What does it even mean to have a male/female brain? I have began taking a class on the sociology of gender and how gender is more malleable than previously thought and that femininity and masculinity exists in a continuum. What does this actually imply for the observable activity of people? For example, are women born with more male brains more likely to be lesbian? or prefer male friends? or prefer a more feminine sexual partner? And Can you tell from physical appearances that an individual has a more masculine or feminine brain? (ex: a man with a more feminine voice or a woman with more masculine features)

I don't think the idea of a male/female brain is well established in the neurosciences.

If you read a book like Delusions of Gender you'll get a critical perspective on the status of sex differences in the brain.

At some level, sex differences in behaviour must be mediated through the brain. But there are major debates about the degree to which such behavioural differences are influenced by social versus biological factors. Likewise, the image of the brain can create an excessive sense in which we are talking about a fixed entity. In addition, with regards to a range of behaviours and brain factors, there is often more overlap than there are differences between the sexes.

None of this aims to deny the value of a deep study of the neuroscience of sex differences. It's just that I don't think the concept of the "female brain" makes sense, certainly not at this point in our understanding.


How does one escape learned helplessness? I've been researching learned helplessness lately, an idea that seems to be responsible for much of the negative behavior observed in humans. Basically, the idea is that once repeatedly exposed to an inescapable pain, a subject learns to accept the pain even when it becomes avoidable.

This was first described by Martin Seligman who observed such behavior in dogs, who, upon being placed in a box that would shock them at random times and then moved to a box where the shock could be escaped by jumping over a barrier, refuse to even attempt to jump the barrier to escape, whereas dogs that could stop the shock in the first box with a lever would easily jump the barrier.

In all my research, however, it seems that the "learned helplessness" could only be unlearned by manually moving the dogs' legs to simulate the behavior to overcome the obstacle. However, in humans, such helplessness situations are often very abstract, for example the idea that no matter how hard one works they will never be able to escape debt, or pay their taxes. In such cases, "manually moving people's legs" is anywhere from extremely impractical to impossible. Does this mean that human learned helplessness is most cases is insurmountable?

How in the case of abstract helplessness conditions can human learned helplessness be escaped?

History

Martin E. P. Seligman, has written extensively on the nature, etiology, and significance of learned helplessness, and in 1975, he broadened the scope of learned helplessness from animal behaviour to a wide variety of human behaviours, including reactive depression, stomach ulcers, voodoo deaths, and child development, then in 1978, he criticised and reformulated his hypothesis.

  The old hypothesis, when applied to learned helplessness in humans, has two major problems: (a) It does not distinguish between cases in which outcomes are uncontrollable for all people and cases in which they are uncontrollable only for some people (universal vs. personal helplessness), and (b) it does not explain when helplessness is general and when specific, or when chronic and when acute. A reformulation based on a revision of attribution theory is proposed to resolve these inadequacies. (Seligman, 1978)

Seligman then went on to rectify these deficiencies.

Problem (a): universal vs. personal helplessness

Universal Helplessness

  Suppose a child contracts leukemia and the father bends all his resources to save the child's life. Nothing he does, however, improves the child's health. Eventually he comes to believe there is nothing he can do. Nor is there anything anyone else can do since leukemia is incurable. He subsequently gives up trying to save the child's life and exhibits signs of behavioral helplessness as well as depressed affect. This example fits the specifications of the old learned helplessness hypothesis. The parent believed the course of the child's disease was independent of all of his responses as well as the responses of other people. We term this situation universal helplessness (Seligman, 1978).

In the same paper, Seligman considered universal helplessness to be externally attributed. Situations where people believe that neither they nor relevant others can solve the problem are instances of universal helplessness according to the 1978 hypothesis.

Personal helplessness

  Suppose a person tries very hard in school. He studies endlessly, takes remedial courses, hires tutors. But he fails anyway. The person comes to believe he is stupid and gives up trying to pass. This is not a clear case of uncontrollability according to the old model, since the person believed there existed responses that would contingently produce passing grades although he did not possess them. Regardless of any voluntary response the person made, however, the probability of his obtaining good grades was not altered. We term this situation personal helplessness (Seligman, 1978).

In the same paper, Seligman considered personal helplessness to be internally attributed. Situations in which people believe they cannot solve solvable problems are instances of personal helplessness according to the 1978 hypothesis.

Flow of events leading to helplessness

The 5 steps towards helplessness was outlined in Seligman's 1978 paper (Page 52 - bold emphasis mine).

Objective non-contingency
Perception of present and past non-contingency
Attribution for present or past non-contingency
Expectation of future non-contingency
Symptoms of helplessness

  Objective noncontingency is predicted to lead to symptoms of helplessness only if the expectation of noncontingency is present (Seligman, 1975 & 1978).

Pre-1978, Seligman's model was vague in specifying how perception that events are non-contingent (past or present) was transformed into an expectation that events will be non-contingent in the future.

