., & Mahnke, R. H. (1993). Color and light in man-made environments. New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.


Bootstrapping in Psychology I am interested in bootstrap, especially how it's entering the psychologist's world.

Boostrapping is used to 'omit' classical assumptions to get statistics. Bootstrapping starts with creating new samples from an original sample (that is considered as a population). Those new samples are generated via resampling with replacement (so that in a new sample observations can be repeated). Doing this (for example) 1000 times, you can get 1000 new samples and then calculate statistics of interest on each of a new sample. Thus you get 1000 of means (as an example). In the end you can calculate (bootstrapped) confidence interval.

I am looking for papers on bootstrap in social sciences (like this one Wright, D.B, London, K., Field, A.P. (2011) Using Bootstrap Estimation and the Plug-in Principle for Clinical Psychology Data, Journal of Experimental Psychology, DOI: 10.5127/jep.013611), where the authors explain bootstrap technique to psychologists in their subfield or those papers (in social science) where bootstrap is used extensively.

Has anyone has seen, read or known such papers?

When I embarked on using bootstrapping in my research I found this chapter/lecture notes by Cosma Shalizi very useful:

The Bootstrap, 36-402, Advanced Data Analysis, 3 February 2011
http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~cshalizi/402/lectures/08-bootstrap/lecture-08.pdf

I see now that he has also written a short introduction for American Scientist

Shalizi, C. (2010). The bootstrap. American Scientist, 98(3),
186-190. http://www.americanscientist.org/libraries/documents/201048159157846-2010-05Shalizi.pdf

We published this paper, which uses bootstrapping in the third analysis (and so may directly answer your question).

Stafford, T., & Dewar, M. (2014). Tracing the trajectory of skill learning with a very large sample of online game players. Psychological science, 25(2), 511-518. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/2/511.full

Aside from mere egotism on my part, the analysis code for the paper is available, so you can see mechanically how I did it for my analysis (in Python)

https://github.com/tomstafford/axongame


Do we all look at pictures from left to right? Because in western culture, writing and reading is from left to right, while arabic writing/reading is the opposite, chinese is from bottom to top and left to right (correct?) I don’t know about others. Also being left or right handed may be considered, I am left handed and I know it. Is it there a relation?

When reading you are performing a trained or learned skill, so if your instruction taught you to follow certain order that's what you do. There is a transfer of this behavior ( or any other learnt one for that matter ),into other types of images and situations,but the degree at which it is transferred depends on both context,cues, and expertise to name a few.

So in one way, yes if you are presented with mainly a text based image you are expected to follow your training to some degree.

This is but half the picture, the human visual system has evolved to notice and extract things ( or features ) in a picture or real life, things that move, things with edges, moving things, things that were once important, the whole thing and on an on.

So in order to analyze an image, there seems to be a complex interplay of attention from both your innate visual skills as well as features from the image that due to their novelty or other feature demand your attention, and sometimes even before that, you are making a decision as to what the image is and how to analyze it.

So which direction then ?

Your eyes analyze an image through voluntary and involuntary saccades,(directional eye movements) which due to the above explanation can be directed everywhere depending on a number of things, an interesting feature could be the starting point, or also a random one, and from there on you will keep analyzing the scene based on where your attention is at, here are 2 images being analyzed:

The resulting lines represent patterns of fixation and are called Scan Paths.They differ from one observer to another and from one image to another, as well as depending on which task the observer is given and context.

I am not aware of the same type of studies made with text and mostly text based images and predominantly left right handed subjects, that would probably give us the definite answer, but it is not too far fetched to expect some jumping around the page with periods of directional fixation based on your preferred reading method.

Sources/Notes

Patterns of Fixation were pioneered by the Russian psychologist Yarbus (1965)
Vision Science (Palmer) 11.2 visual selection: eye movements and attention. A whole chapter that goes into detail.
The nefertiti image is from Yarbus, A. L. (1967) Eye Movements and Vision. Basil Haigh (trans.). New York: Plenum Press. The face one ( not sure about the methodology ) from the wiki on saccades.


How to measure group differences incorporating reaction time / accuracy trade-off? In a psychological experiment I am measuring subjects' reaction time as well as their error rate. Now I would like to compare two groups (males & females). There might be a bias in the sense that subjects who respond within a small reaction time might also commit more errors.

