How fast can stimuli be administered for evoked potentials? I'm looking for a reference about the ability for sensory stimuli to generate separate evoked potentials in the brain.

What is the maximum repetition rate for sensory evoked potentials?

For auditory brain stem responses (ABRs) the click rate can be really high, as the auditory system is exceptionally fast, in the order of tens of stimuli per second (e.g., Rodriguez et al (2010. This will still yield a good ABR. At around 40 ms, the transient ABR shifts toward a steady state response, in which peaks of the previous ABR start to overlap with the following (Korczak et al., 2010).

The visual system, however, is a lot more sluggisch and needs more time to recover from prior stimulation. For example, VEPs are generally recorded at a few stimuli per second. The transition from a transient response to a steady state response occurs at around 6 - 10 Hz (Fishman et al (2001).

References
- Fishman et al., Electrophysiologic Testing, 2nd ed. FAAO
- Korczak et al., J Am Acad Audiol (2012); 23: 146–70
- Rodriguez et al., Brazil J Otorhinol (2010); 76(1): 96-101


What kind of journal 'The Journal of Neuroscience Methods' is? I am looking for some journal that publishes neuroscience research with focus on computational and/or methodological aspects. The Journal of Neuroscience Methods appears on a Google search but it has relatively low impact factor among the journals I have checked this far. What kind of reputation the journal has? Are there other good alternatives?

This is not a complete answer, but more based on surface observations.

At time of posting, Journal of Neuroscience Methods has an impact factor of 2.0. This is quite a respectable impact factor.
The scimagojr puts in the second quartile of "neuroscience (miscellaneous)" journals http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=16765&tip=sid&clean=0
It is published by Elsevier. While Elsevier has its detractors, particularly around its open access policy, it is a respectable academic publisher.


How does speed listening work? I've recently gotten into listening to podcasts. Over time, as I get accustomed to the speaker's voice, I'm able to increase the speed of the podcast to as high as 3x speed. It still feels "normal" to me, as if the speaker is having a normal-speed conversation with me.

When I turn down the speed to 1x, it sounds unbearably slow. For non-speed-listeners, listen to something at 0.5x or 0.25x, and you'll know what 1x sounds like to speed listeners. It's as if speed listening shifts up a listener's range of acceptable speed, so that lower speeds are no longer in that range.

I know there are plenty of other speed listeners who do the same thing (just Google "speed listening" to see for yourself). Yet, others have told me that at this speed, podcasts are basically unintelligible.

Thus, I have a handful of related questions:

What occurs in the brain when a person speed listens?

a. Why does the podcast feel "normal" at such fast speeds?

b. Is there a fundamental/biological difference between those who can speed listen and those who can't, or is it a learned ability?
Is speed listening detrimental to listening comprehension?

Your question made me think of JAWS, a screen reader for the blind. I have worked with visually impaired people for a while and I have always wondered how on earth they can understand the speech produced by JAWS given the sheer high speech rates they apply on their gadgets.

Indeed, people with peripheral vision loss may learn to understand spoken language at rates of up to about 22 syllables per seconds, while the rate in normal listeners is about 8 syllables per sec (Dietrich et al., 2013). These numbers are based on speech understanding, as opposed to simply hearing it.

Hence in answer to your question

  Is speed listening detrimental to listening comprehension?

I would say no, at least not in above study, as speech understanding there was tested in a speech comprehension test, which is different than just hearing the speech.

Then your questions

  What occurs in the brain when a person speed listens?
  a. Why does the
  podcast feel "normal" at such fast speeds?
  b. Is there a
  fundamental/biological difference between those who can speed listen
  and those who can't, or is it a learned ability?

In case of blind people it has been shown that they activate their visual cortex when speed reading. This, because the deafferented area is recruited for other modalities, such as touch and hearing. This is probably not what you are after in your question though. In effect, I doubt gross effects on brain activity occurs in trained, normally sighted subjects and indeed a study where both sighted and blind individuals were trained on fast-speech understanding does not report on gross effects in the sighted group (Hertrich et al., 2006).

It feels normal because it is a learned ability; to continue with the example of these blind folks - they haven't been able to read for a long time and the only way they communicate through written materials is via screen readers. The spoken word is slower than reading so they crank up the speeds whenever possible, so they are slowly increasing their speech understanding skills.

References
- Dietrich et al., Front Hum Neurosci (2013); 7: 701
- Hertrich et al. Brain and Language (2006); 124(1): 9-21


Is it possible to quantify 'pettiness' in a personality? Petty is a word that is pretty clearly defined:

Not very important or serious
Relating to things that are not very important or serious

I'm interested in measuring the degree that someone is likely to be focused on, or taking issue with things that most would consider to be trivial, unimportant or nonsensical. For instance, when interviewing a candidate for a position, how could I determine how likely this person is to latch onto issues that most would forget about within minutes of them occurring?
To better illustrate what I'm trying to measure, suppose someone was exposed to the following bits of information in a day:

The company lost over 14 billion in revenue due to gum-chewing
The city government outlawed all use of purple on Wednesdays
We realized that alien civilizations exist on Mars and have been emulating us by what they pick up from our radio emissions, and formed boy bands
A co-worker wasn't wearing the exact color socks specified in the employee handbook

Despite the magnificence of events 1 - 3, the type of person very likely to place an inordinate amount of focus on all things petty can only dwell on number 4.
Is there a term for this and, moreover, a test to determine the degree of it in an individual's personality?

This sounds like Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. Individuals with OCPD tend to obsess over unimportant details to the extent of it causing significant distress and a negative impact on productivity.

I'm not personally aware of a test to diagnose OCPD, but the DSM does contain diagnostic criteria for the disorder.


How do moral judgments change for older adults? There have been numerous studies that compare the moral judgment/sensitivity of adults and children (a good example is this paper by Decety, Michalska and Kinzler, showing significant differences between the moral judgments of each group). However, I am curious if there exist any similar studies for older adults. For example, is there any significant difference between the moral sensitivity of adults over 60-70 and younger adults?

Moral Judgement:

From Wikipedia:

  ... moral judgment ... is "the ability to reason correctly about what
  'ought' to be done in a specific situation."

Research on moral judgement was pioneered by Jean Piaget, summarized in his book "The Moral Judgment of the Child" (1932), in which he implies that moral development levels off in adolescence.  Piaget introduced the standard moral judgement task paradigm that is still often used today to assess moral development by asking subjects to make moral judgements on particular stories or dilemmas.  In his research, peak performance on these tests was achieved around mid-adolescence, and he never bothered to test older subjects.  Interestingly, performance of older adults was only finally put to the test in 1996.  This study showed that (a) moral development does not peak in adolescence, as adults perform slightly better, and (b) older adults do not differ much in overall performance than younger adults, but the details are mixed - in some areas of morality they perform better and in others worse.

Beginning in the 1960's, Piaget's work was extended by other researchers such as Kohlberg and Gilligan to include moral development throughout people's entire life-span.  This spurred much research on moral development in adulthood.  For example, a study published in 1997 summarizes the dubious state of the research at the time as follows:

  In sum, findings to date suggest three possible developmental paths of
  moral reasoning development in adulthood: (1) a plateau effect in
  adulthood; (2) ongoing development throughout adulthood; or (3)
  on-going development in earlier adult-hood with decline in later
  adulthood.

Results of that particular study are depicted in the image below:

As you can see, it's not really that clear what happens in later adulthood, but it doesn't seem to be much different from early adulthood.

Moral Sensitivity:

From Wikipedia:

  ... moral sensitivity ... is "the ability to see an ethical dilemma,
  including how our actions will affect others."

Research on moral sensitivity is much more recent.  Even in his early works, Piaget was aware of this effect on moral judgement task performance.  In the original paradigm, very young children were asked questions like "should a child who accidentally broke 15 cups while washing the dishes be punished more than a child who accidentally broke 1 cup while stealing a cookie".  Although the children were often aware that stealing a cookie is wrong and washing dishes is not, the large amount of damage caused would outweigh that due to its emotional impact on the child.  By around age 8 or 9 however, children understand that the amount of harm is not a relevant factor - only the intention is.

However, later research suggested that moral sensitivity is still correlated with emotion much later in life.  By adolescence, this emotional reaction no longer affects moral judgements, but it continues to impact other aspects of moral reasoning such as deserved punishment.  An early attempt to measure sensitivity (2001) used the speed of word associations as an indirect indicator, and found no significant difference between the performance of younger and older adults once the age-related decrease in overall performance was taken into account.

Modern research on moral sensitivity uses fMRI to detect changes in activity in areas of the brain associated with emotion (limbic system) and moral reasoning (prefrontal cortex).  This approach is relatively new, and still fairly expensive, so sample sizes tend to be small.  The study cited in the question also concludes, as is well established, that:

  ... judgments about how wrong an action was did not differ significantly
  by age

but as for moral sensitivity:

  ... with increasing age, subjects reported feeling less upset when viewing
  objects being damaged ... With age, agents were rated as even more
  mean if they had harmed a person intentionally than if they had harmed
  a person accidentally ... with increasing age, participants were less
  willing to punish agents who intentionally damaged objects than those
  who intentionally harmed people ... Comparison across the three groups
  showed a significant difference ... between the early childhood group
  and the adult group in the connectivity between the vmPFC and amygdala
  reflecting increased functional integration between these 2 regions in
  adults.

It would certainly be interesting to see how these results extend to later adulthood - ie, if they continue in a linear fashion, or taper off as in moral judgement scores.

Most modern research on older adults focuses on the effects of brain damage (eg, 2006, 2010, 2010), which is naturally more common with age.  When compared with same-age controls, patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex perform worse on a variety of moral judgement tasks.  Degradation in brain function may be responsible for a decline in moral sensitivity with age in some cases.


