Why is an image of a face without features disturbing? Below is a snapshot of an article linked from LinkedIn today.

What I find more disturbing than the topic at hand is the featured image used to head up the article.

Clearly it's important to provide suitable images to match content.

But why is a face with no features so disturbing?

Is facial recognition so deeply embedded into our subconscious that the inability to distinguish any features alerts us in some way?

Is it the deepest ravine of the uncanny valley?

Or is it just me? I mean it's not me obviously, in the image... is it just me that finds it disturbing?

It's from fear sprung out of the inability to clearly identify and interpret something and from that know how to react to it.

There's something skewed with what you see, something deviating from your mental model of what a face (in this example) looks like. That makes us perceive it as something unknown, and what's unknown is also perceived as unpredictable and induces an uneasiness and discomfort.

The reason why this is unpleasant:

But this isn't:

Is because the latter is clearly an illustration and can be subconsciously dismissed as something static/dead, and by that predictable and nonthreatening. In the first image we have a hard time identifying what it is we see, whether it's something that's alive or if it's dead. This makes us uncomfortable since we don't know how we should react to it, even if it's just an image.

Being confronted by it in real life would without a doubt be very disturbing since then there is no escape, it's very real, very unknown and therefore very unpredictable.


How much our visual limitations are instrument(eye)-based, and how much are they brain-based? Are the limitations to our vision like the field of view and singular focus entirely based on the limitations of the eye?

It seems like it's possible to feed an artificial signal into the brain through the optic nerve.  What would happen if you fed a 360 video through such interface?

What kinds of differences in experience would this provide, regarding the ability to focus on particular object for example? Seems like moving the eye would not be substantial anymore (no need for optical focusing), which introduces another curious situation on it's own. Would the brain be able to adapt to operate with multiple (mental-visual) focus points in such setting?

My understanding is that the eyes are actually quite poor in terms of providing the brain with a clean image. Perhaps the only areas where eyes are better than cameras are with simultaneously viewing light and dark together (high-contrast), being quite fast at focusing, and being able to see reasonably in low-light. Each eye has a full-on blind spot, and the ability to see colours in the periphery is quite limited. Almost everything about our clean visual perception is a result of the brain's compensatory mechanisms -- such as filling in holes and choosing colours based on memories.

Although an unscientific perspective, when I dream, I can see clearly not only in the centre but also in my periphery. Moreover, my vision does not have the static-like overlay in my dreams like it does in real life. (I am often consciously aware when I am dreaming, wherein I have done various tests in my dreams) Hence, my guess is that the brain is capable of handling a fair bit more data than the eyes provide.

When you consider all the people born with abnormalities, and when you consider the array of change that your body goes through during development all the way through old age, it should be capable of handling all sorts of unnatural situations. Even looking at a computer screen and understanding the idea of windows being behind other windows and the idea of a webpage being like a long scroll for which you can see only a part of it are rather unnatural. Many of those brought up before the time of computers have a great deal of difficulty understanding the virtual realm that resides inside the screen (of computers, smartphones, and other modern gadgets).

The concentration of receptors is vastly greater near the centre of visual fixation. While I doubt the brain could handle seeing in full definition in the periphery, it could probably handle quite a bit more than it currently does. I do believe the brain could handle mentally focusing on multiple regions simultaneously. I can focus mentally on three or four areas of my periphery at once, despite the image being quite unclear. At the same time, the brain has limited capacity. For example, they say that the human brain can handle tracking up to 60 moving objects within something like 30deg of visual field. If we could see all the way around us at once, I imagine it would be quite demanding of our attention -- but I am sure we could grow to become accustomed to it.


How are movements stored in the brain? The high level flow of information through the brain for the purpose of motor control is well established. It is also known the cerebellum stores many different movements, while also participating in the fine-tuning and coordination of movements. However, how are these movements stored? Are they stored on a per-limb basis, based on activity or by some other methodology entirely?

Forgive me for not including any scientific references (I've been out of the human movement science for a while), but it is believed that movements are saved and executed in a "goal-directed" way. It is not the case that every muscle has its own area and they are individually activated on a scale of 0 (no contraction) -100 (max contraction) depending on the movement you make.

So let us look at the smallest units of a movement, the motor/muscle unit (wiki). This is a group of muscle cells that is activated by one efferent neuron. Several muscle units, over several muscles, are activated per movement. The brain cells that activate the neurons that stimulates these motor units are stored in groups, and will/can be activated simultaneously/shortly after one another (but I will not go into the matter of timing).

It is possible for the same movement to be be executed by different sets of muscle units (otherwise doing repetitive bicep curls, for instance, is impossible. The relaxation of muscle fibers is not that fast enough to allow repetitive activation). All these sets of muscle units, or the brains cells that are responsible for activating them, are thus stored nearby each other.

When you are a novice, the brain cells are not organized in a very neat way. It varies a lot which cells are activated together, and this explains the variability of your movement; sometimes, wrong motor units are activated. However, with practice, the connections between the "correct" cells will become stronger, and more specialized groups of cells will form. Moreover, more cells will be "made available" (also called scaffolding) for these type of movements . This cán be seen in the homunculus (the bigger hands e.g. represent more fine-tuned motor control of the fingers). This will improve the odds of executing the movement correctly, and allows you to fine-tune your movements.

If you want references, I'd suggest searching in PubMed for motor control, neuromechanics, learning and scaffolding (making cells available). Here is a website that tells the entire story of taking a motor action, including planning and control of the cerebellum. I omitted these parts of to story so to only focus on the "storing" of the movements.


Is actively trying to create insight inducing conditions effective in generating insights? Kounios and Beeman (2009) show that many insight solutions come when one is in a relaxed state. Furthermore, positive mood helps with insight solutions.

But practically speaking, is it wise to try and induce conditions that support insight solutions?
Would trying to induce conditions that support insight solutions be counterproductive because of some type of meta-cognitive process in the background?

I assume that most people who have eureka moments do not explicitly seek out to have them.
References

Kounios, J., & Beeman, M. (2009). The Aha! Moment The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(4), 210-216.

This is all a fairly abstract discussion when it's independent of a particular task.

Insights are by definition those discoveries that you couldn't immediately make. Thus, they are often on the horizon of your understanding. So if you knew more to begin with, the solution may have been obvious. And ultimately solving the problem is typically the goal whether that requires and insight or not.

In general, I would assume that when people are under strong time pressure they may fall back on automated ways of doing a task. Thus, I imagine if you are trying to encourage creativity, to encourage an environment where such alternative ideas can be explored and tried. This may well relate to the issue of relaxation. If people are tense and concerned about their performance being judged immediately, they may be less able to cognitively explore the domain.

More generally, a key part of achieving insight is "incubation". Ultimately, this involves spending time on a problem, then having a break, and returning to a task.

So in summary, If you want to increase insight/creativity, I think it makes sense to do things like spending time on the task, taking breaks, creating a non-judgemental performance environment, getting input from external sources, and so on.


Can normal brain activity arise from no (or random) brain activity? I wonder how stable the brain is as a dynamical system. In other words, how important the state (current activation) of the brain is for its further functioning. Would the brain recover from a state of zero or random activity given sensible inputs from the environment, e.g. visual and auditory input?

By zero activity I mean equilibrium potential everywhere and no spikes. By random activity I mean independent random potentials and thus an initially random spike pattern.

Of course, normal brain activity is needed to keep people alive (e.g. control breathing) but maybe there were cases where machines ensured vital control for brain-dead subjects or computer simulations of neuronal brain models. An answer from either view would be interesting.

There is no such thing as "zero" activity in regards to brain circuits. Even when you record neurons from a brain slice in vitro, you have spontaneous network activity. There is a few studies that suggest that brain circuits are chaotic, where infinitesimal difference in the initial state will lead to exponentially diverging patterns of activity:

Banerjee, A., Seriès, P., & Pouget, A. (2008). Dynamical constraints
on using precise spike timing to compute in recurrent cortical
networks. Neural Computation, 20(4), 974–993.
London, M., Roth, A., Beeren, L., Häusser, M., & Latham, P. E.
(2010). Sensitivity to perturbations in vivo implies high noise and
suggests rate coding in cortex. Nature, 466(7302), 123–127.

To answer your question, the interaction between the internal state of a system and external stimuli is an important topic in neuroscience, and it is not clear how internally and externally generated dynamics interact. Here is a paper that discuss it under the term of "state-dependent computing":

Buonomano, D. V., & Maass, W. (2009). State-dependent computations:
spatiotemporal processing in cortical networks. Nature Reviews
Neuroscience, 10(2), 113–125.

And there are multiple studies investigating spontaneous brain activity:

Foster, B. L., He, B. J., Honey, C. J., Jerbi, K., Maier, A., &
Saalmann, Y. B. (2016). Spontaneous Neural Dynamics and Multi-scale
Network Organization. Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 10.

Hope it helps answer your question.