What would be an appropriate way to combine reaction time and error rate to create a measure that takes into consideration this trade-off between "reacting fast" and "reacting correctly".
E.g., could I just divide reaction time by error rate? Should I center or scale reaction time and error rate before I do this?

The basic approach that you are describing sounds like inverse efficiency scores (e.g., see Townsend and Ashby, 1978,1983), which are measured as

$$\frac{r}{1-e} = \frac{r}{c}$$
where  $r$ is reaction time, $e$ is proportion error, and $c$ is proportion correct. John Christie provides a critique of inverse efficiency scores here or see the discussion in Bruyer and Brysbaert (2011).

This existing question on "How to analyze reaction times and accuracy together?" hopefully answers your question. The answers there generally advocate more sophisticated approaches for combining reaction time and accuracy such as the Linear Ballistic Accumulator Model and Ratcliff's diffusion model.

References

Bruyer, R. & Brysbaert, M. (2011). Combining Speed and Accuracy in Cognitive Psychology: Is the Inverse Efficiency Score (IES) a Better Dependent Variable than the Mean Reaction Time (RT) and the Percentage Of Errors (PE)?. Psychologica Belgica, 51, 5-13. PDF
Townsend, J.T., & Ashby,  F.G. (1978). Methods of modeling capacity in simple
processing systems. In J. Castellan & F. Restle (Eds.), Cognitive theory. Vol. 3.
(pp. 200-239). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.
Townsend, J.T., & Ashby, F.G. (1983). Stochastic modeling of elementary psychological processes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Catching a thief in a closed circle of people I am trying to investigate the issue with money getting lost form peoples wallets in a shared flat.

There are 4 suspects for being a thief of the money. Some of the suspects have been affected as well - the money was stolen from them. This complicates the issue, cause I believe, from the psychological point of view, some people may report that their money were stolen from them as well, just to get out of the picture. The question is - is there a psychological approach as to how to find the person behind this? Are there any methods how can one lead the conversation with the whole group to slowly navigate a thief to confess directly or indirectly through guiding questions or perhaps some bluffing? Are there signs of behaviour to look for when leading the discussion?

One way to get at this is to use the "guilty knowledge" test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_detection#The_control_question_test_and_the_guilty_knowledge_test

In this test, you would need to first find out exactly how much money was reported stolen, and from whom. Then you would ask each suspect a combination of "true" questions and "false" questions. A true question contains only true details of the incident, while a false question contains some false details of the incident.

Let's say Tom, Dick, and Harry claim to have had 10, 12, and 20 dollars stolen from them respectively. If Tom did it, he is lying about his amount, so during his turn, you would ask him ``Did you steal 12 from Dick and 20 from Harry, for a total of 32 dollars?'' You would also ask him some "false" versions of the question, e. g., "Did you steal 11 dollars from Dick and 2 dollars from Harry, for a total of 13 dollars?" You would then see if he reacted differently to the "true" version of the question compared to the "false" version of the question. If he does, then it could be due to him knowing how much was stolen, and that would be evidence he was the one who stole it. You could enhance the effect by monitoring heart rate (perhaps with a phone app) throughout the questioning.

For this to work, it must be the case that you and the thief both know the exact amount stolen, but that none of the victims know this information because they haven't talked to each other. The thief would know because s/he stole it, and you would know from surveying everyone and adding it all up.

Additionally, you can find out when each person's money went missing, where the wallet was located during each theft, and what denominations the bills were. Include these details in your "true" questions, and change them in your "false" questions.

Even then, this is an unreliable test to implement on your own, so there's no guarantee it would work. Most likely you're out of luck.


What is the mental state called when I forget my thoughts? Suppose I am talking to someone and while talking more thoughts come to my mind that I wish to talk about. I postpone those thoughts, however, to tell everything synchronously, i.e., I wish to tell the old thoughts first and then the new thoughts in sequence. But by the time I finish telling previous thoughts and try to come to those new thoughts that I postponed to tell, some are vanished. This must be a very common phenomenon, as everyone has experienced the dreaded

  What on earth was I about to say...?

What is the term for this mental state, or of the process mentioned?

Short answer
The key term in your question is working memory.