  Our reformulation regards the attribution the individual makes for noncontingency between his acts and outcomes in the here and now as a determinant of his subsequent expectations for future noncontingency. These expectations, in turn, determine the generality, chronicity, and type of his helplessness symptoms. In the context of this general account of the role of attribution in the production of symptoms, the distinction between universal and personal helplessness can now be clarified.

  ...

  Cognitive and motivational deficits occur in both personal and universal helplessness. Abramson (1977) has demonstrated this empirically while showing that lowered self-esteem occurs only in personal helplessness (Seligman, 1978).

Problem (b): general vs. specific helplessness, and chronic vs. acute helplessness

When helplessness deficits occur in a broad range of situations, they are called them global or general helplessness; when the deficits occur in a narrow range of situations, they are called specific helplessness.

Some helplessness deficits may last only minutes and others may last years. Helplessness is considered to be chronic when it is either long-lived or recurrent and transient or acute when short-lived and non-recurrent (Seligman, 1978).

Your Question - How can human learned helplessness be escaped?

Seligman, in his 1978 paper touched on this in a number of ways.

  The subject is presented with an unsolvable problem, tested on a second solvable task, and finally debriefed. The subject is told that the first problem was actually unsolvable and therefore no one could have solved it. Experimenters in human helplessness studies seem to believe that telling a subject that no one could solve the problem will cause helplessness deficits to go away. The prior discussion suggests that convincing a subject that his helplessness is universal rather than personal will remove self-esteem deficits suffered in the experiment (Seligman, 1978).

He also outlined some general observations.

Those who typically attribute their failures to general, stable, and internal factors will be more prone to general and chronic helplessness depressions with low self-esteem.
Beck (1967) argued similarly that the pre-morbid depressive is an individual who makes logical errors in interpreting reality. For example, the depression-prone individual overgeneralises; a student regards his poor performance in a single class on one particular day as final proof of his stupidity.
Boys and girls have been found to differ in attribution styles, with girls attributing helplessness to lack of ability (global, stable) and boys to lack of effort (specific, unstable) (Dweck, 1976).

  Therefore, the therapeutic implications of the reformulated hypothesis can now be schematized.

Seligman went on to state that depression is most far reaching when

the estimated probability of a positive outcome is low or the estimated probability of an aversive outcome is high,

  Change the estimated probability of the outcome. Change the environment by reducing the likelihood of aversive outcomes and increasing the likelihood of desired outcomes.

the outcome is highly positive or aversive,

  Make the highly preferred outcomes less preferred by reducing the aversiveness of unrelievable outcomes or the desirability of unobtainable outcomes.

the outcome is expected to be uncontrollable,

  Change the expectation from uncontrollability to controllability when the outcomes are attainable. When the responses are not yet in the individual's repertoire but can be, train the appropriate skills. When the responses are already in the individual's repertoire but cannot be made because of distorted expectation of response-outcome independence, modify the distorted expectation. When the outcomes are unattainable, this does not apply.

the attribution for this uncontrollability is to a general, stable, internal factor.

  Change unrealistic attributions for failure toward external, unstable, specific factors, and change unrealistic attributions for success toward internal, stable, global factors. The model predicts that depression will be most far-reaching and produce the most symptoms when a failure is attributed to stable, global, and internal factors, since the patient now expects that many future outcomes will be noncontingently related to his responses. Getting the patient to make an external, unstable, and specific attribution for failure should reduce the depression in cases in which the original attribution is unrealistic. The logic, of course, is that an external attribution for failure raises self-esteem, an unstable one cuts the deficits short, and a specific one makes the deficits less general

In 1983, learned helplessness was also proposed as a model for the emotional numbing and maladaptive passivity sometimes following victimisation. Victims may learn during the victimisation episode that responding is futile

  If this learning is represented as a general expectation of helplessness, then subsequent deficits may occur in situations unrelated to the original situation in which the victimization occurred. The victim’s causal interpretation of the victimization episode may partly determine the chronicity and generality of these deficits, and the involvement of self-esteem. (Peterson & Seligman, 1983).

Based on Seligman's findings, Cognitive Therapy might be beneficial as:

  Therapy may consist of testing the assumptions which one makes and looking for new information that could help shift the assumptions in a way that leads to different emotional or behavioral reactions. Change may begin by targeting thoughts (to change emotion and behavior), behavior (to change feelings and thoughts), or the individual's goals (by identifying thoughts, feelings or behavior that conflict with the goals).

References

Abramson, L. (1977). Universal versus personal helplessness: An experimental test of the reformulated theory of learned helplessness and depression. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Beck, A. T. (1967) Depression: Clinical, experimental and theoretical aspects. New York: Hoeber.