What is the scientific evaluation of Rapid Transformational Therapy? I came across Rapid Transformational Therapy (RTT), a type of therapy created by the British psychologist and best-selling author Marisa Peer, which claims to be able to cure almost every personal "problem". Hypnosis is a key element of the therapy, with the idea that the deep cause of many issues, from acne to phobias to depression to allergies, is something in the subconscious, and the solution being its acknowledgment and liberation.
All I can find online about this (very expensive) therapy is praise after praise, mostly from self help and other light sites. I have found no scientific assessment of it. There are a few peer psychologists complaining about it, but how much this is just envy is hard to tell.
I am interested in a scientific appraisal of RTT. Is it as effective as the online presence of her seem to indicate? Is there evidence about it, perhaps comparing it to other therapies?

There are no research papers on RTT present on Google Scholar.
Therefore, I think it is straightforward to presume that it has not been scientifically evaluated, which makes any claim whatsoever about its efficacy quite dubious. It's up to the people promoting an approach to demonstrate scientifically that it is effective, rather than for others to demonstrate it is ineffective.


What is meant by this theory that there are only 3 possible kinds of cognitive loads? I don't understand this theory that states there are only three kinds of mental loads:

  The theory is that there are basically three different kinds of
  demands or loads that you can make on a person: Cognitive (thinking
  and remembering), Visual, and Motor.

Source, Posted on February 17, 2011 by Susan Weinschenk.

What about things like listening to someone speak? Or if someone's learning to play a musical instrument and is trying to hit the right note. Is this only in the context of interaction design.

The source you mention is a web blog about computer and office work. The blog doesn't describe a 'theory', not even a hypothesis for that matter, it just outlines a starting point for a popular scientific blog on cognitive load in everyday life. It all depends on the task what adds mental load. Every input, let it be acoustic (e.g. speech), visual (e.g. computer tasks), touch or internal mental processes can all increase cognitive load.

I can recommend reading the wiki page on cognitive load as a starting point to better understand different aspects of cognitive load theory.


How to create an effective and efficient team - with the same or different cognitive style? We've all participated in team building activities, where the goal is to get the team working better together in an environment very different from their usual occupation situation. As a team member you are supposed to build trust among other team players, and that they will trust you. This should have a positive impact on the teams effectiveness and efficiency.

I've been told that a diverse team is better than a team less diverse. Of course it depends on the project to be executed, but nevertheless this is what I hear and read about all the time. There are little opposition to this position, maybe because it's politically incorrect?!

However, on Wikipedias article Cognitive style one can read that:

  ... team members with similar cognitive styles likely feel more positive about their participation with the team. While matching cognitive styles may make participants feel more comfortable when working with one another, this alone cannot guarantee the success of the outcome.

But if the team already find trust in each other based on their similar cognitive style, they would most probably start to be more effective than an unequal team. I'm not mixing cognitive style with diversity, but I feel there is more to it than just that. What would form the ultimate team? One with the same cognitive style, or one with different cognitive style?

How to create an effective and efficient team - with the same or different cognitive style?

Let me say first off that I don't know anything about cognitive style. However, I have recently read an interesting article by van Knippenberg and van Ginkel (2010) about diversity in work teams which might be relevant here.

Demographic Diversity.
To explain the sometimes contradicting effects of diversity on work teams, the authors propose a model that differenciates between two types of diversity, demographic and functional diversity. According to the authors, these two forms of diversity have opposing effects. According to Self-Categorization Theory, demographic diversity (age, gender, country of origin, etc.) is likely to initiate categorization processes (see this post for more information) through which people perceive themselves as belonging to different groups. These perceptions of ingroup and outgroup might lead to conflict and thereby negatively impact team performance.

Functional Diversity.
Functional diversity on the other hand refers to different areas of knowledge and expertise, that members of a team might have and is seen as an informational ressource. A team with experts from different fields has a potential benefit (at least with regard to some tasks). This might also cling to cognitive style. This kind of diversity, then, can potentially increase a team's performance. However, it is not sufficient for a team to be functinally diverse. Rather, the members have to put this diversity to use by elaborating together on the task at hand. This Elaboration process is not automatic and involves the exchange, discussion and integration of information.

The Categorization-Elaboration Model of Work Group Diversity

It is important to note that according to van Knippenberg & van Ginkel (2010), it is not the question, which one of these two approaches is the correct one. Instead, both kinds of diversity might be present at the same time and interact, leading to the often mixed results from studies on diversity. There are a couple of moderators in the model, as well. Task complexity is thought to be a factor with regard to funtional diversity: the more complex the task, the more schould the team benefit diversity. The two other moderators are motivation and ability, which are, as I would argue, not specific to the discussion of diversity.

Team Design and Management

What can one learn from this with regard to the design of work teams? The first thing that comes to mind is that teams should be functionally diverse. In addition, the importance of the elaboration process needs to be acknowledged, because otherwise informational ressources will not be put to good use. As to demographic diversity, the suggestion cannnot be to have teams not be diverse (to prevent categorization as ingroup and outgroup). Rather, the authors suggest to foster the importance of group members beliefs in the value of diversity. van Knippenberg & van Ginkel also prevent evidence that leaders can be trained in order to do so.

Reference:

Van Knippenberg, D., & van Ginkel, W. P. (2010). The categorization-elaboration model of work group diversity: Wielding the double-edged sword. In R. J. Crisp (Hrsg.), The psychology of social and cultural diversity (S. 257–280). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.


What is the condition called when someone believes that robots should be treated as though they are human? There is a movement calling for the "humanitarian treatment of robots" where robots must not be "sexually molested", must be spoken to with kind words and be treated, generally, like sensitive humans. This is likely because people are incapable of separating human from robot when they look at a robot made up to look human.

This question came up when there was a video of Boston Dynamics engineers shoving a robot and knocking it over went viral.

What is this condition where this inability to separate the two manifests? Perhaps the bonus question is: What is the phobia called where one fears that these groups will gain enough momentum to make it law?

The term robot humanization can be used to describe a psychological trait for considering certain robots to be human-like.
Life-like humanization of robots has been the aim of artificial intelligence (AI) research for many years, and we seem to be getting there with a robot called Sophia.

Using artificial intelligence, Sophia can communicate with people and even use facial expressions to convey emotions - and looks eerily human as she does so (ITV, 2017).

A YouTube video of a 2019 interview with Sophia on UK television programme This Morning can be seen at https://youtu.be/5_jp9CwJhcA
The pros and cons of AI being used to humanize robots have been debated for quite a while (Giger et al. 2019). One con is that the more a robot is humanized, the less likely people are to sacrifice it in favour of a fellow human (Nijssen et al. 2019).
References
Giger, J. C., Piçarra, N., Alves‐Oliveira, P., Oliveira, R., & Arriaga, P. (2019). Humanization of robots: Is it really such a good idea? Human Behavior and Emerging Technologies, 1(2), 111-123. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.147
Nijssen, S. R. R., Müller, B. C. N., van Baaren R. B., & Paulus, M. (2019) Saving the Robot or the Human? Robots Who Feel Deserve Moral Care. Social Cognition, 37(1): 41 https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2019.37.1.41
ITV. (2017) Meet Sophia, the eerily human-like robot... Retrieved from https://www.itv.com/goodmorningbritain/news/sophia-the-robot-freaks-our-piers-morgan-and-susanna-reid


What measures are available for calculating big 5 congruence with a collection of profiles? Say there is a group of OCEAN profiles. How do I calculate how well another profile fits into this group of profiles?

Is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congruence_coefficient the way to go or are there alternatives?

As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Similarity_measure states:

  Cosine similarity is a commonly used similarity measure for real-valued vectors, used in (among other fields) information retrieval to score the similarity of documents in the vector space model. In machine learning, common kernel functions such as the RBF kernel can be viewed as similarity functions

Also see: Congruence coefficient

Other measures: Euclidean distance


Anger and problem solving Is there any evidence that a little bit of inner anger is healthy when engaging in problem solving? I personally feel this way, but feel that people around me misinterpret my anger as being directed at them and the world around me instead of at the problem I'm trying to solve. Thanks.

According the the Yerkes–Dodson law, a moderate level of arousal gives energy to the task, improving performance.

  The Yerkes–Dodson law is an empirical relationship between arousal and
  performance, originally developed by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes
  and John Dillingham Dodson in 1908. The law dictates that
  performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only
  up to a point. When levels of arousal become too high, performance
  decreases.

Anger is an emotion that creates arousal, but it is also a negative emotion that makes other people more hostile and negative. Other emotions that create positive arousal are excitement, interest, curiosity etc.


Brain Wave Research PTSD, Depression Let me preface this with I am a Software Engineer, NOT a neuro-scientist. Please forgive me if my terminology isn't spot on.

I am obsessed with using my skills as a computer scientist to help veterans with PTSD and Depression.

Currently I am attempting to do research on the effects that depression takes on brainwaves. From my, all be it limited, understanding, depression causes a drop in Alpha brainwaves. I want to continue doing research on this topic and nail down as many brainwave signals as possible before I go into the development phase but for the life of me, I have no idea where to begin my research.

What I am looking for is someone to provide me with a resource[s] that will teach me about the effects depression has on brainwaves.

Some research which may help is as follows:

Fingelkurts, A. A., Fingelkurts, A. A., Rytsälä, H., Suominen, K., Isometsä, E., & Kähkönen, S. (2007). Impaired functional connectivity at EEG alpha and theta frequency bands in major depression. Human brain mapping, 28(3), 247-261. DOI: 10.1002/hbm.20275

Peniston, E. G., & Kulkosky, P. J. (1991). Alpha-theta brainwave neurofeedback for Vietnam veterans with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Medical Psychotherapy, 4(1), 47-60.