Background
Working memory is involved in information-processing functions such as encoding, storing, and retrieving data and it is a system that temporarily stored and manages information required to carry out cognitive tasks, such as learning, reasoning, and comprehension.

One relatively straightforward test to assess working memory is memory span. In this test the number of items (usually words or numbers) is determined that a person can hold onto and recall. In a typical test of memory span, an examiner reads a list of random numbers aloud at about the rate of one number per second. At the end of a sequence, the person being tested is asked to recall the items in order. The average memory span for normal adults is 7 items (source: Medicine Net).

Note that the definition of working memory, as opposed to short-term memory and, to a lesser extent, long-term memory are not that well defined. In fact, Medicine Net links two identical webpages to short-term memory and working memory. The difference between working memory and short-term memory is indeed subtle. Working memory is generally thought to rely on short-term memory, but to additionally involve processes to effectively use those memories during cognitive tasks. The difference may be explained as (Cowen, 2008):

  [W]orking memory includes short-term memory and other processing
  mechanisms that help to make use of short-term memory.

The difference between short- and long-term memory stores is based on a difference in their duration and in their capacity (Cowen, 2008). Long-term memory, not surprisingly, is of longer duration and it can hold much more information. However, it cannot be accessed as readily compared to short-term and working memory.

Reference
- Cowen, Prog Brain Res (2008); 169: 323–38


What is the psychology behind trolling? For those new to the internet, trolling is an activity where one person intentionally tries to upset other members of the same community, presumably for entertainment.

This has been informally addressed in the media, normally positing that the anonymity of the internet gives rise to more extreme behaviors,

but is that the explanation research supports?
And if it is, how does the process of enabling occur?
And more broadly, why do people derive pleasure from the anger of others within the same group?
Lastly, is this behavioral phenomenon unique to the internet era, or are there historical predecessors involving similar causal mechanisms?

There are a few references to the scientific literature on trolling in the wikipedia article

  Some psychologists have suggested that flaming would be caused by
  deindividuation or decreased self-evaluation: the anonymity of online
  postings would lead to disinhibition amongst individuals (Kiesler et al, 1984). Others
  have suggested that although flaming and trolling is often unpleasant,
  it may be a form of normative behavior that expresses the social
  identity of a certain user group (Lea et al, 1992; Postmes et al, 1998).

References

Kiesler, S. , J. Siegel and T.W. McGuire (1984). "Social psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication". American Psychologist 39 (10): 1123–1134. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.39.10.1123. LINK
Lea, M., T. O'Shea, P. Fung and R. Spears (1992). "'Flaming' in Computer-Mediated Communication: observation, explanations, implications". Contexts of Computer-Mediated Communication: 89–112.
Postmes, T., Spears, R., & Lea, M. (1998). "Breaching or building social boundaries? SIDE-effects of computer-mediated communication". Communication Research (25): 689–715. FREE PDF


Is it easy in languages other than English to read a paragraph where all but the first and last letters of every word have been rearranged? I was really surprised how fast I was able to read and comprehend following text:

  I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg.
  Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at
  Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a
  wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in
  the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it
  whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey
  ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas
  tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

Does this phenomenon relate to the language structure, i.e. is specific to English?

Would trick works for languages with longer words, like German?

Does the same phenomenon exist for Asian, non-Latin alphabet based type languages like Mandarin?

UPDATE:

I have tried to scramble longer words as suggested in answer below and it becomes more difficult to read: "Ceefrconne of iantrintaeonl enatldocatiiuss" (Conference of international educationalists).

Moreover, if letters just pair-wise permuted - it easier to read than random permutation. My initial feeling is that it should be certain metric that define closeness(distance) of the words to its right spelling. Then "easiness" and speed of comprehension will be proportional to that distance.

The neologism used to describe this phenomenon is Typoglycemia.

It relates to the cognitive processes behind reading written text.

Randomising letters in the middle of words have little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text.

Because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but as a whole, it would work for any given language where we can apply the same randomisation and keep the words separated in the same order.

