Effectiveness of spaced learning when the data have personal meaning There is much study of spaced learning (expanded retrieval, spaced retrieval, spaced repetition system, gradual-interval recall, etc), and much of the discussion is about around the optimal distribution of the recall over time (often in comparison to equally spaced recall events or mass recall).

Instead of a focus on time, have studies considered the nature of the data to be remembered?

1) Have studies considered autobiographical data in comparison to non-autobiographical?

So, for example, if the data to be remembered are personal and relate to, say, family and friends, then will the use of spaced learning be more effective than, say, learning new vocabulary?   I am thinking about people with Alzheimer's or other diseases that impact memory.

Put another way: is spaced learning more effective when applied to personal facts vs. impersonal facts?  Or does it make no difference what the data are?

2) Is there any impact if the data are all related in some way?  For example, suppose the task is to learn vocabulary for parts of system (e.g. family, parent, child, sibling, etc or the parts of an automobile, ...)  in comparison to a set of unrelated words.    Does it make a difference if the set of concepts to be remembered have associations which the mind can use to link them together?

I'm not sure if personal relevance of data has been studied directly, but this factor seems related to depth of processing [Wikipedia link A], which improves memory encoding. I'm not aware of any research on an interaction between depth of processing [Wikipedia link B] and whether learning is spaced (as an experimentally controlled variable). I hope others will have more info for you on these questions.
Relatedness of data has a clear effect on learning and recall. Chunking is a mnemonic technique that capitalizes on relationships among data to facilitate info-reconstructive processes in memory. This can even be performed on ostensibly unrelated data using elaborative rehearsal. (See also depth of processing link A.)  Example methods include combining disparate elements in a narrative, or associating them with landmarks using the method of loci.


Why do individuals initially dislike things that they end up ultimately liking? Background: I noticed with a lot of things, but especially music I tend to hate certain songs and albums initially but they always seem to grow on me, and vice versa. I noticed this pattern in a lot of my friends as well so my question is:

Why do humans dislike things they normally like later on?

It could be the case that it takes time to like some thinks. We get habituated by being exposed to the same stimuli, here music. The dislike decreases after repeated presentations and the likeness may occur, if at all. At the same time, there is a continuous 'strive' between 'familiarity' and 'change'. The experience of 'change' we face by listening to some songs at the beginning, might become the experience of 'familiar' sounds and the liking could develop.
The same experience I've had with some food preparations.


How to test whether THC or CBD gives a mental boost? Studies have shown significant reduction in seizures in babies to adults when taking marijuana. I would call that amazing but what does it do in improving cognitive abilities in normal people?
Anecdotal reports across the internet claim that marijuana consumption can aid in creative thinking. Why is that? Is it the Cannabidiol (CBD) a phytocannabinoid (bought over the counter where I live) or the Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) a cannabinoid (which is still a misdemeanor) that contributes to creativity?
How can I do a controlled experiment or test to determine which chemical is giving me a mental advantage in creative thinking?

The only study I'm aware of is the following:

  Cannabis increased verbal fluency in low creatives to the same level as that of high creatives. Cannabis increased state psychosis-like symptoms in both groups and the high creativity group were significantly higher in trait schizotypy, but this does not appear to be linked to the verbal fluency change. Acute cannabis use increases divergent thinking as indexed by verbal fluency in low creatives.

Regarding whether THC or CBD causes an increase in creativity the authors note that:

  A few studies have attempted to objectively investigate whether cannabis increases creativity. Cannabis users produced more original (i.e. statistically infrequent) responses on an associative ability test when intoxicated with the drug compared to users given placebo (Block, Farinpour, & Braverman, 1992). Similarly, verbal fluency was significantly and dose-dependently improved by THC (the active ingredient in cannabis) compared with placebo in healthy volunteers given all treatments (Curran, Brignell, Fletcher, Middleton, & Henry, 2002). In contrast, Tinklenberg, Darley, Roth, Pferbhaum, and Koppel (1978) found that cannabis did not enhance scores in uniqueness, fluency, flexibility or elaboration during an object description task, considered to be a measure of creativity.

Schafer et al. 2012: Investigating the interaction between schizotypy, divergent thinking and cannabis use


How to test people's compatibility for friendship I'd like to have a test that would predict whether two people will get along (enjoy conversation and possibly become friends) if they try? The idea is simple: many people pass the test and then, by looking at results, we can find matches for potential friendship. However, I feel that it's not easy to implement if at all possible.

It's obvious how to find shared interests, but I doubt it would be enough to find a match. So, the test should explore some personality characteristics. The question is what should we test for and how to find matches based on results?

I don't have education in psychology or something similar, and I couldn't find any relevant information. There are many articles regarding compatibility for romantic relationship, but that's not the same thing.

There is no such thing as a test for compatibility in a friendship. There are measures for amity (that is, how much we feel someone is our friend), but no tests that predict whether two people would become good friends.

There are tests that aim to test for compatibility in romantic relationships. These are based on theories about what makes romantic relationships work, and some of them are employed on certain online dating platforms. Some of these platforms (e.g. Parship.de and Edarling.de), conduct studies to test their "scientific dating" principles and publish them. What is interesting in this context is that while there are clear indications for what makes a majority of romantic relationships work, but psychologists have as yet been unable to predict what makes people fall in love. So we know what would make them happy in the long term, but we don't know how to get them together. People fall in love for reasons that are very individual and cannot be systematized, yet.

In friendships, there are of course similar predictors as in romantic relationships, but since friendships are often much looser, friends spend very much less time with each other, and therefore don't need the same level of compatibility (because much incompatibility is compensated by less expectations and more time without each other), it is often enough for friends to share the same hobby, the same job, or live in the same neighborhood.

If you think of friendship as very intimate relationships with much sharing of emotions and thoughts, that is, of close "best" friends, then tests for romantic relationships would very likely cover aspects of these friendships as well.


How does Parkinson's disease result in tremors? From what I understand, Parkinson's disease is caused by the death of dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra, however I don't understand how that causses the symptoms of Parkinson's. I am particularly interested in the tremor aspect of the disease, although it would be great if someone could also explain how the other psychiatric problems arise (dementia, emotional problems and sleep issues).

The reason for this question is that I am trying to understand how deep brain stimulation (DBS) is able to stop the tremours in Parkinson's, or at least reduce their severity, and whether DBS could also help in the other symptoms of Parkinson's.

What causes the tremors in Parkinson's disease? Why do Parkinson's patients develop dementia, emotional problems and sleep issues?

Why does Deep Brain Stimulation alleviate tremors in Parkinson's disease? Can DBS help other Parkinson's symptoms?

Parkinson's Disease, as you note, is believed to occur due to damage or degeneration to the basal ganglia, especially the substantia nigra. Cells in the basal ganglia and substantia nigra produce dopamine, and in fact, the majority of the brain's dopaminergic cells have their bodies here, but that isn't the whole story. From Kandel's Principles of Neural Science (the first rule of neuroscience is always to look in your PoNS):

Primarily on the basis of studies in MPTP-treated primates, a working model of the pathophysiology of Parkinson disease has been
developed. According to this model, loss of dopaminergic input from the substantia nigra pars compacta to the striatum leads to increased
activity in the indirect pathway and decreased activity in the direct pathway (see Figure 43-6) because of the different actions of dopamine on
the two pathways (via D1 and D2 receptors, respectively). Both of these changes lead to increased activity in the internal pallidal segment, which
results in increased inhibition of thalamocortical and midbrain tegmental neurons and thus the hypokinetic features of the disease.

Tremors and DBS
Three of the central nervous system's four major dopaminergic pathways originate in the substantia nigra, but it is the nigrostriatal pathway which is believed to be involved in Parkinson's tremors. The nigrostriatal pathway innervates the striatum, which is involved in planning movements. Broadly speaking, because the basal ganglia are involved in action selection and routing information, impaired communication along this pathway can explain tremors as a function of failing to inhibit undesirable actions and facilitating desirable actions (Stocco, Lebiere and Anderson, 2010).
Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) has been shown to be effective in alleviating the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease in a number of studies (e.g., Deep-Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease Study Group, 2001; Weaver et al., 2009). However, comparative studies frequently do not explain the theoretical grounding for the method. Kandel provides the answer (first rule of neuroscience):

Selective inactivation of the sensorimotorportion of either the subthalamic nucleus or the internal pallidal segment is sufficient to ameliorate the cardinal parkinsonian motor signs (akinesia, tremor, and rigidity) in MPTP-treated animals (Figure 43-7). Surgical lesions of the posterior (sensorimotor) portion of the internal pallidal segment (pallidotomy) in patients with advanced, medically intractable cases of Parkinson disease is also highly effective in reversing parkinsonian signs. [...] Thus the hypokinetic features of Parkinson disease appear to result from increased (inhibitory) output from the internal pallidal segment as a result of increased (excitatory) drive from the subthalamic nucleus.