Dweck, C. (1976). Children's interpretation of evaluative feedback: The effect of social cues on learned helplessness. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, 22(2), 105-109.Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23083956

Peterson, C., & Seligman, M. E. (1983). Learned helplessness and victimization. Journal of Social Issues, 39(2), 103—116.
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1983.tb00143.x

Seligman, M. E. P., & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 1—9.
DOI: 10.1037/h0024514

Seligman, M. E. P., Maier, S. F., & Geer, J. H. (1968). The alleviation of learned helplessness in the dog. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 73(3, Pt.1), 256—262.
DOI: 10.1037/h0025831

Seligman, M. E. P., & Groves, D. (1970). Non-transient learned helplessness. Psychonomic Science, 19(3), 191—192.
DOI: 10.3758/BF03335546

Seligman, M. E. (1972). Learned helplessness. Annual review of medicine, 23(1), 407—412.
DOI: 10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.002203 PMID: 4566487

Seligman, M. E. P. (1974). Depression and learned helplessness. In R. J. Friedman & M. M. Katz (Eds.), The psychology of depression: Contemporary theory and research. Oxford, England: John Wiley & Sons.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1975). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. San Francisco: Freeman

Seligman, M. E. P., Abramson, L. Y., & Teasdale, J. D. (1978). Learned Helplessness in Humans: Critique and Reformulation. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 87(1), 49—74
DOI: 10.1037/0021-843X.87.1.49 Retrievable from: Semantic Scholar


How should results from linear mixed models (LMMs) be reported? Are there any official APA guidelines for reporting linear mixed model results?

Can I take an approach similar to what would be done with an ANOVA (i.e., report the p-value, standard error and .95-CI for each main effect and interaction)?

What about the intercept?  Any additional recommendations?

The APA style manual does not provide specific guidelines for linear mixed models. Additionally, a review of studies using linear mixed models reported that the psychological papers surveyed differed 'substantially' in how they reported on these models (Barr, Levy, Scheepers and Tily, 2013). It depends greatly on your study, in other words. Normatively speaking, I find this checklist (Ferron et al., 2008) extremely helpful in such cases.
Besides the more general checklist, Barr, Levy, Scheepers and Tily (2013) also provide some guidelines for reporting on LMMs. The whole paper is well worth a read, but excerpts of their "Reporting results" section are provided below.

One needs to provide sufficient information for the reader to be able to recreate the analyses. One way of satisfying this requirement is to report the variance–covariance matrix, which includes all the information about the random effects, including their estimates. ... A simpler option is to mention that one attempted to use a maximal LMEM and, as an added check, also state which factors had random slopes associated with them.
If it is seen as necessary or desirable in a confirmatory analysis to determine the random effects structure using a data-driven approach, certain minimal guidelines should be followed. First, it is critical to report the criteria that have been used, including the a-level for exclusion/inclusion of
random slopes and the order in which random slopes were tested. Furthermore, authors should explicitly report the changed assumptions about the generative process underlying the data that result from excluding the random slope (rather than just stating that the slopes did not ‘‘improve model fit’’), and should do so in non-technical language that non-experts can understand. Readers with only background in ANOVA will not understand that removing the random slope corresponds to pooling error across strata in a mixed-model ANOVA analysis. It is therefore preferable to clearly state the underlying assumption of a constant effect, e.g., ‘‘by excluding the random slope for the priming manipulation, we assume that the priming effect is invariant across subjects (or items) in the population.’’

Searching the Barr article, I also found a highly relevant CrossVal.SE question which asks for examples rather than guidelines. Since no guidelines appear to exist, I would suggest that.
References

Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278. doi:10.1016/j.jml.2012.11.001
Ferron, J. M., Hogarty, K. Y., Dedrick, R. F., Hess, M. R., Niles, J. D., & Kromrey, J. D. (2008). Reporting results from multilevel analyses. Multilevel modeling of educational data, 391-426. (Statistical checklist only.)


Does the digit span test draw on any executive functions besides working memory, if "chunking" is not used? Does the digit span test draw on any executive functions besides working memory, if "chunking" is not used?

This answer neatly explains what chunking is

  This ["chunking"] is much easier explained in the domain of letters/words, e.g.
  we'd recognize USA as substring among random letters. Similarly most
  would recognize the pattern 1945 (WWII end) by paired association, or
  12321 algorithmically.

I'm not sure I believe that the digit span is a test of a single raw cognitive function.

e.g. surely we don't need to "chunk" for perceptual speed to play a role: would that be helped by other executive functions?

if "chunking" is not used?
  This answer neatly explains what chunking is

Chunking is a strategy for more efficiently storing information by changing the way you encode or process it. Effectively, you're arranging/re-arranging information in a way that makes sense to you. Chunking refers to breaking it up into meaningful lots. For example:

Suppose you had a digit span task. Normal capacity is 7 plus/minus 2 digits. I was presented the following digit span numbers:

11111111111111111111111112221111111111111111111111111

I could store it as: 1-1-1-1… however, by the time I got to the end, the information I encoded at the start would have decayed.