Let's take the notorious German example Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän, meaning Danube steamship company captain:

Our noun Donau remains the same
It is possible for our noun dampfschiffahrts to be reformed into dampfschifffahrts
Our noun gesellschaft becomes the adjective gesellschafts
Then our noun kapitän remains the same

Let's see what happens when we scramble the compound lexeme:

Unscrambled German: Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän
Scrambled German: Dsnegapcfssamspfkaihdoftctflhreulasihatän
Unscrambled English: Danubesteamshipcompanycaptain
Scrambled English: Dbipiutpaccmmaapeansytoeshann

Virtually impossible! Now let's see when we scramble each lexeme, then compound it:

Original German per lexeme: Donau-dampfshiffahrts-gesellschafts-kapitän
Scrambled German per lexeme: Doanu-dhsffhmftpiacras-glhcselefasts-kipatän
Scrambled German composition: Daonudhiahscfmffatrpsglhcselefastskipatän
Original English per lexeme: Danube-steamship-company-captain
Scrambled English per lexeme: Dnbaue-stahmseip-camonpy-citapan
Scrambled English composition: Dnbauestahmseipcamonpycitapan

The composition being nearly just as readable as per lexeme!

Feel free to try another here.

Now let's take an example in Mandarin.

Script:

研究表明
漢字的順序並不一定能影響閱讀
比如當你看完這句話後
才發現這裡的字全都是亂的

Pinyin:

Yánjiū biǎomíng
Hànzì de shùnxù bìng bù yīdìng néng yǐngxiǎng yuèdú.
Bǐrú dāng nǐ kàn wán zhè jù huà hòu
cái fāxiàn zhèlǐ de zì quándōu shì luàn de.

Now let's invert 6 disyllabic characters.

Script:

研表究明
漢字的序順並不定一能影閱響讀
比如當你看完這句話後
才發這現裡的字全是都亂的

Pinyin:

Yán biǎo jiū míng
Hànzì de xù shùn bìng bù dìng yī néng yǐng yuè xiǎng dú.
Bǐrú dāng nǐ kàn wán zhè jù huà hòu
cái fā zhè xiàn lǐ de zì quán shì dōu luàn de.

This rather tame example now makes little sense, but does not quite appear completely disordered (with the exception of the preserved third line).

Further materials:

Psycholinguistic evidence on scrambled letters in reading - Matt Davis
Reibadailty - Graham Rawlinson
The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition - Graham Rawlinson
Jumbled Chinese - Victor Mair


In SPSS, should you change the significance level for One way ANOVA post-hocs? When running a one-way ANOVA, selecting "Post-hoc" and ticking "Bonferroni":

There is a box at the bottom which says "significance level" and the default is 0.05.

My question is: should I leave the default value (assuming SPSS adjusts accordingly) or change the value to 0.05/k (k groups)?

Leave it at 0.05 . SPSS corrects it properly. Only when you want to test with different alpha's (.10 or 0.01 e.g.) you should change it.


Is there a term for the desire to maintain a level of anxiety? As a war veteran who has/had PTSD, I've noticed in myself a desire to maintain a level of anxiety and stress closer to what I was used to.

You've probably also heard/seen this type of behavior from other veterans who engage in High Risk Behavior after separation from service.

I've also known former incarcerated individuals and PhD graduates who do the same.

Is there an official term for this behavior? Further reading on the topic?

With "normal" risk taking related to "thrill seekers" what you could be talking about can be

Sensation Seeking (Zuckerman, 2007)

  Risky behavior can be an expression of a normal, genetically influenced personality trait, sensation seeking. Its expression in risky behaviors such as extreme and risky sports, vocations, substance abuse, unsafe sex, and crime, among others, is the topic of this fascinating and accessible book.

or

Disinhibition (Wikipedia), which is a lack of restraint manifested in disregard for social conventions, impulsivity, and poor risk assessment.

In the case of PTSD (or other mental health problems) causing the behaviour, it is Negative Urgency (Cyders & Smith, 2008), which is the tendency to engage in rash action in response to extreme negative affects (experiences of negative emotions, poor self-esteem and/or poor self-concept)

Cyders & Smith (2008) believe there is

  striking circumstantial evidence that positive and negative urgency play an important role in adolescence. It seems likely that the normative adolescent experience involves a developmentally limited increase in levels of urgency, and also that there are important individual differences in the urgency traits during these years.

A study conducted by James, Strom & Leskela (2014) looked at the risk-taking behaviours and impulsivity among veterans with and without PTSD.  They also compared the results with those who not only suffered PTSD, but also mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI).

