In measuring preferences, is the magnitude of the question wording effect topic-dependent? I just read that in a survey on legalizing abortions:

  Responses depended strongly on the question wording.

But I have also seen cases where question wording is largely irrelevant. As long as there are no intentional "leading" phrases or general errors like ambiguity, respondents are likely to respond in a similar manner to questions with a similar content.

My hunch, based on personal experience in non-survey contexts, would be that in issues where people have already formed strong attitudes on the topic, a wording which is congruent with existing attitudes will elicit more agreement, and a wording which implies disagreement will elicit more disagreement. But in cases where people don't already have attitudes, the question wording won't be that important. But this is really just a hunch, I have never seen data on that.

Is there a good scientific overview on the factors which determine the relationship between the question topic, the respondent (whether his attitudes or other characteristics), and the likelihood that a difference in question wording will cause a difference in response?

Self-report methodology was one of my qualifying exam topics as a doctoral student of social and personality psychology, so I've got a ton of references to offer, but I confess I haven't read most of them very thoroughly (if at all), and I've forgotten where exactly I've read some of this. It's really a very broad topic as well, so I won't list most I know of that might be relevant here, but I can probably offer more on specific subtopics per request.

Very many relationships exist between respondent characteristics and response biases that depend on survey design. It would be practically unimaginable if topic-in-question weren't a moderating factor for some of them. Social desirability in particular is a form of bias that depends heavily on survey design, participant characteristics, and topic of study. Wikipedia offers a pretty good intro-level summary:

  The tendency poses a serious problem with conducting research with self-reports, especially questionnaires. This bias interferes with the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.

  Topics where socially desirable responding (SDR) is of special concern are self-reports of abilities, personality, sexual behavior, and drug use. When confronted with the question "How often do you masturbate?", for example, respondents may be pressured by the societal taboo against masturbation, and either under-report the frequency or avoid answering the question. Therefore the mean rates of masturbation derived from self-report surveys are likely to be severe underestimates.

  When confronted with the question, "Do you use drugs/illicit substances?" the respondent may be influenced by the fact that controlled substances, including the more commonly used marijuana, are generally illegal. Respondents may feel pressured to deny any drug use or rationalize it, e.g., "I only smoke marijuana when my friends are around." The bias can also influence reports of number of sexual partners. In fact, the bias may operate in opposite directions for different subgroups: Whereas men tend to inflate the numbers, women tend to underestimate theirs. In either case, the mean reports from both groups are likely to be distorted by social desirability bias.

  Other topics that are sensitive to social desirability bias:

  Personal income and earnings, often inflated when low and deflated when high.
  Feelings of low self-worth and/or powerlessness, often denied.
  Excretory functions, often approached uncomfortably, if discussed at all.
  Compliance with medicinal dosing schedules, often inflated.
  Religion, often either avoided or uncomfortably approached.
  Patriotism, either inflated or, if denied, done so with a fear of other party's judgement.
  Bigotry and intolerance, often denied, even if it exists within the responder.
  Intellectual achievements, often inflated.
  Physical appearance, either inflated or deflated
  Acts of real or imagined physical violence, often denied.
  Indicators of charity or "benevolence," often inflated.
  Illegal acts, often denied.
  [Emphasis added.]

An arguable exception to the second-to-last appears in Smith (1987): people respond less generously and more negatively to "welfare" than "poor".

Wikipedia mentions one of many measures of socially desirable responding, but notes:

  The major concern with SDR scales is that they confound style with content. After all, people actually differ in the degree to which they possess desirable traits (e.g., nuns versus criminals).

Another concern is the potential multidimensionality of social desirability bias. Some arises in consciously deceptive responding; another kind arises from unconscious self-deception. These extent of each of these kinds of social desirability bias may depend differently on individual differences in respondents and question topic and wording.

Wikipedia also gives a brief overview of other response styles, including extreme response style, which relates to demographic (Song, 2007) and personality (Hamilton, 1968) factors. An opposite sort of style, the tendency toward neutral / "don't know" responses may be caused by personal uncertainty, item difficulty, or the sensitivity of the topic (Coombs & Coombs, 1976), so this seems to be a pretty complete example of a kind of bias that depends on all three factors. Another one of these response styles, acquiescence (and vice versa), is a somewhat interesting personality variable unto itself (Couch & Keniston, 1960); its influence can be limited by avoiding the "agree vs. disagree" format, but this may be harder in attitude research than in some other topics.

Below this, Wikipedia mentions that anonymity, confidentiality, and neutralized administration can reduce social desirability bias, so in this sense, contextual factors outside the question itself can affect biasing, especially where the judgment of others (e.g., parents, peers, employers, law enforcement) is of concern (e.g., children of authoritarian parents, friends of judgmental people, job applicants facing personality tests, parolees and prior convicts).

A particularly good review article I have on hand (Schwarz, 1999) discusses issues of "question wording, format, and context," including:

Ambiguity, obscurity, and wordiness
Open-ended responding (see also Geer, 1988) vs. frequency reporting and item rating
Topical subjectivity, demand for expertise, and time-dependence

As this article is a review itself, you can also find plenty of other references through it. Another review article that might interest others here relates survey measurement issues to cognitive issues like memory, comprehension, and schema priming (Jobe & Mingay, 1991), each of which I could easily see being more or less relevant in certain contexts and for certain people in ways that would depend on how a question is worded. Again, another huge reference section to be mined for more specifics there too. Yet another review (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) pertains specifically to error (not necessarily systematic bias) in self-reported information about mental processes due to limited self-awareness / insight and the influence of prior theories or plausibility judgments. Good stuff to bring up here, if I do say so myself!

References

Coombs, C. H., & Coombs, L. C. (1976). “Don't Know” Item Ambiguity or Respondent Uncertainty?. Public Opinion Quarterly, 40(4), 497–514.

Couch, A., & Keniston, K. (1960). Yeasayers and naysayers: Agreeing response set as a personality variable. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60(2), 151–174.

Geer, J. G. (1988). What do open-ended questions measure? Public Opinion Quarterly, 52(3), 365–367.

Hamilton, D.L. (1968). Personality attributes associated with extreme response style. Psychological Bulletin, 69(3), 192–203.

Jobe, J. B., & Mingay, D. J. (1991). Cognition and survey measurement: History and overview. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5(3), 175–192.

Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review, 84(3), 231–259. Available online, URL: http://www.apologeticsinthechurch.com/uploads/7/4/5/6/7456646/nisbettwilson.pdf. Retrieved February 5, 2014.

Schwarz, N. (1999). Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54(2), 93–105. Available online, URL: https://edit.ethz.ch/oat/education/material/material_06_07/material_empirical_methods_06_07/American_Psychologist_Self-Reports.pdf.

Smith, T. W. (1987). That which we call welfare by any other name would smell sweeter: An analysis of the impact of question wording on response patterns. Public Opinion Quarterly, 51(1), 75–83.

Song, X.-Y. (2007). Analysis of multisample structural equation models with applications to Quality of Life data. In S.-Y. Lee (Ed.), Handbook of latent variable and related models, pp. 279–302. North-Holland.


Reproducible meta-analysis in psychology I am a big proponent  of reproducible data analysis. In particular, I like when researchers share documents in formats like Sweave and knitr which weave statistical output (e.g., text, tables, and graphs) into a statistical report.

I previously asked for examples of reproducible research of any kind on Stats.SE and for advocating articles in psychology.
However, at present I'm particularly interested in complete examples of reproducible meta-analysis.

Meta-analyses involve a number of steps. Summary statistics and study information is extracted from source studies. Various transformations and steps are applied to the data (e.g., corrections for reliability, conversion from one statistic to another, etc.). Various models are tested; tables and graphs are produced. Some journals are requiring that researchers supply tables of data used (e.g., references used, summary statistics).  However, I can see meta-analysis as an area which could benefit from a more comprehensive reproducible approach: (1) it would permit greater inspection of specific methods used; (2) researchers could more easily build on the analyses used.

Thus, my questions:

Are there any complete examples of reproducible meta-analysis preferably in psychology or a related discipline?
Is there any published advocacy for reproducible meta-analysis?

I have started to see a fair bit of discussion about reproducible meta-analysis.

Tim Churches seems to have a github repository with a few examples of meta-analyses in R.

See in particular the public health example:

RMarkdown source
Formatted Markdown output


Talking about a problem helps (software developing) I am 42 and doing software developer since 20 years.

Since several years I know that talking about a problem helps.

If I can't find a an easy solution myself I talk to a team mate or ask at a site like stackoverflow.

Often it is enough to speak about it (or write the question). If I do this, I often find the solution myself.

I would like to find a matching term (from
psychology or neuroscience) for this.

Question: How do you call this?

If you have links to related studies, please leave a comment. Thank you.

I can think two reasons why talking about a problem helps :

Explaining your knowledge can reveal gaps and bugs

The following extract is from the book Smart Thinking by Art Markman :

Talking about a problem changes its mental representation

  Our mental representation is the ideas, concepts, stories, theories,
  and skills that make up how we internalize something in our mind.
  Gardner writes:

  “Generically, mind change entails the alteration of mental
  representations.  All of us develop mental representations quite
  readily from the beginning of life.  Many such representations are
  serviceable, some have notable charm, others are misleading or flatly
  wrong.  Mental representations have a content:  we think of these
  contents as ideas, concepts, skills, stories, or full-fledged theories
  (explanations of the world).  These contents can be expressed in words
  — and in a book, that medium is customarily used.  However, nearly all
  contents can be expressed in a variety of forms, media, symbol
  systems: these systems can be exhibited publicly as marks on a page
  and can also be internalized in a ‘language of the mind’ or a
  particular ‘intelligence.’”

