How to design research participant recruitment flyer to maximise participant response? I often supervise student research projects. Often these projects involve recruiting participants by placing one page flyers in strategic locations. The most common scenario is that the flyer is targeted at university students, there may be some small financial reimbursement for their time, and the study might involve spending an hour or so in lab.

When writing such a flyer, there is a balance between making participation sound like a worth while thing to do, but at the same time being ethical and accurate in describing what the study involves.

Thus, while I have a bunch of tips and tricks for writing such materials, I wasn't aware of any particular material that I could provide to research students to get started.

What is best practice in participant recruitment flyer design?
What is a good repository of examples of good participant recruitment flyers?
What are some good online resources outlining tips for creating a participant recruitment flyer?

I'd also be interested in materials about the surrounding context (e.g., flyer placement; streamlining the process between reading a flyer and participation).

Not exactly an answer to your question, but some thoughts on why we don't use flyers.

There is a lot of research going on at our university that involves recruiting participants. From psychology to medicine and economics, everybody vies for the time of the several thousand students. Then there are all those flyers for parties, political initiatives, religious get-togethers etc. etc. On top of this information overload, most students are extremely short of time and mental and emotional energy. Studying here is hard, and students don't want to sit in a lab, when they have the time to not sit over their books.

Our department has the most success at recruiting participants with setting up a small screened area inside the refectory/cafeteria (where the students eat their lunch), standing in front of the entrance, approaching everyone, and testing them then and there. If we cannot test them in the cafeteria, we still approach them there and try to arrange a date for a lab test. We also offer sweets with the recruitment (they're in a small tray and offered when we approach the person).

Maybe that gives you some ideas.


What challenges the ideasthesia balance theory has to answer? Ideasthesia "can be defined as a phenomenon in which activation of concepts produces phenomenal experience". The examples vary from the Kiki/Bouba phenomenon applied to (possibly) everyone to actually seeing colors in graphemes like in synesthetic people. According to the theory, "there is a strong similarity between semantics and sensations".

(source: ieet.org)
Figure: Sensation vs. meaning balance shown for hypothetical pieces of entertainment (red), art (yellow) and science (white), as they are broken down into their components. Only an art piece is consistently located in the gray area.
Given that this theory is pretty young (first creation in Wikipedia was in 2012 by presumably one avid contributor on the field, based on their username), I wonder if there are any review or critic on the theory. What challenges does it need to answer? Which theory is it incongruent with?
Source:
• Wikipedia: Ideathesia
• TED-Ed: Ideasthesia: How do ideas feel? - Danko Nikolić
• IEEE: Danko Nikolić, Ideasthesia and Art

Short answer
Ideaesthesia does not comprise a theory or even a hypothesis. It is merely a term meaning 'sensing concepts' or 'perceiving meaning'.

Background
As Steven Jeuris also comments, ideaesthesia is not a theory, it is simply a term. It is a combination of two Greek words, namely 'concept' or 'idea', and the other is 'sensation', or 'aisthesis'. In translation, ideaesthesia means sensing concepts or perceiving meaning (source: Danko Nikolić).

It it used to denote phenomena as the Kiki/Bouba effect (Milan et al., 2013; Martinez & Milan, 2015) and synesthesia (Jürgens & Nikolić, 2012) as you write. These phenomena are associated with assigning shapes to names, and colors to graphemes (and the likes), respectively. As far as I can see, ideaesthesia does not explain anything, it is not an observation, it is not a hypothesis, let alone a theory. It is a term used to group phenomena where people associate seemingly unrelated concepts.

Further, for what it's worth, a cursory Google Scholar search on 'ideaesthesia' yields few hits (82), and those hits that pop up, in part referenced here, point sometimes to questionable journals or to irrelevant papers. I would hence use the term cautiously as it doesn't seem to be widely used.

References
- Jürgens & Nikolić, Translat Neurosci (2012); 3(1): 22-7
- Martinez & Milan, V Int Conf Synesthesia: Science and Art. Alcalà la Real de Jaén. España. 16–19th May 2015
- Milan et al., J Consciousness Studies, 20(1-2


How can I visualize DTI tractography streamlines generated from FSL's probtrackX in 3D? I currently have track files of diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data generated from FSL's probtrackX tractography tool. What is the best software to visualize the streamlines from FSL in 3D?

I must say I am not an expert, but the following sources look helpful:

Gao et al. (2013) write

  The voxel value in the resulting dataset represents the number of
  streamline samples passing through this voxel times the expected
  length of these samples. The probabilistic-tractography-derived DDM
  was generated by keeping the values of those voxels located at the WGM
  interface and setting the remaining voxels to zero. Again, the DDMs
  were rendered on the 3D WGM interface in DTI space.

The FDT Userguide discusses tractography and PROBTRACKX in section 2.6.3;
Catani & Thiebaut de Schotten (2008) discuss how diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography can be used to virtually dissect white matter pathways in the living human brain;
This presentation contains a lot of references;
Specialist fora like this one may be of help.

References
- Catani & Thiebaut de Schotten, Cortex (2008); 44(8):1105-32
- Gao et al., PLoS ONE (2013); 8(10): e75065


Do most people want to murder? It seems like the most popular theory among philosophers and neuroscientists who believe in free will is something called free won’t. This basically means that we cannot will what we want to will, but we have the power to veto a thought that our brain has produced.

This would mean that a person who is about to murder another person should have the power to veto pulling the trigger- but if they don’t, then they should be held morally responsible because they didn’t use their free won’t power.

Now, I don’t think about murdering people, but I might be a weirdo. Do most people want to murder other people, but they use their free won’t to refrain- so that they should be praised for their self-control?

[Just addressing your title question:] supposedly so, but there isn't a lot of data on this. One of David Buss' students has this in his PhD thesis:

  participants from the Austin
  community completed a survey instrument that asked a series of questions about their
  most memorable fantasy of killing someone else. Seventy-six percent of women and 91
  percent of men reported having at least one homicidal thought in their lifetime. The
  person both men and women most frequently thought of killing was an intrasexual rival.
  The majority of homicidal fantasies involved the murder of someone who was not a
  genetic relative. Men were significantly more likely than women to have a murder
  fantasy triggered by a romantic partner’s infidelity. Women were more likely than men
  think of killing a rival who damaged their sexual reputation. These and other findings
  were predicted in advance by Homicide Adaptation Theory [HAT] (Buss & Duntley, under
  review).

As you can probably tell, their angle is evolutionary psychology; they don't care about any free will debates, it seems. I could easily find a criticism of HAT by Durrant (2009), which cites several works of Duntley and Buss on this; the latest cited in there being:

Duntley, J. D., & Buss, D. M. (2008). The origins of homicide. In J. D. Duntley, & T. K.
Shackelford (Eds.), Evolutionary forensic psychology: Darwinian foundations of crime
and law (pp. 41−64). Oxford: Oxford University Press

A more recent paper Reynolds & McCrea (2017) summarizes a few of the older studies on prevalence:

  Unfortunately, there is a paucity of
  research on homicide fantasies, with most of
  the research historically focused on criminals
  or the pathological [...] This tells us little about the psychology
  process of homicide in typical individuals.
  Kenrick and Sheets (1993) conducted
  two studies with college students as subjects
  to address just this limitation. In the first
  study, participants were asked about their
  most recent homicide fantasy, and in the second
  study participants were asked about their
  homicide fantasies in several contexts.
  Results indicated that the majority of participants
  did have at least one fantasy, with
  males recalling more homicide fantasies
  (e.g., 73% vs. 66% in Study 1), and males
  reporting longer and more detailed fantasies.
  Results were interpreted as supporting evolutionary
  explanations for homicide like the byproduct
  hypothesis.

  Crabb (2000) also found that homicide
  thoughts were common in normal
  undergraduates. Crabb investigated homicidal
  thoughts and the weapons used in these fantasies.
  Similar to Crabb, Kenrick and Sheets
  (1993) explicitly asked undergraduates questions
  concerning their thoughts about killing
  someone. Replicating previous research, most
  participants admitted to a homicide fantasy.
  Results also indicated that homicide fantasies
  were preceded by a threatening interpersonal
  event and involved weapons like firearms, knives,
  and clubs, rather than weapons like hands
  and feet. The evidence was interpreted as supporting
  the existence of evolved psychological
  mechanisms able to associate material–cultural
  implements, like firearms, with aggressive
  actions and to rehearse this through fantasy.
  These studies are important as they demonstrate
  that homicide fantasies are common and
  unlikely the result of pathological processes.
  Furthermore, they support evolutionary explanations
  for homicide like the by-product hypothesis
  and homicide adaptation theory.

Reynolds & McCrea's study tried to elicit subjects to spontaneously think of murder by providing them with some typical contexts in which murders occur, but they weren't terribly successful at this: less than 5% of participants reported such cued homicidal thoughts, although many more reported violent thoughts.


Do neurons fire at a faster rate during dreaming? When I dream it seems that the (subjective) time is slower than the objectively passed time as seen on my clock radio. Is this because neurones fire collectively at a faster rate, so you can "put an hour of dream time in a minute of objective time"? If they fire at a faster rate, then this does not mean that you perceive the events in your dream as going faster, as you adapt to your experience of time in the real world.