Saxby, E., & Peniston, E. G. (1995). Alpha‐theta brainwave neurofeedback training: An effective treatment for male and female alcoholics with depressive symptoms. Journal of clinical psychology, 51(5), 685-693.DOI: 10.1002/1097-4679(199509)51:5%3C685::AID-JCLP2270510514%3E3.0.CO;2-K


What causes words repeated in your head to start fading away from consciousness? Background: I tried to do a self-control exercise that involved doing something boring like folding clothes while the exercise part involved repeatedly saying "focus" in my head, to stop daydreaming. However, after 15 minutes, my internal voice suddenly became weaker and weaker until it stopped to echo in my head. I tried to scream "focus" inside my head and it felt like moving a hand while in sleep paralysis, nothing echoed, while my front head (not forehead) felt weird.
I am confused as knowing nothing about what actually happened and why.

Off-Question Notes: I have ADD, that sometimes something feels so boring I can't focus on it (The purpose of the exercise), but it doesn't seem to be the case, because I couldn't say anything else in my head nor think.

Question

What is the cause of the phenomena whereby repeating words inside your head begin to fade from consciousness?

If you use a slightly different (and to my own experience more common) phrasing of this phenomenon to look for information you find immediate relevant results on Google. Rather than referring to words fading from consciousness I've usually heard it being stated as repeating a word often makes it lose its meaning.

The first hit is a Wikipedia article on semantic satiation.

  Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a psychological
  phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily
  lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as
  repeated meaningless sounds.


Find the panda among snowmen! I just saw this picture puzzle, and found it easily by doing a row-by-row scan, but it seems harder to find it just by looking around. I was thinking that the puzzle was intentionally designed to draw attention away from the correct location, by the following features:

Every snowman is different and its nose points in an apparently arbitrary direction, so as to prevent any uniformity that would give the panda away.
A sizeable fraction of the snowmen have extra things like scarves, hats, bow-ties and and even candy sticks, most of which are also brightly coloured. These distract the viewer as they automatically spend more time looking at these oddities, especially those with patterns. (Saccades tend to concentrate about them.)
The panda ears are almost the same size as the buttons on the chest of each snowman, and the snowmen themselves are positioned such that many of them have their buttons appearing just above the snowmen in front of them at about where the ears should be.

So I was wondering what are the psychological processes that facilitate such visual misdirection. Is it just the saccade mechanism? My second question is whether there are more convincing examples. For other kinds of visual illusions there are plenty of unambiguous examples, but this one does not feel like an illusion as the task is just to find something.

At least three things play a  role here:

Camouflage: the panda looks like the snowman in shape and coloring. Further, the ears of the panda are the buttons of the snowmen behind, i.e. the panda partly merges with the 'background' snowmen;
Clutter: there are simply many, many snowmen;
Distracters: The colored hats and other attributes are more salient and draw the attention away from the colorless panda.

Saccades are indeed often made to salient features in the visual scene, so that may indeed be one of the factors (cf. point 3).

I am unsure what you mean with more convincing examples and illusions, but this is not really an illusion. Below examples of camouflage (Fig. 1) and cluttered images (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1. Find the leaf-tailed gecko. source: Bored Panda (apt!)

Fig. 2. Find the coffee maker. source: EtchingFitness


What causes a muscle to be unsteady? I have noticed for myself that sometimes, certain muscles may become unsteady. Here are three examples:

Sometimes it is more difficult to hold my hand still in the air.
Another example is how my calf muscles are not able to extend smoothly--when they get to a certain point, it sort of spasms and it is difficult to just maintain a slow steady movement.
Just today I noticed my right thumb, when holding down on the touch pad left click button, tends to spasm--my left thumb doesn't feel this way.

I also don't believe this can be contributed to lack of motor coordination since I have good coordination to play guitar with the finger picking style and therefore my fingers should be quite dexterous.

Though I am not sure if the first example is related to the other two. I am more curious about my thumb spasming since it can affect my guitar playing.

First, adrenalin reduces hand steadiness and increases anxiety (Basowitz, Korchin, Oken, Goldstein, & Gussack, 1956), so other causes of anxiety seem likely to reduce steadiness by promoting the release of adrenalin. Next, here's an odd reference for a more voluntary psychopharmacological cause of hand-arm unsteadiness: drug abuse (including alcohol; Kaur, Sandhu, & Sandhu, 2007). Caffeine and nicotine both impair hand steadiness, apparently without interacting (Smith, Tong,  & Leigh, 1977; Heatherley, Hayward, Seers, & Rogers, 2005; Rogers et al., 2005; Richardson, Rogers, Elliman, & O'Dell, 1995; Bovim, Næss, Helle, & Sand, 1995; see also for a review of caffeine effects and original evidence of a lack of interactions with alcohol  Franks, Hagedorn, Hensley, Hensley,  & Starmer, 1975). Daily consumption of caffeine does not appear related though, and the effect of active caffeine can be blocked medically (Arnold, Springer, Engel, & Helveston, 1993). A small dose of propranolol may also reduce hand tremors regardless of caffeine use (Humayun, Rader, Pieramici, Awh, & de Juan, 1997), though interested readers should consider precautions and contraindications regarding propranolol, including hypoglycaemia or diabetes, asthma, and abnormal blood pressure, among several others (Rossi, 2006).

Physical exertion (Mürbe et al., 2001; Simon & Dare, 1965; Halliday & Redfearn, 1956), skill in manual labor, and sex (Gray, Sustare, & Thompson, 1953) appear relevant as well. Gray and colleagues found greater hand steadiness in men, but a more recent study found the opposite, except in women during premenstrual phases and women using oral contraceptives (Hudgens, Fatkin, Billingsley, & Mazurczak, 1988). A loosely related sex difference emerged in a study of marksmanship, suggesting men's accuracy endures longer than women's (Johnson & Merullo, 1996); incidentally, this study found no effect of caffeine on marksmanship. Also, another study found lesser effects of caffeine on motor performance in women who use caffeine regularly (Jacobson & Thurman-Lacey, 1992). A particularly old study seems to have found a weakly negative (and quite possibly spurious) correlation between performance on a mental multiplication test and hand steadiness, as well as a positive experimental effect of humidity (Stecher, 1916).

An early electroencephalographic (EEG) study emphasized the distinction between low-frequency, high-amplitude tremors, and the opposite kind, suggesting that the latter is less affected by cortical activity (Lindqvist, 1941). Two relatively recent studies produced apparently conflicting evidence about the relationship between hand and finger tremors and EEG activity: one succeeded (Isokawa & Komisaruk, 1983) and another failed to influence hand tremors with rhythmic flashes of light, even though this induced changes in EEG activity (Lakie & Combes, 1999). Other articles on hand steadiness research have been published in psychological journals to which I don't have access; the first of these even considers personality factors such as extraversion (Treadwell, 1960; Fleishman, 1956; Lovell, 1941).

Last (for this edition of this answer), some evidence supports the effectiveness of yoga for hand steadiness (Telles, Hanumanthaiah, Nagarathna, & Nagendra, 1994), finger flexibility, grip strength and endurance (Garfinkel, Schumacher, Husain, Levy, & Reshetar, 1994; Madanmohan, Jatiya, Udupa, & Bhavanani, 2003; Dash & Telles, 2001; Madanmohan et al., 1992; Raghuraj, Nagarathna, Nagendra, & Telles, 1997; Raghuraj & Telles, 1997), and stability of knee extensors (Bukowski, Conway, Glentz, Kurland, & Galantino, 2006). These references were cited in a recent review that deserves mention itself (Donahoe-Fillmore, Brahler, Fisher, & Beasley, 2010).