The mere fact of trying to formulate our thinking into speech, changes its representation (see this article).


What exactly is IQ, and how to develop or improve it? Some people are said to have exceptionally high IQ.
What exactly is that supposed to mean?

Is it possible to develop high IQ if one doesn't have it? If yes, then how?

Literal IQ: In a literal sense, IQ is a standardised score derived from intelligence tests. Typically IQ is scaled to have a a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. In that sense, it is a normative score. For children, the norm is defined relative to other children of a similar age, for adults, it is defined relative to an adult population.

IQ as g: But this still leaves the question of what an IQ score ultimately represents. At a slightly more abstract level, IQ scores typically measures something called g (perhaps g for general intelligence). In a statistical sense, g is the first component that is obtained when you perform a principal components or factor analysis of scores across a large number of cognitive ability tests. In non-statistical terms, when you get  scores on many cognitive ability tests you find that each test will typically share something with other tests, but will also contain a unique bit. g is the common bit across many tests.

g as intelligence: Of course this still leaves the question of why there is the common variance across cognitive tests called g and whether we should care. IQ scores certainly correlate highly with educational performance, vocational outcomes, and many other social indicators (common correlations are in the .3 to .6 range).  If you are new to intelligence, a good starting point is Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns which was put together by an APA task in order to deal with some of the controversy around IQ and intelligence. It covers conceptual definitions of intelligence, correlates and more.

Is it possible to develop IQ?
First, by IQ, I assume you mean latent IQ or latent cognitive ability. In contrast, practicing certain types of ability tests may lead to some small improvement on similar types of tests, and somewhat larger improvement on the identical test items. Cheating on a test could lead to getting a huge IQ. And all these strategies may be effective if your goal is to do well on a test perhaps for educational, vocational, or other selection purposes. However, I am assuming that you don't want to just improve on the test, you want to improve your cognitive ability in terms of the underlying ability that such tests aim to measure.

Many quick fixes to boosting intelligence are advertised under the banner such as brain training, however, there is little evidence that they are effective. And there is strong theoretical and empirical evidence that  domain specific practice does not lead to general improvements in cognitive ability. See for example these earlier questions here, here.

I tend to see boosting IQ as an unproductive goal. I think a more useful aim is to try to be good at something more specific. There is plenty of evidence that humans are able to acquire domain specific expertise with practice. IQ might help in some cases, but it is often not a major limiting factor. See the expertise literature for more information about this, from which K. Anders Ericsson is probably the most famous academic.

That said, you'll see in Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns interesting discussions of (a) how IQ changes over childhood, (b) the relative but not complete stability of IQ in adulthood, (c) the many interventions that have been tried to improve IQ, but that generally failed to yield long term increases, (d) the mysterious Flynn effect  representing major generational increases in IQ scores, and so on. Such evidence suggests that IQ is influenced by environmental factors, but that we're not that good at understanding how to increase it. Presumably any intervention targeted at something as general as IQ would need to be similarly general, such as education or generational changes in lifestyles.


Is there a term for simulated irrationality? When 2 rational people want to accomplish their goals, they'll get compromise by meeting their goals halfway. But if one of them seems irrational, his opponent will go much farther in his concessions since he knows there's the risk of him burning everything to the ground.

Therefore, it can be advantegous to seem irrational or insane. Is there a term for behaving in such a manner on purpose?

I don't think there's an official term for this kind of bluffing specifically, that's widely used. But Nixon's approach to the Soviet Union, to act in an exaggerated irrational manner to deter them from provoking the US, is sometimes referred to as the "Madman Strategy".


Special treatment of youngest member of a group In the German language, there is a term for the youngest member of a family: "Nesthäkchen".

Unfortunately, on Wikipedia I can't find any more details - only the book/film with the same title has a Wikipedia page.

I have seen it several times where the youngest team member gets special treatment. Mostly the older team members are kind to the youngest member, and  thus the youngest member has more freedom/rights than the other team members.

What is this phenomenon called in psychology?

BTW, I guess this phenomena is valid for many mammals.

I'm not aware of any special technical term for such a phenomenon, though colloquially the youngest child may sometimes be called "the baby of the family".  Furthermore, I'm not aware of this phenomenon existing outside of family dynamics - it might be just your personal experience.  In the workplace for example, the youngest members of a team may be treated as inexperienced or incompetent, as competition or threat, or as subordinate or servant.  Favouritism may equally be shown to the eldest, most senior, most productive, or most visionary members of a team.

Within families, a number of surveys have suggested that parents do appear to favour their youngest children.  However, a few interpretations of this phenomenon are possible.  One interpretation is that younger children demand and respond to preferential treatment over their older siblings (eg, Jensen & McHale, 2017).  Another is that younger children are easier to manage than older children, and in fact they receive no better treatment than their older siblings did at the same age (eg, Mumsnet, 2018).  It is also possible that there is a cuteness effect:

  ... human adults react positively to infants who are stereotypically cute.

Also of note: Being the youngest child does not grant any special advantage later in life.


Does "The Brain Machine" work? I came across this article on Make Magazine on "The Brain Machine" which will supposedly put one into a trancelike meditative state via a combination of sound and light pulses.

Is there any scientific evidence supporting the effectiveness of such a device?

I have not heard about any similar devices.

You have to break down the question in two parts.

(1) Is it possible to entrain brain oscillations by presenting oscillating lights or tones?

Yes, it is possible to evoke "response phenomena" in the brain by presenting participants with oscillatory stimuli. The technical term for this phenomenon is "steady state evoked potential" and it was demonstrated for the visual (e.g., Herrmann, 2001) and as well as for the auditory domain (e.g., Zaehle et al., 2010).

(Please note that these references are only examples from one group. A more comprehensive overview can be found at PubMed.)

Thus, the devices you linked to might work in principle, that is, they might be able to entrain different brain oscillations.

(2) Is it possible to put someone into a trancelike meditative state by entraining certain brain oscillations?

It has been shown that the different frequency bands in which brain oscillations can be found are connected to perceptual and cognitive phenomena. (For a short introduction see Wikipedia on brain oscillations). Furthermore these frequency bands are not isolated, but the interweaving of these bands (i.e., cross-frequency coupling)  is not fully understood yet (see for example Jensen & Colgin, 2007).

It has been shown, however, that the manipulation of brain oscillations can alter perception (see for example publications on phase resetting.)

In general, the topic of brain oscillations and its experimental manipulation is quite hot at the moment and receives a lot of attention, especially since new non-invasive methods for oscillatory brain stimulation are available (namely  repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial alternating current stimulation). For a review, see Thut et al. (2011).

To come back to your initial question: no, I am not aware of any study connecting the entrainment of brain oscillations to trancelike meditative states. This, however, does of course not mean that there are no studies. Furthermore, that does not mean that you cannot reach meditative states while using this device. (Personally, I would think that you can reach meditative states with almost any stimulation - if you are good at mediation.)

  References

  Herrmann CS. (2001). Human EEG responses to 1-100 Hz flicker:
  Resonance phenomena in visual cortex and their potential correlation
  to cognitive phenomena. Experimental Brain Research, 137: 346-353.
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/rldm5p6rt912phw2/fulltext.pdf

  Jensen O, Colgin LL. (2007) Cross-frequency coupling between neuronal
  oscillations. Trends in Cognitive Science 11(7):267-9.
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661307001271

  Thut G, Schyns GP  & Gross J (2011) Entrainment of Perceptually
  Relevant Brain Oscillations by Non-Invasive Rhythmic Stimulation of
  the Human Brain. Frontiers in Psychology 2011; 2: 170.
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3142861/?tool=pmcentrez

  Zähle T, Lenz D, Ohl FW, Herrmann CS. (2010). Resonance phenomena in
  the human auditory cortex: Individual resonance frequencies of the
  cerebral cortex determine electrophysiological responses. Experimental
  Brain Research, 203, 629-635.
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w264045p1j5532pg/fulltext.pdf


Does everyone have some degree of Aspergers? I have taken some tests for Asperger's which gives a rating point, and the higher you score its more likely that you have asperger. I was just wondering if this means that there are degrees of asperger, that everyone is asperger to some degree, or is this rating just a property of the test, and people either have asperger syndrome or not?

Whatever test you took, it does not test Asperger. It tests for symptoms that are typical in someone with Asperger.

For example one Asperger test asks you to rate the following statement (translated from German) on a skale from 1 = "totally disagree" to 4 = totally agree":

I prefer to spend my leisure time with other people rather than alone.

Now of course people with Asperger often tend to stay by themselves and undertake things alone rather than with friends, but many non-Asperger people might feel that they sometimes enjoy time alone also, for example if they are naturally shy and find being with others enjoyable but exhausting, or if they have a job dealing with people and they like to have some free time by themselves to relax from the constant interaction.

Just this weekend I read an interview with one of the most influential German movie directors, Doris Dörrie, who said how she likes to go on holidays by herself, especially to foreign countries where she cannot interact with anyone because she does not speak the language, and she goes on to tell how she went to Japan and enjoyed her aloneness tremendously and spent whole days basking in being outside society and looking on. Totally Asperger, if you think about it. But her job is to intensely interact with people, and she simply needs time off from that.