In REM sleep, the EEG is remarkably similar to that of the awake state (Purves et al., 2001). Although the EEG represents the synchronized activity of many neurons in the cortex, it does give us a clue whether they are firing faster or not.

Wakefulness is mainly dominated by  beta and gamma waves (source: Scholarpedia), i.e. 12 - 100 Hz. REM sleep is characterized by low-amplitude mixed-frequency brain waves, quite similar to those experienced during the waking state - theta waves, alpha waves and even the high frequency beta waves more typical of high-level active concentration and thinking, i.e. 4-30 Hz (table 1) (source: Sleep).

Table 1. EEG bands. source: Neurosky

So if anything, I would say REM sleep, being largely devoid of the gamma band, is associated with slightly lower-frequency oscillations and hence lower neural activity overall.

References
- Purves et al. (eds). Neuroscience. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001)


Judgments of similarity between samples of writing I was thinking last night about the possibility of an experiment that investigates the factors contributing to peoples' judgments of 'stylistic similarity' between two samples of writing.
For example, such an experiment might consist of multiple trials for each subject, each of which would present a different set of say 3 short excerpts of writing (text randomly sampled from a corpus of authors' writings... maybe no more than 500 words each).
Each participant would be asked to make a judgment of either "Which 2 of these writings are most similar in style?" OR 'Which 2 of these writings were most likely created by the same person?".

Part of the data analysis and interpretation might involve the use of programs similar to this one: http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php . Researchers could form hypotheses about relatively low-level factors that might be important in peoples' judgments of stylistic similarity, and then write programs that would make judgments based on these low-level factors.

I'm assuming that research resembling or even perfectly matching what I've described above has been conducted in the past. After reading what I've written above, does anyone have any suggestions for relevant readings?

It sounds like you're talking about Latent Semantic Analysis. Here's their rundown of what it is.

  However, LSA as currently practiced has some additional limitations. It makes no use of word order, thus of syntactic relations or logic, or of morphology. Remarkably, it manages to extract correct reflections of passage and word meanings quite well without these aids, but it must still be suspected of incompleteness or likely error on some occasions.

It's used in a lot of automated grading programs, or systems designed to give a score to paper based on some criteria. However, because order doesn't matter, it makes syntactic and grammatical coherence much harder to measure, so quantifying 'style' might be a little hard, unless by 'style' you mean something like word choice, phrase choice, etc.

Here's a gscholar search. The first three should give a good overview.


What is the maximum number of objects an average human being can recognize at once? I'm wondering, how many objects can the average human being can recognize?

For example, most of us can't look at this and say how many boxes there are  without counting them:

But I think we can all recognize that there are only 3 boxes here (without  manually counting):

So how many objects can an average human being recognize at once?

The ability to enumerate objects without counting is known as subitizing.
Most studies suggest that we can subitize up to about 3 or 4 items (e.g. Starkey & Cooper, 1995). Enumeration of a small number of objects (i.e. subitizing) yields consistent response times regardless of the quantity of objects. Enumeration of larger quantities (i.e. counting) yields response times that increase linearly with the number of objects. This is taken as evidence that the two processes are computationally distinct.
Further studies in both neuropsychology (Dehaene & Cohen, 1994) and neuroimaging (Piazza et al., 2002) have supported the idea that separate neural substrates underly the two computational processes.
References

Dehaene, S., & Cohen, L. (1994). Dissociable mechanisms of subitizing and counting: Neuropsychological evidence from simultanagnosic patients. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance, 20(5), 958-975. PDF
Piazza, M., Mechelli, A., Butterworth, B., & Price, C. J. (2002). Are subitizing and counting implemented as separate or functionally overlapping processes?. Neuroimage, 15(2), 435-446. PDF
Starkey, P., & Cooper, R. G. (1995). The development of subitizing in young children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13(4), 399-420.


Have ideas of "gamification" been applied to education? Wikipedia defines Gamification as "the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences."
Khan Academy has received attention (e.g., see this post) for incorporating some elements of gamification into its online learning system.

Are there any scientific papers that seek to:

integrate the ideas of "gamification" into models of education and cognitive psychology?
critically and empirically evaluate the ideas of gamification for educational purposes?

A popular lit review [1] discusses some game concepts that have been empirically tested to support the idea of gamification. In some cases, these may be very hard to quantify. For instance, the article cites fantasy as one gaming characteristic that engages gamers. Other characteristics, such as having clear, well defined rules/goals seem easier to objectify.

The authors also cite mystery, challenge (something hard but not too hard, with levels of increasing difficulty), sensory stimuli, and user control as important attributes as well.

[1] Garris et al. (2002). Games, Motivation, and Learning: A Research and Practice Model. Simulation and Gaming, 33, 441-467. Retrieved from http://scottsdale.brainadvantage.com/PDF/Games,%20Motivation,%20and%20Learning.pdf


How do we know bipolar is one illness rather than two comorbid illnesses? Based on my previous question about ADHD and OCD.

Essentially, ADHD and OCD are kind of opposites in the sense that ADHD people (always? sometimes?) have dopamine deficiency and OCD people (always? sometimes?) have excess dopamine.

I know this may be a stupid question or based on incorrect understanding of bipolar, but how do psychologists know that bipolar is one disorder rather than a comorbidity of mania and depression?

Short answer: Bipolar disorder is probably not composed of two comorbid illnesses, but it may be on a continuum that includes some depressive disorders.

This is a good question, though it does convey some confusion associated with this diagnosis that should be cleared up.

Bipolar symptoms:

The first confusion I think is the idea that "depression", "mania", and "bipolar" are disorders.  Depression and mania are not disorders - they are symptoms.  And bipolar is a "spectrum" disorder - a collection or continuum of similar diagnoses, that all feature at least one manic or hypomanic episode, and in most cases at least one depressive episode.

It is true that depression without mania is one of the key symptoms of a variety of depressive mood disorders (such as major depressive disorder, sometimes referred to as "unipolar" because of the lack of manic episodes), so it may be confused with a disorder.  However, this is not the case for mania, so diagnostically bipolar disorder would not be confused with a comorbidity of 2 disorders - depression and mania - because mania is not a disorder.

Mania rarely presents without other symptoms:

  Although bipolar disorder is by far the most common cause of mania, it
  is a key component of other psychiatric conditions (e.g.,
  schizoaffective disorder, bipolar type; cyclothymia) and may occur
  secondary to neurologic or general medical conditions, or as a result
  of substance abuse.

Presumably, a standalone manic episode may be sufficient for a diagnosis of bipolar I disorder or a "not otherwise specified" (NOS) diagnosis, depending on the severity and other symptoms involved.  So diagnostically, "mania" as a standalone disorder is actually a sub-type of bipolar.

Bipolar unitarity:

The second confusion I think is the idea that a bipolar diagnosis in some way precludes the symptoms of depression and mania from having separate causes.

Historically, bipolar disorder was not seen as 2 separate illnesses because (1) it was believed that mania and depression were mutually exclusive in time - as 2 extremes (poles) of a single mood continuum, and (2) mania rarely presents without depression.  The assumption of mutual exclusivity of mania and depression was called into question by the occurrence of mixed-state episodes - a condition that features symptoms of both mania and depression simultaneously.

Ultimately, many psychiatric diagnostic criteria are encumbered by some historical precedence, common clinical presentations, how patients perceive their symptoms, and also some political influence, as diagnoses are associated with healthcare subsidization, stigma and prejudice, and explanatory power for the patient.  So diagnostic criteria should not generally be confused with an understanding of common cause.

The cause of bipolar spectrum disorders is not well understood, and the question of whether unipolar and bipolar disorders are distinct, or part of a single continuum, remains a hotly debated topic.  The very common co-occurrence of depressive episodes whenever manic episodes are present suggests that they may be related in some way.  On the other hand, depression disorders and bipolar disorders are treated with different medications, suggesting that they may be distinct disorders - depression is typically treated with anti-depressants, while bipolar depression may be more effectively treated with mood stabilizers.  The disorders have some predictors (genetic, environmental, comorbidities) in common, and some different.  It's also entirely possible that both disorders incorrectly encompass several unrelated sub-types.


how to see prefrontal cortex is functioning well by a test? Is there a test to see if the Prefrontal cortex of someone works normally? especially a simple test like a questionnaire that you give the individuals to fill out and based on their answer you obtain results.

My next question, if someone's prefrontal cortex does not work normally, how that can be cured? I am looking for natural ways, natural medicines, or methods.

I'll tackle the first part of the question as cognitive training is a whole can of worms on its own:

The function of the prefrontal cortex should be assessed by a trained neuropsychologist, who can administer the appropriate tests and compare results to reference data from the broader population.

One commonly used test associated with prefrontal cortex function is the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) [1]. For this test, the participant has to match cards according to changing rules. This test has been used extensively with patients with various neurological deficits and psychiatric disorders and seems to be sensitive to pathology of the prefrontal cortex.

Questionnaire measures are generally quite crude and are usually only used as a screening instrument for more detailed tests.

Reference:

[1] http://www.cognitiveatlas.org/task/Wisconsin_card_sorting_test


Can I use Mechanical Turk for a longitudinal study? My thesis looks at depression and social support. My design involves participants answering taking a survey every other day for a total of 10 times. Is is the same set of questions that they will answer each time, but I need to see how the responses change over time.

1) Is it possible to set up such a 10 part study on Mechanical Turk, where they will have to return every other day to take the next part?