  [A] 42-item scale developed for the study permitted the assessment of a wide range of behaviors that are not captured in existing risk-taking measures but tend to be common and problematic among veterans (e.g., risky driving practices). Items were derived from a review of relevant literature.  Participants reported how frequently they engaged in each of the behaviors using a 5-point Likert-type scale ranging from 0 (never) to 4 (very often). Total scores range from 0 to 63. In addition to the total score, scores on four subscales (substance abuse, aggression, risky sexual practices, and thrill seeking) were also evaluated [...]

  As expected, the co-occurring PTSD + mTBI group endorsed significantly more risk-taking behaviors and Negative Urgency than the control group and significantly more risky substance use, aggressive behavior, and Negative Urgency than the mTBI group. An identical pattern was found for the PTSD group compared to the control group and the mTBI group. Counter to expectations, the co-occurring PTSD + mTBI group did not endorse significantly more impulsivity and risk-taking behaviors than the PTSD group. That is, individuals with PTSD, regardless of TBI status (i.e., PTSD; PTSD + mTBI), tended to engage in more risky behaviors and more impulsive behaviors in the context of negative affective states than controls and those with mTBI only. The control group and mTBI group did not significantly differ from each other. Across all four groups, thrill-seeking behaviors were the most frequently reported risk-taking behaviors. There were no group differences in Sensation Seeking.

Not surprising, considering the nature of PTSD and its effects, the study also found other highly problematic behaviours

  Notably, both theoretical and empirical works also link disinhibition, or the highly related construct of impulsivity, to suicide-related behaviors. In the present study, the PTSD groups (i.e., PTSD, PTSD + mTBI) were not only characterized by greater levels of the Negative Urgency facet of impulsivity and risk-taking behaviors than the mTBI and control groups but were also more likely than the control group to have thought about suicide and purposely driven a vehicle into another object. Thus, premorbid disinhibition may place people on a track toward later involvement in risky or other highly problematic behaviors that ultimately result in psychopathological and self-destructive outcomes.

(See also, Cyders & Smith (2008) about urgency and psychopathology)

Due to risks involved with Negative Urgency, therapy needs to be sought with regard to this too.

Therapy Available

When receiving psychological help for PTSD, it is best to highlight the fact that you have a desire to maintain a level of anxiety and stress closer to what you are now used to compared to the past.  That way, the best form of help can be ascertained via your therapy provider.

Your therapist may be able to incorporate therapy for this using the same techniques they use for your PTSD, or they may tweak the sessions to incorporate other techniques such as Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) or Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT; see Linehan, 1993 or Lynch, et al., 2007)

  One main focus of DBT is teaching individuals to respond adaptively to the experience of extreme emotional states, referred to in this treatment as Distress Tolerance Skills.

References

Cyders, M. A., & Smith, G. T. (2008). Emotion-based Dispositions to Rash Action: Positive and Negative Urgency. Psychological Bulletin, 134(6), 807–828. PMCID: PMC2705930 DOI: 10.1037/a0013341

James, L. M., Strom, T. Q., & Leskela, J. (2014). Risk-taking behaviors and impulsivity among veterans with and without PTSD and mild TBI. Military medicine, 179(4), 357-363. DOI: 10.7205/MILMED-D-13-00241

Linehan, M. (1987). Dialectical-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder: Theory and Method. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 51(3), 261—276Free ResearchGate PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marsha_Linehan/publication/19580590_Dialectical_Behavior_Therapy_for_Borderline_Personality_Disorder_Theory_and_Method/links/553076c80cf20ea0a06f7fb8/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-for-Borderline-Personality-Disorder-Theory-and-Method.pdf

Lynch, T. R., Trost, W. T., Salsman, N., & Linehan, M. M. (2007). Dialectical behavior therapy for borderline personality disorder. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 3, 181-205. DOI: 10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.2.022305.095229Free ResearchGate PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marsha_Linehan/publication/6124095_Dialectical_Behavior_Therapy_for_Borderline_Personality_Disorder/links/599ce0290f7e9b892bb003d9/Dialectical-Behavior-Therapy-for-Borderline-Personality-Disorder.pdf


IQ scores - fixed raw scores vs infinite tails of the underlying normal distribution of standard scores When taking an IQ test, if a subject responds to all questions correctly, they will achieve the maximum (raw) score, a finite number. Yet, due to the test's normalisation that takes the median raw score across the population and defines it into a standardised score of 100, IQ scores are expressed not as raw scores but as standardised scores, or equivalently, a number of standard deviations (SDs) away from 100.