It's totally unremarkable that many people show some of the behaviors or emotions that people with Asperger (or other psychological disorders) show. It does not mean that they have Asperger to some degree. Rather, if someone rates very high in that test, that is merely an indication that they very likely have Asperger. No psychological diagnosis relies purely on a single self-report measure, but on a complex series of observation, interviews, and a battery of tests.

Also see the answer by Eoin for a different perspective on the question.


If a human brain would be placed inside that of an animal: Could it talk? Assumption: Animals can't talk 'human' because of their small(er) brain.

Perhaps a strange thought, but I was really wondering: If we could place a human brain inside that of an animal: Would we be able to speak 'human', instead of 'animal'?

Part of what makes speech possible is a complex set of interactions between a number of different muscles that control aspects of producing speech sounds like airflow and mouth shape. Humans are unique in the complexity of the sounds that we can produce. Even if we granted the science-fiction that would be necessary to put a human brain into a chimpanzee and somehow managed to reconnect the analogous neural pathways to sensory organs and effectors, human speech wouldn't be possible because it requires a human body.

This Wikipedia page gives an overview of the biological developments that support speech.


Awareness of unconditional positive regard When Unconditional Positive Regard is in use through several therapy sessions and a client asks about this technique. What explanation should be given?

Unconditional Positive Regard is one of the core conditions in Person Centered Counselling and so is congruence.

In order for you to provide Unconditional  Positive Regard (UPR), you need to be congruent and in order for you to be congruent you need to be genuine in your responses.  Therefore, you should only provide the truth to any question asked.

You need to tell them what UPR is and that in order for UPR to exist you will be non-judgemental and you would provide a safe and warm environment for them to explore what is troubling them in the here and now.


Which is the most valid/validated scale for diagnosis of Major depression for an Indian population? I am planning a study of an online intervention for depression in India. We were planning to use Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) for assessing the depression symptom severity. One of our collaborators raised an important question in a recent meeting. He asked what is the validity of PHQ-9 in India and is there a possibility of using any other tool that is more valid?

I have searched the web and found some studies that have used PHQ-9 in adult (another study) as well as adolescent populations in India. I also found a paper that developed a slightly modified version of PHQ-9, called PHQ-12, for an Indian population.

I just wanted to know if there is any other tool that has been developed specifically for an Indian population or even any tool that has been well validated for an Indian population.

I am sharing my research here should anybody find it useful.

=========================================================================

Although PHQ-9 wasn’t developed for an Indian audience, it has been used by multiple
studies in India [1, 2, 3]. It has also been validated for an adolescent population, and a
score of was found to have high sensitivity (87.1%) and specificity (79.7%) [4]. A
modified version of PHQ-9, the PHQ-12, was developed and validated on a South Indian
population of 100 participants. PHQ-12 essentially tests the same symptoms as PHQ-9
but differs in number of questions, the specific wordings of the questions, and the
marking scheme. PHQ-12 lets the patient mark every question in a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. A
‘Yes’ is given a score of 1 and a ‘No’ a score of 0. A total score of >4 according to this

marking scheme has shown the highest sensitivity (92.0%) and specificity (90.7%) when
compared against PHQ-9 [5].
Other popular scales for diagnosis of depression - Hamilton Depression Rating Scale,
Beck Depression Inventory, and Montogomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale - have
been adapted for an Indian population [6, 7, 8]. Brief Patient Health Questionnaire has
also been translated into 11 Indian languages and validated for an Indian population [9].
A novel scale, Amritsar Depressive Inventory (ADI), has been developed based on
symptoms which are more prevalent in Indian populations [10].

Mehrotra, Seema, et al. "Profile of seekers of an internet-based self-help program
for depression in India: observations and implications." International Journal Of
Community Medicine And Public Health (2017).
Sidana, Surbhi, et al. "Prevalence of depression in students of a medical college in
New Delhi: a cross-sectional study." The Australasian medical journal 5.5
(2012): 247.
Thour, Amit, et al. "Depression among patients with diabetes mellitus in North
India evaluated using patient health questionnaire-9." Indian journal of
endocrinology and metabolism 19.2 (2015): 252.
Ganguly, Samrat, et al. "Patient health questionnaire-9 as an effective tool for
screening of depression among Indian adolescents." Journal of Adolescent Health
52.5 (2013): 546-551.
Poongothai, S., et al. "Reliability and validity of a modified PHQ-9 item
inventory (PHQ-12) as a screening instrument for assessing depression in Asian
Indians (CURES-65)." (2009).
Ajmany S, Nandi DN. Adaptation of A. T. Beck et al.'s "an inventory for
measuring depression" Indian J Psychiatry 1973;15:386-90.
Ganguli M, Dube S, Johnston JM, Pandav R, Chandra V, Dodge HH. Depressive
symptoms, cognitive impairment and functional impairment in a rural elderly
population in India: A Hindi version of the geriatric depression scale (GDS-H).
Int J Geriatr Psychiatry 1999;14:807-20.
Raguram R, Weiss MG, Channabasavanna SM, Devms GM. Stigma, depression,
and somatization in south India. Am J Psychiatry 1996;1531043-9.
Kochhar, P. H., S. S. Rajadhyaksha, and V. R. Suvarna. "Translation and
validation of brief patient health questionnaire against DSM IV as a tool to
diagnose major depressive disorder in Indian patients." Journal of postgraduate
medicine 53.2 (2007): 102.
Grover, Sandeep, Alakananda Dutt, and Ajit Avasthi. "An overview of Indian
research in depression." Indian journal of psychiatry 52.Suppl1 (2010): S178.


Freud's theory regarding child to parent attraction This may be a thought from false information but even from some teachers I've heard quotes of how Sigmund Freud had a theory about how children are attracted to their parent of the opposite gender.

I was just thinking, is that the real theory? Or did Freud mean that we are attracted to the person that reminds us of our parent of the opposite gender either physically and/or emotionally?

Both are true, to my knowledge (in the sense that Freud did believe this). They relate to the Oedipus and Electra complexes, which are are core parts of classical Freudian theory.

Children, through the Oedipus and Electra complexes during the phallic developmental stage, where they sexually desire their same-sex parent, eventually come to identify with their same-sex parent by resolving these desires through different mechanisms. These mechanisms are castration anxiety, in boys, and penis envy, in girls.

He believed that these mechanisms would lead to partner preferences matching the same-sex parent. Freud also believed that failing to successfully resolve the Oedipus or Electra complex could lead to a host of "problems" in adulthood, like neurosis, pedophilia and homosexuality.

I don't need to say that this classical view is outdated and not supported by evidence or modern theories.


Origin of the SEEV Model of visual attention distribution What's the original source of the SEEV (Salience Effort Expectancy Value) Model for predicting the distribution of visual attention? I've seen it mentioned in many papers and presentations but everyone of them lacks a reference to the source of this model.

Does anyone have a valid reference?

Wickens et al. (2003) is the earliest I'm aware of:

Wickens, C. D., Goh, J., Helleberg, J., Horrey, W. J., & Talleur, D.
A. (2003). Attentional models of multitask pilot performance using
advanced display technology. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society, 45(3), 360-380.

Actually, in that paper he cites Wickens et al. (2001), but I can't seem to find
a copy of this manuscript anywhere, and it has fewer citations:

Wickens, C. D., Helleberg, J., Goh, J., Xu, X., & Horrey, W. J.
(2001). Pilot task management: Testing an attentional expected value
model of visual scanning. Savoy, University of Illinois Institute of
Aviation.

If you're using N-SEEV, cite one of these instead:

Steelman-Allen, K. S., McCarley, J. S., Wickens, C., Sebok, A., &
Bzostek, J. (2009, October). N-SEEV: A computational model of
attention and noticing. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and
Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 53, No. 12, pp. 774-778). SAGE
Publications.
Wickens, C., McCarley, J., & Steelman-Allen, K. (2009, October).
NT-SEEV: A model of attention capture and noticing on the flight deck.
In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual
Meeting (Vol. 53, No. 12, pp. 769-773). SAGE Publications.


Can one depressive episode be enough to prescribe antidepressants? Suppose someone were to see a psychiatrist, explain their life problems and such and then their psychiatrist concludes they are currently in a depressive episode. Their psychiatrist doesn't yet know if they have major depressive disorder - MDD - bipolar disorder or no disorder.

Are there situations where someone in such scenario might be able to be prescribed antidepressants or any kind of medication? I can tell such situations are rare since doctors would probably want more information before prescribing medication.

The context of this question is what we can conclude from those who are prescribed antidepressants. Does the fact that they have been prescribed such medications imply that they have been diagnosed with or highly thought by a doctor to have a mental illness instead of simply having an "episode" or a temporary mental health problem?

Sorry if the assumptions of my questions are wrong. I'm assuming that there are cases where mental health problems are temporary much like having a fever and some are permanent much like being farsighted. To my knowledge, people can experience a depressive episode without having MDD or bipolar

Suppose someone were to see a psychiatrist, explain their life
  problems and such and then their psychiatrist concludes they are
  currently in a depressive episode. Their psychiatrist doesn't yet know
  if they have major depressive disorder - MDD - bipolar disorder or no
  disorder.