DBS treatments for Parkinson's take advantage of this finding to achieve their effect by directly stimulating the subthamamic nucleus and/or globus pallidus. This implies that the treatment is extremely specific to the mechanism, and though there is no reason to rule out effectiveness in other areas, there is no reason to rule it in, either.
Emotional problems
Parkinson's Disease patients are, perhaps intuitively enough, prone to depression, and as many as 25-40% of sufferers experience depression (Leentjens, 2004). Less intuitive is the finding that future patients are at increased risk of depression in the three years preceding their Parkinson's diagnosis (Leentjens, van den Akker, Metsemakers, Lousberg et al., 2003). One explanation for this finding, however, may lie with the other two dopaminergic pathways in the substantia nigra (mesolimbic and mesocortical), which are involved in affect and emotion, and that the emotional problems arise from the dopaminergic impairment in a manner similar to the tremor symptoms.
Unfortunately, I do not know a mechanism for dementia or sleep issues.
References

Deep-Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease Study Group (2001). Deep-brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus or the pars interna of the globus pallidus in Parkinson's disease. The New England journal of medicine, 345(13), 956.
Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (Eds.). (2000). Principles of neural science (Vol. 4, pp. 863). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Leentjens, A. F. G. (2004). Depression in Parkinson's disease: conceptual issues and clinical challenges. Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, 17, 120-126.
Leentjens, A. F. G., van den Akker, M., Metsemakers, J. F. M., Lousberg, R. & Verhey, F. R. J. (2003). Higher incidence of depression preceding the onset of Parkinson's disease: A register study. Movement Disorders, 18(4), 414-418.
Stocco, A., Lebiere, C., & Anderson, J. R. (2010). Conditional routing of information to the cortex: A model of the basal ganglia’s role in cognitive coordination. Psychological review, 117(2), 541.
Weaver, F. M., Follett, K., Stern, M., Hur, K., Harris, C., Marks, W. J., ... & CSP 468 Study Group. (2009). Bilateral deep brain stimulation vs best medical therapy for patients with advanced Parkinson disease: a randomized controlled trial. Jama, 301(1), 63-73.


Make a search limited only to Medline? From what I can tell (and from what Wikipedia can tell), the Pubmed database forms a superset of the Medline database, throwing some extra stuff in there. However, is there any way to make a search in the Medline database only?

There are several MedLine search engines, some of them requiring an (academic) account. You may want to use

ISI Web of Knowledge - http://isiknowledge.com/medline,
EbscoHost - http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp?profile=web&defaultdb=cmedm,
ProQuest - http://search.proquest.com/medline/advanced
Ovid - http://gateway.ovid.com/autologin.html

By searching PubMed with "all databases" selected, you will notice all the different databases PubMed is linked with, including the "Literature" section (PubMed database alone). Searching with the PubMed database alone will usually give the exact same results as the engines mentioned above.


Does meditation improve working memory more than exercise? I have noticed that I feel much more mentally sharp after doing an hour of moderate exercise in the morning. On the contrary, when I meditate, I feel no such difference in my mental alertness. Isn't meditation supposed to improve working memory?

Focused attention meditation practices improve focus in the long term. So the improvement is difficult to asses and could probably only be found in a standardized test setting. Physical exercise however has been demonstrated to improve mental abilities in the short term (after recovery of physical exercise) levels of circulating neurotransmitter stay elevated for approx. 48h.

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2007.7022 (Meditation and focused attention)

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001691802001348 (Physical exercise and cognition)


Finding the anterior comissure to set origin in a SPECT image using SPM/ISAS I am learning how to use SPM and ISAS to analyze ictal and interictal SPECT. However I am stuck at a point of their tutorial.

In the item 1.2 one has to set the origin for the SPECT image. That is, to pinpoint the anterior commissure. This is a fairly easy task in a MRI, but very hard to do in a SPECT. How am I to find a tiny anatomical area in such a blurry image (like the one below)?

Are there any anatomical references that I should be using in order to find the approximate area for the anterior commissure?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You can use the Whole Brain Atlas by Harvard to look at the normal brain anatomy in 3-D with MRI/PET.

Check the Anterior Commissure (AC) on the MRI and sync it with the PET or SPECT. It helps.

More specifically, select "Anterior Commissure" and T1/FDG and click sync to show all the orientations in the same modalities and anatomical structure. It helps to find the anterior commissure in a normal brain using nuclear medicine image.


Can people with absolute pitch identify the exact frequency, or simply the pitch class? Absolute pitch can be defined as the ability to identify or re-create a given musical note without the benefit of a reference tone.

When people claim to have absolute pitch, does this mean they have the capacity to detect the exact frequency of a note, or merely the pitch class (i.e. C,C#,D, etc)?

Short answer
In practice, absolute pitch is generally tested for by using musical pitch classes.

Background
Absolute pitch (AP) is the ability to identify the pitch of a musical tone, or to produce a musical tone at a given pitch without the use of an external reference pitch. Most humans process musical pitch relatively rather than absolutely, and in fact most sensory systems operate relatively and not absolutely. AP is indeed a rare ability, occurring in less than 0.01% of the general population (Tekuechi & Hulse, 1993).

The way in which AP is tested is mostly using pitch classes. Pitch classes are likely preferably used experimentally, because people with AP are often musicians. Musicians are already familiar with pitch classes because of their training. In turn, AP typically manifests itself in trained musicians (Zatorre, 2003). Therefore, testing AP using frequencies expressed in Herz may simply be too abstract for most people with AP, since they are more accustomed to the use of pitch classes.

Note that, because the pitch A4 used to tune orchestras, corresponds to 440.0 Hz by modern convention, AP as tested with pitch classes can be, indirectly, considered to represent frequencies.

Some subjects with AP may consistently identify pitches a semitone low or a semitone high. This can occur because a subject may be accustomed to a different tuning standard for A4 than 440.0 Hz (Tekuechi & Hulse, 1993). Hence, AP has a strong correlate to training.

References
- Tekuechi & Hulse, Psychol Bull (1993); 113(2): 345-61
- Zatorre, Nature Neurosci (2003); 6(7): 692-5


Information sampling task There is a lot of research done on impulsivity trait. Here is detailed wikipedia article and here is one interestiing video of biological and psychosocial causes of impulsivity.

In wikipedia article lot of tests are mentioned, but I am specificaly looking for:

  Information sampling task. Onsly aditional information I have is
  authors Clark et al, 2006.

It measure reflection against impulsivity.

Does anyone knows where to find it or how to use it or is there any substitute for that test.

The researchers that developed this task decribe it in DeVito et al. (2009) as follows:

Information Sampling Task
The IST (Clark et al. 2006) is a measure of ‘reflection–
impulsivity’. Subjects were told they would be presented
with ten trials in each of two conditions [fixed win (FW),
decreasing win (DW)] and that the task would last for
10 min. On each trial, a 5×5 matrix of grey boxes with two
larger coloured panels below it was presented. Subjects
were told to press on a box to reveal its colour and to open
as many boxes as they chose prior to deciding which of the
two colours they thought was in the majority amongst the
25 boxes. Boxes remain open for the duration of the trial to
minimise working memory load. To register their decision,
they pressed on one of the two coloured panels displayed.
In the FW condition, if the subject chose correctly, they
earned 100 points, but lost 100 points if they chose
incorrectly. In the DW condition, subjects begin with the
ability to win 250 points, but with every box they opened
the amount they could win decreased by 10 points. An
incorrect choice was still penalised with a loss of 100 points
regardless of the amount of boxes opened. Therefore, in the
FW condition, extensive information sampling prior to
decision was optimal, whilst in order to gain points in the
DW condition the subject must adjust to sample less
information. A variable inter-trial interval was used such
that the minimum trial duration was 30 s (e.g. if the subject
responded after 10 s, the inter-trial interval would be 20 s).
This feature was included to prevent unduly rapid responses
leading to shorter task duration and thus an earlier escape of
the experimental setting. This task is described in more
detail by Clark et al. (2006).

In Clark et al. (2006), they write:

In the present study, we used a novel Information Sampling Task (IST) to assess reflection impulsivity in chronic substance users. The objectives of the IST design were to derive a primary index of information sampling (rather than a speed–accuracy composite) in a task that placed negligible demands on visual processing and working memory. The IST presents a series of trials with an array of 25 grey boxes arranged in a 5 × 5 matrix. The grey boxes conceal an underlying assortment of squares (e.g., yellow and blue; Figure 1) on each trial. The subject was asked to decide which of the two underlying colors (yellow or blue) lay in the majority. The subject was able to open as many boxes as they wished to make that decision. Once opened, boxes remained visible for the duration of the trial to obviate working memory demands. Correct decisions were awarded a number of points, with trials blocked into two conditions. In the Fixed Win (FW) condition, a correct decision yielded 100 points, irrespective of the number of boxes opened. In the Decreasing Win (DW) condition, the number of available points decreased with every box opened. Consequently, the DW condition introduced a conflict between reinforcement and certainty: to maximize reinforcement the subject must tolerate high uncertainty, whereas sampling information until a point of high certainty would win very few points. Given preliminary evidence that drug users might be hypersensitive to reward (Bechara et al 2002 and Garavan and Stout 2005), we predicted that the DW condition would encourage impulsive responding and exaggerate individual differences.

Figure 1. Screen display for the Information Sampling Task. Each trial commences (left) with the presentation of 25 grey boxes arranged in a 5 × 5 matrix, covering a random assortment of two colors of squares; these two colors are displayed on panels at the foot of the screen. When the subject touches a box (middle), it opens to reveal its color. The subject must decide which of the two colors lies in the majority on the board. They are told they can open as many boxes as they wish to make this decision. They are told to touch the corresponding panel at the foot of the screen (bottom right) once they have decided which color is in the majority.