How to know whether a methodological technique is quantitative or qualitative? How do you classify NASA TLX, ANOVA, Matched Pair T-Test, Self-Efficacy Scale, and System Usability Scale?
Are these types of data analysis considered quantitative or qualitative?
Please answer whether each is quantitative or qualitative.
Below are a few webpages about these forms of data analysis.

NASA TLX (Wikipedia),

ANOVA (Wikipedia),

Matched Pair t-Test  (Wikipedia),

The General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE),

System Usability Scale (Usability.gov).

I believe that the NASA TLX, Self-Efficacy Scale, and System Usability Scale are qualitative. While ANOVA and the Matched Pair T-Test are both quantitative.
If I am wrong, please let me know what the correct answer is and why.

ANOVA and t-tests are statistical tests for significance and therefore quantitative.

The other mentioned items are scales (adding numbers to a certain choice) and therefore they can be considered as ordinal scales, and hence as quantitative as they are based on numbers.

The NASA one can be administered by using a sliding scale which can be considered to be a continuous scale, allowing for parametric statistical testing. However, if divided in say 10 choices, it becomes an ordinal scale and non-parametric tests have to be used.


Does homosexuality correlate with narcissism or finding yourself attractive? I'm a heterosexual male. Male bodies do not appeal to me much. I find my own (average) body mediocre. At the same time I find average female bodies rather interesting and attractive. The same goes for faces and "male" and "female" character traits. So I wonder how homosexuals judge themselves.

Since gay men and lesbian women are attracted to bodies, faces and possibly personalities of the same sex, maybe they find their own bodies, faces and personality more aggreeable on average than the heterosexual, for whom persons of their own kind must by definition lack at least some aspects of attractiveness (i.e. the sexual and erotic appeal).

If this is so, then maybe traits like narcissism are more frequent and disorders like body dysmophic disorder are less frequent among homosexuals. In general terms:

Do homosexuals like themselves more than heterosexuals?

where "liking" includes anything from feeling attractive to disorders such as narcissism.

Or doesn't sexual orientation moderate "self-love" at all?

What you have here is a hypothesis and it's almost impossible to answer this conclusively because you can't design a randomized study but only look at correlations.  In addition, "narcissism" itself is far from a simple concept and used differently by different researchers.  For instance some see is as synonymous with self-esteem and self-confidence, some don't.

In fact, your view is closer to some of the psychoanalytical views of homosexuality.  For instance, a hundred years ago, in talking about narcissism and abnormal development, Freud suggested that people who had experienced problems during libidnal development (libido is a kind of instinctual sexual energy behind our psychological development), including gays and "perverts", instead of choosing their mother as their "love-object", they'd use themselves as the love object.  He labeled this abnormal sexual development a kind of narcissism.  The theory is more complex than that but I just wanted to give you an idea of the kind of views I was referring to.

Contemporary research does not follow this line of thinking nor talks about development, gays or not, in those terms.  In fact many (not all) psychoanalytical concepts are no longer seen as scientific (=falsifiable) so they're not seriously studied these days in universities.  You would instead find researchers look, for instance, at homosexuality and mental health (with a lot of attention paid to social factors; see Herek & Garnets, 2007), but not studies of narcissistic development in homosexuals, except a couple here and there in psychoanalytical journals.

I took a look and most recent study I found in a non-psychoanalytical journal was by an Israeli researcher, Rubinstein, published in 2010.  In her study she found exactly what she believed based on Freudian conception, that gays were more narcissistic but had less self confidence than heterosexuals.

As the invited commentary on that study (Hartmann, same issue, can't find citing info) mentions, given that there is still stigma against homosexuals, one need a higher standard for offering the conclusion that she had (the study used only 200 Jewish students in their 20s living in Israel and within what Hartmann calls "forceful social and religious traditions", and had relied on self-report, which is far from objective).  In her defense, Rubinstein did talk about three potential interpretations and also the limitations of her study.

Summary:

Some psychoanalysts believe that homosexuals are more narcissistic than heterosexuals but no good data is available to confirm that, partly because researchers try to be careful when they study sexual orientation because of potential misuse of findings, but more importantly because those conceptions of homosexuality are no longer seen as scientific or more useful/productive than current biological or psychological theories of homosexual development.

I hope you found this answer helpful.

Works Cited

Freud, S. (1957). On narcissism: An introduction. In J. Strachey (Ed. and Trans.),The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 67–104). London: Hogarth Press (Original work published 1914).

Herek, G. M., & Garnets, L. D. (2007). Sexual orientation and mental health. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 3, 353–375.

Rubinstein, G. (2010). Narcissism and Self-Esteem Among Homosexual and Heterosexual Male Students. Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, 36:24–34.


Do people with birth defects feel phantom limbs? The phenomenon of phantom limbs in people who have lost arms or legs to amputation is pretty well-established. It makes a fair amount of sense. The "brain mapping" of the limb (and for that matter the nerves that led to it) don't go away just because the limb does.

But what about people who never had the limb? Does a person who was born with one arm due to a birth defect ever "feel" the second arm that should be there?

Here is a link to an article that discusses the very thing. Specifically, it discusses a case study conducted by Paul McGeoch and V.S. Ramachandran on a woman whose hand was amputated at 18, but who has been missing a thumb and index finger since birth. This woman "sprouted a phantom hand that contained five digits, including a phantom thumb and index finger that had been absent since her birth." The end of the article discusses similarities between this phenomenon and supernumerary phantom limb.

Ultimately (from the article): "The authors say that most people born with congenitally missing limbs do not experience phantom ones, but a small subset do."

In case you are curious, below is the citation for the case study conducted.

As a side note, depending on whose definition you use, "phantom limbs" are defined solely for individuals who have had the limb amputated (though this may be due to unintentionally specific wording).

References

McGeoch, P. D., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2012). The appearance of new phantom fingers post-amputation in a phocomelus. Neurocase, 18(2), 95-97. doi:10.1080/13554794.2011.556128


Difference between psychosis and schizophrenia Can you please illustrate the difference between the psychosis and the schizophrenia?

Psychosis is part of schizophrenia, and it can be part of other psychiatric disorders, too. Psychosis is a concept that describes specific symptoms. Schizophrenia is a mental illness that has psychotic features. When broken down into symptoms, the notion of schizophrenia vs psychosis makes sense.

Psychosis isn’t a mental disorder by itself. Instead, specific features define the experience psychologists call psychosis. Some of the psychotic symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, confusion, and confused speech.


Is there a practical limit to the amount of knowledge a human can learn? There's definitely progressive interference and retroactive interference, which are basically two ways that old memories and new memories can interfere with each other.

But on the other hand, do these types of interference always have to happen?

Taken from a purely practical viewpoint, there is a finite number of neurons in the brain, with a finite (though large) number of connections between them. As such, a brain can only contain a finite amount of information. The more that one attempts to learn, the more that the connections between neurons will get obscured as a single memory  or idea becomes mapped to a multitude of different related pieces of information or memories.

Evolutionarily, the brain attempts to condense related information to allow for the processing of new and possibly more important data. If you tried to learn everything about every single chair in existence, your memories of different chairs would blur together as your brain tries to force similar things to be considered one memory, especially concerning things that are neither life-threatening or of obvious physical gain. This conclusion is drawn from various theories in Evolutionary Psychology, principally "The cognitive system operates at all times to optimize the adaptation of the behavior of the organism" (John R. Anderson 1990 p. 28). A short summary of these theories can be found here starting on page 783


How does the brain calculate velocity? How does the human brain calculate velocities? For example, when crossing a road and seeing a car coming towards you, how does the brain actually compute the rough velocity of the vehicle and your own maximum speed as you cross the road so as to judge that you can cross safely without using the relevant physics equations? I am interested particularly in the specific cognitive and/or neural processes and that level of detail rather than just the fact that the brain estimates distance and time taken to cross that distance.

N.B. This question is derived from an earlier post of mine which I was advised to split into two for clarity.

Motion perception

This article on motion perception might be a good start.

  pure motion perception is referred to as "first-order" motion
  perception and is mediated by relatively simple "motion sensors" in
  the visual system, that have evolved to detect a change in luminance
  at one point on the retina and correlate it with a change in luminance
  at a neighbouring point on the retina after a short delay

Vehicle velocity

There are a few articles on estimating vehicle velocity.
Scialfa et al (1991) provides a more behavioural account focussing on age differences.

References

Scialfa, C. T., Guzy, L. T., Leibowitz, H. W., Garvey, P. M., & Tyrrell, R. A. (1991). Age differences in estimating vehicle velocity. Psychology and aging, 6(1), 60. PDF


Term for behaviour of transfering personal problems to other people and trying to solve them there? I think my question is a little tricky to express, but I have observed this kind of behaviour pattern many times, and would like to know if it is coined in cognitive science.
As an example, consider an employer who has problems with time management - he is often late and even misses appointments.  None of his employees have this kind of problem - his team is well functioning.  However, the employer forces his team to use time tracking systems.
Another example: A person with a drinking problem tries to manipulate her friends and family to completely avoid bars, parties, and clubs, because these are the places where people tend to abuse alcohol.
The pattern I see is that a person is unable to deal with a particular personal problem, and instead obsessively tries to make sure that others don't get anywhere near that same problem.  The measures to achieve this protection are often not rational and exaggerated.
I understand that at a healthy level, the described behaviour can be beneficial.  For example if I experience a very painful situation and have an opportunity to teach others how they could avoid that experience, then I would vigorously do so.
However, I wonder if there is a term that describes when this behaviour is irrationally applied.