So instead of trying to store it that way, I could break it up into the meaning parts: twenty-five 1s, three 2s, twenty-five 1s.

Wow! Did I just increase my digit span to over 53 digits? No, not quite. I just changed the way the information was encoded.

By chunking information, one can store more information by more efficiently structuring it.

That said.

  Does the digit span test draw on any executive functions besides working memory, if "chunking" is not used?

Yes, it does.

It actually becomes a better measure of executive function. And working memory.

First, is there a reason why you're looking at digit span? I ask because it's not a good measure of working memory capacity/executive function. Also, your use of digit span may be leading to a number of misconceptions about what is going on during the  WM task, and it's because the digit span task is biasing your understanding of it.

To begin with, any digit span test requires executive function. This is because at a bare minimum, you need to be paying attention to new information. You need to rehearse it. You need to store it.

Instead, if you would like to get a better conceptual idea of what working memory tasks are trying to measure then have a look for the "N-back task". You should be able to download it. Recommendation: Try to "walking yourself through" the sorts of things you need to do in order to perform the task. It's a hard task. In fact, they don't recommend it be used to actually test WM because performance is too unreliable to be used as a measure of WMC.

  I'm not sure I believe that the digit span is a test of a single raw cognitive function.
  e.g. surely we don't need to "chunk" for perceptual speed to play a role: would that be helped by other executive functions?

What you're asking ought to be inferable from first principles.

First, you need to look at positive manifold. See all those intercorrelations? They're all positive. When you move them around, however, you identify the way that different tasks build up on one another.

The easiest way top make sense of this is to look at Carroll's Three Stratum Model. The single abilities are right at the bottom. But our digit span test is at stratum II

  I'm not sure I believe that the digit span is a test of a single raw cognitive function.

There is no such thing as test of a "single raw cognitive function". For example, the closest to what I presume you're thinking of is say, a reaction time task. This is called an elementary cognitive task (ECT). But it's not like reaction time is comprised of a "single raw cognitive function". Instead, (and I think this is what you mean is) this is meant to tap into independent processes as maximally possible.

But more to the point, digit span is meant to be a measure of WMC. It's "higher up" in terms of requiring that there is integrity of simpler cognitive processes below it.

It's a higher-order task. It's simply not possible to tap a single raw cognitive function. Even without looking it up, I know that it has to be tapping into numerical ability.

This is what a good test of WMC will be tapping into. However, digit span doesn't do this, because it's only going to be loading on the phonological loop:

  e.g. surely we don't need to "chunk" for perceptual speed to play a role: would that be helped by other executive functions?

I think I know what you're getting at. Let's just way that, perceptual speed has to have some role, because if you're, say, looking at a computer screen, light hits your eyes, the travels through the optive nerve and to your brain, Then you create a mental representation somewhere, and then perform higher order processing on it. But if you're asking will it affect it any meaningful way? Then no. But more importantly, one shouldn't design a cognitive task that does.

There are good and bad tasks. A well designed test of WM is will not try to "tap into" perceptual speed, because if you did poorly in that task, you would not know if it was due to a bottleneck in WMC (which you want) or perceptual speed. This is particularly relevant if somebody has a brain injury where damage in more elementary cognitive process renders then incapable from even performing the task.


How to design ballot papers with a large number of candidates in a preferential system? Background: In the 2013 Australian Federal election, several parties were elected to the senate seemingly because of usability issues related to the ballot paper (see here for discussion). For example:

  [The] Australian Sports Party has no policies other than advocating lots
  of sport, and won just 0.22 per cent of the vote. But with preferences
  from other small parties, they are likely to get a Senate quota ahead of
  the second Labor candidate, who had 12.33 per cent.

For those unfamiliar with the Australian federal electoral system, the Senate is the upper house. Each state has an equal number of senators. Election to the senate requires that you achieve a certain percentage of votes in a given state. It is a preferential block voting system. Thus, you can achieve the required votes after preferences have been allocated.

On the current ballot, you can either vote above the line or below the line. Above the line involves ticking a single box and accepting the allocation of preferences of that particular party. Ticking below the line requires that you number every candidate from one to the number of candidates (which could be over 100). Thus, the according to wikipedia about 98% of people vote above the line.

A strange situation arose in the 2013 election where several micro-parties appear to have won senate seats due to a flaw in the combination of the preferential and the above the line system. This seems to have been brought on by a range of factors including a general across the board increase in the vote for micro-parties and collaboration in micro-parties in allocating preferences to each other.  Traditionally, when the likely senator was one of only a few parties, the allocation of preferences was fairly clear. However, many voters if explicitly asked about their preferences, may have put one of the major parties above some of the more obscure parties that seem to have been elected based on preferences.