References

- Arnold, R. W., Springer, D. T., Engel, W. K., & Helveston, E. M. (1993). The effect of wrist rest, caffeine, and oral timolol on the hand steadiness of ophthalmologists. Annals of Ophthalmology, 25(7), 250–253.
- Basowitz, H., Korchin, S. J., Oken, D., Goldstein, M. S., & Gussack, H. (1956). Anxiety and performance changes with minimal dose of epinephrine. AMA Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry, 76(1), 98–105.
- Bovim, G., Næss, P., Helle, J., & Sand, T. (1995). Caffeine influence on the motor steadiness battery in neuropsychological tests. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 17(3), 472–476.
- Bukowski, E. L., Conway, A., Glentz, L. A., Kurland, K., & Galantino, M. L. (2006). The effect of iyengar yoga and strengthening exercises for people living with osteoarthritis of the knee: A case series. International Quarterly of Community Health Education, 26(3), 287–305.
- Dash, M., & Telles, S. (2001). Improvement in hand grip strength in normal volunteers and rheumatoid arthritis patients following yoga training. Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 45(3), 355–360. Retrieved from http://yoga4arthritis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20010101_ihgsnvrapfyt.pdf.
- Donahoe-Fillmore, B., Brahler, C. J., Fisher, M. I., & Beasley, K. (2010). The effect of yoga postures on balance, flexibility, and strength in healthy high school females. Journal of Women’s Health Physical Therapy, 34(1), 10–17. Retrieved from http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232207909_The_Effect_of_Yoga_Postures_on_Balance_Flexibility_and_Strength_in_Healthy_High_School_Females/file/72e7e515448e1c52be.pdf.
- Franks, H. M., Hagedorn, H., Hensley, V. R., Hensley, W. J., & Starmer, G. A. (1975). The effect of caffeine on human performance, alone and in combination with ethanol. Psychopharmacologia, 45(2), 177–181.
- Fleishman, E. A. (1956). Psychomotor selection tests: Research and application in the United States Air Force. Personnel Psychology, 9(4), 449–467.
- Garfinkel, M. S., Schumacher Jr., H. R., Husain, A. B. I. D., Levy, M., & Reshetar, R. A. (1994). Evaluation of a yoga based regimen for treatment of osteoarthritis of the hands. The Journal of Rheumatology, 21(12), 2341–2343.
- Gray, J. S., Sustare, G., & Thompson, A. (1953). An apparatus for measuring operational hand steadiness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 37(1), 57–58.
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Is procrastination greater when skill is low and rewards offer low status boost and does this lead to efficient  task allocation in groups? I am very interested in procrastination, because it is such a clear sign of lack of motivation. I have a hypothesis about why we procrastinate, which I would like to get tested by you.

The assumption for this hypothesis is that we are more likely to procrastinate on tasks, which we are not good at, or which does not yield a sufficiently large boost in status.

If this assumption is correct, then I believe that a group of people, where all members are able to do all tasks, would become more efficient if those group members who were less efficient at solving a task would procrastinate and never get it done, so it could get solved by someone who is better at it. Similarly, it would be good if the whole group procrastinate on tasks, which do not yield a sufficiently large boost in status, because this way the group can allocate more status to tasks that are more important and this way avoid having the members do tasks, which they just felt like doing.

Questions

Are individuals more likely to procrastinate on tasks that they are not good at?
Are individuals more likely to procrastinate on tasks when the rewards in terms of status boost for successfully completing the task are low?
Does procrastination serve a functional role in efficiently allocating tasks in groups?

As a starting point, the Steel (2007) meta-analysis in the highly regarded Psychological Bulletin is  an excellent starting place for learning about the theoretical and empirical literature on procrastination. However, a lot of the literature seems to be focused on procrastination as trait, rather than treating procrastination as a task specific, temporally varying phenomena (which I think is what is more relevant to your question).

Defining procrastination

Before we can talk about the causes and consequences, we should define procrastination.
The wikipedia article on procrastination cites Steel (2007) who defined procrastination as

  "to voluntarily delay an intended course of action despite expecting
  to be worse off for the delay."

Thus, we should be clear that procrastination is not intentional stalling with the aim of getting out of a task.

Skill, difficulty, and procrastination

Steel (2007) suggests that procrastination may be greater when:

people have low self-efficacy, fear of failure, and perfectionism

Self-efficacy may be due to an actual lack of skill or may be a bias in thinking.

From a utility perspective, for a constant level of reward, having lower levels of skill on a task or doing a task that is more difficult, increases the cost of obtaining the reward.
I can also see a specialisation argument, whereby people seek out domains that they are good at because the link between effort and reward is shorter.

So in summary, I think there is reasonable theoretical support for the idea that being bad at a task whether through lack of skill or inherent task difficulty may increase procrastination (or even task avoidance).

Rewards and procrastination

I'd be more comfortable defining your question in terms of rewards rather than specifically focussing on social status. Social status is one, albeit very important, type of reward. However, I think as a starting point, it would be easier to think about the rewards provided by the task. Also, it is probably also worth thinking about the flipside, the punishment (or loss of rewards) that flow from not doing a task.

In reviewing the literature, Steel (2007) suggests that procrastination may be greater when:

the task is aversive in itself
rewards are more distal

It is also implied by the concept of procrastination that the person does want to do the task in the longer term, whether this be out of obligation or for another more material reward.
That said, greater reward and less distal rewards should reduce procrastination. Also, increasing the punishment and temporal proximity of not completing the task should reduce procrastination (as perhaps many all-nighter before an assignment is due can attest).

More broadly, there is a school of thought typified by this blog post by Daniel Lemire that sees procrastination as sometimes representing an adaptive indicator that one should focus on different tasks.

Thus, in a broad sense, reduced rewards for task completion should both increase procrastination and task avoidance.

Functional role of procrastination

Thus, in broad terms there is a theoretical argument suggesting that reward structures and the distribution of skill should lead to specialisation whereby people generally will tend towards doing tasks to which the opportunity cost is less than that for others. That said, there is a difference between procrastination and task avoidance in that task avoidance implies someone does not want to do the task at all.

Anyway, while the above analysis touches on the empirical literature, it is largely driven by a theoretical analysis grounded in concepts of rationality and utility maximisation. I'd be interested to read about what specific empirical studies have been conducted to test some of these ideas.

References:

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin 133 (1): 65–94. FREE PDF


Article about DTI of Autistic Brain Does anyone know where do I find the article that published this image?

Appereantly it was created by a neuroscientist called Jason Cooperrider and it is the tractography of Temple Grandin's brain. But I am unable to find the full article

The source of the image (which also appears here, here, and here) is the Walter Schneider lab at the University of Pittsburgh. They have a webpage about an episode of 60 Minutes that featured their research (including high density fiber tracking of Temple Grandin's brain) related to Grandin's book, The Autistic Brain. The images can be found under FAQ #5 ("You did an HDFT map of Temple Grandin’s brain – what did you see and what did you conclude?"): http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/schneiderlab/content/60-minutes-20120716.asp.

The webpage is also available in PDF form here, where page 4 is identical to the graphic you posted: http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/schneiderlab/documents/TBI_early_draft_HDFT_FAQ_April_30_2013_Schneider_Lab_U_Pittsburgh.pdf.

(Fyi, I just found the source by searching for the caption text in Google.)


Why do we rely on others in dangerous situations? *This question is based on my observations.

Q: What is the reason people trust their peers implicitly in extreme (or not) situations?

Example:

  I am walking with a friend, and I am telling him something. Now we need
  to cross a road to the other side (not at the crosswalk; we both
  know that, so this fact is not communicated – we just proceed to the
  other side) while I am still telling him something. Unconsciously
  I understand that we are crossing a road at this point, and I am aware
  of the possible dangers even at that same point when I am thinking
  about it, but still I do not look to the right or left and continue
  following my friend, putting my well-being on his shoulders for that
  moment.

This may not be the worst case scenario and maybe not so extreme, but it is imaginable, and such a pattern is common in many different situations when one person relies on others' awareness of the dangers the current situation possesses without analysing and watching out for such dangers himself, thus dismissing the self-preservation instinct.

Q: What is the reason for people to implicitly trust their peers in extreme (or not) situations?

Reliance is basically the dependence or trust in someone, to each lies a limited capability of being relied on due to our limited capacity as human beings. What I'm trying to imply is that your friend might have been able to consciously lead you across the road without you questioning his judgement, but in a time of crisis would you let that same friend tell you that it's best to invest all of your money into a shoe shining company?

We depend, or rely on specific people for specific things. Growing  up we rely on our mother to provide us with the maternal support and experience required, just as we rely on our father (or father figure) to teaching us what it means to be a man. (Assuming the example human is a male..)

If you were a CEO of a huge company, you would have no trouble relying on your employees to do a specific job in which you ordered them to complete, but only knowing them on a work-basis what are the chances of you trusting them to the extent of looking after your children for a week while you're on holiday? (Also assuming the example human is a parent..).

Trust is a huge factor in the concept of persuasion, and to pursuade someone is to induce someone to do somthing through reasoning or argument. You are more likely to be pursuaded by someone whom you trust in, rather than someone you don't. That person you have relied on has shown to prove the actuality of being credible and knowledgable in the field in which you have decided to trust them in, thus allowing them to lead or guide you as an authority figure.

Also, childhood experience highly influence who we trust and to what extent, but that is an area in which I have little knowledge available to answer you question. I hope I made my message clear. Nonetheless, these are based off of opinion, although @denniswennen had a similar argument.


What are the main differences between gestalt therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy? Can someone explain the main differences in an easy to understand way between gestalt therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy?

Which is better suitable in which situations? I read some articles online but I still don't have a clear picture.

In a very elementary and basic way Cognitive Behavioral Therapy focuses on mental schemas and behavior modification techniques.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

In the formulation of the case the professional analyzes how attitudes, behavioral dispositions, behavior and the interpretations of all this are related to the different problems and disorders.

You can find numerous information about this so I will try some differentiations of Gestalt therapy.

I would emphasize first that Gestalt therapy maintains a greater link with therapies close to emotions or where a therapy must have special consideration of emotional processes, this feature is easy to see at first, and in his theory some develop principles to analyze emotions, his theory considers what, how, why of those emotions, in this way become important goals and objectives that represent important factors of emotional and behavioral change.