In addition, there is a description of the Information Sampling Task in the Cognitive Atlas.
References

DeVito, E. E., Blackwell, A. D., Clark, L., Kent, L., Dezsery, A. M., Turner, D. C., ... & Sahakian, B. J. (2009). Methylphenidate improves response inhibition but not reflection–impulsivity in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Psychopharmacology, 202(1-3), 531-539.

Clark, L., Robbins, T. W., Ersche, K. D., & Sahakian, B. J. (2006). Reflection impulsivity in current and former substance users. Biological psychiatry, 60(5), 515-522.


Is it possible to develop dementia by eating bone marrow? A psychiatrist once told me to avoid eating bone marrow because it could contain prions that could cause dementia. However, I haven't been able to find any studies that confirm this. Could this happen?

You might be referring to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). It is transmitted through exposure to brain tissue and spinal cord fluid from infected individuals.

  CJD is characterized by rapidly progressive dementia.

The leading scientific theory at this time maintains that CJD and the other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are caused by a type of protein called a prion.

CJD is indeed caused by prions: proteins that occur in both a normal form, which is a harmless protein found in the body’s cells, and in an infectious form, which causes disease. The harmless and infectious forms of the prion protein have the same sequence of amino acids, but the infectious form of the protein takes a different folded shape than the normal protein. Sporadic CJD may develop because some of a person’s normal prions spontaneously change into the infectious form of the protein and then alter the prions in other cells in a chain reaction.

Sources
- NIH Fact Sheet
- WHO


How is the size of a video related to its perceived quality? Video is often presented at different sizes. On the Internet, many websites provide quite a few size settings. In the store, you can buy TVs of many different sizes. In both cases, it's the same resolution video being stretched to a various sizes. To the technically savvy, making the same pixel occupy a larger physical space does not increase the quality of the video. But to the average consumer, he may think bigger is better.

What does the graph of perceived quality VS physical size look like? Is it linear, that is bigger is always better. Or is it parabolic? That is, there is a perfect ratio of pixel to size and any deviation from this ratio will result in a worse perceived quality. Or is it some other shape?

At least for images (I don't know of such a result tested on videos) for a given resolution, there is an optimal display size (assuming constant viewing distance. otherwise, display size should be measured in angles from the viewers point of view). In a paper from 1989, Peter Barten provided a formula to compute this effect [1]. The gist can be seen in the following figure from that paper:

For the low resolution images (e.g 100px wide) there is a slight advantage in quality ranking for the smaller screen over larger ones. However, as the number of pixels increases, the perceived quality on the small screen saturates, and larger screen are preferred.

[1]  The Effects of Picture Size and Definition on Perceived Image Quality. Barten, P. G. J; IEEE Trans.on Electron Devices, 36 (9), p. 1865-9, Sept.1989
doi: 10.1109/16.34260


Can cats get depressed in a way similar to humans? Most of the research on depression seems quite human focused. Can cats also get depressed in the same way there's depression for humans?

Human depression has been modeled in a variety of animal models, including cats (Wilner, 1984). Cats show comparable signs of distress when subject to maternal separation, including separation phenomena of protest, followed by despair. Although it is hard to project the DSM-V criteria onto cats, they can show comparable behaviors when subject to anxiety and stress.

Reference
- Wilner, Psychoneuropharmacol (1984); 83(1): 1-16


Can the V * I * E theory of motivation explain the motivation of Nelson Mandela? Background

The V * I * E theory of motivation (Galbraith & Cummings, 1967; Vroom, 1964) posits that if either the value of a goal, its instrumentality or the expectancy to reach it is zero, then an individual will not be motivated to reach that goal (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail because he was an anti-apartheid revolutionary. Apparently, he never gave up his mission.

Question

Can the VIE theory of motivation, or newer developments of it, explain thoroughly why some people don't give up their goals even if they to live under adverse conditions for a very long period of time?

More details: One might argue that such a person didn't lose the goal but just didn't try to realize it as long as it wasn't possible. In other words: the value was kept upright but the expectancy was zero. On the other hand, if V, I or E is zero, then the motivation - the drive - is zero as well. It is unclear what kept upright the value in this case. What drives a person in such a situation to keep fighting and can that be explained by the VIE theory of motivation?

References

Galbraith, J., & Cummings, L. L. (1967). An empirical investigation of the motivational determinants of task performance: Interactive effects between instrumentality—valence and motivation—ability. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 2(3), 237–257. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(67)90020-7

Vroom, V. H. (1964). Work and motivation. Oxford,  England: Wiley.

The VIE theory you mentioned can explain why some people don't give up their goals even if they to live under adverse conditions for a very long period of time, and the theory is very similar to a theory followed in Sociology and Psychology.  That is Social Exchange Theory.

Although the theory is generally referred to when talking about social interactions in relationships, it can also be related to the situations you are referring to.

Social Exchange Theory

The basic idea is that the social exchange process brings satisfaction when people receive fair returns for their expenditures. The major difference between social and economic exchange is the nature of the exchange between parties.  The social exchange perspective argues that people calculate the overall worth of a particular relationship by subtracting its costs from the rewards it provides.

$Rewards$ $–$ $Costs = Worth$

If the $Costs$ in the situation you are talking about is bigger than the benefits ($Rewards$), the $Worth$ has a negative value leading to the choice of not carrying out the task in mind.

To use your Nelson Mandella example,

  Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail because he was an anti-apartheid revolutionary. Apparently, he never gave up his mission.

Mandella perceived that the possible positive $Rewards$ (end to apartheid) outweighed the $Costs$ (imprisonment), therefore the $Worth$ of his social activism was positive (greater than zero).

If Mandella saw the $Costs$ being greater than the $Rewards$, the $Worth$ would have been negative and he may have chosen a different path, but then that is speculation.  The other point of note is that motivation towards social activism is generally towards improving the status quo within society, leading to positive $Rewards$.

What I have put forward is on Social Exchange Theory, however a possible alternative would be that he felt that change was vital and therefore the value of the fight and its goal outweighed the $Costs$ (VIE Theory).  Maybe both theories were in play.  This again is open to speculation.

Social Exchange Theory was introduced in 1958 by the sociologist George Homans with the publication of his work "Social Behavior as Exchange" (Cook & Rice, 2001).  Homans summarised the theory in 5 propositions (University of Amsterdam, n.d.):

The 1st Proposition - Success proposition:When an individual is rewarded for their actions, they tend to repeat the action;
The 2nd Proposition - Stimulus proposition:The more often a particular behaviour has resulted in a reward in the past, the more likely it is that a person will respond to it (possibly with reward); and
The 3rd Proposition - Value proposition:If the expected result of a behavioural action is considered valuable to the individual, it is more likely for that behaviour to occur
The 4th Proposition - Deprivation–satiation proposition:The more often in the recent past a person has received the same reward, the less valuable any further unit of that reward becomes.
The 5th Proposition – Aggression-approval proposition:When the rewards of a social exchange are not as expected, a person will react emotionally, usually in an angry or aggravated manner. Those who receive more than they expect or do not receive anticipated punishment will be happy and will behave approvingly.

References

Cook, K. S. & Rice, E. R. W., 2001. Chapter 31: Exchange and Power - Issues of Structure and Agency. In: J. H. Turner, ed. Handbook of Sociological Theory. New York City: Springer Science & Business Media, LLC, pp. 699-719.

University of Amsterdam, n.d. SocioSite: George C. Homans - General Propositions. [Online]
Available at: http://www.sociosite.net/topics/texts/homans.php
[Accessed 4 August 2016].


Are life positions in transactional analysis accurate aides in diagnosing personality disorders? Eric Berne developed the notion of transactional analysis (TA ) and author of the book  "The Games People Play".

Thomas A Harris then wrote the book "I'm OK - You're Ok" based on Berne's theory of TA.

Tony White expanded on this theory.

They produced the following concepts about people's life positions. As a basis for a person's way of relating to others and the world.:

"I'm OK, You're OK"
"I'm not OK, You're OK"
"I'm OK, You're not OK"
"I'm not OK, You're not OK"
"I'm not OK, But You're Worse"
"I'm not OK, You're Irrelevant"
"I'm a Bit More OK Than You Are"
"I'm OK, You're Irrelevant"
"I'm OK, You're OK, They're not OK"

How effective is this paradigm as an aide  to diagnosing personality disorders?

Personality disorders are diagnosed with the DSM manual save for a few which have targeted assessment tools (like the PCL-R).

TA is not considered a well supported technique research wise and lots of schools don't teach it except by way of a history lesson. I'm quite certain that both Berne and the authors of the DSM would agree that it doesn't actually map onto any specific personality disorders currently recognized. At best there would be a relationship between many of the addictions and related dependencies but they're certainly not seen the same way.


What is the effect of high expectations on long-term happiness? Are there any studies about the long term effects of having high expectations of oneself on one's happiness? Does crashing after failing to reach unrealistic goals significantly impact long-term happiness?

There are definitely studies on this, but I don't have the references at hand. I've heard about this in the online Harvard courses on positive psychology by Tal Ben-Shahar.

In terms of "crashing", there are studies about baseline-happiness, showing you bounce back up after a setback, and back down, after a positive event, like winning the lottery. Only intrinsic perspective changes can increase or decrease your base-level of happiness.