Thus, there is a problem:

There are too many candidates to make it easy for people to indicate their preferences for all candidates.
The preferences implied by putting a 1 in a box "above the line" (i.e., accepting the preferences of a given party) may often not be consistent with what a voter would intend their preferences to be were they asked to think about it.

Questions

What is a good way to design ballot papers with a large number of candidates in a preferential system so that it is easy to use and conveys the important aspects of people's preferences?
What psychological theory or empirical research justifies such a ballot paper?

This is a partial answer to your question, there is considerable research touching on specific designs and strategies in ballots that will be outlined below

This issue has come up in research around the world.  A specific concern is:

  Ballot design can be an important factor in determining whether voters are able to cast a ballot accurately, which can influence the legitimacy of elections.

Source: "Ballot design and Unrecorded votes on paper-based ballots" (Krimball and Kropf, 2005).

Krimball and Kropf assert that there is a lot in common between a ballot and a self-administered questionnaire, in that voters must process a myriad of verbal, symbolic and graphical language (which includes the written instructions etc).  There has been some research in making ballot papers more 'realistic' so to speak.

Research in Britain has looked into including a photo with the ballot, according to "Candidate appearance and voting in British elections: The potential impact of ballot paper photographs" (Johns, 2008), asides from making an Australian Senate ballot sheet the size of Tasmania:

  Some MPs express worries that voters may be swayed in their choice by the photos. This concern is consistent with psychologists’ findings that we automatically make judgements about people’s characters based on the briefest inspection of facial appearance, and that these judgements influence behaviour towards them. This is especially true when, as with most constituency candidates, we know little else about the people.

Swinburne Politics Professor Brian Costar, in the online article "We need to simplify voting for the Senate" suggests:

  the Senate ballot paper should be redesigned to abolish above- and below-the-line voting. Instead, voting should be optional preferential. At a normal Senate election, a voter would need to number at least six squares, and at a double dissolution election at least twelve. This would keep informal voting low and put a stop to secret wheeling and dealing over preferences and unexpected successes for candidates with extremely modest direct support.

One main problem is, according to the empirical analysis "Influence of ‘Cognitive Sophistication’ on Ballot
Layout Effects" (Geys and Hayndels, 2003), is that

  Candidates in ‘critical’ (top and
  bottom) positions in multi-column ballots obtain a larger percentage of the vote in
  multi-column ballots than in a single-column ballot.

These positions are, according to the authors, in the top and bottom corners.  But, the authors assert that this is actually not a huge issue, given

  The results of our empirical analysis have shown that cognitive sophistication
  of the electorate does have a strong effect. A larger share of highly
  educated (or richer) voters significantly reduces the strength of Ballot Layout
  Effects.

However, a key point from the article is that

  avoiding layout effects by randomizing the order of candidates or using
  additional layouts such that each politician has an equal probability of being
  on top (bottom) of a column may be hard to use in practice.

An interesting point the authors found in regards to computerised ballots is that

  preferential votes are more evenly
  distributed among candidates when voting is done via computerized ballots.

Further information could be sourced from the International Centre for
Electoral Psychology

Anecdotal side note: In my electorate (I am an Australian also), we had the same thing happen - about 30 above the line, and over 100 below the line for the Senate.  I have wondered about this also - I am "apolitical" (this is not up for discussion) and could not be bothered doing the 'under the line' thing - this apathy was a topic of conversation when I was in the long queue to get into vote (Reminder to everyone else, voting is compulsory in Australia).

The point of this anecdote is that voter enthusiasm (or lack thereof) could also be a factor in the effectiveness of any ballot design.


Is there a psychological condition which promotes literal and overly complicated thinking? Quote from Sheldon Cooper, Big Bang Theory IMDB

  Leonard: You convinced me. Maybe tonight we should sneak in and
  shampoo her carpet.
  Sheldon: You don't think that crosses the line?
  Leonard: Yes... For God's sake, Sheldon, do I have to... hold up a
  sarcasm sign every time I open my mouth?
  Sheldon: You have a sarcasm
  sign?

Some people tend to think very literally and also over-complicate things.

This causes much misunderstanding when communicating with people, especially with the advent of texting, email and social networking, as the verbal and nonverbal cues are absent.

It sometimes causes difficulty when completing tasks, as those with this condition can misinterpret what is required of them. This can be an asset academically. A  "misinterpretation" (or better put, a different interpretation) in one way, will, usually mean there is a gain in another aspect.

When someone truly does not understand something, others might think that person is  joking. Others may not understand their humor, as he/she will make a joke about something, he/she sees as obvious and will be taken seriously by others.

Another way to describe this "condition" is to use the example of sudokus and cryptic crosswords. Someone might make mistakes in the easy ones, and find the more difficult ones easier to solve, looking for a more complicated solution than the one that was there and already apparent.  To solve complex problems is, often, easier than the straightforward and simple.

Is this a known condition?
What, neurologically, may cause this in the brain?
Could this be some form of "retardation"?
Are there ways to improve this?