There are a couple of defence mechanisms that may fit the bill.  Keep in mind that these defence mechanisms typically involve an unconscious denial of the problem - ie, they apply to people who don't admit to the problem in themselves.
Projection:

... a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against
unpleasant impulses by denying their existence in themselves, while
attributing them to others. For example, a person who is rude may
constantly accuse other people of being rude.

Someone with a time management problem may constantly focus on and accuse others of being late, while someone with a drinking problem may imply that others around them have this problem rather than themselves.
Reaction formation:

... a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which emotions and
impulses which are anxiety-producing or perceived to be unacceptable
are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing
tendency.

Someone with a time management problem may actively promote the importance of punctuality and time tracking, while someone with a drinking problem may act as a spokesperson for the virtues of abstinence.
Note that the construct of defence mechanisms in general is outdated and has largely been superseded by cognitive dissonance theory.


What is an effective way of working with core beliefs/schemas? In CBT one of the core concepts is ANTs (automatic negative thoughts) that form the basis of depressive feelings: they are repetitive, conscious, mostly ungrounded negative thoughts about one's existence, talents, capabilities, etc. Most applied CBT literature discusses how to get rid of these thoughts and replace them with more realistic or at least more positive ones.

ANTs don't exist by themselves though; they derive from core beliefs or schemas that are quite elusive and often unconscious (unlike ANTs). Currently I've read the following books on the subject: Schema Therapy by Young et al., Schema Therapy: Distinctive Features by Eshkol et al., and a few articles, which helped me identify some of them.

Is there any good literature on working with ANTs? I'm especially interested in cases when ANTs are not particularly evident, so it's quite hard to identify them. It's almost like it's subconsciousness, but of course it is not.

I'm lucky enough to know a counselor-in-training whose preferred modality is CBT; here's what she suggested.

Identifying those core beliefs is indeed the important part. Useful tools include the CBT Thought Record worksheet, which pretty well explains itself, and the downward arrow technique illustrated in this figure:

(Trader, 2011).

One less-than-self-evident trick in applying these methods is refusing to take "I don't know" for an answer – it's a cop-out, my counselor connection says! Assuming this works well enough, and that you can get to the core belief more or less, you can then check a list like Grohol's (2009) for help in identifying the particular cognitive distortion at hand. He also lists Beck (1976) and Burns (1980) as references on these theories. The work of Aaron T. Beck covers very many angles of CBT, and so would be good to study for further details. As Wikipedia says, "He is regarded as the father of cognitive therapy," so you probably can't go wrong with anything he's written.

Bringing these core beliefs to the conscious "surface" is a very good start. ANTs have a lot more power when they're preconscious (not "subconscious", BTW; see https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/992/4086), because at this level, they have plenty of emotional impact but receive little or no rational scrutiny. When a person actually states a core belief aloud, that belief might not sound so reasonable, because the believer has to process the belief more deeply and consciously, which engages the error-checking cognitive mechanisms that an unconscious belief does not.

Sometimes hearing oneself speak the belief aloud is enough to realize that it doesn't make sense, and to start catching oneself in the act of reacting emotionally to unreasonable ANTs. Further therapy is necessary sometimes, and often more can help. For instance, the first question a therapist might ask in response to the core belief in the above figure could be, "I hear you expressing a very broad belief about yourself: you don't seem to think you have ever succeeded at anything. Am I understanding you correctly?" That's a very gentle response style based on reflective listening; do you see how it does more than simply repeat the client's words back to him/her? If someone can say, "I am a failure at everything!" with a straight face, hopefully he/she at least can't say, "Yes, it's correct that I've never succeeded at anything." I don't think that's true of anyone.

If the client still can't see this, the therapist may have to up the ante a bit. One generally has to stop short of calling one's client a deluded fool, but various modalities take differing perspectives on confrontationality in talk therapy. Other usual precautions in counseling apply, but within the boundaries of accepted practice, whether differences in therapeutic style produce different outcomes is an open, empirical question, and will depend largely on the character of the client in question. Further detail is probably beyond the scope of this answer.

References
- Beck, A. T. (1976). Cognitive therapies and emotional disorders. New York: New American Library.
- Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York: New American Library.
- Grohol, J. (2009). 15 common cognitive distortions. Psych Central. Retrieved on March 7, 2014, from http://psychcentral.com/lib/15-common-cognitive-distortions/0002153.
- Trader, A. (2011). A meeting of minds. Cultivating the garden of the heart: Patristic counsel and cognitive techniques for schema reconstruction (1st ed., chapter 9, pp. 217–250). Peter Lang Publishing. Retrieved from http://www.oodegr.com/english/psyxotherap/cognitive_therapy.htm.
P.S. Thanks Andréa!


What is the minimum angle off horizontal before a line visually appears inclined at first glance? Here is a straight line, which visually looks like a straight line:

At first look (lets say minimum 2–3 sec.) the line below looks straight, but after some time you can see that it is actually an inclined line. You need some time (more then 5–8 sec.) to classify that line as a inclined line.

Here is an inclined line, which looks like an inclined line at first look:

Question: Is there any study that determines the minimum angle at which a line should be inclined to be visually classified at first look as an inclined line?

Vogels and Orban (1985) asked subjects to complete several thousand angle judgments at near-principal angles (horizontal or vertical). They found that the just-noticeable difference (JND), the threshold at which people could reliably detect deviation from a horizontal line, was 0.5 degrees after a 600ms exposure to the stimulus.

The real purpose of their study was to compare learning effects for judgments of deviations from principal orientations with judgments of deviations from oblique (diagonal) angles. They found that while people could double their sensitivity over extensive training to small changes in oblique angles, the principal angles showed no such learning effects, as you can see in this graph:

Additionally, the threshold for detection of changes from principal angles was about twice as good as the oblique angles, even after 5000 trials of practice discriminating oblique angles.

Reference

Vogels, R., & Orban, G. A. (1985). The effect of practice on the oblique effect in line orientation judgments. Vision research, 25(11), 1679-1687.


Doubt on definition of emotion I am currently reading Psychology and Life by Richard J. Gerig, where emotions are defined as

  A complex pattern of changes, including physiological arousal,
  feelings, cognitive processes, and behavioral reactions, made in
  response to a situation perceived to be personally significant.

I am not able to understand why anything other than feelings should be part of emotion. Isn't physiologica arousal, behavioral reactions and cognitive processes side effects of emotions rather than being part of emotion itself? For e.g. when you feel angry your heart rate increases. Why including factors (other than feeling) in definition make sense? I think this is also related to unlearning what has been already wrongly learnt where I am treating emotion just as feeling but nothing more.

You are asking some very important questions. And your skepticism is a sign of a scholar in my book. ;o)

I agree with you that the definition provided by your textbook falls short.

Emotion is a huge topic. It might help to narrow the scope of your question.

I also suggest carefully defining a word like "feelings". For example, how are feelings and emotion different? (if they are).

Here is an article that will give you an introduction to contemporary research on emotion:

Critchley, Hugo D. and Sarah N. Garfinkel. "Interoception and emotion." Current Opinion in Psychology 17 (2017): 7–14. [Open access]

  Abstract: Influential theories suggest emotional feeling states arise from physiological changes from within the body.

  Interoception describes the afferent signalling, central processing,
  and neural and mental representation of internal bodily signals.
  Recent progress is made in conceptualizing interoception and its
  neural underpinnings. These developments are supported by empirical
  data concerning interoceptive mechanisms and their contribution to
  emotion.

  Fresh insights include description of short-term interoceptive effects
  on neural and mental processes (including fear-specific cardiac
  effects), the recognition of dissociable psychological dimensions of
  interoception, and models of interoceptive predictive coding that
  explain emotions and selfhood (reinforced by structural anatomical
  models and brain and experimental findings).

  This growing grasp of interoception is enriching our understanding of
  emotion and its disorders.

Wikipedia has a good article on interoception.


Can't use the urinal when next to someone. Is this psychological? It's a common symptom that men are unable to wee in public, for example in the urinals in a bar. This is sometimes called shy-bladder syndrome as far as I know.

Is this condition known to have physiological grounds, or is it a psychological issue?

Is this a psychological issue for me?

Depends: is there any other common factor that makes you unable to urinate? If not, then it's probably psychogenic.

It's very common.

  Paruresis (Psychogenic Inhibition of Micturition): cognitive behavioral formulation and treatment

  Paruresis is a condition characterized by difficulty or inability to urinate in situations where others are present, or may soon be present. Despite knowledge that paruresis can significantly impact on occupational functioning, social functioning, and quality of life, there exists a paucity of research into effective treatments. Although cognitive conceptualizations have been advanced for other anxiety disorders, there has not been a comprehensive cognitive behavioral model of paruresis. This article presents a revised cognitive and behavioral conceptualization of paruresis, drawing on empirical evidence from other anxiety disorders. Using this conceptualization, a cognitive-behavioral intervention strategy is outlined, with clear targets for cognitive and behavioral strategies.

Reference: Boschen, M. J. (2008). Paruresis (psychogenic inhibition of micturition): cognitive behavioral formulation and treatment. Depression and Anxiety, 25, 903-912. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/da.20367/full


'Always Give a Reason Why' - How to describe this subject area? I summarise http://rayedwards.com/always-give-a-reason-why/:

In Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence, he cites a research study showing that simply adding the word “because” to a request multiplies the likelihood of compliance.
Interestingly, the study seems to indicate that the legitimacy of the reasons supplied did not seem as important to the outcome as you might suppose. In fact, it seems hardly necessary to have a real reason at all.
For example, you might ask to cut line at the post office, and be more likely to get a “yes” response from the person in front of you if you simply frame your question by saying something like, “Would it be possible for me to please cut a front of you in line, because I’m really in a hurry.”