  Are there situations where someone in such scenario might be able to
  be prescribed antidepressants or any kind of medication?

Yes, absolutely. I do not think that they are necessarily rare either. As this link attests:

The proportion of non-psychiatrist doctor visits where antidepressants were prescribed without a documented psychiatric diagnosis increased from 59.5% to 72.7% between 1996 and 2007, according to a new study in Health Affairs.

  Does the fact that they have been prescribed such medications imply
  that they have been diagnosed with or highly thought by a doctor to
  have a mental illness instead of simply having an "episode" or a
  temporary mental health problem?

Being prescribed the medicine implies that the doctor believed that they were suffering from depression, a form of mental illness. Other factors (e.g., the symptoms or their history) would dictate whether the doctor though it was/would be a long term mental illness/mental health problem.


Does neuroplasticity cancel the notion of "aptitudes" as a natural gift? Considering the definition of neuroplasticity as the capability of our brain to rewire itself by forming new neural connections throughout the life, it seems to me that our brain is like a programmable computer and all we have to do is to input new codes and debug/delete/re-program what we have internalized from our parents and the environment.

Having that in mind, this notion that people are being born by some special gifts called "aptitudes" loses its credibility. According to what aptitude pros say: "Aptitudes are natural talents born differently in every individual and they are special abilities for doing, or learning to do, certain kinds of things which is unique in every person."

It seems to me that what we have in our unconscious "to some extent" can be controlled by what we consciously decide to do and therefore, neuroplasticity seems more true to me than being born by special gifts called "aptitudes". Am I correct? or, there is still more to know about the relationship between "neuroplasticity" and "aptitudes"?

To elaborate upon @Rooirokbokkie's comment, neuroplasticity is not exactly like changing computer code, because the brain is not a computer. The brain performs computations, but thinking of it as analogical to consumer CPUs and their Von-Neumann architecture is limiting. For more information on this idea, see "Moving Beyond Metaphors: Understanding The Mind For What It Is" by Chris Eliasmith.

The most important difference is that not everything in your brain is re-wireable. Related questions that explore this are:

Does adult neurogenesis occur only in the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus?
What evidence is there that the adult brain can produce new neurons?


Is the consciousness currently in oneself the same as the consciousness that used to be or in the future will be in oneself? People seem to believe that one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others, but the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future. How likely is this to be true? I have almost no knowledge about neuroscience, so please refrain from using much neuroscience jargon if feasible, even if it's at the cost of not giving a thorough explanation. A simple "yes," "no," or "we have no idea" answer would suffice if need be.

Short answer
Consciousness is different between individuals and can change over time.

Background
Nelkin (1997) provides the following definition of consciousness:

  When philosophers and psychologists think about consciousness, they generally focus on one or more of three features: phenomenality (how experiences feel), intentionality (that experiences are "of" something, that experiences mean something), and introspectibility (our awareness of phenomenality and intentionality of experiences).

Although I am not an expert on the matter I think this definition answers your question. You say People seem to believe that one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others, but the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future. Because the phenomenality changes over time, because past experience change the way sensations feel (new versus familiar sensations are very different) your statement that consciousness is constant is invalid.

The intentionality and most notably the introspectibility makes consciousness a very personal thing, meaning that your statement ...one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of other is valid.

As a neuroscientist I can tackle the two statements posed on more familiar ground to me. I dare to say that consciousness is not a stable entity, because in the end, sensations, perceptions and awareness of the world are all in your head and generated by neurons. Because psychoneuropharmaca or brain damage can lead to temporary and permanent altered states of consciousness, respectively, the statement that ...the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future is simply invalid.

From a similar neuroscientific vantage point one's brain is obviously different and physically separate from another person's brain, so we quite frankly are not sharing a consciousness. Consciousness is therefore a personal thing, the more since one can suffer brain damage without another even noticing it, hence one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others must be true.

Reference
Nelkin N, Philosophy of Science 1993


Metacognitive strategy in terms of cognitive science Everything I can find about term 'metacognitive strategy' or 'metacognition' is related to teaching or learning strategies, but I wonder what does it actually mean in terms of cognitive science.

I don't think there's a single meaning for this term, mainly because "cognitive science" is pretty broad and inclusive. So people working in different sub-fields of cognition use it to refer to different things, depending on what they're working on. A couple examples outside of learning and teaching might be confidence judgements (how likely is it that your last response was correct? etc) in memory or categorization studies, or things like 'planning to plan' in resource-rational accounts of behavior, where you might want to work out how much time you can afford to spend making a decision. These are pretty different areas, but they are all legit ways to use the word 'metacognition', as are the learning and teaching examples you mention. They're all 'thinking about thinking' in some sense.
Actually if it comes to that I don't think there's a single clean and universally accepted definition for 'cognition' either. You recognize it when you see it, it's just a vibe sort of thing. Or, to put it more scientifically, 'cognitive' is a fuzzy category ala Rosch.
Confidence/error tracking example:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rstb.2011.0416
resource-rational example:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1801.09848.pdf


Treatment and strategies for procrastination for ADHD I am keen to know what strategies and treatment approaches works best for procrastination for people with ADHD?

People with ADHD seem to have a different level of complexity from the usual procrastination with neurotypical people. Another thread discussed how people with ADD/ADHD "often heavily discount the importance of an event if it's sufficiently far away from the current time", which does not seem to occur as much with neurotypicals.

ADHD research has increased recently and I was wondering whether there has been any evidence found to be effective with procrastination in this specific population as yet?

The difference between ADHD procrastination and usual procrastination was nicely discussed in this thread -
Effectiveness of aversion therapy for procrastination

Usual procrastination is addressed here - What works for procrastination

This is an interesting question, and after mostly failing to find recent literature I've become fascinated at why this topic is not more heavily studied. It looks like a field ripe for disruption by new ideas and approaches.

I'm not convinced that procrastination is any different in those diagnosed with ADHD than in neurotypicals. As with many psychiatric diagnoses, behaviors are described in the DSM but mechanisms are usually unknown. Without knowing any mechanism (hand-waving a probable weakness of connection between prefrontal areas and motor areas, but no idea what may weaken it) it's hard to say whether an unknown mechanism in ADHD differs from an unknown mechanism in everyone else, or even that the distinction between ADHD and normal has clear boundaries. I'd really appreciate the education of being shown evidence I'm wrong here, but I've seen heated debates over defining ADHD, and Stack Exchange doesn't do extended back-and-forth discussions.

The slope of the curve representing what I've known as "delay discounting" (also called "time preference") was described by Green and Myerson and has been associated with ADHD, drug abuse and gambling, and lower socioeconomic status. But I don't see this as a mechanism, just another way to quantify the behavior.

The nature of procrastination by Piers Steel and Longitudinal study of procrastination, performance, stress, and health by Roy Baumeister seem to be the most relevant (highly cited) descriptions of procrastination, and both are over a decade old. Some intervention articles I've found are ADHD outcomes for children treated in community based pediatric settings by Jeffrey Epstein (not that one), et al and Academic interventions for academic procrastination by Zacks and Hen, but I can't find anything on interventions that seems to be highly cited and well-accepted.

I disclose that I often procrastinate on StackExchange. I'm currently reading and writing about procrastination rather than working on analyses I need done asap. :(


Difference between conditioned freezing, shock sensitization to startle and conditioned fear potentiation to startle? I am reading paper-listed below-that talks about three terms,
Conditioned freezing;
Shock sensitization to startle;
Conditioned fear potentiation to startle.
I understand that conditioned freezing takes place when the subject (rat) learns to associate a neutral stimulus (CS) with an aversive stimulus (US), such that when the CS is presented alone, the subject will freeze in the form of defensive behavior. However, I do not understand its relation to the other two terms listed above.
The paper citation is below,
Richardson, R., & Vishney, A. (2000). Shock sensitization of startle in the developing rat. Developmental Psychobiology: The Journal of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology, 36(4), 282-291.

The first sentence of the abstract is:

Rats given a series of shocks exhibit a potentiated startle response to a loud
acoustic stimulus compared to nonshocked animals

Shock sensitization to startle refers to how giving a series of shocks results in a stronger startle in response to a startling acoustic stimulus.
The first sentence of the introduction is:

Presentation of a stimulus (e.g., a tone or a light) that had been previously paired with an aversive stimulus (e.g., shock) markedly enhances the unconditioned startle response to a loud, unexpected noise. This effect is referred to as fear potentiation of startle

Fear potentiation of startle is a more general case of "shock sensitization to startle" - animals who are made fearful respond more strongly to a startling cue. This is probably something you are familiar with as a human, too: think about jump scares in a haunted house, being startled by something while watching a scary movie, a sudden noise when walking in the dark, etc.
When reading a paper you might start at the beginning and find the first places that terms you are interested in are mentioned - that's usually where they will be defined.


Is there sub-conscious error correction in interpreting heard language? My personal experience suggests there is a background process taking place when interpreting a partially heard utterance. The sound is taken in, the conscious part of my mind begins the process of asking for a repetition because of imperfect reception and then a possible interpretation is delivered to my conscious mind for acceptance or rejection. Usually the logic can be seen, how a few words heard imperfectly can be combined to make sense, a partially heard name combined with a pronoun and a mental list of participants narrows the possibilities to one or two, but I don't have a sense of doing this analysis consciously. A second, almost a paraphrase, interpretation is offered up  seemingly from the sub-conscious, "she's asking about Tony's birthday."