Some features commented very briefly:

Awareness and responsibility (initially could be considered similar to locus of control): The immediate holistic experience is considered, this means that are considered perceptions, sensations, feelings, thoughts and wishes or intentions, it is about going a little further beyond simple words or superficial conversations, it is about what the person thinks and does but also about what they feel, how they perceive certain situations or how they interpret them.
Concept of self (this theory of Rogers is well known: self-worth, self-image, ideal-self) considering a holistic perspective or integrated cognitive but emotional, motivational and relational or social system, which perceives, evaluates, experiences and that is related to behavioral tendencies and manifest behavior about the environment. For example, not only what is done but what is wanted to do or intentions or make small changes to the behavior are considered.
The attention to the present moment is prioritized, the professional and the client during the sessions work in a direct way with the problems, not with the words about the problem, that is, in therapy they working all the aspects involved in the problem while the problem manifests.
A therapeutic relationship style close to Client-Centered Therapy, for example working from a style where the professional only directs to the client in front of a style of authoritarian expert.

Finally, it is very important to highlight the evidences of Gestalt Therapy that are sometimes ignored as in the case of humanistic-experiential therapies and there is also an important publication bias, one of the most important documents from which follow the evidences of this therapy is this chapter released or freely accessible:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/110659465.pdf

Elliott, R., Watson, J., Greenberg, L.S., Timulak, L., & Freire, E. (2013). Research on humanistic-experiential psychotherapies. In M.J. Lambert, Bergin & Garfield's Handbook of psychotherapy and behavior change (pp. 495-538). New York: Wiley.


What would be the Term for this Character Trait? This might be the wrong place or way to ask this question but I'll give it a shot. It could be more related to literature but it does deal with a form of character or personality.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown", the "protagonist" wakes up from a dream (or vision, maybe even reality) of all his religious towns folk members taking part in blatant evil deeds. The next morning, his perception of everyone changes to the point he (not exactly) distrusts everyone because of what he saw and eventually dies lonely due to his callous nature. Nathaniel made this in order to warn against this type of action or character trait but what is a term for this, this trait? This callous behavior due to an imperfect/changed perspective? Is it a combination of terms?

Nathaniel made this in order to warn against this type of action or
  character trait but what is a term for this, this trait?

I think that Nathaniel is presenting a powerful indictment against individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). He is not saying that one should ostracise the Borderline, but that one ought to proceed with caution when choosing to becoming entangled in the lives of those with BPD.

  the "protagonist" wakes up from a dream (or vision, maybe even
  reality) of all his religious towns folk members taking part in
  blatant evil deeds.

Clearly, the Borderline is experiencing the phenomenon of dream-reality confusion:

Dream-reality confusion in borderline personality disorder: a theoretical analysis

This paper presents an analysis of dream-reality confusion (DRC) in relation to the characteristics of borderline personality disorder (BPD), based on research findings and theoretical considerations. It is hypothesized that people with BPD are more likely to experience DRC compared to people in non-clinical population. Several variables related to this hypothesis were identified through a theoretical analysis of the scientific literature. Sleep disturbances: problems with sleep are found in 15–95.5% of people with BPD (Hafizi, 2013), and unstable sleep and wake cycles, which occur in BPD (Fleischer et al., 2012), are linked to DRC. Dissociation: nearly two-thirds of people with BPD experience dissociative symptoms (Korzekwa and Pain, 2009) and dissociative symptoms are correlated with a fantasy proneness; both dissociative symptoms and fantasy proneness are related to DRC (Giesbrecht and Merckelbach, 2006). Negative dream content: People with BPD have nightmares more often than other people (Semiz et al., 2008); dreams that are more likely to be confused with reality tend to be more realistic and unpleasant, and are reflected in waking behavior (Rassin et al., 2001). Cognitive disturbances: Many BPD patients experience various cognitive disturbances, including problems with reality testing (Fiqueierdo, 2006; Mosquera et al., 2011), which can foster DRC. Thin boundaries: People with thin boundaries are more prone to DRC than people with thick boundaries, and people with BPD tend to have thin boundaries (Hartmann, 2011). The theoretical analysis on the basis of these findings suggests that people who suffer from BPD may be more susceptible to confusing dream content with actual waking events.

  The next morning, his perception of everyone changes to the point he
  (not exactly) distrusts everyone

This is a classic Borderline trait: A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.

  dies lonely due to his callous nature. This callous behavior due to an
  imperfect/changed perspective?

No, the loneliness is due to the Borderline's Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. Ironically, it is through this effort to escape their aloneness that the Borderline dies alone.


Is there another example of a strongly emergent phenomenon besides the mind? If you agree that the mind arises from the brain and is an emergent property of it, then the mind has to be strongly emergent, rather than weakly emergent.

Is there any other example in reality of a strongly emergent property or phenomenon?

If not, doesn't this mean the mind has no basis in nature and is not natural?

If you look at the paper Strong and Weak Emergence by David J. Chalmers he states his belief that consciousness is the only example we have of strong emergence. However, he also states that it is quite possible that there is no such thing as strong emergence, and therefore, our perception of the mind as an example of strong emergence stems from our current lack of understanding of consciousness.

My guess is that the emergent nature of the mind is actually weak; that is, its behavior stems from the massive interaction of all the components of its circuitry. If this is correct, then we may still never be able to understand precisely how this emergence works. However, we will likely be able to simulate it. One test for strong versus weak emergence that has been suggested is whether the emergence can be simulated. Consider the emergent properties of Artificial Neural Networks (especially recent work with Deep Belief Nets).

That said, I would suggest that if the mind is strongly emergent, then it is not only natural, but is an example of nature at one of its most fundamental and mysterious points.


What is the opposite of the Bandwagon Effect? Is there a name denoting the psychological bias where a person prefers obscure methods, things, opinions, etc. over a more popular alternative?

The term "bandwagon effect" was originally used to explain voting behavior. In 1950, Leibenstein introduced it as a concept in economics to describe changes in consumer demand:

  By bandwagon effect we refer to the extent to which the demand for a commodity is increased due to the fact that others are also consuming the
  same commodity. It represents the desire of people to purchase a commodity in order to get into "the swim of things"; in order to conform with the people they wish to be associated with; in order to be fashionable or stylish; or, in order to appear to be "one of the boys."

He also defined a term that describes the opposite pattern of behavior, the "snob effect":

  By the snob effect we refer to the extent to which the demand for a consumers' good is decreased owing to the fact that others are also consuming the same commodity (or that others are increasing their consumption of that commodity). This represents the desire of people to be exclusive; to be different; to dissociate themselves from the "common herd."

These definitions have coined the usage of the terms "bandwagon effect" and "snob effect" in micro-economics.

In psychology, the terms have been less relevant. Social, personality and consumer psychology have used other labels investigating people's diverging responses to social influence, such as their tendency for "conformity", or their motives for seeking "uniqueness" (e.g., Berger & Heath, 2007; Snyder & Fromkin, 1977) and "optimal distinctiveness".

References

Berger, J., & Heath, C. (2007). Where consumers diverge from others: Identity signaling and product domains. Journal of Consumer Research, 34, 121–134.

Leibenstein, Harvey (1950). "Bandwagon, Snob, and Veblen Effects in the Theory of Consumers' Demand". Quarterly Journal of Economics 64 (2): 183–207. doi:10.2307/1882692.

Snyder, C. R., & Fromkin, H. L. (1977). Abnormality as a positive characteristic: The development and validation of a scale measuring need for uniqueness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86, 518–527. doi:10.1037/0021-843X.86.5.518


The strange shape of the temporal generalization map We are plotting the temporal generalization map (binary decoding) using EEG signal, but we obtained a strange result and don’t know how to interpret it.
First, after bandpass filter (8-12 Hz), we could obtain a normal result as below.

As shown in time-course, the classifying values (thick black lines) between red line (first condition) and blue line (second condition) are variable along the time, so that the values in the early time do not easily apply to the late time leading to the normal map of the temporal generalization.

However, using higher frequency band (12-30 Hz) we encountered a strange result

In this case, the classifying values between red line (first condition) and blue line (second condition) are somewhat constant along the time, so that the values in the early time easily apply to the late time leading to the high decoding accuracy all over the map. The point is that two parallel curves are easily divided by a simple mean (black thick line) between two curves as the classifier. If two curves are not parallel but mixed with each other, the decoding accuracies over the map of the temporal generalization should be low, and we can conclude that the high frequency do not contain decodable information.

Questions,
1.  Have you ever seen this type of time-courses of the high frequencies in our result and this strange map the temporal generalization and?
2.  We use the matlab function ‘filtfilt.m’ for bandpass filter, could you recommend other function for bandpass filter?

I am unsure to what your paradigm exactly does, but as to your frequency bands a layman's interpretation would be as shown in Table 1. Hence, the frequency bands you investigate could simply be different, because the states associated with them are different.

As to your band filter - the best thing to do is find the rock stars in your field and copy their methods. The filtfilt function in matlab is excellent, as it is a zero-phase digital filter. It will depend on the filter order, however, if the outcome will make any sense. Too low of an order may generate overlap between bands, too high orders may introduce artifacts. But by the looks of it, none is happening here, but I can't be sure and you need to verify yourself.