2) If yes, will have to pay them as they finish each part, or can I pay them when they finish the whole study? I was also wondering if it might be possible to pay a bonus amount to those who finish the whole study - as an incentive to keep coming back each day.

2a) How much should I pay them each time? The survey consists of 23 rating questions on a 5 point Likert scale. I tried it and it took me a little less than 4 minutes.

3) Also, is it possible to accept their answers but only pay the ones who finish the whole study? Because I will be discarding the participants with missing data from my study anyway.

4) The survey results will be anonymous but it is a diary study of sorts. So, I need to be able to connect participants' responses from one day to the next. Will Mechanical Turk allow me to generate a specific code for each participant? Or does each worker already have a code?

5) What survey platform do you suggest I use for setting up my study? Will google docs work?

6) I read somewhere that Mturk workers don't like giving out their emails. But I need to be able to send them emails everytime the responses are due. Will Mechanical Turk allow for this?

The best way to set up a Mechanical Turk longitudinal study is with TurkPrime.com. You can follow-up with users and invite them to take a new survey. As long as they are properly incentivized they will come.

I recommend that you inform them at the start that you are running a 10 part study and that those who perform well on each of the 4 minute studies will also receive a significant bonus, say $5-$10.

See here for some more instructions on setting this up.


Long term effects of a high self monitor who voluntarily chooses a contradictory self-presentation Are there any cases or studies of a high self monitor who intuitively chooses to act "by impulse" in order to reform said impulse?

In other words when the HSM behaves as a low self monitor they selectively and willingly embrace a low self presentation in order to challenge (or embrace flaws) within their own pride, ego, or some other aspect of psychology.

Additional questions

What else can be said of this situation?
What other questions, or background is necessary to analyze this occurrence?
Is this behavior indicative of other problems worth investigating? (e.g. morally flawed premise for taking such action)
What negative effects could there be on the ego and super-ego by behaving this way over long periods of time?

Edit

At a young age, this HSM may have discovered that behaving as a low-self-presentation allowed them to abdicate responsibility.  This was later corrected in adulthood when the subject decided to actively pursue accountability on past and present behavior... thus leading to overall character improvement.

So basically the question eventually became about the influences of on-line activities on changing (improving in this case) one's behavior if not downright one's personality in real life.

There is a body of evidence that this is not uncommon, especially with children, adolescents and young adults. It's not an incredibly well research topic, so I'll mention a few papers and their findings:

"The influence of anonymous peers on prosocial behavior":

  Prosocial behavior of anonymous peers (confederates) exerts a profound influence on college students’ participation in a signature campaign and money donation, whereas the reading of a prosocial paragraph has no effect. Furthermore, no participants reported peer influence as a reason for engaging in prosocial behavior.

"The Effects of Prosocial Video Games on Prosocial Behaviors: International Evidence from Correlational, Longitudinal, and Experimental Studies"

  The experimental study using U.S. university undergraduates demonstrated a short-term causal impact of playing prosocial games on helpful behavior (and of playing violent games on hurtful behavior). Short-term experiments like this are especially important for at least two reasons: (a) they provide a strong case for causality; (b) they reveal underlying processes likely to influence long-term effects. The correlational study using Singaporean junior high schoolers demonstrated the predicted associations among video game habits and “real world” prosocial and antisocial behaviors and traits. Such correlational studies are important because: (a) they provide an opportunity for a theoretical model to fail; (b) they allow tests of the predicted association with long-term consequential behavioral patterns and traits; and (c) they allow tests of some plausible alternative explanations. The longitudinal study using Japanese children and adolescents demonstrated effects of earlier prosocial game play habits on later prosocial behavior. Such studies allow strong causal inferences, primarily by ruling out many alternative explanations that rely on individual differences in trait aggressiveness and in interests that exist at the first assessment time period; they also allow testing of the theoretical model with consequential real-world outcome measures. The bi-directionality of the present longitudinal results also demonstrates that the often-asked chicken and egg question is overly simplistic. These data suggest that playing prosocial games tends to increase prosocial behavior tendencies, and that prosocial tendencies tend to lead to selection of prosocial games. This clearly has implications for the parallel argument about violent media and aggression.

A bit of an aside here, but their conclusions about violence are a bit simplistic. From a later study:

  Research on video games has yielded consistent findings that violent video games increase aggression and decrease prosocial behavior. However, these studies typically examined single-player games. Of interest is the effect of cooperative play in a violent video game on subsequent cooperative or competitive behavior. Participants played Halo II (a first-person shooter game) cooperatively or competitively and then completed a modified prisoner's dilemma task to assess competitive and cooperative behavior. Compared with the competitive play conditions, players in the cooperative condition engaged in more tit-for-tat behaviors-a pattern of behavior that typically precedes cooperative behavior. The social context of game play influenced subsequent behavior more than the content of the game that was played.

I haven't found the exact study this refers to, but the Guardian says

  Joseph Kahne, a professor of education at Mills College in California, studied 400 teenagers over three years. Kahne found that teens who participated in fan or hobby sites were more likely than other kids to do real-world volunteering. Interestingly, this wasn't true of being on Facebook.

The findings about Facebook are fairly consistent with another paper though, i.e. it has a weak impact on "real life" behavior.

There might be more research on which (other) kinds of online communities facilitate "real life" pro-social behavior, I'm not terribly familiar with this area.


how can the development of sexual preferences be influenced? I am wondering about the development of sexual fetishes, not necessarily in its meaning of having a sexual affection for inanimate objects, but in its broader meaning of any type of sexual abnormality.
As far as I know, such preferences develop through conditioning; i.e. in a state of arousal something not related to sex is perceived and assosiated with one's feelings. For example, one might experience a leather outfit while being aroused and develop a fetish for them.

This is quite a harmless example, but many fetishes may actually be harmful and an individual may want to prevent its development. For the sake of argument, a castration fetish could be considered extremely dangerous, leading to potential self harm at some point in the future.

Would a person who experiences arousal from such a fetish be able to prevent it from emerging? As an example, one could avoid masturbation while thinking of the unwanted fetish. This on the other hand would lead to repression of these unfulfilled desires and could possibly backfire.

Can the development of sexual preferences be actually stopped and/or influenced, and if so, what would be the best way to do so?

A bit of background on me: I’m a clinical psychologist and have worked with many sexual disorders, ranging from paedophile, to gender identity disorder. I am however no expert in any of these, so my answer is based on my own clinical experience and reading of the literature.

Most of my colleagues, and me, think that the general answer is: no – there is not much you can do to stop the development of a fetish. The most common fetish I encounter is SM / bondage. Most of my patients that have this fetish; feel that they had this inclination very early in life, and seldom are they traceable to specific events or experiences in their life.

Same goes with paedophilia. Here I think things are a bit more complicated, as there seems to be two kinds of people (that enter therapy that is, and as such come in contact with me). One group seem to be born with this fetish, if you can call it that. They don’t know why, and how they developed it, and many of them have poor insight into their condition.

On the other hand, there are the ones that spontaneously develop an interest in adulthood. They usually descript their fetish more as a curiosity toward the subject. And most of them never develop into a pure disorder (at least they don’t act on their impulses), and drops it after a while. These people usually develop the fetish during periods of stress.

To build the argument that fetishes are innate. I don’t know if this is a valid comparison to make, but I think most gay people would say that their sexual preference is not something that could be controlled with masturbation-regulation, or whatever. I think most of them would say, that being gay, is just who they are. An assertion supported by the fact that all animals ever closely studied have shown to have a few members of their group who are gay. As such, one could argue that sexual interest seem to very much linked to genetics and biology.

All of the above does not however preclude us from looking for ways to modify a fetish and/or reduce it. When I work with people who are distressed; there are a few things I focus on.

1.Make sure that the fetish is an actual problem. You would be surprised by how often people get panicked by fetish thoughts alone, without the sexual arousal or interest in acting on the fetish. If this is the case, we would work in a metacognitive framework to reduce patient response and thought about the fetish-thoughts. Other times the fetish is not a problem because there actually is nothing wrong with being into “weird” stuff.

If the fetish is a problem. The next step is basic Cognitive Psychology. A lot of people can have quite a lot of change in their problematic fetishes if they are just able to have a good narrative and a good ability to articulate the consequences of the fetish. Sometimes people are not even fully aware of the negative sides of their actions, and the fetish will itself diminish somewhat once they have a fuller understanding of the implications of acting on their desire.
Stimulus control. You don’t start working in a bakery to “satisfy” you need for food, when you are trying to lose weight. For the same reason one should avoid situations that trigger the problematic lusts. I once had a paedophile that wanted to work in a kindergarden – thinking that he would get fulfilled his need just by watching the kids, so that he would feel less need to act on impulses later. Same as with the old catharsis theory from Freud, the mind doesn’t seem to work that way.
Establish overriding associations. Sometimes it can help to try to associate the destructive fetish with something negative. For instance one could try to associate rape with going to jail, being beaten up, or something else negative. This is quite hard to do, and there are no good mainstream guides on this. It’s kind of the opposite to when people overcome their fears be associating something scary with something positive (like when you try to imagine that you are friends with the ghost, instead of its victim). We often find that a good way to remove something from the brain, is to overwrite it.
Reduce other stressors in life. Often fetishisms pop up in response to overwhelming stress from other parts in a persons’ life. An example could be a male that gets fired by a female boss, and starts to really dig in on fantasies about raping and murdering women. Another example would be children that gets messed up by a horrible upbringing, and start feeding their aggressive and dominant sexual fantasies (sex, dominance and aggression are linked in the mind
for many people).
Learn coping strategies. Here one needs to be creative. This could range from not searching for related porn, all the way to masturbating instead of acting on an impulse. There are no “one answer fits all”, and needs to problem-solve with the person to find out what’s optimal, what’s necessary, and what’s possible.