He also talks about a study showing "pessimists" are better at estimating their short and long term success rate. And "optimists" are bad at estimating short term, but good at estimating long term success. The interesting thing is, the pessimists set lower expectations, and their base-level of happiness remains. The optimists have higher expectations, and try until they succeed. The increased belief in their own efficacy, and resilience in the face of a set back, helps to increase their base-level of happiness.

On the other side of the coin, he stresses the importance of "realistic optimism". He says the keys to success are a combination of optimism, passion and hard work. Only optimism (high expectations) is not enough. A quote, by approximation, by Maslow:

  Too much optimism does not lead to success, and results in depression. A sense of reality is needed.

You can look into the Stockdale paradox.

Sorry I can't give you a shorter, more concise answer at the moment, maybe I'll revisit this later.


Is it possible to run Psychtoolbox or PsychoPy on Raspberry Pi 2 for simple perceptual experiments? We are considering setting up a few testing computers using Raspberry Pi 2. There was an interest in this a few years ago, but due to limitations of OpenGL in Raspberry Pi it did not go far. I was wondering if anybody made progress with possibility of running PTB, or PsychoPy, or other experimental software.

Old reference links:
Is the Raspberry Pi capable of operating as a stimulus presentation system for experiments?

http://akiraoconnor.org/2013/02/01/using-the-raspberry-pi-to-run-cognitive-psychology-experiments/

Speaking for the PsychoPy team, I would expect it to be possible but performance won't be great.

Both PsychoPy and OpenSesame use Python under the hood and this is an interpreted language. That means it isn't super-fast to execute code but we can get away with that by having fast computers (and hardware-accelerated graphics makes a huge difference).

Another option to consider might be a barebones PC like the Intel NUC computers. You can get one of those for £100 (but you have to add memory and hard disk so maybe £180 all in?). It still won't be as fast as a high-spec computer but should outperform a Raspberry Pi

Jon (for full disclosure, I'm the creator of PsychoPy)


Dissecting human reaction time It's claimed that the average human reaction time in response to a visual stimulus is 0.25 seconds (https://backyardbrains.com/experiments/reactiontime). This article by Mcleod (1987) may be a better, more reliable benchmark for my question, as it comes from a more reputable source and states both the low and high bounds  of tested human reaction times (p. 49):

  Traditional  laboratory  estimates  suggest  that  it  takes  from  200-300  ms  to  pick  up  visual  information  about  an  uncertain  event  in  the  outside  world  and  to  use  this to  initiate  an appropriate  action

Do we know/have any way of knowing what percentage of this time is taken up by any given part of the reaction process? aka how much time is the eye converting what it sees, how much is the nerve signals doing their job and reporting to or from the brain, how much time does the brain spend processing, how much is the time the muscles take to contract, etc.?

I've been recently studying reaction times, so would be really interested in the breakdown of this total given time between the various processes involved. Can anyone help me out with this?

McLeod, P. (1987). Visual reaction time and high-speed ball games. Perception, 16(1), 49-59.

Complex reaction times have been extensively studied and broken down into underlying processing stages. Sternberg (1969) [Acta Psychologica, 30, 276-315.] was one of the first systematic attempts at using reaction time to understanding cognitive processing. For simple reaction times (like responding to a brief sound or light), Botwinick (1966) [Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(1), 9-15.] split reaction time into pre-motor and motor components and found the motor component accounted for 50 ms of a simple reaction time task that took about 250 ms. I am not aware of anyone who has split apart the remaining 200 ms into addiitional stages.


Does having a sense of purpose increase longevity? There is evidence that people who retire early tend to die earlier than people who do not. One interpretation of this finding is that having a sense of purpose improves psychological health and that psychological health is linked to physical health.

What is the evidence for the validity or invalidity of this interpretation? (I am equally interested in the validity of this interpretation with respect to early retirement and with respect to other measures/correlates of purpose.)

  http://longevity.about.com/od/healthyagingandlongevity/a/retirement.htm

I did a little search and found an article by Moen (1996) which seems relevant.
Moen summarised the existing evidence as follows:

  Poor physical health is frequently a reason for retiring (Anderson &
  Burkhauser, 1985; Bound, 1991; Chirikos & Nestel, 1989; Palmore,
  Burchett, Filenbaum, George, & Wallman, 1985), leading to a view of a
  unidirectional link between health and retirement (see Figure 1). In
  support of this one-way model, most of the existing research
  literature has shown that retirement per se is not directly related to
  early mortality or health decline. However, there is some evidence
  that being retired affects psychological symptoms (Bosse, Aldwin,
  Levenson, Spiro, & Mroczek, 1993; Ekerdt, 1987). Other studies show
  that retired individuals sometimes report improvements in their
  (subjectively rated) health status following retirement (Ekerdt,
  Bosse, & Locastro, 1983). Most early research on retirement suggests
  that being retired has no deleterious effects on either physical or
  psychological health; most retirees say they are satisfied with their
  retirement and some even report better health (Atchley, 1976; Barfield
  & Morgan, 1968; McGoldrick & Cooper, 1989; Streib & Schneider, 1971).
  However, research on the effects of the loss of the work role through
  retirement often ignores the complexity of the retirement transition,
  including issues of timing, previous health, and quality of the
  employment experience (McGoldrick & Cooper, 1988). George (1993)
  pointed out that most research on stress and well-being fails to
  consider either the social contexts or the timing of potentially
  stressful life experiences, such as retirement.

References

Anderson, K. H., & Burkhauser, R. V. (1985). The
retirement-health nexus: A new measure of an old puzzle.
The Journal of Human Resources, 20, 315-330.
Atchley, R. (1976). The sociology of retirement. New York:
Schenkman.
Barfield, R., & Morgan, J. N. (1968). Early retirement: The
decision and the experiences. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for
Social Research.
Bound, J. (1991). Self-reported objective measures of health
in retirement models. The Journal of Human Resources,
26, 108-137.
Bosse,  R., Aldwin, C. M., Levenson, M. R., Spiro, A., &
Mroczek, D. K. (1993). Change in social support after
retirement: Longitudinal findings from the normative
aging study. Journal of Gerontology, 48, 210-217.
Chirikos, T. N., & Nestel, G. (1989). Occupation, impaired
health, and the functional capacity of men to continue
working. Research on Aging, 11, 174-205.
Ekerdt, D. J. (1987). Why the notion persists that retirement
harms health. Gerontologist, 27, 454-^57.
Ekerdt, D. J., Bosse, R., & Locastro, J. S. (1983). Claims that
retirement improves health. Journal of Gerontology, 38,
231-236.
George, L. K. (1993). Sociological perspectives on life
transitions. Annual Review of Sociology, 19, 353-373.
McGoldrick, A., & Cooper, C. (1988). Early retirement.
Chichester, England: Gower
Moen, P. (1996). A Life Course Perspective on Retirement, Gender, and Well-Being. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 1, 131-144.
Palmore, E. B., Burchett, B. M., Filenbaum, G. G., George,
L. K., & Wallman, L. M. (1985). Retirement: Causes and
consequences. New York: Springer.
Streib, G. F, & Schneider, C. J. (1971). Retirement in
American society. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.


What is input resistance and how to interpret its values? For example, this site gives a distribution of values of the input resistance of various cells. The values are in MOhms. The definition says that "input resistance measured at steady-state voltage response to current injection".

How can its value be interpreted? What do high or low values indicate? Does it relate to other cell properties?

Ohm's law famously states V=IR, the voltage change (V) across a resistor generated by a current (I) equals the current multiplied by the resistance (R).

The resistor in this case is the cell membrane.  When an experimenter injects a known amount of current through an electrode, the voltage change that occurs is related to that current by the resistance of the cell membrane.  A high value indicates that the cell membrane does not let current pass easily so a given amount of current requires a large voltage changes.

The size of the cell and the number of open ion channels affect the input resistance.  Larger size means lower resistance (more surface area for current to flow through) and more open ion channels means lower resistance (the conductance g=1/R increases when you open ion channels so the resistance decreases).

As for relevance to neural computation, higher input resistance means that less synaptic input (current injection) can lead to larger voltage changes.  Manipulating input resistance (say by opening Cl- channels, which don't change the voltage of the cell much but do decrease the resistance) can change the responsiveness of the neuron to other inputs.  This phenomenon is called shunting inhibition.


Islam and participation in acts of political violence This is currently a hot political topic, but what does the science say?

I was thinking that a good experiment would take groups of people, and match them for alternate explanations: Age, gender, socio-economic status, level of education, nationality, occupation, cultural factors, political affiliation, immigration status, etc.  (These are factors that many experiments control for when dividing subjects into groups, so is not unusual to do.)  Then look for correlations, and see if particular religious affiliations (or non-believers), are more strongly correlated with participation in acts of political violence than are other factors.

I have not found such a study yet.  There is a fair amount of research regarding attitudes towards violence, with mixed results (example, example, example, example), but these are generally not controlled for very many factors, and do not address any actual violence rates.  There is also some research on actual violence rates (example, example), but again, few variables are controlled for, and the focus is on countries rather than people.

Is religious affiliation really a predisposing factor for people to actually commit acts of terrorism and politically-motivated violence?