My question is: what sense does it make to speak of very high IQ scores, such as for instance 170, that correspond to an extreme in the distribution's tail, when, if one were to convert back to raw scores, this would seem to result in a raw score higher than the one corresponding to an "all answers correct" result.

Put more simply, my question is: since there is a hard-limit on raw scores, why is it that the normal distribution used to describe an IQ score can (theoretically) lead, along its tails, to infinitely-large numbers - as well as, conversely, to negative numbers - as raw scores, both extremes being out of the raw-scores range?

The answer is provided by the Test theory, which distinguishes between the true value of a latent (=unobservable) psychological construct, in this case the IQ of a person, and the IQ score measured with an IQ test. A good test is objective, reliable and valid which ultimately means that each measured score reflects the underlying construct (measured IQ= true IQ). High validity means that the test measures what it claims to measure. If a person has an IQ 170 but the IQ test assigns that person IQ 160, because this is the highest possible score in that test, then this result is invalid and the test is not a good tool for measuring high IQ.

In practice, the test manual should clarify what is the IQ range, in which the test provides reliable and valid estimates of person's IQ. Furthermore, the authors may provide multiple test versions which differ in difficulty. For instance, Raven's Progressive Matrices come in three test versions: test for normal adults, test for children and mentally impaired individuals, and a test for people with above-average IQ. As you can imagine, the last-mentioned test features higher number of tasks than the normal version.


Why is toilet paper out of stock around the world during the coronavirus outbreak? Ok, I am not going to fuss around the issue. The question is simple, but the internet is oozing with self-proclaimed behavioral scientists answering the question and it's hard to find a good, scientific answer to the query, so here goes:

Why are the toilet paper shelves out of stock around the world?

A lot of articles on the internet seem to lead back and quote this article from "The Conversation". Their slogan is "Academic rigour, journalistic flair", but I don't know the site and so what do you think of it?

In simple terms, demand for toilet paper increased and supply was unable to scale up.

The supply chain for toilet paper is unable to rapidly scale up production to the levels required to meet the large increase in demand.
Most supermarkets (at least where I live) seem to be unwilling to increase the prices of toilet paper in order for supply and demand to equalise. Presumably, if the price of toilet paper in supermarkets was increased by 4 or 5 times (or perhaps more), we would eventually reach a point where toilet paper would be in stock. However, supermarkets would be accused of price gouging in a crisis, which would be bad for publicity (as well as people unable to afford toilet paper).

So why did demand increase?

Toilet paper is not perishable. Thus, people can buy huge amounts of toilet paper and they will eventually be able to use it.
There are few substitutes for toilet paper. There are items like tissues, paper towels,  wet wipes, and bidets, but these are not great substitutes for most people, and in some cases, these are out of stock also.  In contrast, while food is essential, people are able to eat a wide range of different foods.
Toilet paper is also an essential item.  For most people the perceived cost of being without toilet paper is quite high. Thus, if people perceive there is a chance that they could run out, this is more likely to trigger an increase in their demand (to stock up).
As noted below, more people are using toilet paper at home rather than at outside the home (e.g., work, school, etc.).

Presumably, the increase in demand is triggered by the sum of the knowledge and motives of the many economic actors in a society.

Some people might be rationally thinking that it would be wise to stock up on toilet paper if they might be going into lockdown soon.
A desire to stockpile will further increase when people see that if they don't stockpile, they are more likely to run out of toilet paper. Presumably, international media and social media would help ignite the stock-piling and then the empty shelves and the associated media coverage further increase demand. So, shortages create even more shortages.
I'm not really clear on whether third parties are stockpiling toilet paper to sell at inflated prices. But it seems like normal rational behaviour (perhaps selfish when taken to extremes) can explain what is going on without the need for reference to such third party actors.

So, I'm inclined to think that normal rational economic behaviour combined with failures in the supply chain and an unwillingness to raise prices in response is the main explanation.