I recognise the lack of substantiated evidence in the above quote, but I'm interested in learning about such empirically, scientifically proven behaviour and human psychology (eg through reputable peer-reviewed articles). To clarify, I seek not the hard data itself, but only conclusions and tips supported by credible evidence. I only chanced upon that above link, so to discover more in this area methodically and productively,  what are some key words terming this subject? Where should I start?
I've no training in sciences, so I'd cherish answers and advice written in lay, simple, readable language.

This particular study, sometimes called the "Xerox Experiment", was done by Ellen Langer, who studies "mindfullness", but that may not be what you are looking for.  It is also cited on Wikipedia under Attitude Change - Heuristic Processing:

  For example, people are more likely to grant favors if reasons are
  provided. A study shows that when people said, "Excuse me, I have five
  pages to xerox. May I use the copier?” they received a positive
  response of 60%. The statement, “Excuse me, I have five pages to
  xerox. I am in a rush. May I use the copier?” produced a 95% success
  rate.

It is worth noting however, that a study published in the same year by Stanley Milgram (famous for his obedience experiments in the 60's), cited on Wikipedia under "Breaching Experiments", about people giving up their seats in the subway found a similar success rate when no reason was given, but a significantly lower compliance rate if a trivial reason was provided:

  the second condition, the trivial justification ... a much lower number gave
  up their seats.

A related field that a layman might find more accessible, is called "behavioural economics", and there is also a lot of overlap with "cognitive bias".  Search YouTube for Dan Ariely, you'll learn lots of neat tips and tricks just like this one, backed by peer-reviewed studies, about how easily people can be manipulated.


Why does regular repetition become a habit? Humans have the tendency to develop habits. Habits of an individual can be different, same, or unique.

Some have a habit of talking too much (chatty), drawing a box around the answer of mathematical problem, etc.

Why does regular repetition become automatic or habitual?

Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia you might find helpful for the (somewhat too-) general question:

A habit...tends to occur subconsciously.[(Butler & Hope, 1995)]...[Andrews (1903)]...defined [habits as]: "...acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience." Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks. Habits are sometimes compulsory...Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the behavioural patterns we repeat are imprinted in our neural pathways...but it is possible to form new habits through repetition [(Rosenthal / Psychology Today)].
As behaviors are repeated in a consistent context, there is an incremental increase in the link between the context and the action. This increases the automaticity of the behavior in that context [(Wood & Neal, 2007)]...
Habit formation can be slow. Lally[, Van Jaarsveld, Potts, and Wardle] (2010) found the average time for participants to reach the asymptote of automaticity was 66 days with a range of 18–254 days...

References
Andrews, B. R. (1908). Habit. American Journal of Psychology, 14(2), 121–149. Available online, URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1412711.
Butler, G., & Hope, T. (1995). Managing your mind: The mental fitness guide. Oxford Paperbacks.
Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C. H., Potts, H. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review, 114(4), 843–863. Available online, URL: http://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/545/docs/Wendy_Wood_Research_Articles/Habits/wood.neal.2007psychrev_a_new_look_at_habits_and_the_interface_between_habits_and_goals.pdf.


What is the proper term for the synchronization of eye movements? In humans and most two eyed species, eye movements synchronize so that both eyes are focused on the same point. This facilitates 3D vision significantly, allowing bifocal cues. I remember reading a bit about this but I can't recall the actual term or any related words I would use to find more information on the phenomenon.

What is this "synchronization" called?

binocular coordination

Linked below is a general overview of binocular coordination which also describes how, due to independent saccades events, mammalian eyes are generally not actually very well "synchronized".

Kirkby JA, Webster LA, Blythe HI, Liversedge SP. (2008) Binocular coordination during reading and non-reading tasks. Psychol Bull. 134(5):742-63

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18729571


Is neurolinguistic programming effective in influencing sales processes? In my country neurolinguistic programming (NLP) has become very popular in sales departments. Therefore, I wonder if there are any experiments which examine the contribution of NLP to the sales process.
I was especially curious when I heard that Bander sued Grinder.

Are there any peer-reviewed validation studies of NLP?
Particularly, has any peer-reviewed research examined the effect of NLP on sales?

Section "Scientific Evaluation" in the Wikipedia article on NLP sums up current research nicely:

None of the claimed effects have been validated.

Scientists consider NLP a pseudoscience with aggressive marketing and a name and jargon that deludes people seeking help by "[giving] the impression of scientific respectability" (quoted from that section).


How moral reasoning is measured? According to this answer, there are some kind of points used for moral reasoning. Therefore, I'm interested now, how the amount of points given for reasoning? Is there some kind of ideal moral theory used for it, or is it just how consistent the reasoning is or what?

It really depends on your theory.  If you can write measurement of morality in google scholar you would find many morality theories and attempts to measure it such as (Ziv, 1976). Most theories, as far as I know, use stories and evaluate children's responces to those theories. I'm not aware of any scale to measure moral development.

By the way, one of the most commonly used theory of moral development is Kohlberg's stage based moral development theory (Kohlberg, 1971). In that article, although I have not read fully, Kohlberg talks about some stories he used to measure moral development.

Of course there are many critiques to this stage based measurement of moral development. (Bandura 2014) can guide you on current theories. I haven't read any of those articles but they seem to be good starting point.

References:

Bandura, A. (2014). Social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. In Handbook of moral behavior and development (pp. 69-128). Psychology Press.

Kohlberg, L. (1971). Stages of moral development. Moral education, 1, 23-92.

Ziv, A. (1976). Measuring aspects of morality. Journal of Moral Education, 5(2), 189-201.


What statistical tests should be performed to test effect of trials on response times where each subject has different number of data-points? I am running a behavioral experiment where a number of subjects (=20 in my case) perform a simple cognitive task. The experiment consists of a fixed number of trials (say, 40 in my case). During each trial, the participant executes a single key-press and the response time (RT) is recorded.

So my recorded data looks like this:

subject-1   -> [Trial-1 RT, Trial-2 RT ... Trial-40 RT]              # (40 trials)
subject-2   -> [Trial-1 RT, Trial-2 RT ... Trial-40 RT]              # (40 trials)
...        ...       ...
subject-20  -> [Trial-1 RT, Trial-2 RT ... Trial-40 RT]              # (40 trials)

Now based on some RT criterion, a few trials are removed for each subject. This resulting data looks like this:

subject-1   -> [Trial-1 RT, Trial-3 RT ... Trial-40 RT]              # (32 trials)
subject-2   -> [Trial-1 RT, Trial-2 RT ... Trial-38 RT]              # (36 trials)
...        ...       ...
subject-20  -> [Trial-3 RT, Trial-8 RT ... Trial-40 RT]              # (28 trials)

The removal of a few trials result in a non-uniform number of data-points for each subject. Eg. subject-1, subject-2 and subject-20 have 32, 36 and 28 trials respectively.

Now I want to test the effect of trials on response times, what statistical methods should I use?

I know that when I am not removing the data, I have a nice 20*40 (subjects * trials) data matrix on which I can perform repeated measures ANOVA (within-subject) to see the effect of trials on response times. But how should I go about it if I am removing a couple of trials?

Mixed effects regression is somewhat related to repeated measures ANOVA and can handle missing data. However, they assume the missing data are missing at random.

Depending on what type of rejection criteria you are using, that assumption may be broken, in which case I think you're pretty much out of luck without a method to account for that. It may be that it is a sufficiently reasonable assumption, however, even if not strictly warranted.


Are there specific game mechanics that correlate with addictions? Are there specific game mechanics that have a high correlation with addictions or with the characteristics of addictive behavior?

Should such mechanics be avoided or can they be used with other checks in place?

This article identifies the key gameplay elements (of Candy Crush Saga) that keep players engaged and excited for the next level. A few key quotes are:

  Players experience Beginner’s Luck when they start the early levels, which allow them to easily get three stars for matching candies and crushing them.

This is essentially enticing a user with a quick reward (e.g. an easy to earn badge) to quickly get them hooked on the idea of earning more.

  This is the Free Lunch that makes them feel like they are getting bonuses due in part to their performance.

These could be rewards unlocked as they progress (e.g access to moderator tools on SE).

  a Leaderboard which includes where you rank amongst your friends.

Relatively self-explanatory, but being compared to other users (particularly friends) can be a major motivator to maintain bragging rights.

  Last Mile Drive where the player keeps on playing because they're so close to the goal and they've already invested too much time and energy in the game to quit.

This is an important one in terms of addiction; once you've drawn a user in with other methods, it can get to the point where they have to keep going or else feel they have wasted their time. Of course, with gamification there isn't an end level; you want your application to be used indefinitely.

With all the above said, I think the important thing is not what you implement, but rather, how you implement it. Try to avoid badges such as 200 consecutive logins, and use analytics to watch out for any addictive behaviour.


Can hypnotherapy help to change my tastes in food? First a few disclaimers:

I am from a scientific background but a marine biology and computing one, so I apologise if I get any concepts wrong, but I will try my best. I have never been hypnotised, but I am given to understand that hypnotherapy has been researched, written up and peer reviewed, so there is clearly some efficacy to it, although I personally have no idea how much or what its limitations are, but I am curious.

I know hypnotherapy has been mooted for weight loss, and although that is my goal (I run and occasionally use a gym), what I am interested in is not so much whether hypnotherapy might help stop me liking lardy snacks, but if it can help me change my tastes in food. My issue is that I hate salad. Can't stand the stuff. I have no problem with most green vegetables and so on, although I wouldn't say I go out of my way for them, but for some reason I find lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes and the like detestable. But I can think of no good reason why beyond that lettuce is either a bit tasteless or tastes earthy.