Table 1. Simplified overview of the EEG bands and their characteristics. source: New Dawn Magazine


Reference signal when measuring EEG When performing EEG, a number of electrodes are placed on the scalp to measure the electric potential difference between those locations and a reference. In the unipolar configuration, the reference is often the signal on another electrode (and is common to all measurement electrodes) or an average of the all measurement electrodes. In the bipolar configuration, the reference is specific to each measurement electrode (and is often another electrode located nearby). For examples, see here and here.

Questions:

For the unipolar configuration, why can't we just use Earth ground as our reference instead of having a reference electrode or performing an average of measurements on all the electrodes?
For the bipolar configuration, if the electrodes are too close to each other, wouldn't we measure very low voltages since much of the signal appearing on one electrode would also be picked up by the other?

For the unipolar configuration, why can't we just use Earth ground as
  our reference instead of having a reference electrode or performing an
  average of measurements on all the electrodes?

The ground has a different function than the reference. The reference is the electrode that the voltage is recorded against; a voltage is a potential difference so you need two electrodes. The ground is used for common mode rejection. The primary purpose of the ground is to prevent power line noise from interfering with the small biopotential signals of interest (source: Biopac).

  For the bipolar configuration, if the electrodes are too close to each
  other, wouldn't we measure very low voltages since much of the signal
  appearing on one electrode would also be picked up by the other?

Yes. The smaller the distance, the better the rejection of unwanted signals. But with that, you're also risk to throw away the baby with the bath water.


Why are we the smartest species on the whole known universe? Why?

One possible reason would be because intelligent give humans, and only humans, evolutionary edge compared to their peers. Gorilla, for example, are strong because strength give Gorilla evolutionary edge. For our species, that's intelligence. But how?

What evolutionary advantage does having high "intelligence" does to humans?

My friend told me that the greatest benefit of intelligence is that we "deceive" others betters.

Is that the main use of intelligent?

Deceiving others? Many of my mensa friends are honest. If anything I hate lies in any form except for jokes. Also we don't seem to have more children than normies.

How does having, say, high IQ help a person reproduce?

The evolution of higher intelligence in hominids is an empirically difficult enough evolutionary question that (a) it might be better for biology.se and (b) any answer needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but I'll give you a feel for it. By that I mean, "watch the way multiple accidents of evolutionary history made evolution more favourable among our ancestors than most animals".

The 2003 documentary Walking with Cavemen discussed one model of what happened to early hominids: a decline in African rainforest coverage c. 8 Mya led to arboreal primates evolving bipedalism for more efficient locomotion, and this meant hands no longer compromised between movement and tool usage. Hand-brain co-evolution would have involved a positive feedback, which may (or may not - always bear that in mind) be part of the reason for rapid brain growth among Australopithecines. The same documentary also discussed how subsequent climate change in Africa changed the ecosystem enough to provide new nutrition opportunities for early Homo species, and how the move from North Africa to West Asia led to bamboo tools.

There are many models for what encouraged the evolution of higher intelligence in our ancestors, at various points in the past 5 Mya or so. The reason a trait is more favoured in one species than another comes down to unique cost-benefit analyses. Large brains are expensive, but the shift from a mostly herbivorous diet to one more reliant on meat, especially bone marrow (which only hominid tools could access), is part of why they were "worth it" in our genus.


Are some methods of teaching reading "bad"? I have a young daughter who I am teaching to read, and I was given a "Your Baby Can Read" DVD set by a friend.  When discussing it with friends, several of my teacher friends frowned upon the use of "memorization" to teach reading, and implied it would have negative long term effects.  Is there data to support this claim?  Since I expect there is a lot of research in this area, are some methods of teaching reading considered "bad"?

For reference, the "Your Baby Can Read" series proposes that babies even can "read" even before they can talk by watching videos and looking at books which show words and then show a picture or short video that explains the word.  This is intended to make the connection between the word and what it represents, and ideally guide the child in a reaction to indicate they know what it means.  There is no mention whatsoever of spelling, or phonetic sounds - it is all word/picture or word/video associations one after another.

In general, parental involvement/engagement has lots of positive social, emotional, cognitive, and academic effects for a child's development. Some evidence suggests that the positive effects of relatively general factors like improved parent-child relationship, increasing motivation and (positive) expectations, etc., are stronger than the specific benefits of learning particular educational material. Based on this, I would say that if you and your daughter enjoy doing these learning to read activities, then they will have positive effects because they will teach your daughter that reading is important and that her parents care about her and her intellectual/academic development, whether or not your daughter specifically learns to read from this DVD.

On the specific subject of reading, it is important to keep in mind that the vast majority of children will learn to read regardless of the particular method of instruction. Phonics-based methods (which emphasize letter-sound correspondences) are generally thought to be more effective than whole-word methods, especially for children at risk for reading disability/dyslexia. However, even the most die-hard phonics supporters acknowledge that phonics needs to be embedded within a comprehensive reading instruction program that makes reading fun and meaningful. In other words, phonics is the best method, but any fun reading activities that you do at home to get her interested in books will have positive effects.

A few references:

Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-Drzal (2010). Parent Involvement and Children's Academic and Social Development in Elementary School. Child Development, 81(3), 988–1005.

Senechal & LeFevre (2002). Parental Involvement in the Development of Children's Reading Skill: A Five-Year Longitudinal Study. Child Development, 73(2), 445-460.

Rayner, K., Foorman, B. R., Perfetti, C. A., Pesetsky, D., & Seidenberg, M. S. (2001). How Psychological Science Informs the Teaching of Reading. Psychological Science in the Public Interest Monograph, 2, 31-74.

Ehri, Nunes, Stahl, & Willows (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panels meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71, 393–447. [Note: there has been some statistically complex back-and-forth regarding this report, but I believe the original finding still stands.).


Number of exercises and the learning of some subject? For example, I show to my students that XY=Z, so I ask for them to do some exercises, so in the future, they will always know that XY=Z.

Is there any known study relating the numbers of exercises needed to learn a subject?

And that relates the numbers of steps with the amount of practise?

Because we can see clearly that the sequency 1-3-8 is easier to remember than 1-3-8-6-9-8-7-5-5.

But the second sequency will need three more times of exercise to remember?

I think this may be useful in my studies, considering time a important factor.

If a do just some exercises, I just can half learn, and if I study much more than I need, I waste my time.

Learning is a very complex process, do not expect to find precise answers like “5 exercises are required to learn a new subject”. There are many factors that affect learning, just to name a few:

Your existing knowledge.
Your engagement with the subject.
How you learn. Deep Vs shallow processing.
The complexity of the subject.
Your personal characteristics e.g. IQ.
Your current state, how much tired you are etc.

With so many factors involved is impossible to give precise answers.


Is it okay to measure only a subset of the Big Five such as neuroticism and extraversion in research? I recently received this question via email and thought it might be of broader relevance:

  I am writing as I am interested in using measures of personality in
  some clinical psychology research.   I am specifically interested in
  measuring neuroticism, and perhaps also extraversion, given previous
  work in my area speaks to the importance of these dimensions in terms
  of health outcomes in my area.   I was wondering whether you would
  have any advice on available instruments for measuring just these
  dimensions (rather than measuring, say, a full five factor model).

  For instance, would it be considered psychometrically ‘kosher’ to just
  pull out the neuroticism and/or extraversion scales from the BFAS or
  the 5 NEO Domains from the IPIP website and administer the scales in
  isolation?

It's very common in research to only measure a subset of the Big Five. When I recently reviewed the literature on the Big Five and well-being, there were a huge number of papers that only used a subset of the Big Five. And I'd say that the most common variables to be measured in isolation were neuroticism followed by extraversion. More generally, if I were to add one more to the mix in health related research, I'd say that conscientiousness deserves greater attention. It's particularly relevant to health-related outcomes and captures quite a different mechanisms (e.g., compliance with treatment, healthy lifestyle, lower levels of compulsive behaviours, etc.).

And when you look at this research, they generally take scales from standard length measures of the Big Five (e.g., NEO FFI, IPIP NEO 50, BFI or BFI 2, etc.). You also have Eysenck's measures which are still popular and provide neuroticism and extraversion measures.

That said, I'm not really a fan of this piece-meal approach to personality measurement. It's not that hard to include a complete measure of the Big Five, and then you get a more comprehensive view of how personality maps onto the constructs of interest, rather than assuming a priori that the domains you're looking at are all that there is. If the number of items is a big issue, the BFI 44 is not that long or if you get desperate there's something like the Mini IPIP 20 (although alphas are a bit lower). We discuss these recommendations and trade-offs quite a bit in Anglim & O'Connor (2019).

Anglim, J., & O’Connor, P. (2019). Measurement and research using the Big Five, HEXACO, and narrow traits: A primer for researchers and practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology, 71(1), 16-25. https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download?format=pdf


What's the functional difference between the NEF and normal ANNs? Aside from obvious biological plausibility, from a computational standpoint, what's the motivation of using the Neural Engineering Framework (NEF) instead of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) for computing functions? From what I can tell, they both approximate functions, have the ability to learn new functions and the ability to create self-organizing networks. What makes the NEF different?

First, let's take a look at the basic principles of NEF.

The first two principles (Representation and Computation) do seem analogous to trained ANN models. Additionally, with the hPES learning rule that I've described here, they seem to have the same learning (gradient-descent) capabilities.