One last note. Your question was mostly focused on the “development” of fetishes, and how to stop them. My answer was more a general answer to treatment of fetish disorders after they developed. But I do think that most of these points are relevant. When it comes to development of fetishes, I would say that my point 5 is most relevant – Try to reduce other stress, and try to create a happy life for the individual in general, and one significantly reduce the chance of antisocial behaviour of all kind, even destructive fetishes. Other than that, remember that you never change anybody, yourself or others, by force. They need to want it.


Why do prices ending in 99, e.g., 0.99, 199 or 1999.9 convince consumers to buy? Why are people more likely to buy articles with a price of \$199, rather than the same (or let's say a slightly better) article for \$200?

On which human brain centre is this advertising focused? Is this some kind of manipulation?

An interesting article relating to your first question is the "Analyzing the Psychology of Pricing", where they suggest that consumers don't really notice any change in units of 10, e.g. \$54 vs \$59.99 etc.

In answer to the 2nd of your queries about what part of the brain is affected, here is some research that I found.

According to the article "Marketing actions can modulate neural
representations of experienced pleasantness" (Plassman et al. 2007), very little is known about the neural responses to marketing.  However, they tested the hypothesis that

  marketing
  actions, such as changes in the price of a product, can affect neural
  representations of experienced pleasantness.

In another of that author's papers "Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook" (which includes diagrams of the parts of the brain affected), he bases the process on the parts of the brain that control

  (1) representation and attention, (2) predicted value, (3) experienced
  value, and (4) remembered value and learning.

This is also something that many in marketing are actively pursuing, according to "Neuroeconomics: Studying Brain Responses Gives Marketers Increased Ability to Predict How People Make Decisions".


Uncsoncious expectation of other people to be motivated by the same values as you Is there a special term describing the situation when somebody automatically expects other people's behaviour to be motivated by the same values that motivate his own?

For instance, out of my personal observations, dishonest people expect other people to be dishonest, as well. Dishonest people would never truly believe the behaviour of honest and loyal people around them. Much in the same manner, they would never truly abhor being cheated - to them that is something natural and while unpleasant, it is not necessarily evil - just like you would dislike bad weather, but you would not attribute the quality of evil to it.

I think two close concepts are that of "naïve realism" and the false consensus effect.

The basic idea of naive realism is very simple. You believe your beliefs to be true! That seems a bit silly, but we can create a concrete example. Let's say you think President Trump is a great president. You have some reasons for believing it, and you have faith in your own cognitive abilities to judge evidence and come to logical conclusions. Therefore, if someone disagrees with your they must either have bad information or have different values (i.e. be bad people since most of us think of ourselves as good people).

The false consensus affect seems a bit closer to what you describe. That people (in this case, you) "overestimate the extent to which their opinions, beliefs, preferences, values, and habits are normal and typical of those of others (i.e., that others also think the same way that they do)"


How can two-way dependencies in factorial designs be interpreted? Scenario: Given there are results from two factorial experiments that show a two-way dependency between two variables A and B.

Details: In the first experiment A is the independent variable with two conditions: high and low A. B is identically induced in both conditions and measured as the dependent variable. In the high A condition, high B is measured. In the low A condition, low B is measured. The second experiment is analog to the first one, except with A and B reversed: in the high B condition high A is measured, and in the low B condition low A is measured.

Question: What can be reasoned or assumed about the relationship between the two variables A and B, and why?

References to example papers would be excellent.

In the full-generality land of arbitrary A and B, the 'details' section of the question gives the grand total of all the conclusions that can be drawn here. What you have is that when A was fixed to be high, B was observed to be high, when B was fixed to be high, A was observed to be high etc etc, and this is the complete total of things you know about A and B. Full-generality land is super harsh. You can observe an arbitrarily large number of points falling on an exact line and full-generality land will insist that the true function might bounce around like a roller-coaster that just happens to pass through the points you've observed. Full generality-land doesn't have to make sense. In full-generality land, fixing A at 0.1 units higher than you did in this experiment might cause the value of B to plummet, or turn into a turkey dinner.

Reality tends to make a lot more sense than full-generality land, except when brains or quantum particles are involved. Some things you might know in reality:

The units A and B are measured in.

Whether A and B are smoothly-varying or can contain discontinuities.

Whether A or B have ceiling/floor caps, and maybe where they are.

Whether the 'fixing' intervention is likely to be monotonic in its effects on A, B, or both (this is a big one, and it's quite likely that you do know this).

The 'causal depth' you plausibly care about (A and B are both caused by X might be interesting, that A and B are both products of the big bang probably not, how far you want to ride that train is domain specific)

That some particular theory of A and B is incompatible with A and B being high simultaneously.

All these things would give you some traction to move beyond the bare-bones statement of the exact results you observed, which is all full-generality land will let you do. Full generality land won't even let you claim that you'd get the same results from the exact same experiment performed tomorrow. Full-generality land has the attitude normally associated with honey badgers.

There's definitely a version of your argument that makes sense. If you have five blind people arguing over whether an elephant is a snake or a wall or a bit of rope, firing a starter's pistol so the elephant runs away is an excellent experiment. Under the theory that an elephant is five different things it is vanishingly unlikely that they will all run in exactly the same direction. Observing that they do all go in the same direction at the same speed should cause the blind scientists to propose a bunch of strongly-connected elephant theories. Only this argument is inductive not deductive, so it requires you to supply a hypothesis space. It's always possible that there were five animals who all ran in the same direction, to make the inductive argument it's critical to guess how likely that scenario is. If you do the experiment in a narrow valley there might acutally only be one direction it's possible to run in. If you do the experiment out in the open plain there's 360 degrees of freedom and coincidences are much more inductively compelling. In the real world, you almost always have some information about the landscape, making results of the kind decribed here strong ones. But you stripped all of that information out to ask the question! Reducing the variables to A and B brings you into full-generality land, where nothing is certain. Maybe you are standing in a narrow valley. Maybe you're underwater. Who knows?

It is possible to operate in full-generality land despite its Dadist tendencies, sometimes you can get away with some impressively weak assumptions. Try these:

Dunn, J. C., & James, R. N. (2003). Signed difference analysis: Theory and application. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 47(4), 389-416.

Pearl, J (2014). Probabilistic reasoning in intelligent systems: networks of plausible inference.


How to apply different motivational theories to understand career orientation? "What motivates you towards choosing the career/job orientation you have chosen? Discuss and explain with reference to three of the motivational theories discussed during the course".

I'm used to writing more scientific essays in the field of psychology, but I am finding some difficulty introducing and maintaining this assignment with a more subjective approach. We are expected to keep with APA rules and formatting and stick to a scientific method of writing. Yet if I am to write a theoretical paper, how am I to keep the focus on what motivates me personally?

Assuming the specific case of being "motivated towards a career" rather then simply getting a job to make ends meet, there can be several factors.

Social status is probably the most common pursuit of a career.

Enjoyment, which is the ideal reason for pursuing a career. Usually a career sought for enjoyment is referred to as 'pursuing one's dream'.

Proximity (a.k.a. convenience) is another driving factor. Which could also be considered the "path of least resistance". An example of this is following in your parents' footsteps. Another example could be someone's part-time job turning into a full-time career.

Addition

I found these two article which describes the work of John Holland and his theory of career choice. (not the scientific essay as requested in the comments but perhaps with more time I, or someone else, could elaborate on this topic further. It is definitely a good one)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mr-personality/201106/the-psychology-career-choices-why-personality-matters

http://www.careerkey.org/choose-a-career/hollands-theory-of-career-choice.html#.U04FZfldXh5


Are there any applications of choice modelling to romantic relationships? Background: I was at a talk today where the presenter discussed a study that involved a administering a couple of questions asking participants which of two people they would prefer as a relationship partner. To simplify things a little bit, in one example participants were asked whether they would prefer a rich ugly partner or a poor attractive partner.

This got me interested in whether anyone had extended this idea to a comprehensive choice modelling study. I.e., get a large number of participants to compare pairs of possible partners with different characteristics and estimate the utility of different characteristics.

Question:

What if any journal articles have examined relationship partner preference using a choice modelling methodology?
What were the main findings?

Speed dating seems to provide an ideal setting for the type of study you seek. There are several relevant papers (see References below and Google search human mate preferences speed dating).