Motor skill: Let speed come naturally? I've commonly heard that when practising a motor skill, one should start slow with correct form and one shouldn't force speed. Rather, let speed come naturally. I believe this but I can't find a citation for its prescription. Does anyone have a study to support (or deny) this?
I'm particularly interested in aiming movement in first-person shooter video-games. The input device is moving a computer mouse. I am also training in Super smash Bros. Melee, a platform fighting game. The input device is a GameCube controller. These would both fall under fine motor skill.

The following citations don't speak to starting slow, but they confirm that speed and accuracy increase with practise.

It is interesting that with practice, [...] limb trajectories get faster and more asymmetric (Elliott, Chua, Pollock, & Lyons, 1995; Khan & Franks, 2000).

Elliott, D., Hansen, S., Grierson, L.E.M., Lyons, J., Bennett, S.J., Hayes, S.J. 2010. Goal-directed aiming: two components but multiple processes. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 1023-1044. PDF page 5.

Decrease in endpoint variability occurs in conjunction with an increase in the peak velocity of the limb (e.g., Elliott et al., 1995).

(Elliott et al., 2010, PDF page 10)
Edit: Found some more relevant sources.

The group exposed to the slowest speed training program was the only group [...] which had significantly lower time-on-target scores from the control group who trained at the criterion speed.

Barbara E. Jensen (1975) Pretask Speed Training and Movement Complexity as Factors in Rotary Pursuit Skill Acquisition, Research Quarterly. American Alliance for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, 46:1, 1-11, DOI: 10.1080/10671315.1975.10615298

The effect of learning a novel skill at specific speeds on performance over a range of speeds was examined on the pursuit rotor. Three groups of subjects were given three days of training: Group 1 at 30 rpm, Group 2 at 60 rpm, and Group 3 at 30–45.60 rpm. Group 4, a control, practiced on a pegboard task during this period. On Days 4 and 5, all four groups were tested for transfer at 30, 45, and 60 rpm. For the most part, Group 3 appeared to perform equal to or better across the range of speeds than any of the other groups.

Siegel, D., & Davis, C. (1980). Transfer Effects of Learning at Specific Speeds on Performance over a Range of Speeds. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 50(1), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1980.50.1.83

Speed and accuracy are two sides of the same skill coin. although there is a strong and widespread belief in industry that the instructor should focus on developing accuracy because speed will follow, that is not true. The research is clear: if you want speed and accuracy, you must train for both and preferably right from the start of training.

James, R. (1995). Chapter 8. In The techniques of instruction (p. 55). Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Gower.


What is the term for "What has been seen cannot be unseen" in cognitive sciences? During a discussion with my officemate I told him that I read somewhere that the gas pillar in Carina nebula looks like a cat punching the dog; ever since then, every time my wallpaper slideshow switches to this wallpaper, "cat vs dog" is the first thing that comes to my mind. We were curious whether there is some dedicated terminology for this.

I learned via Google that this is a meme called "What has been seen cannot be unseen", I wonder what is the term for this phenomenon in cognitive science? Like a memory bias during the perception of something? Or it is that people tend to visualize some new concept/picture/term as something they are more familiar with subconsciously?

The most relevant term would be Ironic Processing.

  Ironic processing is the psychological process whereby an individual's deliberate attempts to suppress or avoid certain thoughts (thought suppression) render those thoughts more persistent.

This is a result of a failure of Thought Suppression or more generally Motivated Forgetting. It appears Thought Suppression doesn't work well and generally the attempt to not think about X results in a sudden increase of thoughts about X.

Since you have a sudden increase of thoughts about the "suppressed" thought, you're strengthening retrieval of it, and you might even be conditioning that thought with the reason you don't want to remember it.


Is there a good entry-level tutorial for SPM? The title pretty much says it all.  I need to do some fMRI data analysis and I can't find any entry-level tutorials for Statistical Parameter Mapping (SPM).  I've looked at some of the videos on the official SPM website, but I find that videos are not the most effective way of learning a new computerized tool -- I'm in the market for reading.

Does anybody have a go-to reference that's a bit less verbose and a bit more crash-course-y than the official manual?

The best way to learn is probably not by reading, but by doing. The SPM website contains a number of useful datasets with tutorials for various tasks.