I like the idea of eating salad, just not the reality.

Can hypnotherapy help a person enjoy the taste of healthy food that they otherwise don't?
If it wouldn't work, why not? Is it because that level of suggestion simply isn't possible or some other deeper physiological reason?

As a professional hypnotist, I would start by asking you to consider if your body perhaps needs one or more nutrients in those snacks, or maybe there is a component of salad that really doesn't work for your body? There's the possibility of aversion to salad due to a negative association at some point in your life, say as a child you were forced to eat it. And of course there's the positive association of lardy snacks that the salad has to compete with! Sugar and fat are powerful motivators.

I don't think any respectable hypnotist would set about 'making' you like or dislike anything without seriously considering the ramifications of such an approach, and I doubt that hypnotic suggestion would be enough to overcome the messages coming from your enteric nervous system in the case of it not being an emotionally-based negative association.


How can we know which types of brainwaves is dominated at particular state? I am a freshman at Neuroscience.

As I learned there are 5 types of brainwaves: Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Theta and  Delta, each types have a different frequency  range.
So my question is when onserving a brainwaves at particular state how we know which types of brainwaves is dominated from each other?  (Does it change amplitude or it change frequency).

And if it change amplitude, is there any ways can I know what is maximum and minimum range of amplitude of each types of brainwaves.

Thank you very much.

See a previous Q&A: Why do brains oscillate within specific frequency ranges?

I think that answer covers much of your question; I'll try to cover the rest here. In short, the names gamma/beta/alpha/theta/delta are just that: names of parts of a spectrum, just like colors red/green/blue. "Alpha waves" aren't necessarily a real, discrete thing, it's just a name given to oscillations in a particular frequency band which may or may not be due to a "real" oscillation: even a random system produces waves of many frequencies.

The power spectrum of noise in the brain is typically "pink" which means it falls off with ~1/f or 1/f2.

To see "real" elevations in a power spectrum, you need to plot the whole spectrum and look for "bumps." I just grabbed one from a random paper, and although I don't like how these data are plotted without a log scale, it does show peaks in the spectrum nicely:

  Image adapted from Cajochen et al 1995; annotations mine.

As far as the amplitude of these "waves" - that entirely depends on your recording system, skull geometry, and other technical issues specific to a particular recording: the actual amplitude in volts is not really important. Therefore, typically one normalizes the power spectrum and either compare across conditions in a recording (that is, keeping the recording system constant and looking at different epochs), or normalizes the entire spectrum to "total power" to compare between recordings.

It almost never make sense to compare power in different frequency bands, though, in saying whether a frequency is "dominant": there is no meaning to delta being higher than beta, for example, besides the power law relationship where power is almost always higher at lower frequencies (except for extreme cases like the alpha peaks in the image above). What is relevant, however, could be when "in condition A, delta is higher than delta in condition B, and beta in condition A is lower than beta in condition B": relative comparisons are key. The exception is when you have prominent peaks, like in the image above.

Cajochen, C., Brunner, D. P., Krauchi, K., Graw, P., & Wirz-Justice, A. (1995). Power density in theta/alpha frequencies of the waking EEG progressively increases during sustained wakefulness. Sleep, 18(10), 890-894.


Do safety features cause drivers to engage in more risky behavior than they otherwise would? It seems to be generally assumed that making cars safer for the occupants will reduce death, injury, and damage from traffic accidents.

What are some examples of significant empirical research on this topic? Specifically, do safety features cause drivers to engage in more risky behavior than they otherwise would? If so, what is the net effect of additional safety mechanisms?

Any review in this area should start with Peltzman's 1975 JPE article.  Peltzman was writing a few years after the 1968 Motor Vehicle Safety Act (U.S.) went into effect.  The act required, among other things, padded dash boards and seat belts.  He says (p. 717):

  The  one result of this study that can  be put  forward most
  confidently is  that  auto  safety  regulation  has  not  affected
  the  highway  death  rate.  Neither the time-series nor cross-section
  data permit any other conclusion.  However,  these data are not as
  decisive about what underlies this result.  On  one interpretation,
  safety regulation has decreased the  risk of death  from an accident
  by more than an unregulated market would  have,  but  drivers have
  offset this by taking greater accident risk.

In general, the idea is that seat belts and other safety devices may save lives if the accident rate is held constant, but that in reality, wearing a seat belt may induce more risk taking and thus more accidents overall (moral hazard, or Peltzman's "compensating behavior").  Then, it is not obvious whether more accidents which are, on average, less fatal will result in more deaths overall.

Of course, Peltzman didn't settle the matter.  More recently, Cohen and Eniav (2003) found the opposite--that safety devices unambiguously save lives and that there is no evidence of additional risk-taking by seat belt wearers.  Levitt and Porter (2001) came to a similar conclusion (this later paper is worth reading because it brings to light the issue of sample selection problems (à la Heckman), and a way of correcting for it).  It seems, at least for seat belts, that the matter has been settled by these later papers.  But, these lines of research highlight that, in general, we cannot say for certain what the net effect of safety regulations will be a priori.

Interestingly, the Cohen paper focuses on primary enforcement, that is, providing incentives to use safety devices (or, rather, disincentives for not using them) beyond the live-saving benefits.  This would tend to cause people who wouldn't ordinarily use safety devices to use them.  If it is true that drivers are compensating for their unsafe behavior by using safety devices, then more safe drivers would be induced to use the devices and the moral hazard may be somewhat offset.  This tends to indicate that non-optional safety improvements may have a larger impact on deaths per mile than optional safety improvements.

Oh, and here is the spiked steering wheel comic you are looking for.


What is the name of the "Things are more visible once you learn about them" phenomenon? (Excuse the horrible title of this question. I just can't find the proper (?) words. Please edit as pleased.)

It happens many times to me that when I learn about something (e.g. a word, a concept, etc), I suddenly start to see it in many places. This is not due to a change in external circumstances but to "the way you look at things".

For example, I recently learned the word "oftentimes". I was not aware it existed before. And yet, I suddenly started to see it in many places, so that it caughts my attention. Naturally, people did not suddenly started to use this word, so this was clearly a change in my perception, due to "conceptual learning".

My question is, is there a word for this psychological phenomenon? I hardly find the proper words to search for this, so my efforts at the moment have been pointless.

The scenario you describe is sometimes called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

  Baader-Meinhof is the phenomenon where one stumbles upon some obscure
  piece of information—often an unfamiliar word or name—and soon
  afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly.

The more scientifically accepted name for this cognitive bias seems to be 'frequency illusion'.

  The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently
  come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable
  frequency shortly afterwards[.]

As to why it occurs, this article seems to state a combination of selective attention (or attentional control) and confirmation bias:

  One, your brain seems to be excited by the fact that you've learned
  something new, and selective attention occurs. Your brain
  subconsciously thinks, "Hey, that's awesome! I'm going to look for
  that thing without actually thinking about it." So now that you're
  looking for it, you find it. To make it all the more powerful,
  confirmation bias occurs after seeing it even once or twice. In other
  words, you start agreeing with yourself that, yup, you're definitely
  seeing it more


Getting useful readings out of GSR sensors while moving? I'm currently thinking about a project that would involve using a GSR sensor and an Arduino (Probably the Grove GSR Sensor) to measure Stress levels in a person.

It will not be a research project, but an art project instead. I want to build a device that shows my stress level with some LEDs as indicators. The idea is that I can walk around with it and when I approach people and talk to them the color changes because of my social anxieties. So it doesn't have to be accurate, but if it won't work at all, I might as well scrap the project.

In which ways would movement of the subject distort the readings? Suppose the wearer has heightened physical activity, would the GSR sensor give any useful readings? And if so: any pointers on how to pull this off?

I think the general downside of the galvanic skin response (GSR) apply here. Wikipedia sums up a few confounding factors that affect the validity of GSR:

Temperature and humidity (affect the resistance of the skin and hence GSR);
Internal factors, such as medications and hydration;
Different locations of measurement on the body can lead to different responses; for example, the responses on the left and right wrists are driven by different regions of the brain, providing multiple sources of arousal.
Different body parts may have different sweat gland density
Electrodermal responses are delayed 1–3 seconds.

My personal biggest issue with the method is the fact that the GSR depends so much on the temperature of the room and activity of the subject. However, my purpose for it is a quantitative one; your is more of a qualitative one as I understand it. If yes, then some variability may not be so problematic and you can counter the above drawbacks by

Only do the experiment indoors in a climate controlled environment;
Calibrate the equipment on yourself and only use yourself as a subject and stay hydrated;
Always use the same location (fingers in case of your linked device);
Give your device some time to respond; so the (stress) situation has to be somewhat prolonged, and the response will be delayed.

Do note that skin conductances are finicky. You can assure good contact by rubbing the skin with alcohol and a rough-surface pice of gauze. Make sure to apply some conductive paste. Measure the impedances regularly.

FYI: I have chosen to use pupillometry as a measure of stress. It has its own drawbacks and issues (especially adaptational responses and baseline issues), but once it works, it's less prone to signal drift, e.g. because of impedance issues as with electrode-based methods.

Below I've added a reference that lists an entire protocol for such measurements.

Reference
- Cartocci et al., J Vis Exp (2017); 126: 55872


How does the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument relate to the Big Five? The Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI) is apparently quite popular in MBA classes and even in conflict negotiation practice:

  The TKI is popular beyond the confines of negotiation classes.
  Indeed, it is one of the most widely used instruments of its kind in the
  world.