A good, and very pertinent question. This speculative and blunt answer is based on the literature that I have studied as part of understanding behavior change. It is a simplification of the literature, but it should set a foundation that you could build on if you wanted to investigate further and develop a more nuanced view.

  Is religious affiliation really a predisposing factor for people to
  actually commit acts of terrorism and politically-motivated violence?

I start with a basic assumption: As terrorists are people we can assume that they are motivated by the same things as people in general.

Based on this assumption it seems more than reasonable to expect that religious affiliation would influence behavior, and in some cases influence likelihood of violence and terrorism. In all that follows you can assume that I am contrasting one 'more benign' form of religious affiliation, such as atheism, with another form which is more easily used to justify violence, such as Christianity or Islam. The following are some reasons why having one type of affiliation rather than the other might affect behavior:

Mental characteristics, such as values, attitudes, and beliefs, have a strong influence on behavior [e.g. 1]. Additionally, these mental attributes are influenced by information [e.g., 2], such as what might have been encountered in religious literature. Given this argument, it seems reasonable to assume that the religious literature that terrorists have read could have influenced their mental attributes, and in turn predisposed them, even if just to a small extent, to engage in terrorist behavior.
Expected value has a strong influence on behavior [3]. Essentially, people are more likely to engage in behaviours that they believe will create value for them. For most of us, suicide is a pretty low value outcome but for certain religions, suicide to kill others is going to be rewarded by eternal life, along with a number of devoted companions. Likewise a war can be holy for some religious affiliations but not others. In light of this example, it seems reasonable to assume that religious beliefs that make a terrorist behaviour appear like it will be more rewarding, will in turn influence people with those beliefs,than those without, to be more likely to engage in that behaviour.
Research suggests that most people generally require justifications for their actions to avoid congnitive dissonance [e.g., 4]. Those who have been raised by learning a religious scripture which presents many justifications for violence, would in turn have easy mental access to these justifications when thinking about how to act. Indeed, they might have access to the justification that a supreme, unquestionable, omnipent, ominpotent individual wants them to act in a violent way. Accordingly, it is reasonable to assume that individuals with these sets of justifications could use them to justify violence, while those not in possession of such justifications would not be able to.

I am happy to clarify, or add to this as you wish. I am sure I have oversimplified things in a few cases.

References:

[1]Ajzen, I. and M. Fishbein (2000). "Attitudes and the attitude-behavior relation: Reasoned and automatic processes." European Review of Social Psychology 11(1): 1-33.

[2] Chaiken, S. (1980). "Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(5): 752-766.

[3] Wigfield, A. and J. S. Eccles (2000). "Expectancy-Value Theory of Achievement Motivation." Contemporary Educational Psychology 25(1): 68-81.

[4] Festinger, L. (1962). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, Calif., Stanford University Press.


What is the optimal repetition pattern to maximize long term memory? Which is the appropriate repetition pattern to aid long term memory, in terms of time between study sessions?

I have been reading about Ebbinghaus and doing some related research, but I can't find a recent study on the effectiveness it may have if a certain pattern is used for distribuiting the learning sessions on a subject.

It sounds like you are interested in the Spacing Effect.
A search on Google Scholar for "spacing effect" for articles published since the year 2000 yields over 2500 articles some of which might be worth pursuing.

Perhaps you might want to start by having a read through the meta-analysis in Psychological Bulletin by Cepeda et al (2006). To quote the abstract:

  The authors performed a meta-analysis of the distributed practice
  effect to illuminate the effects of temporal variables that have been
  neglected in previous reviews. This review found 839 assessments of
  distributed practice in 317 experiments located in 184 articles.
  Effects of spacing (consecutive massed presentations vs. spaced
  learning episodes) and lag (less spaced vs. more spaced learning
  episodes) were examined, as were expanding interstudy interval (ISI)
  effects. Analyses suggest that ISI and retention interval operate
  jointly to affect final-test retention; specifically, the ISI
  producing maximal retention increased as retention interval increased.

You may also want to read Pavlik and Anderson (2008). They used a computational model of known spacing and practice effects in order to try to develop an optimal practice schedule for maximising learning and retention.

References

Cepeda, N.J. and Pashler, H. and Vul, E. and Wixted, J.T. and Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological bulletin, 132, 354. PDF
Pavlik, P. I and Anderson, J. R. (2008). Using a model to compute the optimal schedule of practice. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14, 101. PDF


How did the unique features of human intelligence evolve? I have been debating the following topic with a friend.

She argues that humans do not descend from chimpanzees or orang-utans, because if we did, such animals would share the same cognitive thinking that humans have.
I argue that we do descend from that such animals, and that a high protein diet has allowed early humans to develop a better memory, intelligence, and other mental processes.

Questions

What is the  the real origin of human intelligence?
If non-human animals do have intelligence too, why is their intelligence not as advanced as humans?

If non-human animals do have intelligence too, why is their intelligence not as advanced as humans?

Notions like “advanced” or “better” really have no place in evolutionary thinking. Again, evolutionary fitness is about self-reproduction and success compared to whatever competition is present at any moment. There is no force “optimizing” species to meet some external criteria of “progress”.

One important observation is that (relatively) simple species have in fact been quite successful (in terms of number of individuals, total biomass, capacity to survive climate changes and other disruptive events, etc.). Humans have been flourishing very recently (few thousands of years), colonizing big parts of the earth, reaching large population numbers but before that there is evidence that they went through a severe population bottleneck as recently as 70000 years ago. Great apes populations are also not very large and all species are considered endangered.

Sustaining a large brain and human intelligence is in fact extremely onerous. The human brain requires a lot of energy. Furthermore, it has become too big to go through the mother's womb so that it still undergoes growth after birth, meaning that human babies require a lot of care and protection. All that suggest that “high intelligence” is not always such a big advantage, evolutionary speaking. As often, there are trade-offs and various successful “strategies”.

In any case, you might be interested in Wikipedia's article on the “Evolution of human intelligence”.


If a two-tailed test shows significance and the mean is higher, can you infer that one condition is significantly higher? Condition A has M=5, SD=1
Condition B has M=10, SD=1

If a two-tailed test gives p<.05, can you infer that Condition B was significantly higher than Condition A without conducting a one-tailed test?

Yes.

A two-tailed test simply corrects for the appropriate probability of observing a difference as large as you observe given the null hypothesis is true. This probability is twice the one-tailed probability (in effect, a two-tailed test with alpha=0.05 is the same as two one-tailed tests each with alpha=0.025). You do not need a one-tailed test to infer the direction. If there is a significant difference with a two-tailed test, it clearly must be in the direction of the observed difference.


Omitting word(s) when typing [Reraising a recently asked question that was closed here, but in more cogsci fashion, I hope.]

Some people are more inclined than others to omit a word when typing, but still be unaware of its unintended absence on a (first) proofreading. In human-computer interaction (HCI) this is called a "misperception error". (according to Jan Noyes, Designing for Humans, p. 147, Psychology Press 2002... but that's about all the book says on the topic).

So what else is known?

First of all, is it also called something else, perhaps more specific, because "misperception error" is very general, so it's hard to turn up any research on this particular error using these terms in pubmed.
What is the prevalence among general population? It can't be something that hard to study, say among students, the low-hanging fruit of psychology and HCI studies, so I suspect some study on prevalence exists.
What are some abnormal psychology correlates? I would venture a guess dyslexia and ADHD, but how much more common is it in such sub-populations than in neurotypicals?

I would gladly break this into separate questions if deemed necessary, but I suspect all of the above can probably be answered from one or two papers specifically on this topic.

I found a paper on a similar auditory phenomenon, which has some generally applicable ideas:

  the application of signal detection theory (SDT) allows
  perceptual performance to be understood in terms of both sensitivity (the ability of a system to distinguish signal from noise) and response bias (the system’s bias, independent of sensitivity, for responding either positively or negatively)

So obviously there is a stronger response bias in proofreading your own typing than another's... which probably means that general statistics for "filling in" missing words in a sentence need to upward adjusted for proofreading your own typing.

Even more interesting, and perhaps a little worrisome for those exhibiting this,

  This theory is supported by behavioural evidence showing that the
  influence expectation exerts over auditory perception is stronger in those who
  hallucinate [...] This theory
  is also supported by evidence that the prediction error signal, which communicates the
  discrepancy between expectation and actual sensation [...] is reduced in those who suffer from
  schizophrenia [...].

It remains to be seen if misperception of non-existent words due to semantic expectation correlates to some kind of predisposition for visual or other kind of hallucination. It seems a bit more far fetched.

Perhaps it's also worth noting here that simply proofreading familiar text, which the subject has read before in the correct version, but which is then modified by the injection of spelling errors, actually improves the detection rate of spelling errors. So not all kinds of familiarity with the text predispose to proofreading errors, at least not to proofreading spelling errors (missing or extra words were not tested in that study).

In his 2003 psycholinguistics book, John Field has summarized (pp. 70-72) his own typing errors and combined them with an older corpus of Hotopf.
Missing words were among the frequent errors, but alas no numerical frequencies are given.
But what he says he noticed is that short function words like "are" or "it" (these are his examples) are more likely to be omitted. And regarding the type of words more likely to be omitted he says:

An important factor appears to be the difference between lexical and function words.
The latter seem very susceptible to error: they are sometimes omitted or duplicated, and it is quite common in rapid typing for one function word to be
substituted for another, even when they are not phonologically identical. This
leads one to the conclusion that function words may be processed differently from
lexical ones. It seems possible that the writing process accords a higher level of attention to lexical items.