There is no consensus among researchers, but here's a sampling of some of the supposed findings:

Buston & Emlen claim that people choose mates from their league, i.e., those they think have comparable traits, which lie in four categories: "wealth and status, family commitment, physical appearance, and sexual ﬁdelity".
Todd et al. claim support for parental investment theory because "men chose women based on their physical attractiveness, whereas women ... chose men whose overall desirability as a mate matched the women's self-perceived physical attractiveness"

  References

  Buston, P. M. & Emlen, S. T. (2003) Cognitive processes underlying human mate choice: the relationship between self-perception and mate preference in Western society. PNAS 100: 8805-8810. [pdf]
  Todd, P. M., Penke, L., Fasolo, B., & Lenton, A. P. (2007) Different cognitive processes underlie human mate choices and mate preferences. PNAS 104: 15011-15016. [pdf]


Why superimposing PET data on MRI scan images instead of doing fMRI scans? I'm currently reading this paper:

Savic & Lindström (2008). PET and MRI show differences in cerebral asymmetry and functional connectivity between homo- and heterosexual subjects.

It certainly is an interesting study but I just can't understand what the benefit is of mapping PET data on MRI scan images instead of doing fMRI scans. Any ideas what the benefits are?

Also, I found out that reference 64 is referenced in the text but missing in the reference list. I was thinking that PNAS is peer reviewed...

All right then, any feedback is much appreciated.

They used MRI to compare asymmetry in hemispheric volumes across the groups. Hemispheric volume is not something that is changing over time, and so it doesn't require the use of functional neuroimaging (e.g., fMRI).

Instead, if we want to be accurate when measuring volume and making comparisons across groups, we need to have high spatial resolution of the cerebral hemispheres. fMRI does not have the same degree of spatial resolution as MRI. Consequently, MRI is much better for studying anatomy, whereas fMRI is good for studying function (due to its relatively high temporal resolution).  So when imaging hemispheric volumes, MRI is better suited for the task.


Can a positive change result in positive stress? I have been researching the differences between stress and anxiety to understand them for my own curiosity. My basic understanding is that stress is a variation from routine or something that upsets your normal balance while anxiety is worry about something when there is no stressor.

My question, then, is this: if stress is caused by change to normal routine, would a good change with only positive effects still be considered stress? For example, going on vacation. The travel could certainly be stressful (or perhaps just anxious), but once a person arrives, lets assume they have a very good, relaxing stay. Could this be considered a stress since it is a change from the normal routine, despite having no negative effects?

I admit that most likely the answer lies in a misunderstanding I have about the definition of stress, but I am curious...

It sounds like you're looking for the word "eustress" or "good stress". Which isn't exactly a label of stress, which as commented is negative, but a positive perception of stress.

My favorite go to example is the positivity often associated with, "challenge accepted!" Here we have a change that is often motivational, difficult, and identifiable as worthwhile.


Effectiveness of implicit measures of deception (e.g., sweating, eye focus, EEG) when filling out online questionnaire I'm working in my master thesis on a method of detecting user deception or lying when answering online questionnaires using his implicit feedback like sweating, eye focus, EEG etc.

I would like if you could recommend me some related works or books or give me some tips on which implicit feedback should I focus.

If you want to estimate/classify using implicit measures, whether a user is being deceptive while filling out an online questionnaire ... then methods such as EEG are not suitable.

Recording EEG data takes a lot of preparation and at least one experimenter to prepare the "user" (in your case the person filling out the questionnaire). And if you are talking about online questionnaires, I do not see a point in having an experimenter visit the user.

On the other hand, using (often toy-like) dry-electrodes that could be prepared by a single person, will not yield a sufficient data quality.

I think the easiest might be to consensually access the webcam of a user and evaluate the video stream for e.g., eye blinks, or other tentative variables.

Generally, this sounds like a very difficult task that will probably result in a high number of false positives and false negatives.


What are the effects of casual sex on men versus women? There is a lot of research citing that men are more physically primed for sex than women. Graziottin (2004) discusses this difference and other differences of strength and vulnerabilities between the sexes:

  The clinical correlate of the neurobiological condition is that men have a stronger, more biologically and genitally focused sexual drive, expressed more as lust (7). Women tend to have a romantically driven sexual drive with a more relational expression and emphasis on intimacy (6,7). Women have a stronger oestrogen priming of two other basic emotions command systems, the fear- anxiety and the panic with separation-distress, which contribute to and modulate their parenting abilities and social bonding skills (2,19). The gender-based different biological modulation of seeking pathways in men and women may be an important contributor to different desire vulnerability in the sexes, both in the early phases of a relationship and later stages of a long-term relationship (34,35).

Is it really fair to say that men are more inclined to benefit by casual sexual encounters than women, or is this a presumption stemming from social-stereotyping?

One factor that should be considered is the culture surrounding casual sex and the social judgments that men and women may experience as a result of casual sex. Conley, Ziegler, and Moors (2012) report a series of experiments conducted on an American university campus that show that women who accept offers of casual sex are perceived more negatively on a variety of dimensions than men. In their experiments:

Subjects judged women who accepted offers of casual sex as being "less intelligent, less mentally healthy, more promiscuous, less competent, and more risky" than men who accepted offers of casual sex.
When subjects imagined a hypothetical offer of casual sex, men were more likely to accept than women. Subjects were given a series of questionnaires to examine their attitudes towards offers of casual sex. A mediation analysis indicated that "part of the reason that women are less likely to accept casual offers than men is that women perceive that they will be evaluated more negatively for accepting the offer (or more positively for rejecting the offer) than men do."
Similar results were found when subjects recalled a recent offer of casual sex, and imagined the reactions of people had they accepted the offer.

Thus, social stigma seems to play a significant role in how men and women perceive casual sex, which may explain the relative willingness of men and women to engage in casual sex. This particular set of social stigmas will certainly not be universal across cultures, and the point of this answer is not to suggest that the experiences of American college students are universal. What is likely to be universal is the idea that the culture surrounding casual sex will have a direct impact on how men and women choose to engage in casual sex.


Which parts of cognitive tests are under copyright? Can test rights be purchased for modification? what are the steps/considerations if I want to modify an exisiting Cognitive Test Battery?

1) How do I know which parts of the test are under copyright? For example, simple digit span isn't under copyright but is part of a test battery that is copyrighted.

2) If I want to develop my own set of tests, is it possible to buy over the rights of a test and make modifications from there?

Disclaimer: Obviously this is not legal advice. It is just a few thoughts about what may or may not be true, let alone the fact that legal questions are intimately tied up with particular jurisdictions and so on.

What elements of a cognitive test are copyright?

Part of violating copyright is actually copying. So if you actually copy any specific part of the test, such as specific item wording, or images, or instructions, then you might be in trouble. Likewise, many test names if they are not generic might have a range of intellectual property protection including copyright, trademarks, and passing off.

In contrast taking inspiration from the the idea for a test and building your own seems a lot less likely to breach copyright. It's even better if instead of copying the idea for a test you are able to understand the scientific literature and appreciate that a certain type of test has been developed by many people already. You then take inspiration for the type of test from the literature rather than copying a particular test.

To follow on from your example, "digit span"  is an example of a common experimental task. There are many others (e.g., simple and choice reaction time, stroop tasks, various sensory discrimination tasks, etc.). Likewise, in the case of intelligence tests, there are huge numbers of subtests or item types which are not owned by anyone in particular, such as vocabulary items, analogies, general knowledge, simple mathematical questions, and so on.

You can make tests involving these kinds of tests without having to copy any particular existing test.

Likewise with all these tests there are many decisions that the test developer needs to make including specific item content, which subtests will go together, what to call the tests, how many response options to include, how many items to retain, what difficulty to choose, and so on.

If you are serious about developing a cognitive test battery then you would need to think about these ideas. You would also want to be informed about psychometrics and the many approaches that have been adopted for creating tests of a given type. With this knowledge and a plan you would not need to copy any one test.

Is it possible to buy the rights to a test to adapt it?

I imagine that if you offer enough money to the owner of the test copyright, then they would generally allow you to do this. Presumably the cost of such a deal would depend on what your planned use of the test would be. If you just want to adapt a test for your own research, then that does not challenge their business model. In fact, you sometimes might be able to do this as long as you pay for each test use or whatever the licensing scheme is. However, if you want to sell a  product that competes against their, then presumably that would cost a lot more. By way of example, I remember hearing about a case study of how a US commercial personality test was adapted to the Australian market. Australian norms were developed and some minor wording changes were made. I don't know the details of the commercial arrangement, but it clearly shows that it is possible.

In an academic context, there are many tests that are free to use, and the implied rights of use are often a little ambiguous. Academics often adapt such tests for their specific research purposes. It makes sense in this case to talk to the academic who developed the test to see whether they mind you performing the adaptation.


Venus effect explained in greater detail? I stumbled upon this fact but I can't seem to understand the websites that are trying to explain it. I could only understand wikipedia's explanation

  This psychological effect is often used in the cinema, where an actor will be shown apparently looking at himself or herself in the mirror. What viewers see is different from what the actor sees, because the camera is not right behind the actor, but the position of the actor is often chosen so that his or her image is nicely framed in the mirror for the camera.

but I don't think my understanding is sufficient.

So correct me if I'm wrong but, the idea is that, contrary to our quick assumptions, Venus isn't actually admiring herself in the mirror but she's actually looking at the viewer (me)? Am I right?

I'm just wondering why all the other websites are talking about mirror angles, like how she actually would not be able to see her face (really?) and there's one saying that Venus' face is actually between me (the viewer) and the mirror, uhhh what? So does that mean she's actually painting herself?

I'm so confused.

The Venus Effect is just as you understand it.  The painting the effect is referring to is depicting the woman admiring herself in the mirror, when in fact, if you study it properly you will see that she would not be able to see herself in the mirror, but she wuld be able to see the artist (or you) as the viewer.