Literal thinking can be associated with circumstantial thinking, and could be the result of thought 1 or communication disorders:

  Circumstantial thinking
   A type of thought disorder in which each of a series of thoughts seems
   less closely related to the original thought than the one before it at
   first, but the patient's thoughts eventually return to the original
   subject.

Circumstantial thinking can be a symptom of autism, some schizophrenia and schizotypal affects.

The assumption can be made that verbal skills are a prerequisite for effective communication. (without discussion of the mute or deaf)

Metaphorical intelligence is inversely linked to literal thinking.

  that the ability to process metaphors functions as a relatively stable
  individual differences variable, and that those who are “less able” to
  process metaphors can be said to have a more “literal” thinking style.
  ...
  Frozen metaphors are those that are in common use in the language and
  which are often thought to be treated as single linguistic units by
  native speakers. Novel metaphors are ones in which ideas are combined
  in new or unusual ways.

Logical thinking is not linked to creative thinking. Creative thinking is linked with metaphorical thinking.

  Divergent (as opposed to “convergent”) thinking is a relatively old
  concept, proposed by Guilford (1967). He described the convergent
  thinker as a person who finds it easy to deal with problems requiring
  one conventional correct answer, clearly obtainable from the
  information provided. The divergent thinker, on the other hand, is
  better able to solve problems requiring the generation of several
  equally acceptable answers where the emphasis is on the quantity,
  variety and originality of responses. Those who engage more readily in
  divergent thinking are more likely to display metaphoric intelligence. 2

  Creative thinking (divergent thinking) and critical thinking
  (convergent thinking) are two powerful aspects of effective thinking  3

A photographic or eidetic memory,  is often associated with high intelligence or savant intelligence.
There is evidence that suggests that the creation of photographic or eidetic memories is impaired by concurrent verbalisation.   An interesting point that the mental processes involving this talent are not only independent from verbal skills, but, potentially, hindered by such. One thing it does reveal, is that verbal skills are not linked to this type of "genius".

  Research has shown that if a person verbalizes during the time he or
  she is scanning the original picture, this interferes with eidetic
  image formation.

The same features of simultaneous brilliance with impaired social skills and varying cognitive impairments, are observed with "savants".  4

I think a better question would be, what processes cause literal thinkers, who may be highly intelligent in some ways; to frequently over complicate or misinterpret, seemingly, simple concepts?

Literal and over complicated thinking can be linked with a logical thinker, who lacks creative thought skills. Some of the complications could be the result of interpreting problems literally and missing metaphorical meanings.

1. The Confusing Area of Disturbed Thinking
Journal of Personality Assessment
Volume 40, Issue 5, 1976
Preview
Access options
DOI:10.1207/s15327752jpa4005_5
Bert Loro
2. Dr. Jeannette Littlemore
English for International Students Unit
University of Birmingham
Birmingham
B15 2TT
U.K.
3. Critical Thinking and the Art of Learning and Living
John F. Kennedy
4.  Is there such a thing as a photographic memory? And if so, can it be learned?
Alan Searleman,
Professor of psychology
St. Lawrence University


Are hallucinations a requirement for Schizophrenia? The symptom most people think about when hearing "Schizophrenia" is hallucination. However, ICD-10's entry for schizophrenia seems to list auditory hallucinations as just one of many possible symptoms.

In practice, are hallucinations a required symptom for a diagnosis of Schizophrenia, or can a diagnosis be made based on other symptoms?

No – at least, they shouldn't be required. Wikipedia describes the DSM-5 as requiring "delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized speech". Delusions are distinct from hallucinations in that they aren't necessarily perceptual in a conventional sense, though both diverge a person's conscious experience from empirical reality. Disorganized speech is characteristic of disorganized / hebephrenic schizophrenia, regarding which Wikipedia states:

  The most prominent features of disorganized schizophrenia are not delusions and hallucinations, as they are in paranoid schizophrenia,[5][6] although fragmentary delusions and hallucinations may be present.

This doesn't seem to be the only (partial) exception to the rule you ask about, and your source mentions it too: "Affective changes are prominent, delusions and hallucinations fleeting and fragmentary".


Does the subconscious mind communicate its analysis through emotions? I'm reading this article by Marianne Cantwell, in the middle of the article, she quotes Jonah Lehrer's book How We Decide:

  “When a person is drawn to a specific item on the menu or a particular
  romantic prospect, the mind is trying to tell him that he should
  choose that option.

  It has already assessed the alternatives – this analysis takes place
  outside of conscious awareness – and converted that assessment into
  positive emotion.

  The world is full of things and it is our feelings that help us choose
  among them.”

How correct is this statement from the perspective of psychology and neuroscience?

First, there's not complete agreement in psychology nor neuroscience: you can find support for most any imaginable position. But in terms of the consensus of recent peer-reviewed work, here are some thoughts.