It basically scores one's negotiation style in five domains: Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Avoiding, and Accommodating, although it looks like these are placed on just two dimensions Assertiveness and Cooperativeness.

(The also have an interesting FAQ as to why they chose this domain approach: apparently to avoid halo and  social desirability effects in questions/answers.)

Has the TKI been [co]related to the Big Five or some other more general (i.e. not simply focused on conflict-resolution) personality model?

There are a few studies that have correlated Big 5 with conflict styles. There are various terminology and measures but many use a similar set of five styles to the TKI.

Antonioni (1998) is highly cited. Here are the correlations.

In short:

The five conflict styles are correlated in ways that partially reflect the underlying two-dimensions of interested in self and interested in others.
Agreeableness correlates positively with interested in others and avoiding conflict. Agreeableness is also the strongest correlate of conflict styles.
Extraversion and openness are both related to integrating and negatively related to avoiding conflict.
Conscientiousness is related to integrating.
Neuroticism is related to avoiding conflict.

Antonioni, D. (1998). Relationship between the big five personality factors and conflict management styles. International journal of conflict management, 9(4), 336-355.


Why do we sometimes forget the retrospective component of a particular task? I'm sure everyone experienced it quite a few times before. For example, sometimes when we go to the kitchen to grab something the moment we get to the kitchen you forget what you were trying to get. Why is that?

I must begin by stressing that while this is an interesting question, it is also very complex (much like memory itself). Similar to other areas of Cognitive Psychology, depending on which expert you ask, you might get different explanations. My background is in prospective memory and cognitive psychology, and this is how I would address this question. I believe this framing is crucial to contextualize my answer.
On a high level, we can classify memory into retrospective memory and prospective memory. Retrospective memory is where to be remembered item occured in the past (people, events, tacit skills). Prospective memory (PM) concerns how we remember to do things in the future (i.e., "remembering to remember"), or remember to perform an intended action at the correct time/situation. A classic example of PM is having to remember to pick up milk on the way home from work. Your ability to do this may be directed by active maintenance (e.g., reiterating to yourself for hours), self-generated cues/offloading (e.g., a phone reminder), or environmental cues (e.g., driving past the shop).
In prospective memory, it is common for individuals to remember to complete the prospective (e.g., go to the shop), but forget the retrospective component of the task (e.g., what to buy at the shop). This is the experience you are talking about. There is a wide literature of laboratory based experiments that attempt to explain the processes underlying why individuals sometimes forget to perform a PM task (see Smith et al.; or Brandimonte et al.; or Scullin et al.), or forget to perform the retrospective component (for review, see Mcbridge & Workman).
Without getting deep into the neurological or exact cognitive level for why you would forget the retrospective component of a task, consider some factors that may decrease/increase probability of forgetting:

Task interruptions 'disrupting' your memory trace
A long duration between encoding an intention and having to retrieve the specific item from memory.
Pre-existing clinical disorder or ageing related disorder. Intoxication related brain function inhibition.
The to-be remembered retrospective component was unfamiliar, indistinct. You failed to encode the item properly in the first place.
Having a strong memory trace through implementation intentions can support memory for the retrospective component.
There's evidence that cue valence/salience (i.e., being positive/negative or distinct) or important improves  memory for the retrospective portion of PM.

That is but a small subset of possibilities. On a cognitive level, an activation based explanation would be that the "to-be remembered retrospective memory item" dropped below some critical threshold of neural activation, and was forgot. Interference based approaches would argue that some event during the retention interval disrupted the stored model or memory item, thus leading to forgetting. Neuropsychology based approaches would be able to map more specifically regions of the brain to forms of forgetting in laboratory based tasks.
In summary, we don't really know exactly why people forget things in any arbitrary context. However, psychologists can identify and classify the kind of forgetting that occurred, and provide suggestions of the likely factors that would have contributed to that forgetting. Neuropsychology approaches would assist in grounding these explanation in terms of neurological processes.
Further Reading:
Brandimonte, M. A., Einstein, G. O., & McDaniel, M. A. (Eds.). (2014). Prospective memory: Theory and applications. Psychology Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-02930-000
Smith, R. E., Hunt, R. R., & Murray, A. E. (2017). Prospective memory in context: Moving through a familiar space. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 43(2), 189–204. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000303
Burgess, P. W., Gonen-Yaacovi, G., & Volle, E. (2011). Functional neuroimaging studies of prospective memory: What have we learnt so far? Neuropsychologia, 49(8), 2246–2257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.014
Schaper, P., & Grundgeiger, T. (2018). The effect of different distractions on remembering delayed intentions. Memory, 26(2), 154–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2017.1339090
Anderson, F. T., & McDaniel, M. A. (2019). Retrieval in prospective memory: Multiple processes or just delay? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(9), 2197–2207. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819845622
Ball, B. H., Brewer, G. A., Loft, S., & Bowden, V. (2015). Uncovering continuous and transient monitoring profiles in event-based prospective memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22(2), 492–499. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0700-8
Dismukes, R. K. (n.d.). Prospective Memory in Aviation and Everyday Settings. 22.
Heathcote, A., Loft, S., & Remington, R. W. (2015). Slow down and remember to remember! A delay theory of prospective memory costs. Psychological Review, 122(2), 376–410. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038952
Kuhlmann, B. G., & Rummel, J. (2014). Context-specific prospective-memory processing: Evidence for flexible attention allocation adjustments after intention encoding. Memory & Cognition, 42(6), 943–949. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0405-2
McBride, D. M., & Workman, R. A. (2017). Chapter Seven - Is Prospective Memory Unique? A Comparison of Prospective and Retrospective Memory. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation (Vol. 67, pp. 213–238). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.plm.2017.03.007
Scullin, M. K., McDaniel, M. A., & Shelton, J. T. (2013). The Dynamic Multiprocess Framework: Evidence from Prospective Memory with Contextual Variability. Cognitive Psychology, 67(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2013.07.001


Why is swearing such an in built part of the mind? My wife suffered from a Traumatic Head Injury several months ago. She had 2 Brain surgeries due to bleeding of the brain. As a result, she is unable to speak words other than yes, no, don't know and there. She has to learn through Speech and Language Therapy how to say each word. However, right from the start, she's been able to easily say sentences such as "For fucks sake Scott" and "Fuck off". Is there something about swearing that is built in?

The mind is a large landscape as you are finding. Speech centers where new or current ideas are formed into words rely on other areas where conversion elements have already been worked out some time ago. Ready made phrases for non-new ideas and reliable conversation can be brought up with little or no effort. With these peppered into speech one can sound as if they are otherwise fully conscious and thinking about what they are saying.

You can see this when speaking with people when they cannot stop adding the same phrase to their sentences. Such as "...if you know what I mean." Though a complex phrase it has its own quick 'subroutine' to send it to the mouth. After hearing this over and over you would guess that the speaker is not as self aware as you first suspected. This can reflect the effort made as they cast about for ideas and how to express them.

The foul language which would be rare in earlier days probably reflects her frustration and anger with her difficulties in forming speech. Normally there are filters to prevent using bad language if only to spare feelings of listeners. These can also be compromised when the effort is to get any speech together. You can think of her speech as letting you in on parts of her internal, normally private, dialogue as she struggles to express herself.

With patience this should improve as she re-maps her speech abilities along with the boundaries of what to say and not say.

I suggest you read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks to see how disparate the areas of the mind can be. Good luck to you both.


How do I stream SMI glasses eye tracker data into MATLAB? We are planning to use the SMI glasses eye tracker. This eye tracker obtains gaze data and we will use it for pupillometry as a measure of cognitive load.

The only thing I'd like to accomplish is streaming the eyetracker data in real-time to a running psychophysics MATLAB script to sync the eyetracker data with a listening task.

Now, SMI's REDn system (the tabletop variant) comes with a MATLAB toolbox, but SMI's glasses don't. The glasses are a mobile application that allows the subject to wear the eye tracker as glasses. Hence, the subject can move around and doesn't have to fixate at a certain point.

Now I was wondering if there is anyone out here that has used SMI's eye tracking glasses with a MATLAB plugin? I'd prefer a low-budget solution, preferably a freeware MATLAB tool.

I am aware of Lab Streaming Layer (LSL), but I can't get that to work, because of a version issue. Basically, LSL is written for a previous software development kit (SDK) for the eyetracker driver software (iView) and the current SDK is incompatible. SMI doesn't support previous SDK versions and hence that's a dead end.

I am also aware of various commercial plugins, such as iMotions, but those are heavy, expensive toolkits for purposes far exceeding the simple streaming of data from the eyetracker to a running MATLAB script.

Philip from iMotions here. Appreciate the mention, and yes for a simple streaming of data, our solutions are probably overkill. We do however offer real automatic gaze mapping in the cloud as well as auto segmentation which saves a ton of time

We also offer LSL in our latest version but yes SMI doesn't support the previous SDK.

I'll listen in and hope someone can help you with your inquiry.


How is the focal point determined when looking into a clear sky? When looking into a clear blue sky, no cloud, birds, trees or any object to give a frame of reference. When a person is actively looking, as opposed to day dreaming or gazing.

The sky goes for a long distance, and with uninterrupted view, and I guess the first question would be:
-  At what point into the atmosphere can the human eye see (which is not a topic for this site), following this,

What I want to know; is at what point to the eyes come to rest and How is the focal point determined?

Another consideration is:

How can this be measured?
 Would any attempt to measure this would involve putting a device between the eyes and focal point?