If you look at the diagrams I put together below, you will see from the first diagram how the venus effect works.

Image 1:  The Venus Effect in play.  The viewer can see Venus, but there is no way Venus can see herself, when in fact she can see the viewer in the mirror.

Image 2:  The Venus Effect is not in play.  The viewer cannot see Venus, Venus can see herself, and she cannot see the viewer


Vigilance is an emotion? I've always loved pondering emotion theories and usually agree with them, but Plutchik describes the intense form of anticipation to be Vigilance, and this is quite confusing to me.

Vigilance as defined on wiki:

"In modern psychology, vigilance, also termed sustained concentration, is defined as the ability to maintain concentrated attention over prolonged periods of time."

This describes a character trait and not an emotion. So my question is has the meaning of vigilance changed since Plutchik's theory, and if so what would be the modern equivalent of this emotion. Or did Plutchik drop the ball on this part of an otherwise excellent theory.

Plutchik's model is certainly visually appealing; however, the two dimensions of the model have no neurological or biological basis.

The Atlas of Personality, Emotion and Behaviour (Mobbs, 2020) is an alternative with an established neurobiological basis.  The atlas catalogues over 3,000 emotions which include vigilance.  Alternative emotions would include: alertness, caution, diligence, attentiveness, observance, and watchfulness.

A visualisation of the atlas is shown below.

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

Plutchik, R., & Conte, H. R. (1997). Circumplex Models of Personality and Emotions. American Psychological Association.


How does intelligence or general cognitive ability vary with level of CO₂? The cognitive ability of humans is varies with the concentration of CO₂ in breathing air. But how does it vary?

A very high concentration causes sleepiness, and sleepiness is a state of reduced cognitive ability.

That means it does vary, but I think there is no sudden onset of the reduction.

I would be interested in, ideally, a function of some experimental correlate of cognitive ability by level of CO₂, but any theoretical or experimental information about the shape of the function is interesting.

I'm aware that the signal to noise ratio in an experimental measurement is high, but qualitative results are the most important.

According to Is CO2 an Indoor Pollutant? Direct Effects of Low-to-Moderate CO2 Concentrations on Human Decision-Making Performance Environ Health Perspect. 2012 Dec; 120(12): 1671–1677:

of 9 different cognitive tests performed at 600ppm (green), 1000ppm (blue) and 2500ppm (red) several show very marked decrease in scores at higher C02 concentration.

Authors summarized findings as:

  Relative to 600 ppm, at 1,000 ppm CO2, moderate and statistically significant decrements occurred in six of nine scales of decision-making performance. At 2,500 ppm, large and statistically significant reductions occurred in seven scales of decision-making performance

Four years after the above was published, the negative effects of carbon dioxide were confirmed in Associations of cognitive function scores with carbon dioxide, ventilation, and volatile organic compound exposures in office workers: a controlled exposure study of green and conventional office environments. Environ Health Perspect (June 2016) 124:805–812, which was mentioned on Earth SE by Ken Fabian, although there is one common author Usha Satish.

On the other hand, a very recent article Effects of acute exposures to carbon dioxide on decision making and cognition in astronaut-like subjects NPJ Microgravity. (June 2019) 5: 17, which also has Usha Satish as an author, tends to contradict the above:


What forms of human thinking are present on animals and protohumans? General idea

I'm trying to see what characteristics of human thinking  are present on animals and protohumans. In other words, how our thought depends on previous forms of intelligence  (because of evolution and particularly that of brain structure, I suppose).

Background and problem

Some days ago someone said on the streets:

  Measuring means comparing.

And it became clear to me that comparison is fundamental for the way we relate to the world, for the way we think and see he world. Why A is bigger\taller\better that B?

Another way we relate through the world is by analogy.  Analogy and for extension metaphor are on the beginnings of language; comparison between one thing or another seems also ancestral. So there are two ways of thinking that might be identified with animals thinking.

The question

Are those ways of thinking present in earlier human beings or monkeys?

I don't expect a complete answer but some help for me to start. Links\recommendations of videos, essays, papers orr short books are very welcome. (I don't believe in long texts, I apologise for this)

Animal brains, especially mammals', are quite similar to humans. So far, attempts to define what makes human cognition "different" in some way have been for the most part a failure - the goal posts continue to be pushed. What seems to remain is a suggestion that human brains are especially socially-focused, and that humans have a uniquely developed ability to understand, plan, and simulate how others may be thinking (for example: Adolphs, R. (2003). Cognitive neuroscience: Cognitive neuroscience of human social behaviour. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 4(3), 165.).

However, we don't even need to look to apes, primates, or even mammals, to see cognitive abilities of the types that you mention.

For example, at least some birds are capable of quite a lot. As far as easily digestible material, there is a NOVA program on animal minds. I have only seen the bird episode, so I cannot speak to the others.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/inside-animal-minds.html#animal-minds-birds

Although for the made-for-TV format a lot of the details are omitted for the sake of brevity, the program attempts to test the hypothesis that birds are capable of some advanced behaviors that are not attributable to simple memorization or repeated tasks. These include the ability to solve novel puzzles, and to learn hierarchical relationships of the form: X>Y and Y>Z therefore X>Z.

Some others from a variety of species:

Monkeys learning the value of tokens:

Addessi, E., Crescimbene, L., & Visalberghi, E. (2007). Do capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) use tokens as symbols?. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 274(1625), 2579-2585.

Basic arithmetic in chimpanzees:

Rumbaugh, D. M., Savage-Rumbaugh, E. S., and Hegel, M. T. (1987). Summation in the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). J. Exp. Psychol. Anim. Behav. Process. 13, 107–115.

A paper and further discussion on generalization of a learned rule in birds:

Kamil, A. C. & Jones, J. J. 1997. The seed-storing corvid
Clark’s nutcrackers learns geometric relationships
among landmarks. Nature, 390, 276–279.

Biegler, R., McGregor, A. & Healy, S. D. 1999. How do
animals ‘do’ geometry? Animal Behaviour, 57, F4–F8

Kamil, Alan and Jones, Juli E., "How do they, indeed? A reply to Biegler et al." (1999). Avian Cognition Papers. 12.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/biosciaviancog/12

Macaques recognizing themselves in the mirror

Rajala, A. Z., Reininger, K. R., Lancaster, K. M., & Populin, L. C. (2010). Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) do recognize themselves in the mirror: implications for the evolution of self-recognition. PloS one, 5(9), e12865.

Monkeys reject unequal pay

Brosnan, S. F., & De Waal, F. B. (2003). Monkeys reject unequal pay. Nature, 425(6955), 297.

And I could go on and on - these are just a few examples, not necessarily the best or most current ones. What you will see that all these works share is that it is very difficult to probe animal behavior, because it is often difficult to rule out alternative strategies as we impose our own cognitive biases on animal behavior.

That said, it seems very unlikely that most of the higher-order cognitive skills humans possess are in any way unique to humans. Some specifics like the exact structure of human language are probably fairly specialized, but other social animals also have forms of language, it may just not be as complex or developed as human language.

I'll close with what I find to be a couple cartoons that are highly insightful in this area of research:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2013-01-25

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humans-are-amazing

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/humans-are-special


How to use EEG on dogs? I need to take EEG readings on dogs for BCI and seizure prediction research. To do so do I need special equipment?

Is there an accepted approach in terms of frequency, electrode size and placement, etc?

After a quick google search I (surprisingly) found that it already has an application: the No More Woof headset.

I believe the most important part is that you have a headset that fits and does not move when a dog walks or turns his head. Then it does not matter that much where and how the electrodes are oriented. The only thing you need to do is map the locations of the available electrodes to correct brain-regions of a dog. For human studies there are many different layouts of EEG caps (FieldTrip), which is fine, because they have such a clear mapping to brain areas.

How a dog's brain looks like and what frequencies can be expected I do not know, however. Perhaps you can follow up on the "No More Woof" to see what references they used to base their approach on.


Quantifying chromatic adaptations made by the brain What are the ways one can use to measure the kind of adaptations done by the brain to provide colour constancy? Has this been done before?

You have specifically asked about the "adaptations done by the brain" in your initial question and an interest in "what has been done towards finding the formula and what it was replaced with for the time being?" By formula, I'm assuming that you meant a perceptual algorithm that can be useful in machine learning and the attempt to reverse-engineer human's perceptual systems.
Yes, there has been extensive work done on this. I cannot give you an extensive answer on this platform, but hopefully point you towards the right direction. I have mentioned two papers and their abstracts, the former is more accessible, and the later in case you want a sneak-peak of the mathematical methods involved in making a computational model of color constancy and chromatic adaptations.
On the other hand, if you're new to this or you want to simply refresh your memory - I have attached my ex-Professor's notes from a Perception class I took a few years ago to give a clearer idea. It might just be best to first read through those first, in which case you should skip the first two papers I have mentioned.

Sensory, computational and cognitive components of human colour constancy.
Smithson H.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences. 2005; 360(1458): 1329-1346.