  “When a person is drawn to a specific item on the menu or a particular romantic prospect, the mind is trying to tell him that he should choose that option."

There's a false dichotomy here between a person's motivation and some external (?) agent called "the mind". Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors emerge from biological and cognitive processes, and if you dig into those operations there is no level that reveals a separate agent. See this link for a related theory called the Homunculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Terminological_use_in_modern_science , or chapter 2 of the book, Waking Up by Sam Harris, for a deeper dive into agentic selves in the brain.

  "It has already assessed the alternatives – this analysis takes place outside of conscious awareness – and converted that assessment into positive emotion."

There were early reports of complex weighing of alternatives by unconscious minds by Dijksterhuis and others, but the higher-quality recent replication attempts suggest these claims were overblown. The unconscious mind may or may not be able to do basic arithmetic. That's the current level: nothing so fancy as suggested here. Recent coverage of this replication: https://retractionwatch.com/2017/05/08/can-math-unconsciously-replicators-prominent-2012-study-doubts/

  "The world is full of things and it is our feelings that help us choose among them.”

This is true, but is already well known. Feelings, thoughts, and motivations operate together to urge our organisms towards desired outcomes and away from unwanted outcomes. Here's an article that goes into more depth on how the body (including our mind) pursues desired states: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00332747.1955.11022996


Why do people feel the need to make changes to a solution presented by another person? There is an interesting phenomenon I have come across several times when working with groups, and that is the need some people have to make changes to a solution that someone else created.

The change is often superficial or doesn't substantively change the solution, however the person making the suggestion is often adamant that the change is vital.

In a question on the User Experience SE, some comments were made about how to plan for and mitigate this:

  People are natural complainers. So next time you present a design make sure there are 1 or more subtle defects you're sure they notice. They'll complain about those, you say ok and fix them. if you present a perfect design, they'll still find stuff regardless.

And:

  That reminds me of the Battle Chess duck - It was well known that producers had to make a change to everything that was done. The artist working on the queen animations came up with an innovative solution. He did the animations for the queen the way that he felt would be best, with one addition: he gave the queen a pet duck. He took great care to make sure that it never overlapped the "actual" animation. Eventually, it came time for the producer to review the animation set for the queen. His comments, "that looks great. Just one thing - get rid of the duck."

Is this a known phenomena in Cognitive Sciences?

It seems to indicate a need/desire on the part of the person making the suggestion to exert some control over an external process but I wonder if it is more elemental/basic than that?

This sounds to me very much (but not exactly) like a phenomenon Dan Ariely has done some research on, which he terms 'the IKEA effect'.
Of course, he will describe it better than me, specifically in Norton and Ariely (2012), Ariely et al (2008), and this TED talk.

Basically, what he's found is that people value things (furniture, lego models, plans) more when they themselves have contributed their own labour in creating them.

In Ariely et al (2008), they found that:

People are more willing to do dull, monotonous paperwork for less money if their name goes on the top of the sheet, and less willing if the paper was shredded after they had finished.
The same effect is found if you pay people to put together Lego models: people do more for less money if you don't take apart the models afterwards.

Norton and Ariely (2012) took a different approach, but showed largely the same thing:

People believe that the IKEA furniture which they themselves assembled was worth more than anyone else's furniture (measured by how much they would pay to keep it)
The same effect was found for origami animals.
..and for Lego models, but not if you take the model apart after you build it (because it's no longer the thing which you created).
...and not getting to finish assembling the furniture reduces this bias.

Hopefully, the link between this research and your question should be clear: by making changes to a solution, that solution becomes in some way 'ours', and because of that, we overestimate it's intrinsic value.

References

Michael I. Norton, Dan Ariely, and Daniel Mochon (2012), “The IKEA effect: When labor leads to love.” Journal of Consumer Psychology. Vol. 22: 453-460.

Dan Ariely, Emir Kamenica and Drazen Prelec (2008), “Man’s Search for Meaning: The Case of Legos.” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Vol. 67: 671-677.


Inferring relationships between psychological variables in clinical samples and issues in generalisation Context

I sometimes speak to researchers studying the relationship between variables in clinical psychology samples.
A typical example is as follows:

100 patients with diagnosed depression
many clinically relevant variables are measured such as demographics, anxiety, intelligence, drug and alcohol use, and so on.

Researchers often want to then develop models of what predicts depression.

However, the problem is that the sample was selected because they already have been deemed to possess a certain threshold level of depression.
Substantial variation still remains in depression with some participants being more severe than others.

Thus, there are problems in trying to generalise observed relationships to describe what predicts depression, because it is not a random sample of the population.

I use depression as a specific case, but the problem applies to many studies of clinical populations (e.g., kids with behavioural problems, kids with intellectual disabilities, OCD, etc.).

Question

What advice would you give to such researchers about how to analyse and generalise from such data?
Are there any references that provide an example of best practice of how to analyse and generalise from such data?