If you try to search for linguistics or language and error correction you will find out that there is a lot of concern about teacher behavior during language acquisition. That is not what I want to know about.

I would like to know if there is a subfield in cog-sci that deals with error correction specifically with regard to heard language. Somewhere I can begin a search. Sometimes all you need is the right search terms.

A simple explanation for the phenomenon is top-down feedback. As the bottom-up acoustic/phonological input is coming in, there is top-down feedback based on your knowledge of the language, the situation, and all of the other contextual information, which is helping to constrain or inform your interpretation of the bottom-up signal. A classic example that is close to the example in your question is the phoneme restoration effect (originally demonstrated by Warren in 1970, and studied in depth by Samuel for decades): if a speech sound is replaced with an extraneous sound like a cough, listeners still report hearing the missing speech sound. Importantly, they report hearing exactly the sound that would belong in that context. So a manipulated word like "*eel"(where the * corresponds to the cough), sounds like "wheel" if it is the context "the *eel was on the axle", but the same word sounds like "peel" in the context of "the *eel was on the orange".

This kind of integration of multiple sources of information is typically called "interactive processing". For a review in the domain of speech perception see McClelland, Mirman, & Holt (2006).

References:

McClelland, J. L., Mirman, D., & Holt, L. L. (2006). Are there interactive processes in speech perception? Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(8), 363–369. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.06.007

Samuel, A. G. (1981). Phonemic restoration: Insights from a new methodology. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110(4), 474–494.

Samuel, A. G. (1996). Does lexical information influence the perceptual restoration of phonemes? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125(1), 28–51.

Warren, R. M. (1970). Perceptual restoration of missing speech sounds. Science, 167(3917), 392–393.


How to efficiently use a statistical consultant? I a fairly solid grasp of Statistics and have taught statistics to both undergraduate and graduate Psychology students. There are, however, sizable gaps in my knowledge and I have attempted to employ a statistical consultant a couple of times. The conversations generally devolved into the consultant suggesting experiments and analyses that did not answer the research questions I was interested in. I am beginning a retrospective epidemiological study which is far enough outside my experience that I want to try a statistical consultant again.

How do I prepare for talking to a statistical consultant such that our discussions can be productive. How much time will it take before I see progress being made on our mutual understanding of the issues (hours, days, weeks, months ...)?

This is a challenging question. As a bit of background, I am a cognitive scientist for the most part (by my highest graduate degree), but in addition to that, I have graduate degrees in both math and statistics and I have worked professionally as a consultant in those fields for many years. So I have some access to the problems on both sides of this question.

Statistical consulting is a point of training for some, but certainly not all, graduate students in statistics. What this means is that some people acting as consultants will be well trained in this activity, while others may be picking it up as they go. So you want to talk to either a more senior consultant or work with a statistics consultancy that has more senior people there to make sure your consultant knows what he or she is doing. That said, there is a standard of care in consulting these days, outlined in (among other examples) this ASA document, this 2010 conference paper, and this white paper by Flavia Jolliffe. Also Zahn and Isenberg is a classical paper on this. These may give you an idea of what the consultants who get trained are taught.

Consultants in statistics are well trained (usually!) in methodologies, but the main weakness in their training is usually exposure to the complexities of any given scientific field. In particular, unless they consult for people in your field regularly, the single hardest problem will be communicating in a concise way what it has taken you years to learn yourself: the specifics of your research problems. A solution here is to find someone who specializes in problems related to your research area. While not comprehensive, this page at ASA lets you search for statisticians by speciality, including some content areas (including epidemiology). Also remember that statisticians live in various academic departments (if you are using academic consultants) and these departments often are only vaguely aware of each other: as an example, I used to be at a university where the main campus statistical consultancy was in a school of social sciences, and the actual statistics department did not interact with them at all. Searching broadly is sometimes helpful.

If you cannot find a specialist, then communication is the key, and it will take longer to get to results in your relationship with your consultant. The paper by Jolliffe (above) has good advice that might be useful both to the consultant and to the client in terms of what to do and how to communicate (and there are some references there that go further). But this will be the central problem, so working closely on clarifying the research goals is probably the most important step.

A good preparation is to think about the problem before meeting the consultant and imagine trying to explain it to a good student or colleague from another field. Try to think through the particularly specialist parts of the problem before meeting the consultant; how would you explain these to someone new in your research lab? Likewise, if the consultant is not clear in responding to you, be direct is asking for more clarity. I believe this is covered by item E.2 of the ASA's ethical guidelines for consulting and collaborating for statisticians.

Not that any of this applies to your case, but from the point of view of the consultant, there are a number of things worth noting. First, clients, especially those with statistical knowledge, often come in with strong expectations of what the right answer is, and sometimes grow offended at questions from the consultant that try to get at the real questions being asked. As an example, I used to consult with psychologists who basically wanted me to tell them how to do an ANOVA on their data, even when that was the wrong analysis. So be open to analyses that you are not used to using. Also, a good consultant will ask a lot of questions to clarify the statistical question you want answered. Always assume good faith, and do try to answer the questions even if you don't fully understand them. But be willing to say (and explain) when you think the consultant's questions miss the point. Another issue is when people come into consulting so late that all there is for the statistician to do is conduct a post mortem. If you are serious about consulting, meet with them early on in the process. Finally, work out payments or collaboration rules up front. You would be amazed how often statisticians are asked to do pro bono work, either implicitly or explicitly.

tl;dr Communication, and it may take some time.


How do different dendritic spines experience a correlated/coupled calcium signaling? The following quote from the discussion in a review paper by Higley and Sabatini:

  Finally, several studies demonstrate the ability of dendritic Ca
  transients to herald near-synchronous and spatially clustered synaptic
  activation. However, most of this evidence has been acquired in brain
  slices using forms of synaptic activation that may not closely
  resemble in vivo conditions. The intact brain is awash with robust and
  behaviorally context-specific patterns of synchronous neuronal
  activity (Buzsaki and Draguhn, 2004; Llina´ s and Steriade, 2006;
  Stevens and Zador, 1998).

  Moreover, neurons in vivo are influenced by both excitatory and
  inhibitory synaptic connections as well as state-dependent actions of
  myriad neuromodulators.

Higley, M.J. and Sabatini, B.L., 2008. Calcium signaling in dendrites and spines: practical and functional considerations. Neuron, 59(6), pp.902-913.

made me pondering about the following questions:

What's the difference between Calcium signal into the spine versus "Ca transients"?
How do different neurons/spines have a coupled/correlated calcium signal?

With little to go on, your questions are difficult to answer specifically but I'll give the general guidance I can.

1) Calcium signals in neurons are typically brief. "Calcium transient" is a synonym for "brief calcium signal." Someone could contrast between types of calcium transients in terms of their source (external calcium vs. internal stores), location (spines vs dendrites), etc, but you would have to give a more specific example to describe any difference.

2) Calcium signals could be correlated in different neurons or different spines of the same neurons if both cells/spines get excitatory input from the same presynaptic cell, or if excitatory input is from different cells that have temporally correlated firing. You could also get coupling if the entire dendrite is depolarized, either locally or via a back-propagating action potential. Again, without a specific example it's difficult to give more information.

The review you cite:

Higley, M. J., & Sabatini, B. L. (2008). Calcium signaling in dendrites and spines: practical and functional considerations. Neuron, 59(6), 902-913.

discusses both (1) and (2).


What regulates the strength of motor signals? I've seen cognitive and robot models where the input signals from the sensors are directly used as the signal for outgoing motor control.

This doesn't make much sense, because obviously we're able to do heavy work with our muscles quite independently from the strength of incoming signals from our sensor systems. However when I consulted several books on general cognition, I wasn't able to discover the source of these arbitrarily strong signals - I'd suspect the thalamus.

I wonder how you could perform a task, e.g. playing a piano, by applying weak or strong force. Both the plan (how to move the fingers) and the feedback (how it sounds) signal would remain the same.

So where does the signal for motor behavior originate, and more importantly what (or who) regulates its strength? Where does the extra energy come from?

Short answer
Muscles are controlled by motor neurons in the spinal cord. The number of motor neurons that fire, as well as their individual firing rates govern the control of muscle force.

Background
Muscles consist of contractile elements: the muscle fibers. These muscle fibers are under direct control of the motor neurons in the spinal cord (Purves et al., 2001), as shown in Fig. 1. The motor neurons in the spinal cord are under direct control of the motor cortex in the brain. When the motor neurons fire, they release acetylcholine, which in turn makes the muscle fibers contract. The force in which a muscle contracts is basically governed by how strong a single muscle contracts, and the number of muscle fibers that are recruited.

Firstly, there is the rate code that allow motor neurons to regulate muscle force. An increase in the rate of action potentials fired by the motor neuron causes an increase in the amount of force that the associated motor unit (i.e., one or more muscle fibers) generates. When the motor neuron fires a single action potential, the muscle may only slightly twitch. If the motor neuron fires at high rates, however, the second action potential may arrive at the muscle unit before the muscle has had time to recover from the first twitch, and that second action potential will produce a greater amount of force than the first. This is due to an increase in strength of muscle contraction through action potential summation. This process has a limit. When the successive action potentials no longer produce a summation of muscle contraction (because the muscle is at its maximum state of contraction), the muscle is in a state called tetanus and is pushed to its limit (source: Neuroscience Online).