Although he doesn't say this, the full-context examples that he gives for omission seem to have another property, namely that short words get omitted close to each other (compare with duplication)

though these [are] not frequent

that [it] is possible

And if you're curious about the related issue(s) he mentions, among the frequent duplication examples are "the the", "that that", and "of of". Among the substitutions are "the" instead of "that", "of" <- "for", "doe" <- "do", "were" <- "where", "for" <- "from". He continues:

Finally, notice that some writing slips provide evidence of a planning process operating
at a level higher than the word. When writing a particular word, we already
have the next few words stored in our minds, ready for production

The examples for these are more interesting

importan topic
these given (= give) insights
using bothing (= both) approaches
difference (= different) intelligence tests
neighbourshoods

This is more qualitative than quantitative, but for lack of anything better, I put it in the answer box.
So if Field is correct, there's an anticipatory process in writing that causes a number of spelling errors, not all of them omissions.


Is there a technical term for "fear of the unknown"? I'm writing paper about climate change and its economic impacts on society.  Is there a generally accepted technical term for "fear of the unknown" in psychology?

The closest formal term I'm aware of is Xenophobia but that term has been primarily used to describe a fear or dislike of foreign people, so I wouldn't use it in any context other than that.

I would simply use the explicit phrase fear of the unknown; general fears are often referred to in an explicit manner like that. "Fear of the unknown" written out as such is commonly used in articles as are "fear of death" etc. While phrases like "arachnophobia" are common in popular use, phobias are really only irrational and extreme fears; as such an X-phobia term is often inappropriate when not discussing irrational, specific fears on an individual basis.


Why do therapists need therapy? I have no educational background in psychology, just a casual curiosity. Do therapists need therapy because it’s impossible for people to see their own blind-spots (I think this is called the shadow)? Are there ways you can train people to see weird distortions in their own logic on their own, or do they always need an outside party?

As pointed out in another answer of mine, therapists are not immune to psychological problems. In fact, one study shows the lifetime rate of depression in psychologists and social workers to be higher than that of the general population (Deutsch, 1985).
They hear about difficult, sometimes traumatic experiences as their clients share their issues. This can lead to problems due to the phenomenon known as Emotion Contagion. They too occasionally have personal problems and things they may find difficult work through without some assistance. See This TalkSpace article for some other examples of how therapists might need therapy.
As you indicated in your question, sometimes this may not be immediately noticed by the therapist for reasons like hidden issues. As I have pointed out in another previous answer - see for more info., there is Clinical Supervision which helps to highlight any possible psychological issues or hidden traits — e.g. prejudices or other incorrect thought patterns/conclusions) — which may need therapy (See my answer talking about Johari Windows for more on that). This is standard practice, and required in codes of practice for registered counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. and those in training.
References
Deutsch, C. J. (1985). A survey of therapists' personal problems and treatment. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 16(2), 305–315. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.16.2.305


Theories of Human Motivation I have heard the true saying that without motivation, there will be no action on anything which needs to be done. I can't remember where I heard it but I have wondered about what help there can be to remove motivational barriers.

I know of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and then I came across Szondi's Drive Diagnostic Test which made me wonder. What other theories and methods are out there?

There are many different possible obstacles to motivation:

Physical issues,
Emotional Issues,
Environmental Issues,
Relationship Issues,
Personality Issues,
Historical Experience,
Financial Issues, and
Practical Issues;

and they all need to be borne in mind.  We could look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, however, studies in motivation started long before he came up with this.

The link you provided gives a lot of what you are asking about.

Sigmund Freud, as far back as 1927 said that a drive theory was what was lacking most in psychoanalysis.  He rejected systematics in psychology as a form of paranoia, and spoke of the drives towards life and death; and sexual/ego drives (Mélon, 1996).

Yet, from 1927 to 1935, Hungarian psychiatrist and psychologist, Leopold Szondi aimed at working towards a systematic drive theory and he developed a “Drive Diagnostic Test” (Mélon, 1996).  On top of that, there were studies conducted by William McDougal in 1932 where it was suggested that a range of animal behaviours could be associated with some form of drive, developing Instinct Theories of Motivation whereby all activities, thoughts, and desires can be drawn from being caused by nature – our biological make-up (Psychology Notes HQ, 2012).

Then attempts were made by Clifford Morgan in 1943 to establish the classifications of Primary Drives (basic needs of the individual) and Secondary Drives (learned or social drives).

Later, in 1961, David McClelland stressed the importance of social needs and specifically the need for achievement, affiliation and power (Mind Tools Ltd., n.d.), whilst in 1967, Grossman proposed the categories of Homeostatic drives (internal drives of the physical body to seek and maintain a balance within its internal environment like hunger, thirst and body temperature), and Non-homeostatic drives (situations external to the body like sexual activity, and other physical or emotional arousal).

I believe Grossman’s categories are categories of Morgan’s Primary Drives, where McClelland’s points refer to Morgan’s Secondary Drives.

References

Mélon, J., 1996. Notes on the History of the Szondi Movement. [Online]
Available at: http://www.szondiforum.org/t419.htm

Mind Tools Ltd., n.d. McClelland's Human Motivation Theory. [Online]
Available at: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/human-motivation-theory.htm

Psychology Notes HQ, 2012. Instinct Theory of Motivation. [Online]
Available at: http://www.psychologynoteshq.com/instincttheoryofmotivation/


Can mental exhaustion be measured? I asked this question a long while ago, but I never got an answer to whether mental exhaustion can be measured. If mental exhaustion could be measured, it would mean that I would have a way of knowing the performance I can get out of my brain in a day. I would be able to know what is best for refilling my brain with energy (maybe TV is your best option after all...;) ) As far as I understand, different parts of the brain gets used for different purposes, so they should get exhausted at different times, so the measuring would have to be on specific regions of the brain or performance of the brain in various fields.

A sleep study by Van Dongen et al (2003) uses three metrics to measure the effects of fatigue due to sleep loss.  The first is cognitive throughput:

A serial addition/subtraction task was included in the assessment
battery to measure cognitive throughput. The serial
addition/subtraction task is a subject-paced task requiring the
completion of 50 mental arithmetic trials. The average number of
correct responses per min was used as a neurobehavioral assay of
cognitive throughput performance.

Second, alertness / vigilance (response time to stimuli):

The neurobehavioral assessment battery included a psychomotor
vigilance task to measure behavioral alertness. The psychomotor
vigilance task (PVT) is a sustained-attention reaction time task with
a random inter-stimulus interval of 2–10 s. Lapses (reaction times
greater than 500 ms) were counted per 10 min test bout as a measure of
performance.

Third, memory:

The neurobehavioral assessment battery also included a computerized
digit symbol substitution task to measure working memory. This
subject-paced task involves the matching of digits (0–9) to symbols
(circle, triangle, etc.). The number of correct responses in 1.5 min
was counted to measure working memory performance.

The metrics ought to be effective for measuring mental performance due to fatigue whatever the cause of fatigue might be.
References

Van Dongen, H.P.A., Maislin, G., Mullington, J.M., Dinges, D.F. & others (2003). The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. SLEEP-NEW YORK THEN WESTCHESTER-, 26, 117-129.


What is the effect of studying logic or mathematics on general thinking skills? I frequently hear comments from people to the effect that "Studies have shown that students who take (intro) logic courses don't show any signs of improvement in logical/rational/critical thinking." Yet, as an undergrad, I got the opposite impression: I felt that studying logic (and mathematics) in more depth sharpened those skills. My initial Google search on the issue didn't really turn up much.

So, I have some questions regarding the psychology of logic and mathematics.

  Question: What studies have been done regarding the effects/benefits to cognitive thinking skills from taking intro logic courses? What about studying probability theory, or even mathematics more generally? How conclusive are they?

Any references would be extremely helpful. I now teach intro logic as a grad student, and if there's something that students consistently miss out on, I would like to know about it so that I can (hopefully) make improvements. Also, any resources in the relation between mathematics and psychology more generally would be beneficial.

(I posted this on the MathSE, but was told this would be a better place for this question. If this needs retagging, let me know. I see that this question is similarly related, but I'm particularly interested in intro formal logic courses).

Here are some references that may be of use to you:

Contrasting the cognitive effects of graphical and sentential logic teaching: Reasoning, representation and individual differences (Stenning et al, 2007).

The shaping of deduction in Greek mathematics: A study in cognitive history (Netz, 1999). - a bit of a historical context, but I'd imagine that there are similar ideas

A cognitive theory of graphical and linguistic reasoning: Logic and implementation (Stenning and Oberlander, 1995).

A Cognitive Analysis of Problems of Comprehension in a Learning of Mathematics(Duval, 2006)

Perhaps related to your request - The Logic of Scientific Discovery (Popper, 2005).


Is there a foveal explanation for the duck-rabbit illusion? Myself when I look at the duck-rabbit image, I see a duck if focus on the left (i.e. the beak) or a rabbit if I focus on the right (the nose).

Is this how it works for most people, i.e. is the foveal shift what drives the change in interpretation? (I obviously meant to ask if there's an empirical study on this.) If so, is the duck-rabbit a part of a wider class of illusions that rely on smaller or larger changes in what's foveated?