Abstract
When the illumination on a scene changes, so do the visual signals
elicited by that scene. In spite of these changes, the objects within
a scene tend to remain constant in their apparent colour. We start
this review by discussing the psychophysical procedures that have been
used to quantify colour constancy. The transformation imposed on the
visual signals by a change in illumination dictates what the visual
system must ‘undo’ to achieve constancy. The problem is mathematically
underdetermined, and can be solved only by exploiting regularities of
the visual world. The last decade has seen a substantial increase in
our knowledge of such regularities as technical advances have made it
possible to make empirical measurements of large numbers of
environmental scenes and illuminants. This review provides a taxonomy
of models of human colour constancy based first on the assumptions
they make about how the inverse transformation might be simplified,
and second, on how the parameters of the inverse transformation might
be set by elements of a complex scene. Candidate algorithms for human
colour constancy are represented graphically and pictorially, and the
availability and utility of an accurate estimate of the illuminant is
discussed. Throughout this review, we consider both the information
that is, in principle, available and empirical assessments of what
information the visual system actually uses. In the final section we
discuss where in our visual systems these computations might be
implemented.

Color constancy using natural image statistics and scene semantics.
A. Gijsenij and T.Gevers.
IEEE PAMI, 33(4):687–698, 2011.

Abstract
To achieve selection and combining of color constancy algorithms, in
this paper natural image statistics are used to identify the most
important characteristics of color images. Then, based on these image
characteristics, the proper color constancy algorithm (or best
combination of algorithms) is selected for a specific image. To
capture the image characteristics, the Weibull parameterization (e.g.,
grain size and contrast) is used. It is shown that the Weibull
parameterization is related to the image attributes to which the used
color constancy methods are sensitive. An MoG-classifier is used to
learn the correlation and weighting between the Weibull-parameters and
the image attributes (number of edges, amount of texture, and SNR).
The output of the classifier is the selection of the best performing
color constancy method for a certain image. Experimental results show
a large improvement over state-of-the-art single algorithms. On a data
set consisting of more than 11,000 images, an increase in color
constancy performance up to 20 percent (median angular error) can be
obtained compared to the best-performing single algorithm. Further, it
is shown that for certain scene categories, one specific color
constancy algorithm can be used instead of the classifier considering
several algorithms.

Below are examples of a few experiments that can be played out from behind your computer screen:
From Jonathon Winawer's notes on Perception:

Color Constancy and Chromatic Adaption
Take a photograph under fluorescent light, and compare it to the same picture under daylight. The colors come out totally differently - greenish under the fluorescent light and reddish under daylight - unless you do some "color correction" while developing the film.

But  you wouldn't  see  it  that  way if  you were  in the  room.  To  you the  colors  would  look  pretty much the  same  under both  illuminants.  This  phenomenon  is  called  color  constancy,  analogous  to  brightness  constancy that  we  discussed earlier.  The  eye  does  not  act  like  a  camera,  simply recording  the  image.  Rather,  the  eye  adapts  to  compensate  for the  color  (SPD)  of  the  light  source.

Above  is  another  example  of  a  pair  of  photographs  taken under  different  lighting  conditions  without  color  correction. The  physical  characteristics  of  the  light  reaching  the  camera  is  very different  depending  on  the  color  of  the  illuminant. This  results  in  dramatically  different  photographs.  But  if  you  were  there  when  the  pictures  were  taken,  this  object would  look  pretty  much the  same  to  you under  both illuminants.

Glance  at  the  penguin and  dragon pictures  above  by fixated  on the  dot  between them.  The  penguin picture  looks very  blueish  and  the  dragon looks  very yellowish.  Next,  you will  hold  your  gaze  on the  dot  between the  blue  and  yellow fields.  Continue  staring  at  that  dot  for  30  secs  or  so.  Then look  back  at  the  penguin and  dragon by fixating  the  dot between them.  What  do  you see?  Why? The  change  in percept  following  adaptation is  due  to  chromatic  adaptation.  Chromatic  adaptation is  like  light  and dark  adaptation  but  instead  of  adapting  just  to  light  and  dark,  it  adapts  to  whatever  the  color  is  of  the  ambient illumination.

Each cone  type  adapts  independently.  For  example,  a  given L  cone  adapts  according  to  local  average  L  cone excitation.  Likewise  for  the  M  cones.  Thus,  the  retinal  image  adjusts  to  compensate  not  only for  the  overall  intensity of  the  light  source,  but  also  to  compensate  for  the  color  of  the  light  source.

Chromatic  adaptation,  like  light  adaptation,  can  give  rise  to  dramatic  aftereffects.  For  example,  adapt  to  this  green, black,  and  yellow  flag  for  60  secs,  then look  at  a  white  field  and  you will  see  an afterimage  of  a  red,  white,  and  blue flag.  Red/green,  blue/yellow,  black/white  are  complementary colors.  Normally,  when  you look  at  a  white  field,  L  and  M cones  give  about  the  same  response  so  the  red/green opponnent  colors  mechanism  does  not  respond  at  all.  If  you adapt  to  green,  the  M  cone  sensitivity is  reduced.  Then,  when you look  at  a  white  field,  the  L:M  cones  are  out  of balance;  the  L  cones  are  now  more  sensitive  than the  M  cones  so  the  red/green mechanism  gives  a  positive response  and  you see  red  instead  of  white.  This  only lasts  for  a  couple  of  seconds  because  the  M  cone  sensitivity starts  to  readjust  right  away. The  visual  system  is  designed  to  try to  achieve  a  perceptual  constancy.  But,  as  with the  various  brightness  illusions  I showed  earlier,  color  adaptation  also  results  in  some  misperceptions.  The  colored  afterimage  is  an undesirable consequence  of  chromatic  adaptation coupled  with color  opponency.  Usually chromatic  adaptation does  the  right thing,  it  compensates  for  the  color  of  the  illuminant.


Does adopting personal routines accelerate cognitive decline? Many people tend to automate many mundane daily tasks by adhering to a proven routine that works and that can be equivalent to a computer script with the person implementing it being equivalent to a computer.  There are many benefits for that in that, just like there are benefits to computing automation, most notably it allows us to live efficiently and spare our mental energies for tasks that cannot be or have not yet been automated yet.

But I am curious if there are cognitive studies that associate adherence to routine to cognitive decline.  I can imaging that, if you were doing a lot of daily tasks in the same way over and over again, you may lose your cognitive processing edge.  This is just an unconfirmed observation so I am reaching out to the community of experts (of whom I am not one) to see if there are studies about it.

On the other hand, I can also see how personal routines and daily automation are an earmark of highly intelligent people who are capable of seeing patterns between two separate instances of a similar task.  But can a side effect (automation) of that initial favorable cognitive state (IQ) lead to lowered cognition as a matter of lessened daily mental workout?  In other words, can you become dull if you do things more routinely?

SHORT ANSWER:

There is no evidence that adopting personal routines leads to cognitive decline in the way that you have described in your post. There is some evidence that a propensity against personal routine can be representative of underlying creative potential. Given that creativity is highly linked to openness to experience on the Big 5 measure of personality, this could be representative of higher intelligence in certain contexts. However, this does not implicate that personal routines decrease one's existing cognitive capacity.

LONG, DETAILED ANSWER:

In your first paragraph, you refer to these daily routine tasks as 'automated', in the sense that they 'spare... mental energies for [other] tasks'.

In your second paragraph, you wonder if said tasks could contribute to a decline in cognitive processing, given that you are (presumably) doing many of them over a long period of time.

For this reason, I think that a computer is not a perfect analogy. A computer may do things 'automatically' (as in, they are pre-programmed to do so). However, the computer still 'runs' this program as it would any higher-level algorithm. The automatic routine may take up less 'space', but I believe it still requires its own subroutine or threaded code (pardon me if my terminology is incorrect, I haven't quite learned how computer systems work yet), thus 'wearing down' the computer over time.

A human performing a daily routine is not the same as a computer performing a recursively-called subroutine. A human performing a routine is engaging in an unconscious and regularly-repeating habit. Because these habits are unconscious, they do not contribute to cognitive decline in the way that you are referring to. Certain routines may be harmful for other reasons (e.g. routine shopping trips without knowledge of money management, routines that aid procrastination, etc.), but in many ways, routines can actually reduce cognitive load, thus freeing up the mind to focus on other things.

The downside is that they take longer to implement, unlike an algorithm. Lally et. al (2009) found that habits take anywhere from 18-254 days to become asymptotically 'automatic', with an average of 66 days. They are also harder to eliminate if they turn out to be harmful. This is augmented by the fact that the basal ganglia remembers the 'triggers' that helped initialize the routine in the first place, and thus routines can be revived if the triggers reappear. (As this article from MIT points out, "Old habits don't die. They hibernate.").

From the third paragraph in your question:

  On the other hand, I can also see how personal routines and daily automation are an earmark of highly intelligent people who are capable of seeing patterns between two separate instances of a similar task. But can a side effect (automation) of that initial favorable cognitive state (IQ) lead to lowered cognition as a matter of lessened daily mental workout? In other words, can you become dull if you do things more routinely?

I don't think that daily automation and personal routines are necessarily the 'earmark of highly intelligent people...' in the way you are describing. Given that automatic routines are unconscious activities, they are marked by a lack of cognitive processing, no?

However, the ability to develop and stick to a pre-planned routine to the point that it becomes automatic does depend, to some extent, on specific areas of the brain that help regulate executive functioning. I already mentioned the basal ganglia, but the prefrontal cortex (and other areas of the frontal lobe) have been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, as well as decision making. These areas are further responsible for task switching, as well as cognitive inhibition of unnecessary impulses and short-term gratification.