Secondly, there the recruitment of motor neurons (size principle). When a signal is sent to the motor neurons to execute a movement, motor neurons are not all recruited at the same time, or at random. The motor neuron size principle states that, with increasing strength of input onto the motor neurons from the higher brain centers, smaller motor neurons are recruited first, while the larger motor neurons are recruited only when the motor signal increases. Why does this orderly recruitment occur? Because of Ohm’s Law, a small amount of synaptic current will be sufficient to cause the membrane potential of a small motor neuron to reach firing threshold, while the large motor neuron stays below threshold. As the amount of current increases, the membrane potential of the larger motor neuron also increases, until it also reaches firing threshold. This process is called recruitment and results in more motor neurons to be activated when the brain signals for the need for a high contractile force. More motor neurons will recruit more muscle fibers (source: Neuroscience Online).

Fig. 1. Motor neurons from the spinal cord innervate the muscles. source: SE Veterinary Neurology

References
- Purves et al. (eds), Neuroscience, 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates. Motor Neuron-Muscle Relationships
- University of Texas, Houston Health Science Center. Neuroscience Online


When can anchoring backfire? Anchoring is a well-known phenomenon [1]. However, I just ran an experiment where the effect seemingly backfired. Basically, I asked people to estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar. In my anchor condition, people were given an estimate produce by the Jelly Bean Counter 5000 computer system which was purported to be highly accurate, then they were allowed to see the jar. They were then asked to estimate the number of jelly beans.

People who were not anchored were allowed to see the jar of jelly beans first, then estimate the count. Then, they were showed Jelly Bean Counter 5000's estimate. They were then allowed to re-estimate the number of jelly beans in the jar.

In all cases, Jelly Bean Counter 5000 provided the exact number of jelly beans in the jar.

The results are shown in the figure below. Basically, people who were anchored with the Jelly Bean Counter 5000 number were about 62% accurate. People who made their own estimate first (self-anchoring) were initially about 46% accurate, but after seeing Jelly Bean Counter 5000's estimate, they increased to about 72% accurate.

I'm at a loss to explain why people exposed to an accurate estimate (Jelly Bean Counter 5000) ended up being less accurate than people who formed their own inaccurate opinion first. Can anybody provide any alternative explanations? Are there any theories that might be applicable?

[1] Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Science, 185(4157), 1124-1131.

I think there is a significant confound in your experimental design: The anchored subjects only make 1 estimate whereas the "no anchor" subjects make 2 estimates. Note that on the first estimate the anchored subjects were much closer to the anchor than the non anchored ones, which is entirely consistent with Tversky's heuristic.

Also, "In all cases, Jelly Bean Counter 5000 provided the exact number of jelly beans in the jar." means that this isn't really a standard anchoring task. Normally, anchoring values aren't correct (in fact much of the anchoring work involves very incorrect anchors). This task confounds being close to the anchor with being close to the correct answer.

You might have an interesting finding: more anchoring after a non-anchored guess, but without correcting for the 2-guess and perfect anchor confounds your results can't be properly interpreted.


What are 'gap junctions' (electrical synapses) for? I was reading this and I found the following sentences:

  Apart from chemical synapses neurons can also be coupled by electrical synapses, so-called gap junctions. Specialized membrane proteins make a direct electrical connection between the two neurons. Not very much is known about the functional aspects of gap junctions, but they are thought to be involved in the synchronization of neurons.

Do we really know very little about the functional aspects of gap junctions? And how are they involved the 'synchronization' of neurons?

Gap junctions can couple cells directly electrically. Cell types electrically coupled via gap junctions include neurons, the pancreatic islets of Langerhans (Andreu et al, 1997) and cardiac cells (Fig. 1.). In contrast to chemical synapses, information transfer via electrical "synapses" (gap junctions) is nearly instantaneous. In chemical information flow, the synapse is the rate limiting step, because it depends on the passive diffusion of neurotransmitters across the synaptic cleft.

Fig. 1. The pacemaker potential in cardiac muscle cells spreads rapidly across the surface of the heart to generate synchronous muscle contraction. Source: Austin Community College.

Moreover, in a structure such as a brain nucleus many cells can be coupled. In other words, if all cells in a tissue contain gap junctions, all these cells are directly electrically coupled, not just those cells directly touching each other. In a way, all cells in such a tissue are in open connection with each other. This means that when one cell fires, it can theoretically activate all the connected cells to fire an action potential in near-synchrony.

Hence, gap junctions allow for synchronous activation of inter-connected neurons, both  in the spatial and temporal domain.

While this can be the preferred mode of operation of firing in some neuronal structures such as the olivary nucleus (Leznik & Llinás, 2005), it can theoretically lead to trouble in case pathological synchronization is established, leading to epileptic activity (Dudek, 2002).

Whether we know little, or much of gap junctions is subjective. However, it is certainly true that way more research is available on chemical neurotransmission than on electrical transmission. Likewise, many more medications target chemical transmission than electrical neurotransmission.

References
- Andreu et al, J Physiol (1997), 498(3): 753-61
- Dudek, Epilepsy Curr (2002); 2(4): 133–6
- Leznik & Llinás, J Neurophysiol (2005); 94(4): 2447-56


What are the temporal limits of the auditory system? I would like to know what the time scale is of the human ear. I mean, what is the shortest duration of a sound that a human ear can notice
and what is the longest duration of a sound that a human ear can not track?

As far as I know, auditory clicks are the shortest possible auditory stimuli. The shortest auditory click I was able to find in the literature, and which was used in a psychophysical context (i.e., audible to a human) was 10 microseconds (Leshowitz, 1971).

The longest sound we can hear is pretty much defined as a human's maximum age I guess. While the auditory system definitely adapts to acoustic stimuli at the neurophysiological level (Pérez-González & Malmierca 2014), this neural adaptation does not become evident in gross psychophysical adaptations. In other words, prolonged acoustic stimulation does not lead to sounds becoming less audible, let alone inaudible. That, because tonal stimuli consist of continuously changing air pressure differences. Of course, a continuous pressure applied to the eardrum is not heard, but a stimulus like that is not sound, but simply pressure, as it has no tonal content.

References
- Leshowitz et al. J Acoust Soc Am 1971; 49, Suppl 2:462-6
- Pérez-González & Malmierca, Front Integr Neurosci (2014); 8: 19


What is the most effective maximum work duration per day? A related question asks about the best work-break schedule for an effective eight hour work day.

This question presupposes that eight hours of work per day is a good duration and that all you need is to optimize your work-break schedule. But research seems to hint that alertness and productivity might increase if you shorten your workday: A survey (Bielenski, 1994) asking managers about their experiences with part time work in eight European countries found a better quality of products or services. Part time work here includes all different kinds of reduced weekly working hours. A German (Infratest Sozialforschung, 1985) and American (Beyer, 1986) study on flexible work time models (including part time and gliding time) found an increase in production volume and quality, higher job satisfaction, and a decrease in lateness and absences.

Research also shows that performance increases if you increase your sleeping hours (e.g. from eight to ten hours per night), and it is a banal truth that the the amount of sleep that you can or want to allow yourself is directly related to the amount of work: eight hours of work plus taking care of the rest of your life only leave you so many hours to rest. So maybe the question of breaks doesn't even arise anymore, when you awake relaxed and highly attentive after enough sleep, and when you work focussed for four hours without breaks, knowing that you'll be free to enjoy yourself for the rest of the day.

Assuming on the one hand that you do in fact need time to get things done and cannot speed up your work frequency and shorten working hours indefinitely; and assuming on the other hand that you will get tired and work less well after a certain time; then there should be a turning point somewhere, where working longer or shorter decreases your productivity.

Of course the exact location of this point (and the optimal per day work duration) will differ for different kinds of tasks, so there will not be one optimum for everything. If there is more research on this topic than you can or want to cover in your answer, please focus on "intellectual work" (like that of scientists or in administration).

Question:

Is there research into how long you should work per day to be most effective?

I'm looking for a comprehensive and definite answer on this, and therefore I am especially interested in recent meta-analyses and overview articles, some of which might be published in handbooks or encyclopedias of occupational psychology and not available on the web.

No untested theories and no personal anecdotes, please.

Sources:

Beyer, H. T. (1986). Betriebliche Arbeitszeitflexibilisierung. München: Vahlen.

Bielenski, H. (ed.) (1994). New Forms of Work and Activity. Survey of Experiences at Establishment Level in Eight European Countries. Shankill: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
Infratest Sozialforschung (1985). Flexible Arbeitszeiten: Erfahrungen aus der Praxis. Humanisierung des Arbeitslebens, vol. 68. Frankfurt am Main: Campus.

This is a part-answer to your question and it doesn't come from occupational psychology, but from expertise research.

Findings from Expertise Research

In their seminal paper on the role of deliberate practice for the acquisition of expert performance, Ericsson et al. (1993) report a number of constraints that play a role in the acquisition of expert performance. One of these constraints is the effort constraint. What is meant by this is that, in order to improve one's skill, one has to engage in deliberate practice, which by definition is an effortful activity that requires full concentration. It is clear that such an activity cannot be kept up for very large amounts of time. Ericsson et al. cite works by Welford (1968) and Woodford & Schlosberg (1954) (which I haven't read) that compare the efficiency of practice durations ranging from 1-8 hr a day. These studies find that there is

  essentially no benefit from durations exceeding 4 hr per day and reduced benefit from practice exceeding 2 hr. (Ericsson et al., 1993, p.370)

The authors then report that studies on the aquisition of typing skill by Baddely & Longman (1978) and Dvorak et al. (1936), and studies on other perceptual motor skills (Henshaw & Holman, 1930) which

  indicate that the effective duration of deliberate practice is may be closer to 1 hr per day. (Ibid.)