Where the NEF differentiates itself the most from ANNs is when it starts to describe dynamics (oscillators, attractors). For a description on how it does this and what it accomplishes, check out Terry Stewart's course notes found here.

Describing dynamics is important in the brain, since simple oscillators and integrators seem to be the foundation of many different cognitive abilities such as working memory and motor control.


When we are sad, why do we feel pain in our stomachs? I thought everything is in the brain.

Why do we feel pain in our stomachs when we are sad?

I certainly wouldn't say "everything is in the brain"; even the central nervous system is defined more broadly than that (to include the spinal cord)...and then there's everything else in the peripheral nervous system to consider...

I also wouldn't say that feeling pain in one's stomach when sad is normal (you didn't say this either, but it's implied by your phrasing, so I think you might've assumed it), but this and the many other varieties of somatization aren't necessarily abnormal either, in as much as it may occur for most people in some way at some point in life (an intuitive guess informed by personal experience; don't quote me on this). From Wikipedia: "Somatization is a tendency to experience and communicate psychological distress in the form of somatic symptoms," which includes bodily pain of pretty much any variety. Note that this definition raises some interesting questions, e.g.:

How do you know if it's psychosomatic or not?
Can psychosomatic reactions be completely unconcious?

Setting these aside and assuming sadness is your original source of stomach discomfort, there are a number of ways this could occur, and the stress of strong negative emotion (which includes sadness) could exacerbate it. Stress in general can cause ulcers (e.g., stress from head injury; Li et al., 2010). Here's a good (and very long) section from The Cortisol Connection (Talbott & Talbott, 2007) [bolding added]:

  The phenomenon of stress-induced ulcers and other digestive problems has been documented in the medical literature for more than fifty years. From a physiological point of view, we know quite clearly that any stressful event will cause digestion to cease. Blood flow is diverted from the digestive organs to the heart and muscles, secretion of saliva and digestive enzymes is slowed, and intestinal contractions and absorption of nutrients stop. This rapid shutdown of the digestive process makes perfect sense, because from the standpoint of long-term survival it is more important to get away from the dangerous stressor (the lion) than to fully digest all your food...However...even while stress hormones are signaling the body to shut down digestion, these same hormones, when kept elevated for more than a few minutes, are telling us to eat...

  Medical evidence shows quite clearly that ulcers of the stomach (gastric ulcers) and intestine (duodenal ulcers) are much more common in people who are anxious, depressed, or under chronic or repeated stress. In the face of these conditions, which are all also examples of chronic stressors, many of the digestive actions are curtailed, and the body also backs off from its production of other protective measures—such as the mucus that lines the stomach, and the bicarbonate that counteracts the highly acidic gastric juices...The problems start to occur when a person experiences the repeated cycles of high stress followed by low/normal stress...This sets up the digestive system for total confusion. Most of the time the body won't be able to secrete enough digestive enzymes to properly digest food (producing nausea, constipation, gas, and bloating). During the "lucky" times when a body can secrete enough digestive enzymes to properly break down food, the protective mechanisms are far from fully operational—which puts the person at risk for damage to her gastrointestinal tract (because the food enzymes digest the gut's lining in addition to digesting the food). This scenario says a lot about why several bouts of intense stress are known to cause more ulcers than a longer continuous period of heightened stress.

  To compound the problem, other factors, such as immune-system function and the body's control of inflammation and wound healing, come into play. It is well described in the medical literature that both repeated periods of acute stress and continuous periods of chronic stress are associated with suppressed immune-system activity. This has a direct bearing on ulcer development, because less immune-system activity means more growth and higher activity of a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, which infects the stomach and causes ulcers in 80 percent of the people infected with it. Compounding the tissue damage caused by the accelerated growth of H. pylori is a suppression of the body's ability to heal that tissue damage because of an inhibition in prostaglandin synthesis. Prostaglandins are typically produced in response to tissue damage, where they help reduce inflammation and accelerate healing. During times of stress, however, the synthesis of prostaglandins is curtailed, which suggests that stress not only increases the rate at which ulcers may form, but also slows the rate at which they are repaired.

  Aside from ulcers, the most common stress-related gut disease may be irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Most of us will experience some degree of IBS during our lifetime. The name "IBS" is really a catchall for a variety of intestinal disorders...The majority of the gastrointestinal conditions falling under the IBS umbrella are either caused by or exacerbated by periods of heightened stress. Irish researchers have solidified the link between stress, inflammation, and gastrointestinal diseases such as IBS through a series of experiments involving 151 subjects that showed IBS to be clearly exacerbated by stressful psychological events, with cortisol and inflammatory cytokines such as IL-6 and IL-8 elevated in all forms of IBS...

  So, again, we have bad news about stress and cortisol for an important bodily system. Stress leads to poor digestion, ulcerated stomachs, and inflamed intestines—not a pretty picture. These effects tend to result in poor dietary choices, suboptimal nutritional status, and a drop in energy levels and overall feelings of well-being. Getting stress and cortisol levels under control can help to reverse these problems.

Pardon the wall of text; I could hardly shorten it further without cutting out directly relevant material or supportive explanation of the responsible anatomical mechanisms. Anyway, given that sadness (a form of stress) can cause our stomachs to go haywire when it's intense or chronic enough, haywire stomachs can then reduce energy and well-being, which forms a wicked little feedback loop between emotional and gastrointestinal distress. Feeling stomach pain can also cause one to clench the abdominal muscles, leading to cramping, which itself also leads back to pain and stress, so that's two feedback loops! Severe and chronic stress can also lead to rumination among those without better coping mechanisms, which is another cognitive-emotional feedback loop unto itself: the more you worry about your stress (both emotional and physiological) is the more you have to worry about!

Given at least these three, distinct, vicious cycles, it's not hard to imagine how a person can spiral out of control and into true disorder. Somatization disorder (SSD) is one such possibility; pain disorder is another. Both involve physical pain that is largely, sometimes completely caused by psychological stress, and are sometimes comorbid with mood disorders, among others. SSD is also sometimes comorbid with IBS.

Extreme cases might best relate to the sentiment expressed in your question, but that doesn't mean your case is extreme or even abnormal necessarily. If you or anyone else is concerned that you might have a disorder such as pain disorder, SSD, IBS, or if you're in any way concerned about how depressed you feel, I'd encourage you to talk to a counselor or therapist (some help is even available for free), seek diagnosis only from licensed professionals, and focus on what you can do about it instead of how bad it might be right now. Most psychological problems can at least be improved through patience, persistence, and positivity, so don't worry about labeling your problem or yourself; focus on finding and pursuing improvements and hope.

Here are some ideas that may help break feedback loops that exacerbate psychogenic stomach distress:

Dietary choices that ease digestion (including anti-inflammatory, low acidity foods)
Nutritional improvement (e.g., vitamins & minerals for stress response, probiotics for digestion)
Stress reduction (as via lifestyle choices, R & R, social support, counseling, etc.)
Cognitive behavioral therapy and biofeedback
Limited, careful, pharmacist-supervised medication of some physical and neurochemical problems
General mindfulness of automatic negative thoughts and unconscious muscle tension
Exercise, recreation, and positivity—generally spending more time looking on the bright side of life!

References

Li, Z. M., Wang, L. X., Jiang, L. C., Zhu, J. X., Geng, F. Y., & Qiang, F. (2009). Relationship between plasma cortisol levels and stress ulcer following acute and severe head injury. Medical Principles and Practice, 19(1), 17-21.

Talbott, S. M., & Talbott, S. (2007). The cortisol connection: Why stress makes you fat and ruins your health - And what you can do about it (pp. 120-122). Hunter House.


Books on Statistics in R for behavioral data analysis Are there any statistics books geared towards teaching behavioral data analysis especially in psycholinguistics?

Just to add a few other options that I consider relevant:

-Longitudinal Data Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences Using R

-Behavioral Research Data Analysis with R

-Methods for the Behavioral, Educational, and Social Sciences: An R package (an interesting paper).


How valid are reaction times collected from online studies? Online studies promise the possibility of greatly increased numbers of and variability in populations to study, but there are many potential concerns and need for validation, and diving in head first seems imprudent.

Here, I am interested in the ability to collect response time data online compared to a standard computer setup (e.g., a PsychToolbox or E-Prime based study with keyboard input, not a response box) in an on-site experiment booth. While these studies have their own limitations, such as being insuitable for experiments where very high fidelity RT data is critical to the study, I am merely interested in whether online studies differ significantly from them.

Are online RTs different from on-site RTs within tasks?
Is the theoretical floor on online RTs in general different from that of on-site RTs?

Short answer: The data is likely to be noisier, the absolute reaction time can't be trusted, but given enough power (which is easy to obtain on the Internet) relative reaction time differences should be similar to those in the lab. However, web-based reaction time studies might pose other problems, because you have less control over stimulus presentation and about how participants behave.

Long answer: There is some research that has looked at Internet-based collection of reaction time data using different software approaches. The number of papers is small, but they converge in the conclusion that there will be more noise, but that it can be quite useful depending on the specific research question.