Accommodation is the process where the lens in the eye changes shape to focus on an object. The eyes have a default accommodation distance, called the resting point of accommodation (RPA). The RPA is the distance at which the eyes focus when there is nothing to focus on. The RPA is not identical to the acommodation state of the eye when focusing at infinity. Instead, the RPA can be measured in total darkness. There, the eyes' focal distance will equal the RPA after accommodation is complete. If the lights were then turned on, an object placed at that distance would be in clear focus. The RPA averages 30 inches (approximately 760 mm) for younger people and gets farther away with age (source: D. Ankrum).

The RPA can be measured by using infrared optometry, which is a non-invasive technique to measure the refractive state of the eye and the accommodation (Roorda et al., 1998).

Reference
- Roorda et al., Vis Res (1998); 38(13): 1913–24


What are current neuronal explanations and models of 'consciousness'? I would like to understand more about consciousness from a neuroscientific perspective. I have a limited understanding of it in the philosophical/psychological sense through lectures.

Although it is hard to define, here is a definition from Christof Koch's website I will provide:

  "At this point in the scientific exploration of this phenomena, it cannot be defined rigorously. Consciousness usually (but not always) involves some form of attentional selection and a rapidly decaying form of information storage. For strategic reasons, most of the empirical research has focused on the brain states underlying conscious sensory perception, the neuronal correlates of consciousness, or NCC. I avoid taking any particular ideological position in the debate concerning the exact relationship between the NCC and conscious experience."

I do not know what the debate is about but I'm curious about this relationship between NCC and overall conscious experience.

Rather than reading through every model of consciousness proposed, I was hoping someone who might be more knowledgeable to briefly explain or provide references to literature/reviews of models with a strong neuronal emphasis. In particular I would prefer models more so if they are not specific to a single mode of sensory perception.

The major neural models of consciousness at the moment roughly fall into two camps: cognitive and phenomenological. They are defined by controversy surrounding what types of experience qualify as concious.
Cognitive models
On the one hand there are strong cognitive models of consciousness, such as the one proposed by Stanislas Dehaene, where consciousness is characterised - neurally - by large scale, reverberant processing across the whole brain. That is, when feedforward stimulus based activity and top down feedback activity (i.e. internal, cognitive factors) are coordinated across the whole cortex. On this view, a stimulus can be said to be consciously perceived when it gains access to a special population of workspace neurons that have limited capacity and broadcast information related to the stimulus to other modular subsystems (e.g., memory, language sensory modalities). Limited capacity and broadcasting are properties of workspace neurons that account for both the limited nature of consciousness (e.g., attention), and coherency of consciousness (that is we perceive multi-sensory information coherently as events that are bound together, not as separate bits of visual, auditory and tactile experiences). It is believed that these workspace neurons are apart of the fronto-parietal attention network, and are involved in selecting information in the occipital-temporal systems.
Phenomenological models
In contrast, so called phenomenological theories, such as the those put forward by Victor Lamme and Ned Block, propose that consciousness also arises from local recurrent activity between two brain regions. The central feature of these theories is that - in addition to the cognitive forms of consciousness - there is also phenomenal consciousness which accounts for raw sensory (non-cognitive) properties of consciousness.
The key argument for this type of consciousness is that phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive consciousness, that is, we are conscious of things that are outside of the focus of attention and that do not become encoded in a more durable form by the central cognitive system (I think Ned Block would still argue phenomenal consciousness requires attention so I am setting up a caricature here). According to this theory, phenomenal consciousness is supported by local recurrent activity between two regions. For example, it is possible to have a phenomenal sense of motion when motion selective cortex (area MT) and primary visual cortex (V1) enter into a feedforward and feedback relationship. Note Block and Lamme hold the same views as Dehaene regarding cognitive consciousness.
Old and other models
It is also possible to distinguish these two theories of consciousness from other dated views that argue that particular parts of the brain reflect the goings on of consciousness. For example, one common view is that the processing in the frontal lobes reflects consciousness. These regionally specific theories are quite different from the ones described above where consciousness is characterised by relationships between regions. However, these types of theories are very much out of fashion and for good reason - consciousness is likely to be a complex dynamic property of the system.
However, once you start to say that the whole system is important some people, such as Alva Noe, argue that it is pointless even saying that consciousness resides in the brain!!!! For Noe, consciousness is a dynamic relationship between the organism and the environment. I would not say that Noe's views are widely held in the neuroscientific community.
Well, these are the only models that I have followed in any detail. I know there are other more complex models, such as Giulio Tononi's Information Integration model, but this model requires a good knowledge of information theory (so I never followed it up). If any of this material needs more clarification I am more than happy to expand on it.

Bibliography
For an intro, try reading:

Kouider, S. (2009). Neurobiological Theories of Consciousness. In Banks, W. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Elsevier, vol. 2, 87-100. (pdf)

See also:

Dehaene S, Changeux JP, Naccache L, Sackur J, and Sergent C (2006) Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: A testable taxonomy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10: 204–211. (pdf)

Lamme VA (2006) Towards a true neural stance on consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10: 494–501. (pdf)


What is the origin of the belief that the heart plays a role in influencing the emotions? In many religious scriptures, novels, fictions you read about this battle between heart and brain. If till date we are using this in our daily conversations and history is full of these examples then there must be some origin of this concept?

In the 4th century B.C., Aristotle identified the heart as the most important organ of the body, and claimed that it was the seat of intelligence and sensation. Aristotle described it as a three-chambered organ that was the center of 'vitality' in the body.  Other organs surrounding it (e.g. brain and lungs) simply existed to cool the heart (source: Stanford University). Since then it has been associated with emotions, although in the middle ages during the Enlightenment it already became clear that he heart was a pump, and not the seat of emotions.

A fact, however, is that intense emotions, such as love, fear and anger have pronounced effects on heart rate, mainly because of the release of adrenaline and other (stress) responses regulated by the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA) axis (source: Penn State University). The brain sends signals to the adrenal gland, which then secretes  hormones and then they go to the heart which causes the heart to beat faster.


Why are dream so fast? Psychology always tell us the brain is meant to relax during rest/sleep/unconsciousness, but why is it that when one sleep and have a dream, the dreams are so fast that you hardly remember 60% of the dream after you wake up.

Is it that the brain processes faster during sleep?
How can you remember at-least 60% of your dream, after you are awake, not after several days, month or years?

Sleeping is a usual, necessary process for memorization and brain rest. It is commonly known that there are two phases of sleeping: rapid eye movement sleep (REM) with high brain activity and non-rapid with low activity and usually without dreams. When you get tired and fall asleep, you enter directly into second, non-rapid phase, and your internal discourse stops. Obviously, this brain state doesn't differ faster processes.

During REM sleep there are some images, dreams in your head, combinations of ideas, memories and worries, which aren't useful, since brain erases most of it. But there is one interesting technic, lucid dream. Using that you can keep consciousness when falling asleep or get it while sleeping. You can control dreams, do whatever you want, even control memories, if you got high skill.

And what about speed of this REM condition? Despite the rapid eye-movements, this condition also doesn't provide high speed of thinking. Sometimes (e.g. during a nap or while awakening) you can have dreams and feel, hear things round you; and you can observe that your dreams and real world go at the same speed. However, when you awoke, thanks to special chemical mechanisms you forget dreams, it seems dim and far - that makes the illusion of fast feelings.

So, the answers are:

No, it is just another kind of brain work.
You can learn lucid dreaming. Also you may just try remember dreams every morning, e.g. I keep dreams diary for a few years and now can remember about 5 dreams per night, when I started from 1 dream per month.

I'd like to add, from mine and friends experience, there is nothing very interesting or useful about remembering or controlling dreams. It is a real trash for mind, although unusual trash.


How are Raven's Matrices scores converted into age-adjusted IQ? There are IQ tests based only on Raven's matrices. I wonder how a raw score on such a test is "scaled" to an IQ result. As we all know, IQ results depend on the age of individual tested. So I was looking for any data about IQ results and standard deviations in different age groups and I didn't find anything except truisms. But there must be a table with multipliers for every age group, by which a raw test score is multiplied to evaluate the IQ result.

How are raw Raven's scores converted into age-adjusted IQ?
Where can one find age norms for Raven's?

Raven (2000) provides norms for Raven matrices for different age groups.

Here is how you interpret it.

Burke (1985) provide different groups norms.

You can use different scales like IQ (which is very old term used in Piaget. DeVries (below) has more about it). Also there are other measures: percentiles, DQI, Z scores, etc... you have formulas to recalculate, but usually you have to have norms on different age groups.

Usually it is hard to interpret if you don't have some background in psychometry, but good luck.

References

Burke, H. R. (1985). Raven's Progressive Matrices (1938): More on norms, reliability, and validity. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 41(2), 231-235. ERIC Number: EJ316493 DOI: 10.1002/1097-4679(198503)41:2<231::AID-JCLP2270410216>3.0.CO;2-Z
DeVries, R. (1974). Relationships among Piagetian, IQ, and achievement assessments. Child Development, 746-756. ERIC Number: ED088593 PDF⇰
Raven, J. (2000). The Raven's progressive matrices: change and stability over culture and time. Cognitive Psychology, 41(1), 1-48. ERIC Number: EJ615887 DOI: 10.1006/cogp.1999.0735 PDF⇰


Fear of things that look like or resemble humans I remember reading this a while back. To be clear, I'm not talking about a phobia such as Automatonophobia (Fear of inanimate objects that resemble humans, such as dolls) or Pediophobia (Fear of dolls).

Instead, what I read about seems to be something we are all programmed to feel. What I read was that people naturally fear things that look human, but at the same time, are not quite human. A good example I once read about is a game called LSD. Now if you guys Google this and take a look at the screenshots, the game doesn't look scary at all does it? How could it when it has such out dated and hilarious graphics. If you tried to play the game however, you'll soon find yourself becoming jumpy at every little thing in the game which sooner or later, you will start to see as really creepy.