I also find PowerPoint slides from lectures and talks useful. There are a bunch of slides on the SPM website, but you can also find more on Google by limiting your results to type:pptx.


Why do males prefer females with blonde hair? I would like to know why males prefer blonde women.

Ellis (1974) thought that men prefer rotund features in women and that blonde hair creates such a roundish upper body shape because the blonde hair, which is close in color to (a white woman's) skin, would blend with the skin.

In his famous book, The naked ape, Desmond Morris (1967) documented that men prefer adolescent features. In his opinion blonde hair serves as a secondary sexual characteristic, because skin and hair tends to be lighter in infants than in adults.

One recent study supports this view: Studying Polish men, Sorokowski (2008) found that those men rated blonde women as younger. Since the men also rated younger women as more attractive, Sorokowski concluded that blonde hair may serve as an age cue for men. Consequently, in a second study, Sorokowski found that middle aged women are more likely to die their hair blonde. Younger women already are young, so they don't need that cue to appear attractive. Only middle aged blonde women were rated more attractive than their non-blonde same-age peers. Young women of all hair colors appear equally attractive.

Youth is associated with fertility and health. Ramachandran (1997) proposes a theory that explains how blonde hair can signal health: blonde hair is usually found in women with light skin, and light skin better allows the detection of skin color changes that are symptoms of illness and infestation with parasites. According to Ramachandran, blonde hair simply signals that the man can more easily check if the woman is healthy.

Rowell and Servedio (2009) propose that male preferences help avoid competitive pressure from other males. According to this view it does not matter so much that maybe men prefer blonde women on average. The important finding is that most men fall into groups liking different kinds of women – differentiated not only by hair color but by complex combinations of traits – and therefore do not compete with each other. (Many men here will probably be able to testify that they found women unattractive that a male friend found attractive. In effect they could remain friends, because they liked different women and did not have to compete with each other.)

There is lots more. These are just the first hits from a quick search. An interesting article in the Guardian summarizes some more research: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/jun/04/men-blonde-women-attractive

Sources:

Ellis, H. (1974). Man and woman: A study of secondary sexual characteristics. New York: Amo Press.
Morris, D. (1967). The naked ape. New York: Dell.
Ramachandran, V. S. (1997). Why do gentlemen prefer blondes? Medical hypotheses, 48(1), 19-20.
Rowell, J. T., & Servedio, M. R. (2009). Gentlemen prefer blondes: the evolution of mate preference among strategically allocated males. The American Naturalist, 173(1), 12-25. Available online at www.jstor.org/discover/10.1086/593356
Sorokowski, P. (2008). Attractiveness of blonde women in evolutionary perspective: Studies with two Polish samples. Perceptual and motor skills, 106(3), 737-744. Available online at http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.106.3.737-744


Cognitive bias with trial and error problem solving I found through self-observation that while solving some problem I am more inclined sometimes to first try and manipulate the variables that require the least amount of effort to manipulate, rather than the ones that might appear the most salient to the problem. Is there any research in this type of bias. I do not know what is the name for this type of phenomena or whether it has been operationalized or published yet.

To give an example sometimes when I am debugging when coding I try some very inefficient changes like changes the syntax from " to ', even though this does not matter.

This sort of experience is probably better termed a heuristic rather than a bias.  The two can be related in some cases (as heuristics can cause bias when the underlying model does not fit the real situation).

From the Wikipedia page linked above, a heuristic is:

  any approach to problem solving or self-discovery that employs a practical method that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect or rational, but which is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal

Choosing to manipulate the easiest variables to manipulate first is an example this. It is practical, but may not be optimal. Since there is a low cost to manipulating the easiest variables, you might save some time and effort if one of those manipulations does happen to work, even if it was improbable. Not only do you avoid trying to more complex solutions, but you also avoid expending the mental effort of determining which one to invest in trying.

A well-known and often-lamented example of this sort of heuristic is in tech support decision trees that often start with steps like "Is the power on?" and "Have you tried turning it on and off again?" These steps seem a bit silly, and often have nothing to do with the symptoms of the problem, but if they happen to work it saves the support representative a lot of further time and effort investigating the problem.

Of course, this heuristic will fail if you manipulate a lot of "easy" variables - in that case, the sum time to try all the easy steps might be more effort than it would have taken to use some mental effort in the first place.