Finally, they cite a study by Pirelli & J.R. Anderson (1985) that found

  no increased learning from doubling the number of training trials per session. (Ibid.)

Thereafter, Ericsson et al. (1993) turn to more intellectually demanding domains. They report on data from financially independent writers, who

  tend to write only 4 hr per day, leaving the rest of the day for rest and recuperation (Cowley, 1959; Plimpton, 1977). (Ibid., p.371)

In their own study 1, which investigated violinists at music college, the authors found that the best students practiced on average 3.5 hr per day.

Maximum vs. Typical Performance

From these findings it seems that the optimal duration lies somewhere between 1 and 4 hours. But it's important to note that this only holds for conditions of maximal effort and full concentration. Furthermore these studies investigate the acquisition, not the execution of a skill, which presumably is more important in the workplace. I would still argue that they can still be relevant in a work context.

In io-psychology there is the distinction between maximum and typical performance. Everything I have said so far obviously refers to maximum performance. The intellectual work of a scientist that you mention in your question might fall into this category. I can also imagine that a software developer needs full concentration. Probably, though, periods that require maximum performance and those that "only" require typical performance alternate. The time limit for typical performance may be much longer.

So my answer is only a part answer in at least two ways: First it only provides information about the time limit for maximum performance. Second, the studies that I cite have not actually been done within an occupational setting.

References:

Baddeley, A. D., & Longman, D. J. A. (1978). The influence of length and frequency of training session on the rate of learning to type. Ergonomics, 21(8), 627-635.
Cowley, M.(Ed.). (1953). Writers at work: The Paris review interviews, second series. New York: Penguin Books.
Dvorak, A., Merrick, N. L., Dealey, W. L., & Ford, G. C. (1936). Typewriting behavior. New York: American Book Company.
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363 PDF
Pirolli, P. L., & Anderson, J. R. (1985). The role of practice in fact retrieval. Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition, 11(1), 136.PDF
Plimpton, G. (Ed.). (1976). Writers at work: The Paris review interviews. New York: Viking Press.
Welford, A.T. (1968). Fundamentals of skill. London: Methuen.
Woodworth, R. S., & Schlosberg, H. (1954). Experimental psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.


What is the notation about group differences in terms standard deviations? I am just getting into watching psych lectures and things online and am taking notes but I have been wondering what the proper/standard way of writing in note form about standard deviations is.

For example: GROUP-A is a third of a standard deviation higher in TRAIT than GROUP-B.

Is there a standardised way of representing that information with a kind of notation or shorthand in psychology?

Thanks! And sorry for the very basic question!

The psychology notation for standardized differences between group means is d. I.e., the difference between group differences divided by the within-group standard deviation. Note that there are some variants about which group is used or whether a pooled standard deviation is obtained.

I.e., in your example: d = 0.3.

If you want to report means and sds, then you typically use M and SD.


Which is the scientific name of stubbornness? Some people are stubborn, with strong, absolute beliefs, and it's really hard to change the ideas. They tend to see just the evidence that confirms their ideas.

What is the scientific name of this phenomenon? Confirmation bias? Mental rigidity? Stubbornness?
Can you give me some explanation of that?

A few bits of useful jargon come to mind...

Low cognitive complexity may lead to simplistic and absolutist thinking, which one may also refer to as splitting or "black-and-white" thinking (because there's no recognition of "grey areas").

Need for closure and low openness to experience may lead to resistance to change, which is a somewhat less pejorative alternative to "stubbornness". "Mental rigidity" is a little more subtly pejorative, in that you'd probably feel a little offended if someone called you mentally rigid, but clinical literature sometimes uses these terms nonetheless. Hence it has more pathological connotations than "stubborn", which I think people recognize as more normally applicable – i.e., you can be stubborn without being psychologically abnormal or clinically dysfunctional, but you probably won't feel proud of it, and would prefer more euphemistic terms like "assertive" or "traditional"...which differ in literal meaning from stubbornness.
I guess that's the sort of cognitive distortion that you'd expect to result from self-serving bias: "I'm not stubborn! I just happen to be right!" Then again, if I were to say that, I might not be biased; I might actually be right! How's that for self-serving bias? :)

Confirmation bias differs somewhat from these. Its effects appear when actually seeking to confirm a belief (or hypothesis in a research context, wherein which we're probably most familiar with it), as opposed to when simply stating an absolute, simplistic belief, or refusing to question it at all. If I actually engage in argument and ignore your counterpoints, then you could say I'm demonstrating confirmation bias, but if I simply "tell you how it is" or tell you that you're wrong and refuse to change, that's really not a matter of confirmation bias per se.


Theorem of uncertainty in cognitive science Recently, reading one book I have come across such paragraph:

"[...] The operation would require de facto to create a complete record of the mind and build the brain again - an impossible thing for absolutely fundamental reasons. Cognitive science has its own theorem on uncertainty, the law proving the impossibility of reducing the mental structure to numerical data."

I am guessing, that the author was referring to the Heisenberg's uncertainty theorem, but that is the only thing that came to my mind (my knowledge about cognitive sciences is very limited). Do you know, what the author might have meant? Or maybe it was just fiction?

As you say in your last comment, this is clearly fictional as a theorem, but the argument has been raised in less fictional works. The "theorem on uncertainty" phrase probably is intended to hint to the uncertainty principle and/or the no-cloning theorem from  quantum mechanics. For instance, Scott Aaronson writes

  Does quantum mechanics (specifically,
  say, the No-Cloning Theorem or the uncertainty principle) put interesting limits on an
  external agent’s ability to scan, copy, and predict human brains and other complicated
  biological systems, or doesn’t it?

  I regard the
  above as an unsolved scientific question, and a big one. Many people seem to think the answer
  is obvious (though they disagree on what it is!), or else they reject the question as meaningless,
  unanswerable, or irrelevant.

Note that he is far from being the first to ask the question (e.g. Alan Turing did in 1951), although Aaronson did perhaps help sharpen it.

So with respect to brain function, this "theorem" is just a hypothesis, and it may well prove to be false. The empirical evidence on the relevance of quantum processes for understanding brain functioning is questionable at best, although you do see occasional "breakthroughs" reported in the press, e.g. on Orch OR; see the long list of comments under the abstract for a review paper for more. On the other hand, other researches continue to pursue brains simulators like the Blue Brain Project, although it's computatinally very expensive just to simulate a part of a rat's brain.


Which personality trait(s) characterize high need for external validation? Some background to explain my question:
I recently overheard a conversation, between two men working in the same firm.
One of them (A) is thinking about finding a new job, as he is not happy where he is. The other (B) says "A, you have very valuable skills in this, nobody else knows as much as you do about this! You will have no problem at all finding a better job!"

I can see and hear that A is very hesitant to find a new job, he looks uncertain and not convinced that he will indeed find a better job.
A says he feels a need for external validation. A does not seem to have low self-esteem, so the need for external validation seems to be unrelated to self-esteem.

In the Big 5, which personality trait(s) would explain such a need for external validation?
Neuroticism and agreeableness might be able to answer the question, but that depends on the following:

Would a high-neuroticism low-agreeableness person crave for external validation?
Is high agreeableness alone enough to make someone crave for external validation?
Is high neuroticism alone enough to make someone crave for external validation?

The Big Five model (OCEAN) of personality is based on statistical analysis of a person's tendency to agree or disagree with short descriptive statements, and consists of the following component dimensions:

Openness to experience (O): general appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, imagination, curiosity, and variety of experience.
Conscientiousness (C): tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement against measures or outside expectations.
Extraversion (E): breadth of activities (as opposed to depth), surgency from external activity/situations, and energy creation from external means.
Agreeableness (A): general concern for social harmony and importance placed on getting along with others.
Neuroticism (N): tendency to experience negative emotions, such as anger, anxiety, or depression.

Of these, I would argue that the trait which most directly maps on to the concept of a "need for validation" by itself would be Agreeableness. This is the short answer.

We can, however, imagine a person who is high on Agreeableness, but for personal/cultural/religious reasons does not directly value others' approval; we can similarly imagine a person who is high on Neuroticism and experiences social anxiety, seeking others' approval to alleviate that anxiety. This can be extended to any combination of traits. These more indirect means of obtaining "need for validation" behaviors means that it is difficult to speak confidently of any one set of Big Five traits, and only that set of traits, mapping on to "need for validation."


Why is it that videotaping someone makes him lose his inhibitions? Why is it that if I videotape somebody, it makes him lose his inhibitions?

Usually, being observed increases someone's self-consciousness and they control their behavior (which is a problem in ethnographic field studies: the presence of the foreign observer changes the behavior of the native subjects). Usually, this leads to more socially acceptable behavior (no public nose picking) and a self-conscious stiffness.

In a private situation, and especially when under the influence of alcohol, being observed might induce someone to decide to behave more excessive, because that is what is expected and socially acceptable in such a situation. Everybody would be quite bored and disappointed, if pointing a camera at someone while on a party or during a holiday outing would not lead to those in front of the camera doing funny stuff. So in fact, "losing their inhibitions" in front of the camera is exactly the opposite: conforming to social expectations.