I read that this seems to be a reason why some people find old horror games with old graphics much more frightening than newer games where character models look much more realistic and humanoid. This might also be unrelated, however looking at the horror genre overall, aren't we mainly scared of things that look human? Jason and Freddy are pretty deformed, however in essence human's in shape. Vampires look exactly like humans, but with paler skin and fangs. Zombies look just like humans, albeit with rotting flesh. etc

Is there a scientific name and reasoning behind all this? I mean if you think about it, the further you create something away from a humans shape, the less frightening it becomes (a blob monster for example). Slap on a pair of red eyes on a human however or fangs, and he instantly becomes pretty scary.

Might be Uncanny Valley

  The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of human aesthetics which holds that when human features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some human observers. Examples can be found in the fields of robotics,1 3D computer animation,[2][3] and in medical fields such as burn reconstruction, infectious diseases, neurological conditions, and plastic surgery.[4] The "valley" refers to the dip in a graph of the comfort level of humans as subjects move toward a healthy, natural human likeness described in a function of a subject's aesthetic acceptability.


Does a more ergonomic and user friendly interface/device make the human brain work less? There was an interesting discussion on UX.StackExchange related to washing machines and their front windows. I was very surprised that it took me like 2 minutes or so to figure out why the washing machine has a window, but most of the answers or comments (including those with many votes) don't express the real reason, which would be similar to this:

  For front-loaders without viewing windows on the door, it is possible
  to accidentally pinch fabric between the door and the drum, resulting
  in tearing and damage to the pinched clothing during tumbling and
  spinning. - Wikipedia.

Question: Does a more ergonomic and user friendly interface make the human brain work less, or less intensive, so it can not see the initial purpose of an improvement made in a system or on one of its elements?

ISO 9241, a standard covering ergonomics of human-computer interaction, defines in its subsection 9241-110, "Dialogue Principles", that the interface in information systems should be (among other things):

suitable for the task
facilitate learning
conform with user expectations
describe its own purpose and functioning

You could translate all this to:

  Don't make the user think too hard about what he has to do

Shneiderman, in his "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design" and Nielsen in his "10 Usability Heuristics of User Interface Design" (also on Wikipedia), make this even more explicit:

Shneiderman, Rule 8: Reduce short-term memory load
Nielsen, Heuristic 6: Recognition rather than recall

Reducing cognitive load is part of the industry definition of usability. By that definition a usable product "makes the human brain work less".

Sources:

ISO 9241-110:2006 http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=38009
Nielsen, J. (1994). Heuristic evaluation. In J. Nielsen & R. L. Mack (Eds.), Usability Inspection Methods (pp. 25-64). New York: Wiley.
Shneiderman, B., & Plaisant, C. (2010). Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (5th ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.


What is the difference between apparent motion and apparent movement? A definition for apparent movement is:

The perception of movement produced by stimuli that are stationary but are presented first at one position and then, at an appropriate time interval, presented at a different position.

Example:

And apparent motion is defined as:

Motion can be detected even if there is no real motion

Example:
Flip Books

Now to my actual question: I know that those two forms of perception are very close; so what is the actual difference between the two? Is there a pure definition of the difference?
I feel that both apparent movement and apparent motion are according to Gleitman et al. (2010) pretty much the same, and could be applied to both sorts of examples. So if presented with a stimulus/illusion, how would one approach them to discern which is which?

There is no difference between the two; illusionary movement and motion are interchangeable terms. For example, a definition of apparent motion is (Oxford Index):

  A sensation of movement in the absence of actual movement, [for example] visual illusions [...]

And a definition for apparent movement (Psychology Dictionary) is:

  [A]n illusion of motion or change of size that is cued by visual tricks.

In other words, apparent movement and apparent motion are the same thing. The two visual illusions you provide, though, are caused by two different neurophysiological phenomena altogether.

The flip book relies on persistent vision where multiple images are blurred into a coherent perception over time.

The rotating spokes illusion is thought to be caused by asymmetric luminance steps that trigger the motion detectors in the brain.


Measures to study working memory level related to physical activity I want to do a study on the effect of physical exercise on working memory. Can you suggest measures for working memory assessment that differentiate levels of memory functioning amongst "normal" adults?

A very common test of working memory is the N-back.

In the N-back, the subject needs to remember what happened some number (N) of steps earlier. For example, imagine seeing the following numbers one at a time on a computer screen. Your task is to press a key whenever the number on the screen is the same as the number that was there 3 steps earlier:

1 4 5 2 6 3 4 5 6 4 2 5 3 2.

The numbers in bold are when the subject should respond.

There are many variations of the n-back, and it is easy to adjust the difficulty of the test by changing how many steps back subjects need to remember.


Why are some people jealous of other people's success? I have seen many time in my life where I encountered few peoples who hate those person who are going great with their life and achieving something. I mean why some people hate those person who are doing great in some particular field but the other guy is not able to do it.

For example, if 2 persons are working together and among them one of them is getting famous and achieving so many things then the other guy starts hating him and sees him as an enemy or rival.

Is there any explanation behind this type of behaviour or it is common to most of the people as it is natural?

Social Order and Hierarchy. As Humans our brains are designed to see where we fit in the social order. If someones success is perceived as a threat, it can lead to anxiety and fear from the person whom is resentful and jealous.

While in the modern world there is no need for this fear, our ancestors had to compete within their tribe(s) for resources,status,choice etc. If one member of the tribe gained more status than another they would have more access to resources, supplies, privilege, reproductive power etc. This could lead to competition from other members of the tribe fearful that they would not have enough resources, or access to enough supplies, ultimately seeing one of their tribe members as a potential threat to their own well-being.This applies to survival and reproduction value as well.

In conclusion: While this type of behavior can still be common, it is a highly outdated form of thinking that comes from our hardwired tribe mentality, defense mechanisms,and the need for humans to look for for a social order and hierarchy in modern society.


Is a concept of machiavellianism useful? I can't be classified by wikipedia as someone clearly machiavellian (I'm hedonist (in the sence of general pleasure/pain, not only physical) and try not to hurt other people). Yet, I managed to score 80 on MACH-IV. But I doubt that questions are well selected. In fact almost every question is ambiguous or ill-posed (it's sometimes about belief that everyone is a kind person, I'm not an ultra-optimist, I'm realist and sometimes just about being average person).

By the way, I could not see anything in this test that could reveal machiavellian traits. Moreover, most study show only a weak correlation between them and high score in test. The real correlation is around .2 if not lower, which makes it unreliable.

What I'm thinking is that people with similar [to mine] philosophy also can score higher than average just for similar reasons. And it's completely weird, since philosophies are too different.

Well, for example, I know that concepts of narcissism (but NPI still has around of half useless questions in my opinion) and psychopathy are much better defined and appropriate tests seem to be more accurate. Yet, if there is another type of personality, that may ruin lifes of other people, it can't be revealed by MACH-IV.

In fact statistics show that mean score is around 67 or so, which is considered as high Mach. If majority are high Machs, then there is no dark triad. Also, the form of graph is symmetrical, while form of graph on NPI test is highly assymmetrical.

So, is it just a canard or is there some evidence, that such personality type exists (and it is something that is useful in terms of psychology)? (Of course, some people may treat themselves as the only really clever ones, who should rule the world, but yet think that they look as average person; which is some kind of narcissism).

What I'm going to say here pertains mostly to your previous question on this topic, rather than this one, which does strike me as a bit of knee-jerk reaction, however, it might help with this one as well.

Mach-IV has, by design, four main factors but in opposite pairs, so only two main sub-scales, which are added for the total score

negative (vs. positive) interpersonal tactics
cynical (vs. positive) view of human nature

You can actually look up how the individual questions load into these factors, for instance Table 2 in this paper, the full text of which is freely available. It is possible to score high on one but not the other sub-scale. There are also to two odd questions about Morality in the Mach-IV, but this is a rather poorly designed part of the test. Mach-IV has an overall degree of internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) of 0.7 (mentioned in that paper), which is borderline acceptable.

There is a newer Machiavellianism test that has seen some adoption, called Machiavellian Personality Scale--MPS (2009) which you might be able to find/take; the authors have made it freely available. MPS has more independent scales:

Distrust of Others (five items)
Desire for Status (three items),
Desire for Control (three items)
Amorality (five items).

As for usefulness, I don't know of real-world uses of Mach-IV outside of research. It's not like you won't land a job at Best Buy by failing it; actually machiavelianism might help you score such a job, but I'm digressing too mcuh already.


Academic performance Is there any literature suggesting a relationship between academic performance and cognitive function?

I'm trying to find something that suggests which cognitive functions/domains are typically utilized when taking school exams. Obviously this will depend heavily on the nature of the exam, but are there any studies that have looked at this generally?

For example, do people that perform better on exams also perform better on computer based tasks assessing working memory, or ignoring visual distractors etc? Hence allowing you to narrow down the specific set of cognitive functions associated with taking an exam?

EDIT: by cognitive function, I'm referring to things like working memory, sustained attention, executive function, spatial processing. Not so much IQ or any measures of intelligence

If by cognitive function you mean IQ, then that's most of the focus of the intelligence research, as in the main motivation to study IQ. In one large UK study of children the correlation was 0.81.
But there are personality factors influencing academic performance as well. Even with respect to IQ [as measured in pracice], it is suspected that it is influenced in part by motivation, which itself may be an interaction between personality and the context/environment. And to the extent that self-discipline is different than [short-term] motivation, some research suggest it may matter even more for academic performance.