Short answer
Ambiguous figures do not necessarily depend on focus, they do depend on attention though.

Background
The figure you provide is huge. From a standard face-to-monitor distance of a meter or so, one indeed needs to scan the image. Under these conditions I agree with you, in that the perceived animal changes when you change focus. The ears become a bill when you focus on that part and you see a duck. Reversely, when you focus on the head, you see a bunny.

However, below I've pasted a smaller version of it (Fig. 1). If it is still too big take some more distance from your monitor and look at the center. You'll notice it will freely flip-flop between critters, also without shifting your gaze. I found another version depicted in Fig. 2. that, in my case, even more smoothly transitions from duck to rabbit and vice versa. Hence, foveal focus is not key.

Ambiguous images are not truly illusions; Many illusions rely on unconscious inferences in perception, while ambiguous figures illustrate the role of expectations, world-knowledge, and the direction of attention. For example, children tested on Easter Sunday are more likely to see the figure as a rabbit; if tested on a Sunday in October, they tend to see it as a duck or similar bird (source: Kihlstrom, University of California, Berkeley, see references there). Hence, by shifting your attention from one part to another, you may indeed evoke a flip flop and although this i medited by visual input and hence needs the retina, it nonetheless is a process induced by shifting your attention and hence a top-down process. Your suggestion of a foveal dependence would imply a bottom-up effect. It is not.

Fig. 1. Rabbit/duck ambiguity. Taken from OP above, source unknown

Fig. 2. Animated version of the ambiguous rabbit/duck figure. source: Tom van der Bilt, Nautilus issue 19, 2014


Intuitive explanation of MBTI test and it's gender bias According to this data there is a small bias related to the gender and some traits of MBTI.

Is it scientifically possible to provide an explanation for these differences?

My intuitive definition of the judging trait could be: "A judging subject spends time trying to classify the reality into categories (i.e. ethical or not). A high percent of his automatic thought go in this direction. Thinking how the world should be instead of changing himself to get the maximum from the world he could be less adaptive."

From the data in the table, it is not possible to tell whether there is a meaningful difference between men and women with regard to the Judging trait, because it does not state the size of the sample, the effect size, and whether the difference is statistically significant. All differences could be just random noise. In fact, the data may just as well be more supportive of the idea that gender does not make a difference here.

Because the MBTI does not hold up to scientific scrutiny (and is hardly used by academic personality researchers), it should be difficult to find reliable data on gender differences. However, because the Judging dimension overlaps with the Conscientiousness factor in the Big Five, one can look at gender comparisons there. There do not seem to be strong gender differences with regard to Conscientiousness (see this earlier answer).


What is the bias/thought process that results in distrust of "formal" knowledge in favor of "folk" knowledge? An interesting effect I've noticed is that certain groups of people seem to accept "folk knowledge" and value it over significantly better founded "formal" or scientific knowledge. In particular this is notable in many discussions of Psychology and vaccinations. Scientific evidence is clearly on one side, but an odd distrust seems to exist for some which makes the unproven or disproven "folk" knowledge more acceptable to them.

This effect seems sort of like Illusory Superiority, but it seems to not quite be that; Illusory Superiority is the tendency of one person to overestimate their own abilities or knowledge. It's possible a number of biases are at work but I can't think of a single one which fully covers what's at work when one outright rejects facts based solely on other sources, rather than one's own experiences or topical knowledge (which certainly influence one's willingness to believe facts).

Is this a known/named effect? Is there anything that drives these oddly specific examples of distrust against logic-based evidence?

This might be a matter of social proof; people generally absorb folk knowledge in a less-impersonal way than formal knowledge (your grandmother says it works, instead of hearing/reading that it might work from a reporter who read the abstract of the paper that says so).  I don't know if there has been formal work examining the role of social proof in the acceptance of folk knowledge, though.


What test could I use to measure the short-term memory capacity of a group of people? I want to start a project about the best schedules for learning activities focused on college students.
Since sleeping patterns are totally different in a young adult/teenager, and many of the classes at my university start at 6:00 AM, I had the idea to measure the level of learning capacity or memory an individual between 17–20 years old can achieve at different hours of the day, and assess if it is actually affected by time of day. But first I need to know what kind of tests I could use for this study.

What test could I use to measure the short term memory capacity of a group of "normal" people without any diagnosed learning difficulties?

There are several commonly used measures of Short Term Memory (STM).

Memory span: lists of items are presented sequentially and the participant has to repeat each list after it ends. The lists become progressively longer. The most common variant is called Digit span, in which the items in the lists are spoken digits. Another common variant is called Backwards Digit Span, in which the participant has to repeat the list in backwards order. The WAIS test battery has an implementation of both, along with a standardized scoring method.
Free Recall: a list of stimuli (usually nouns) are presented. After the presentation ends, the participant has to recall, in any order, as many items as possible from the list. The list is typically, 10-15 items long. This task has been used for a long time (e.g. [1]) and is still used in current research (e.g. [2]). Note that there is another variant of the task that is called Serial Recall, in which participants have to recall the items in the order in which they were presented. This variant is essentially identical to the Memory span described above, except the lists used are usually of constant length, and not successively longer as in the memory span task.
N-Back: a stream of stimuli is presented, and the participant has to respond whenever the stimulus presented is identical to the stimulus presented N steps ago. N usually starts at 2, and increases as the participant performs better. This task has been used for a long time (e.g. [3]) and is still used in current research (e.g. [4]).

You should also be aware of the close term Working Memory (WM). The distinction between STM and WM is not really clear. If there is such a distinction, STM deals with simply holding information in memory "As-Is", and WM deals with the ability to perform mental operations on it (such as comparison to other stimuli, mental rotation, re-ordering, etc.).
Backwards memory span and N-back are usually considered tests of WM, while forwards memory span and free recall are considered tests of STM.

As a side note: if you are interested in improving learning/teaching methodologies such as the schedule of classes, I'm not sure why you are interested in measuring STM. I would guess a more relevant property to measure would be the long term retention of what was learned.

[1] Murdock Jr, B. B. (1960). The immediate retention of unrelated words. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 60(4), 222.

[2] Farrell, S. (2012). Temporal clustering and sequencing in short-term memory and episodic memory. Psychological review, 119(2), 223.

[3] Kirchner, W. K. (1958). Age differences in short-term retention of rapidly changing information. Journal of experimental psychology, 55(4), 352.

[4] Jaeggi, S. M., Studer-Luethi, B., Buschkuehl, M., Su, Y. F., Jonides, J., & Perrig, W. J. (2010). The relationship between n-back performance and matrix reasoning—Implications for training and transfer. Intelligence, 38(6), 625-635.


Why didn't I wake up after dying in a dream? So I found a lot of articles about the facts why death in dream wakes us up, like that our brain doesn't know what happens after death, or because of the adrenaline and so on... I had two dreams in my life where I didn't wake up after being killed. I only remember one of them where I have been chased by a woman (the killer) and I was running, I was so nervous and scared and then she caught me and took me somewhere with some indians keeping telling me "It is going to be ok/cool/alright" and I was tied, I noticed the axe she was holding, it was so scary, and then she cut off my head. No awakening. I saw indians taking my body somewhere else, the woman came to me and I told her "It is ok, as you said" and I was so satisfied, filled with a feeling like Why was I scared?/It is absolutely alright... and the dream continued, but nothing special happened.

We still don't know much about dreams, and researching them is, at the most, a volatile kind of attempt to do science. It would be interesting what the statistics in the papers you read were based on, but the subject itself of those researches would be very unscientific because:

you cannot compare the "being dead in a dream" condition to any other condition that opposes it (not being dead in a dream doesn't count, if you look at it, as it means every other dream, and that is a lot of alternate conditions that might or might not wake you up equally)
you rely on "subjective" and hazy accounts of the event, hardly on a MRI scan or anything plausible (how would you choose specifically the subjects and situations where that specific type of dream occurs)?

...and so on.

To put it bluntly, the answer to your question is: because the science in those papers you read was, most probably, questionable if not downright bad.


What electrical stimuli do brain implants use? I was reading about artificial eyes and came to think about how the brain works. More specifically, what "signals" it uses in the case of cortical visual prosthetics in blind people? Cortical prosthetics apply current stimulations through electrodes placed on the surface of the visual cortex.

Now suppose I would want to let a blind person wearing a cortical prosthesis to see the color red, what signal would I send through the electrodes? Would a sine wave of 200 Hz do the job?

Short answer
The track record of cortical visual prosthetics is limited. However, a lot more is known on auditory prostheses (mainly cochlear implants) and retinal prostheses. In these implants, biphasic, charge balanced pulse trains are generally applied, mainly for safety reasons and to reduce current spread through the neural tissue. Sine waves have been tested in cochlear implants, but have long since been abandoned as useful stimulus. Color perception in visual cortical prosthetics is uncovered ground so far, but in retinal implants some limited data is available that color perception can be manipulated by altering the shape and frequency of the electrical pulse trains.

Background
First off, neural prosthetics (including auditory and visual prosthetics, as well as pace makers) in general operate through biphasic pulses instead of sine waves.