What is acquaintance and how can it help a person? An acquaintance party is :

  ... a college party held at the begining of the semester where students have the opportunity to meet each other. (source)

Since this party is always held in different schools in most countries, it made me wonder if its purpose goes further than just having fun, or getting to know University.

How does this party help a person personally/professionally? What is the main goal of this celebration, aside from having fun?

Short answer
Acquaintance at the start of a new study can help to build a network of friends. Friends can offer mental support in difficult times, they can stimulate you in your studies, you can discuss homework with them and you can just spend your free time with them to (re-)charge before the new semester. Friends are not only fun to have, they are a necessity for a social animal species like Homo sapiens. On the the other hand, friends can also lure you into skipping classes, not doing your homework and focus on the 'wrong' things in life such as doing drugs. It goes both ways.

Background
Social networks can impact our health, happiness, wealth, emotions, and even physical well-being. College students spend a lot of time with their friends. One estimate suggests that the average college student spends only 15 hours a week in class but 86 hours a week with his or her friends.

Freshmen no longer have their parents constantly guiding them or checking in. That’s one reason why supportive friends are an important part of one’s social life during this period. These friends actually turn into students’ families during college. During this period, friends are everything; they are often the closest bonds students will ever make and sometimes the entire support system (source: Weisman).

It has been shown that different people generate different kind of networks. McCabe showed, in a relatively small sample of students, that there are roughly three types (McCabe, 2016):

"Tight-knitters" have a single cluster of close friends.
"Compartmentalizers" have a bunch of unrelated clusters of friends (e.g. a group of friends at university, the other at a sports club).
"Samplers" have one-on-one friendships with individuals who didn't necessarily know one another.

Now, why is this important? Every tight-knitter reporting to have friends that provided academic motivation and support eventually graduated. Among the ones who said they lacked this support and their friends distracted them from schoolwork, only half managed to graduate within six years.

Compartmentalizers and samplers both risked to be 'torn' between social contacts groups and could experience social isolation (source: NPR).

Reference
- McGabe, Connecting in College. How friendship networks matter for academic and social success. University Chicago Press (2016)


Can thought processes be sensed to happen exactly in the head? It's common knowledge that humans think with their brains. So it's common to associate hard thinking with head and to seemingly "feel" that it's the head which is loaded when one's thinking.

But does this association have any grounds in actual sensing? Can one sense where the thought processes are happening if not taught about this? If we taught some child that he thinks with e.g. stomach (and no one hints him otherwise), would he associate thinking with that location? Or would he somehow suspect that actually it's the head which is thinking, and what he is taught is wrong?

In the 4th century BC, Aristotle wrote that the source of intelligence was the heart (source). Other greeks like Alcmaeon of Croton thought it might be the brain. I think the fact that they were having this discussion means that it's not obvious from our sensations alone that the thoughts are happening in the head.


Named conditions that are the result of exposure to psychopathic behavior of another person? Are there any recognized terms for conditions that stem from or are the result of exposure to  psychopathic behavior (by another person) that are distinct from those that might have predisposed the individual to it or made them more vulnerable to it?

In other words, something like a "post psychopath stress disorder"?

It would not have to be an official diagnosis, it's the only applicable tag I could find.

Environmental psychological conditions (conditions triggered by an event arising from another person's actions or other event external to the person) will have the same name irrespective of whether they might have been predisposed to it, more vulnerable to it, or neither.

The question is very broad as there are many different conditions which can arise, which actually can be any condition within the spectrum of environmental psychological disorders. There is no such disorder as "Post Psychopath Stress Disorder" but psychological conditions can include Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Anxiety, and Vicarious Trauma.  There can be many others arising from the physical and/or mental actions of the psychopathic individual.


Is it possible to get good hallucination while suffering from schizophrenia? Schizophrenia : A disorder that affects a person's ability to think, feel and behave clearly.
The exact cause of schizophrenia isn't known, but a combination of genetics, environment and altered brain chemistry and structure may play a role.

So basically you get hallucination in Schizophrenia. I watched a Video about Schizophrenia and it say something like this .
People who suffer from Schizophrenia have hallucination like :

Fishes are swimming all around them.

Books are melting.

Strange voices are ordering them to to something.

But can anyone have hallucination like :

a woman is loving them(sexually and romantically) .

They have many good friends

The voice in the head are telling them answers in an exam.

So basically can anyone get hallucination that they will enjoy.

The short answer appears to be yes, to a certain degree, though there seems to be a need for more research in this area of viewing hallucinations as a boon, rather than a curse.
The positive symptoms of schizophrenia, in this case, hallucinations, often vary in how they appear to the subject. Some argue that one of the keys to how one might react to the manifestation of hallucinations has to do with their culture.
Larøi et al (2014), shows that changing perspective on the hallucinations in a more positive direction might help cope or manage the symptoms, they emphasize that cultural background needs to be considered, as there may not be a need for an intervention or help if the individual's culture does not view the hallucinations as bizarre or abnormal.
A great example would be the way people claim to be able to see or talk with a deity that has proliferated throughout the culture they inhabit. It becomes something that might be giving them those answers to an exam or that the hallucination is in love with them.
It should also be noted that not everybody who has hallucinations is going to show up in a clinical setting, so we still have do not have much data on how these symptoms manifest in different cultures. Something which Larøi et al mention in their article.
Reference:
Larøi, F., Luhrmann, T. M., Bell, V., Christian Jr, W. A., Deshpande, S., Fernyhough, C., ... & Woods, A. (2014). Culture and hallucinations: overview and future directions. Schizophrenia bulletin, 40(Suppl_4), S213-S220. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbu012


What does it mean by "the resulting behavior doesn't produce the consequence"? A lecture slide says:

  classical conditioning causes a stimulus to signal a positive or negative consequence; the resulting behavior doesn't produce the consequence.

What does it mean by the bolded sentence?

The slide is contrasting classical conditioning with operant conditioning.

In operant conditioning, you train that a behavior is paired with a reward or punishment. For example, a lever press dispensing a food pellet.

In classical conditioning, there is no relevant behavior. Some stimulus (rather than behavior) is paired with an outcome. For example, if there is a tone played before a shock, the tone will cause rodents to freeze in anticipation of the shock, but nothing about their freezing behavior is causing the shock.


How widespread is learned-helplessness in society? Looking at these resources:

Wikipedia, Learned helplessness
Christopher Peterson, Learned Helplessness, 2010
Mario Mikulincer, Human Learned Helplessness: A Coping Perspective, 2013

I'm still unable to find how widespread learned helplessness is in society. Do you know where I should take a look?

The problem with measuring learned helplessness is that while we know it exists and is related to  dorsal raphe nucleus 5-HT neurons in the brain, we have no official designation of it as a mental disorder and official study to measure it. However, there is a correlation between depression and learned helplessness, so we might be able to use depression statistics in order to measure the amount of learned helplessness in society. 7.6% of people 12 years and older experience depression in the United States in any two week period and 9.4% of American patients visiting the hospital in 2017 experienced depression. Globally, over 264 million people suffer from depression and thus, they are more likely to suffer from learned helplessness.


Are neurons the wrong shape to model neural networks? Looking at neural networks, each node can be described as a neuron with either several long input wires, or several long output wires.

A neuron, however, has many short input wires (dendrites) and a single long output wires (axon). Thereby not fitting either case.

How do we reconcile these difficulties?

A: Not all neurons have many short dendrites and a single long axon. In fact, the majority of them do not have this shape. Cerebellar granule cells, which are the most numerous neurons in the brain (estimates of their total number average around 50 billion, which means that they constitute about 3/4 of the brain's neurons)[Ref 1,2,3], do not have this shape. They have an axon that branches out into long parallel fibers as shown in the diagram below (modified from the figure in Ref 2).

The shapes of neurons vary greatly. This is because neurons have evolved their structures to suit their functions:

  We can learn a lot about what a neuron does by looking at it’s morphology (i.e. shape). For example a neuron with large branching dendrites is likely integrating information from a large number of inputs, whereas a neuron that has dendrites that branch close to the soma, but don’t extend very far, is probably only integrating information from it near neighbors. Same thing with axons, projection neurons have long axons that allow them to communicate with neurons in distant brain regions, while a local interneuron will a short axon that will only branch locally, allowing it to talk to nearby cells. Some cells in the peripheral nervous system have the axons coming directly out of the dendrites, allowing them to efficiently convey information from one to the other. [Ref 4] (The figure below is also from Ref 4)

So, neurons have evolved their various shapes to do their functions. I think whether the one shape of these, as questioned in this thread, or many or all of these shapes are right or wrong for us to use to model neural networks is not answerable now. But I think we should try to study and learn from them because it is the best model we have. Remember, these neurons with their various shapes and connections are successful in creating one of the most wonderful phenomena in this universe: our conscious mind.

References.

Richard H. Masland. Neuronal cell type. Current Biology. 2004; Vol 14 No 3: R497-R500.
Erik De Schutter. Glomeruli of Cerebellar Cortex: Computation by Extrasynaptic Inhibition?
Wikipedia. Cerebellar Granule Cell.
Masland RH. Looking at Neurons Brown University. Neuroscience in Action: Understanding Our Brains and Nervous System.