IQ itself is not necessarily a matter of activity in the prefrontal cortical regions. You can have a high IQ and have decreased dopamenigernic activity in the mesolimbic reward pathway, thus making it more difficult to automate desired behaviors. You may also find yourself struggling with complex cognitive planning if you have decreased network connections in your prefrontal cortex. However, your intelligence quotient depends on a variety of other neuroanatomical factors besides chemical activity in these regions. The size and shape of the frontal lobes, the amount of blood in the frontal lobes, the total amount of gray matter in the brain, the overall thickness of the cortex, and the glucose metabolic rate all seem to affect IQ.

In terms of making oneself cognitively 'dull' by use of routine, I wouldn't necessarily go that far; however, it is worth mentioning a phenomenon called latent inhibition, which is a personality trait in humans (some more or less than others) in which routine or familiar events become hardly noticeable. Those with low latent inhibition may perceive stimuli as if it were brand new (like a child seeing the world for the first time). From the section on low latent inhibition (courtesy of Wikipedia):

  Most people are able to ignore the constant stream of incoming stimuli, but this capability is reduced in those with low latent inhibition. Low latent inhibition (that may resemble hyper-activity or ADHD in early decades of the individual life) seems to often not correlate with distracted behaviors. This distractedness can manifest itself as general inattentiveness, a tendency to switch subjects without warning in conversation, and other absentminded habits. This is not to say that all distractedness can be explained by low latent inhibition, nor does it necessarily follow that people with low LI will have a hard time paying attention. It does mean, however, that the higher quantity of incoming information requires a mind capable of handling it. Those of above average intelligence are thought to be capable of processing this stream effectively, enabling their creativity and increasing their awareness of their surroundings. Those with average and, less than average intelligence, on the other hand, are less able to cope and as a result are more likely to suffer from mental illness and sensory overload. It is hypothesized that a low level of latent inhibition can cause either psychosis or a high level of creative achievement or both, which is usually dependent on the individual's intelligence. When they cannot develop the creative ideas, they become frustrated and/or depressive.

So, in short, a natural propensity against personal routine may (or may not) be a sign of underlying creative potential, as low latent inhibition may make it naturally difficult to develop and stick with routines to the point of automaticity. However, like many things, this requires context and is not a blanket statement that can generalize people at large.


Theoretical Neuroscience: what tools are in your mathematical toolkit? I believe that the following courses are a minimum math/engineering/(+cs) requirement for theoretical neuroscience research, specifically, Eliasmith's NEF/SPA approach. I wonder what other tools might be useful. Concretely, I am trying to workout the marginal utility of "learning more math just in case you'll need to apply it in some new context + improved mathematical maturity" versus "learning more neuroscience". Can you please list some math/engineering/(+cs) courses you found integral to your research and provide context?
Math:
Precalculus,
Calculus 1,
Calculus 2,
Multivariable Calculus,
Ordinary Differential Equations,
Linear Algebra (to Eigenvalues),
Discrete Mathematics and Logic,
Optimization and Numerical Methods
Engineering:
Systems and Signals,
Control Systems,
Pattern Recognition,
Information Theory and Applications,
Machine Learning (Neural Networks in particular)
CS:
Data Structures and Algorithms,
Object-Oriented Software Development,
Neuromorphic Computing

Luckily, I think your list of requirements is already too long.
Your primary toolkit is going to be:

Linear Algebra
Probability and statistics
python

If you want, you can add:

Signal processing (filtering)
Machine Learning (mostly just applications of linear algebra)

I am currently TAing at an online summer school called Neuromatch Academy.  Check out their syllabus (3 week course) for an overview of tools useful in theoretical neuroscience.  homepage: https://neuromatch.io/academy/ syllabus, tutorials: https://github.com/NeuromatchAcademy/course-content
Out of interest, why NEF?  There are a wealth of frameworks out there, and NEF is relatively limited in its application.


Does nlp have a dependency on a subject having strong visualisation skills? I have read a few books on Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) and, it seems that a corner stone of NLP is strong inner visualisation skills.

Is there any research that looks at the correlation between visualisation ability and the effectiveness of NLP?

Are there any scientifically proven techniques for measuring and improving visualisation skills?

NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) is a pseudoscience at worst, and not a science, but "an approach to communication, personal development, and psychotherapy" at best. There is little scientific research, and no reliable scientific findings, supporting the effectiveness of NLP, and the evidence is probably best interpreted as speaking against the effectiveness and veracity of NLP 1, 2, 3.

In non-scientific venues, there are indeed sometimes claims that NLP can help with visualisation as understood by NLP, e.g. here. In contrast, a recent experimental finding that is actually scientific disconfirmed NLP claims about the nature of visualization as conceptualized by NLP.

It should be noted that there seems to be little overlap between visualization - if assumed to refer to the same concept as mental imagery - as employed by vision researchers and cognitive scientists studying vision, and the NLP concept of visualization. The latter instead vaguely resembles some concepts in cognitive linguistics (e.g. research into metaphors such as those by George Lakoff).

I also want to emphasize that Neurolinguistic Programming is not neurolinguistics, which is a legitimate subfield of cognitive science: the study of how the brain implements language. In contrast, NLP can most likely justifiably called quackery.


What are popular rationalist responses to Tversky & Shafir? In the early 90s Tversky & Shafir observed several violations of rationality in human participants, in particular violation of the disjunction effect and sure-thing principle. This has lead to much work on questioning the rationalist assumptions of Homo economicus.
Example
An example of the violation they saw was in the Prisoners' dilemma: if a person knew their partner defected then also defected (only a 3% cooperation rate), if a person knew their partner cooperated then they usually still defected (only a 16% cooperation rate). However, if they were not sure if their partner defected or cooperated, then they cooperated at much higher rates (a 37% cooperation rate). This violates the naive rationalist expectation of some % between 3 and 16 in the unknown-condition case.
Shafir & Tversky explained this effect through quasi-magical thinking. Even though the participants knew they had no causal effect on their partner's choice, when the choice was unknown they still "did their part" to cause a favorable outcome.
Note that given the false-belief that your actions magically effect the outcome of the other participant's decision, it is no longer irrational to cooperate at a higher rate when you don't know the partner's decision.
Question
However, H.econ is still a popular model in economics. For some, this is a pragmatic choice ("the assumption holds in most situation and allows us to build nice models, so we are okay with it being broken sometimes"), but others have strong justifications for why rationality is still a good principle. What is a popular way for rationalists to defend against the apparent violations of rationality brought up by Tversky and Shafir that go beyond false-beliefs or quasi-magical thinking?
References
Shafir, E., & Tversky, A. (1992). Thinking through uncertainty: Nonconsequential reasoning and choice. Cognitive Psychology, 24, 449-474. PDF
Tversky, A., & Shafir, E. (1992). The disjunction effect in choice under uncertainty. Psychological Science, 3, 305-309.

I know 2 explanations to such seemingly irrational behaviour in cognitive science. Both of them don't really justify the usage of the simple reward-maximizing model in economics.

Rule Rationality versus Act Rationality

Act Rationality is the notion that every decision an agent makes is made in order to maximize his utility. Rule Rationality is the notion that decision making follows rules. These rules are rational, in the sense that among all possible rules, the chosen rule is the one that on average (over choices made) maximizes the agent's utility. Importantly, not every decision is optimal.

In the example you stated, this can be seen as the following: Usually, my actions towards others affect their actions towards me. In this specific game it is not the case, but people cannot take that into account, because of their rule. Their rule says "Assume people are good, try to cooperate, and defect only as a last resort, or if the gain is very high". If they are told explicitly what the other player has chosen, than it is obvious that their choice cannot affect his (so they compute the utility of both choices and choose the higher one). If they're not told the other player's decision, then they assume their decision will affect his to some extent, because that is the way it usually works in the real world.

A presentation by Nobel laurate Robert Aumann on the subject.

This explanation is closely related to the concept of 'Bounded Rationality' that assumes rational decisions with some bounds on the amount of information or processing power.

Relation to Homo economicus

This explanation contradicts the assumptions of H.economicus - Actions are not taken to optimize a utility function in every situation. Actions are taken according to rules (that are themselves optimized perhaps during evolution to optimize average reward).

Unknown optimization function

People choose optimally, just not trying to optimize what you think they are.

For example, if we add some 'reputation' that the agent has, and he is also worried about how his choice will affect (in addition to minimizing the time spent in prison, in the prisonner's dillema), perhaps we can explain the result you mentioned. When the 'time in prison' outcome is clear (other person's choice is known) then it gets a high weight in the combined optimization problem. When the 'time in prison' outcome is not clear (other person's choice is not known) then it gets a smaller weight (no point in working too hard to optimize goals you can't predict) and the reputation result (I want to be perceived as a 'good'/'cooperating' person) is given more weight.

This explanation is more 'rationalistic' by nature: It assumes behaviour is an optimization problem - we (the experimenters/scientists) just don't necessarily know the optimization function.

Relation to Homo economicus

This explanation is somewhat consistent with H.economicus. The problem is, we don't know the utility function in the general case. It can be very complex, and take into account different factors in different situations. This means that the H.economicus' basic assumtion (optimizing some utility function) is correct, but it makes the model less useful by making the specific function used not known in the general case.