Biphasic pulses have the advantage that they can be very short (in the order of tens of microseconds in the case of cochlear implants, and hundreds of microseconds in retinal implants). This is advantageous, because the typical biphasic pulse has two identical phases but of opposite polarity. This means that the injected current is quickly neutralized within microseconds. Note that direct current is damaging to the delicate neural tissues. That's why charge-balanced pulses are used in modern cochlear implants to avoid direct current (DC) stimulation that may damage neural tissues (Bahmer & Baumann, 2013).

Sine waves have been used in cochlear implants (Clark, 2006), as most of the acoustic speech information is conveyed in frequencies between 500 and 400 Hz. Indeed, the auditory nerve does show phase locking when the electrical (or acoustic) stimulus is about 100 Hz or lower. However, biphasic pulse train are the norm nowadays, because it is safer, more power efficient and more effective, as pulses on adjacent electrodes can be alternated to prevent electrical current to summate on closely spaced electrodes. This is called interleaving and has been used widely since the 1990's as it came known as the continuous-interleaved sampling (CIS) strategy (Wilson et al., 1993). A CIS-like strategy has been adopted in retinal implants too, for example the Argus II prosthesis.

Visual prosthetics in general deliver visual perceptions on a gray scale. Cortical prosthetics have not been investigated much. However, retinal implants are currently commercially available from at least two companies. In retinal implants, phosphenes appear mostly as white spots of light, but yellow has been reported too (Stronks & Dagnelie, 2014b) as well as red to orange phosphenes (Humayun et al., 2003). Interestingly, in retinal prostheses it has indeed been shown that by carefully adjusting the pulse rate and pulse shape some crude form of color perception could be induced (Stronks & Dagnelie, 2014a). However, the only consistent result seem to have been that high-pulse rates resulted in blue phosphenes when the stimulation was stopped (OFF response) (Humayun et al., 2003). The thought is that different stimulus characteristics stimulate a different set of fibers in the retina but this is very preliminary at this stage. In cortical implants research has not even touched upon color sensations as yet, as far as I am aware.

References
- Bahmer & Baumann, Hear Res, 306: 123-30
- Clark, Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci (2006); 361(1469): 791–810
- Humayun et al., Vis Res (2003); 43(24): 2573-81
- Stronks & Dagnelie, Exp Rev Med Dev (2014a); 11(1): 23-30
- Stronks & Dagnelie, Encyclopedia of Computational Neuroscience (2014b):
1-4
- Wilson et al., J Rehabil Res Dev (1993); 30(1): 110-6


How do I choose the correct sigma when applying a Gaussian filter to a fixation density map? I am currently analysing some eye tracking data which I recorded in the lab.

For my fixation density maps I calculate tables showing the number of times participants made a fixation at a specific coordinate on the screen.
I then filter them with a gaussian filter (with the matlab function imgaussfilter), however I am not sure how to choose sigma sensibly. I would like to adapt to a paper I based my experiment on. In the paper they used a '2D circular Gaussian Kernel with 0.5° full width at half maximum'. I am not fully sure what this means. Does degree mean visual degree? How can I transfer this to my analysis?

Best regards,

Anna

Yes, they almost certainly mean visual degrees. I presume you know how to calculate visual angles at the distance of your display and how to transform your eye tracked data to that coordinate system.

Full width at half maximum (FWHM) means just what the individual words say: for a Gaussian filter, there are going to be two points on either side of the center that are half of the maximum height of the Gaussian.

When you mention authors writing 2D circular Gaussian Kernel with 0.5° full width at half maximum they mean that the width of their kernel defined this way is 0.5 degrees (or more specifically, the diameter is 0.5 degrees, because they are talking about a 2D circular kernel).

Kernel widths can also be described as "half-width at half-maximum" which would be half of the FWHM.

See Wikipedia for a bit more: Full width at half maximum

To know what sigma to use, you will need to know how the units of your tracking measurements relate to visual degrees.


What positive techniques can be used to motivate individuals resistant to common gamification techniques? A previous question I asked dealt with Gamification techniques to encourage people to perform online workplace training.

We are hoping that we can introduce some game techniques to lift the completion rates.

However I am concerned that a certain percentage will be resistant to this. Perhaps actively resist participation. I want to make sure we capture and motivate a broader set.

Some may suggest a punishment or negative enforcement. I'd rather look for an alternative positive method.

What positive techniques can be used to motivate the individuals resistant to techniques such as badges, leaderboards, reputation points etc?

I would argue that gamification is essentially a form of applied motivational psychology. As such, all findings from research on motivation could potentially be important for gamification. In the other thread that you mention, Self-Determination Theory (Gagne & Deci, 2005) has already been brought up. I would like to make a couple of very general suggestions regarding your problem that stem from SDT.

Self-Determination Theory

In terms of SDT, motivation can be either externally controlled or autonomous. Someone seems to have suggested punishment, which would be a form of externally controlled (a.k.a. extrinsic) motivation. Another obvious way of extrinsically motivating people would be to reward them. Maybe this is an option for you, but since you already mention that reputation points, badges and the like don't work, this might not be a good route.

You are probably looking for a way to motivate people in such a way, that they participate in your games because they are autonomously motivated. In SDT there are 3 different forms of autonomous motivation: intrinsic, identified and integrated motivation. You don't have to worry about those that are intrinsically motivated, because they already like to participate in games and do so. Also, you can't control intrinsic motivation externally, it must come from the individual.

Internalization

However, integrated and identified motivation which are both forms of autonomous motivation (the latter is a weaker form) can be influenced. SDT states that it is possible that a process of internalization occurs, in which a certain behaviour becomes part of the identity of a person, which in turn fosters (autonomous) motivation for this behaviour. In other words, if you manage to somehow influence people's values and attitudes towards your game, they will be more likely to participate in it. As the other thread already mentioned, internalization occurs when the 3 basic psychological needs (need for competency, relatedness and autonomy) are met. SDT puts a special focus on the need for autonomy. Only when this need is met is the behaviour expected to become integrated. So as a very general answer to your question, you might want to look into ways to satisfy those needs. It also seems to work better to satisfy at least 2 of those needs instead of only one (Gagne & Deci, 2005).

Deci et al. (1994) performed a laboratoy experiment to explore ways, in which internalization can be promoted. They found three factors: giving a meaningful rationale, acknowledging that people might not find the task interesting and emphasizing choice rather than control. I must admit though, that I have not read this paper but only the very brief summary that Gagne & Deci (2005) give. It might be interesting for you to read it. Also, there is probably more research on SDT that has be done, so a literature search might yield interesting results.

References:

Deci, E. L., Eghrari, H., Patrick, B. C., & Leone, D. R. (1994). Facilitating internalization: the self-determination theory perspective. Journal of Personality, 62, 119–142.

Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self‐determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational behavior, 26(4), 331-362. PDF


How to determine which scale to use: Nominal vs Interval? I am currently working on immersion and how it can be quantified. One of the problems I have run into is how to determine which scale to use?

I have performed a literature review but have not obtained any insight. Since I do not know if immersion is a binary or graded experience, how should I decide on which scale to use?

Can I use an interval scale and then obtain nominal values from that? If yes, which methods are available?

I highly appreciate your help!

I'd recommend an ordinal scale.

A nominal scale just labels classes without a < or > relation. Using this you would be limited to "immersive" and "not immersive" type of answers. This runs into the danger that experimental subjects might classify all your conditions as immersive or non-immersive respectively. That is, you might get little information.

An ordinal scale is a set of ordered levels with a < or > relation. A 5-point Likert scale like "not immersive at all / a little immersive / moderately immersive / highly immersive/complete immersion" would be an example. In case immersiveness is binary, it would show as all answers falling into only two levels of your scale. That is, you do not lose anything. As an experimental subject, I'd understand such instructions and a rating scale. This is what I'd take.

An interval scale requires a quantitative comparison. For example, the difference between 350ms and 370ms reaction time is as large as between 200ms and 220ms. For immersiveness I do not know of such a scale. Therefore it does not seem an option for you.

There is a further rational scale. But it is even more demanding.

A nice explanation of scales is on https://www.mymarketresearchmethods.com/types-of-data-nominal-ordinal-interval-ratio/


Does the brain get rusty if out of practice? A couple of years back I was in the midst of a lot of competitive exams (for my career, degree etc.). I needed to put my mind to a lot of work. Maths problems, physics problems, logic and GMAT-type questions; you name it.
I haven't been doing these rigorous mental exercises recently. Now, I find that in class I struggle to grasp even the simplest of new concepts.
So, my question: Does the brain lose its edge if out of practice?
(Please state your reasoning. Any references would be appreciated too.)

It doesn't lose its edge; it loses the strength of related associations.

Cognition and skills is very much about memory, and it's all about the neural networks that make up our mental associations.
It might feel like you haven't forgotten anything from the past, but in reality you have forgotten more than you know.

You are not aware that you have forgotten something until something reminds you of something you can't quite remember exactly.
Then you might think "I know I used to know this, I know it's somewhere in my head", or you're more like "How did I use to do that?"

Our neural networks (that is, our associations, our memory) will weaken over time if not used. Whenever we think of something, that association will strengthen. The more we think about something, the stronger the association will get, and that is why we can remember by repeating something again and again.

So when you used to study, your associations got strong because you thought about things often. Then you stopped thinking about most of it, and the association(the memory) weakened a lot.

Now you have to train your memory back to where it used to be.