The effect of additional noise

Some noise stems from the fact that hardware and software is widely different "in the wild". For example, using a JAVA - applet Eichstaedt (2001) has shown much variation in reaction times depending on different PCs. Some of this variation between computers is based on factors that add some constant to the reaction time on a specific machine. These constants don't matter if you do within-subjects reaction time comparisons as they are common in cognitive paradigms. Other factors will add random noise. For example, some keyboards only transmit responses with some frequency (e.g. every 20 ms.). Thus, the timing resolution will be bound to this limit. Also, other software running in the background may result in random noise. Nevertheless, given enough trials and enough participants this random noise may be a manageable nuisance.

In fact, using simulations, Brand and Bradley (2012) have found that adding a random 10 to 100 ms delay to response times reduced statistical power only by 1-4% across a range of different effect sizes.

Research that has compared response times collected with online and lab-technologies suggests similar conclusions. For example, using the Flash-based ScriptingRT Schubert et al. (2013, Study 1) have shown that

  the SDs of [reaction times] stayed below 7 ms in all three browsers. That value is comparable to many regular keyboards and standard reaction time software. In addition, the constant added by measuring in ScriptingRT was about 60 ms. This result suggests that researchers using ScriptingRT should thus focus primarily on differences between RTs and be cautious when interpreting absolute latencies.

From Study 2:

  ScriptingRT resulted in both longer response latencies and a larger standard deviation than all other packages except SuperLab and E-Prime in one configuration. Nevertheless, in absolute terms, the SD of 4.21 is comparable to what was standard for keyboards for a long time [16]. It is thus clear that any test with ScriptingRT should be well powered and used to assess primarily paradigms with a large effect size.

Similarly, comparing JavaScript and Flash-based data collection Reimers and Stewart (2014) concluded that, in general,

  within-system reliability was very good for both Flash and HTML5—standard deviations in measured response times and stimulus presentation durations were generally less than 10 ms. External validity was less impressive, with overestimations of response times of between 30 and 100 ms, depending on system. The effect of browser was generally small and nonsystematic, although presentation durations with HTML5 and Internet Explorer tended to be longer than in other conditions. Similarly, stimulus duration and actual response time were relatively unimportant—actual response times of 150-, 300-, and 600-ms response times gave similar overestimations.

Replications of cognitive paradigms with online samples

Several papers have used online data-collection to replicate well known effects stemming from lab-based research.

For example, Schubert et al. (2013) replicated the Stroop-Effect with online-vs. lab technology and found that the size of the effect was independent from the Software used. Using JAVA, Keller et al. (2009) replicate a the results of a self-paced reading paradigm from the psycho-linguistic literature. The most comprehensive replication project has been published by Crump et al. (2013) who replicate  Stroop, Switching, Flanker, Simon, Posner Cuing, attentional blink, subliminal priming, and category learning tasks on Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Other challenges and limitations

There are several other challenges and limitations associated with online response time collection

A different question is the accuracy with which stimuli can presented online. There will be limits to time resolution (see, e.g., Garaizar et al. 2014, Reimers & Stewart, 2014, Schubert et al., 2013)  and visual differences (color and resolution) depending on hardware and environmental light
Often online samples will be more diverse with regards to age and education, some may have difficulties understanding difficult instructions. Also, in an online study it is easier to abandon boring RT-tasks than in the lab (Crump et al., 2013)
Participants' hardware may be confounded with other variables, thus that there might be confounds in the absolute reaction times because a systematic RT constant may added to certain demographic groups. This is not a problem for reaction time differences within participants. However, correlations of absolute reaction times with personality variables may be spurious (as warned by Reimers and Stewart (2014)

References

Brand and Bradley (2012). Assessing the Effects of Technical Variance on the Statistical Outcomes of Web Experiments Measuring Response Times. Social Science Computer Review, 30, 350–357. doi:10.1177/0894439311415604

Crump, M. J. C., McDonnell, J. V., & Gureckis, T. M. (2013). Evaluating Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research. PLoS ONE, 8, e57410. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057410

Eichstaedt, J. (2001). An inaccurate-timing filter for reaction time measurement by JAVA applets implementing Internet-based experiments. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 33, 179–186. doi:10.3758/BF03195364

Garaizar, P., Vadillo, M. A., & López-de-Ipiña, D. (2014). Presentation Accuracy of the Web Revisited: Animation Methods in the HTML5 Era. PLoS ONE, 9, e109812. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109812

Keller, F., Gunasekharan, S., Mayo, N., & Corley, M. (2009). Timing accuracy of Web experiments: A case study using the WebExp software package. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1–12. doi:10.3758/BRM.41.1.12

Reimers, S., & Stewart, N. (2014). Presentation and response timing accuracy in Adobe Flash and HTML5/JavaScript Web experiments. Behavior Research Methods, 1–19. doi:10.3758/s13428-014-0471-1

Schubert, T.W., Murteira, C., Collins, E.C., Lopes, D. (2013). ScriptingRT: A software library for collecting response latencies in online studies of cognition. PLoS ONE 8: e67769. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0067769


What is the relationship between identity and personality? I would like to know whether identity and personality are the same thing, as they both answer the question of who you are.
Nevertheless in a cognitive approach, identity is considered a part of personality, concretely it's considered as a brain structure inside of the memory.

I think the relation is more or less subjective.

Identity is something that you give yourself. It has to do with what you stand for, morals, values, etc.

It is who your are physically and legally, but that's just a basic "you already know that" statement.

Personality is the way in which you portray or "live in" your identity.

For example, you can identify parts of someone's personality: humorous, attractive, intelligent, funny.

Both adapt and change over time, but your identity changes less often, I believe. Together, they are what makes a whole person.

It's really difficult to give a concrete answer because a lot of this can be subjective, debatable and complex.

It's also important to remember that while in some cases your personality and identity may be the same, in the end, they serve different "roles." If someone says "you're unique", it's true. Both your identity and personality are what makes you unique. They help each other in that way.

Let's take a look at this from a different angle: Let's say that we know this guy named Tom is a murderer. That is his identity. His personality, however, may not portray that and can come off as fun or charming. Personality is how someone behaves. They both go really well together but that doesn't mean that they are always similar. In most cases, you will find that they are similar, though.

Sources

Personality vs. Identity | Authentic Systems - Motivation Research & Development
Discover Your Personality | Truity
The Difference Between Personality & Identity | HiNative


Is there experimental support for John Perry's "Theory of Structured Procrastination"? John Perry's theory of structured procrastination can be summed up as follows:

Some people are inherently predisposed to be procrastinators across a wide range of domains
Such procrastinators are still capable of being productive
They can achieve this because they work on less-important (but still important) tasks in order to avoid working on (procrastinate) on more-important (or seemingly more important) tasks.
If you are a procrastinator and want to still get things done, expand your workload/to-do list.

The first point seems to be well supported since procrastination is regarded in the literature as a personality trait (Steel, 2007). The second point also seems reasonable, although I am not sure of empirical support for it (although I can think of plenty of anecdotal evidence). The real interest for me, is the mechanism proposed in the 3rd and 4th point. (Note that Perry is not the only one to propose such a theory, see for instance Aaron Swartz' HOWTO: Be more productive.)
Has it been observed that procrastinators who are successful achieve this success by expanding their workload and working on medium importance task at the cost of high importance tasks they want to procrastinate on?
References
Steel, P. (2007) "The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure." Psychological Bulletin 133(1): 65–94. [pdf]

In short, no. Perry's essay is amusing and compelling, but incomplete. Procrastination is an epiphenomenon of motivation, an active area of research which has some models relevant to the study of procrastination, such as:

Hyperbolic Discounting
Temporal Motivation Theory
Rational Choice Theory
Expectancy Theory

Perry emphasizes task importance as the metric that keeps a task unfinished and at the top of a structure procrastinator's to-do list. The truth is more complicated and not an entirely resolved area of research. Delayed gratification, immediate discomfort, and the procrastinator's prediction of probability of reward are some of the additional factors that determine which task a structured procrastinator will work on at a given time.

Over time, the least-desirable tasks often remain unfinished, seem increasingly important, and thus move to the top of the to-do list.

References

  Laibson, D. (1997). Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(2): 443–477.
  Steel, P., König, C. (2006) Integrating theories of motivation. Academy of Mgmt. Rev. 31(4): 889-913.


Measuring improvement in 3D tasks I have been teaching 3D design for a while, and i have noticed that a small group has decidedly hard time coping with rotation of the virtual camera. Unfortunately designing in 3D on a screen requires you to do quite a lot of mental rotation.
Instead would like to setup a test to see if a VR setup would alleviate the problem on a individual level.

Now i am aware of this near duplicate, that says men score better. But its not entirely fair in this case, as many of the problem cases are male. In either case i am looking for what improvement can get done on a personal level by optimizing the tools to the user, notwithstanding the general trend of the masses.

How do begin to designing the test for measurement of improvement?

How do [I] design [a] test for measurement of [3D rotation] improvement?

The way to start is to define what you wish to measure.

What needs to be mentally rotated?
Why does it need mental rotation?
What goal needs to be reached by the task?
Are the tasks a matter of correct or incorrect, or is it a graded measure?

Only then can you start thinking about the question proper, namely how performance can be measured.