I don't know if you can completely remove the selection bias from such a sample.

You seem to be referring (in some sense, at least) to regression towards the mean. This is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) problem with much research on clinical samples.

What I would do (assuming resources) would be to take the same size (or larger) sample from the general population, and administer all of the same measures and tests to them. This would allow you to separate the predictors of the clinical outcome versus the variation due to other factors. I would probably employ matching from the clinical sample to the general sample (Gelman and Hill have a great chapter in their book about the matching, and that entire book is filled with helpful advice to analogous problems.

In my research, (on predictors of placebo response) I took large samples from the University where I was conducting my research on all of my self report measures, and compared my experimental population to them to determine if my sample were representative of the larger populatiom, which is a somewhat similiar approach to a common problem.

Unfortunately, other than the Gelman and Hill book, I'm not aware of any literature on the topic (but that may be my own fault).

I hope this helps.


Non coitus sexual activity and the brain Most animals will only engage in sexual activity that can result in reproduction. There are some exceptions; Bonobos, for instance, engage in a lot of sexual activity that does not involve coitus.

Human beings have a large range of sexual activities and fetishes that do not involves exual intercourse that can result in pregnancy (I am not referring to the use of birth control).

Oral sex, anal sex, and a variety of fetishes that do not involve coitus between a human male and female.

Given that the origin of sexual acts pertained to reproduction, somewhere along the line there has been development in the brain of humans and some animals, to include sexual activity for pleasure and acts that have no possibility of impregnating the female.

It can be argued why and what purpose these acts have, whether they are indeed part of the mating process. I am not interested in this so much as, the development in the brain which has offered this variation in sexual activity to some species.

This is not at all a social-psychological question, but a question focusing on evolution, embryology and the brain. From a macro to microscopic view, if applicable.

What is the difference in the brains for animals capable of these great differences in sexual activity and what part of the brain is responsible for this?

edit

I am not assuming that all sexual activity involves pleasure. Dogs are known to dry mount other dogs in an assertion of power. So there does appear to be a development throughout evolution, as to the use of sexual activity and communicate and purpose. Definitely, human beings have a wide range of pleasurable sexual activity derived from non-vaginal intercourse, that the vast majority of species do not. It could be argues to be counter evolutionary for want of a better term, as, like much human behavior, it serves no purpose in the continuation of the species.. OR maybe it does. Either way, it is an interesting advent of behavior.

The first question is, what is normal human sexual behavior. The answer to this changes over time. For example, a hundred years ago masturbation was thought to cause physical degeneration and be a sin, today it is perceived as healthy, even recommended. Research shows that adolescent girls who masturbate have more and stronger orgasms as adults.

So, if anal sex is normal, then there should not be any basic difference in how the brain processes this from vaginal coitus. The difference between different normal sexual practices should be like that between different words that you hear (as compared to non-verbal sound, which should be processed differently). Maybe anal and oral sex where processed differently a hundred years ago or in different cultures. I don't know of any research into this, but maybe there is.

Paraphilias like fetishes, pedophilia, incest, voyeurism and other "deviant" sexual behavior have not been well researched. There are many psychodynamic and cognitive theories of paraphilias, but since you ask for the brain, I'll focus on biological theories here. The following is taken from the chapter on paraphilias in Davison & Neale, Abnormal Psychology.

Since most paraphiliacs are men, it has been theorized that androgen plays a role in the etiology of paraphilias. Research into hormonal differences between paraphiliacs and normal people have had ambiguous results.
Sadism and exhibitionism appear to be caused by malfunctions of the temporal lobe (Mason 1997; Murphy, 1997).
Life experiences (like childhood abuse) are seen as the most important factor in a complex net of causes.

Besides psychological therapies of paraphilias (that will obviously influence the brain), there are biological therapies:

castration: results were highly ambiguous, so this therapy has been largely abandoned
medroxyprogesterone acetate lowers the testosterone level in men, cyproterone acetate lowers the androgene level, both reduce sexual appetency: this works in many paraphiliacs, but when they stop taking the medication the symptoms return; also, the substances can cause infertility and diabetes

As you can see, that's not much, and only two articles deal with the difference in brains. There may be more in recent articles.

The sources for the temporal lobe malfunction:

Mason, F. L. (1997). Fetishism: Psychopathology and theoriy. In D. R. Laws & W. O'Donohue (Eds.), Sexual Deviance (pp. 75-91). New York: Guilford.

Murphy, W. D. (1997). Exhibitionism:  Psychopathology and theoriy. In D. R. Laws & W. O'Donohue (Eds.), Sexual Deviance (pp. 22-39). New York: Guilford.


What is the difference between experience and knowledge and how could we make use of that in machine learning and AI applications? Let's suppose that i am a blind person whom never had any experience with sight before. I will also suppose that i have started some courses to learn about the eyes and the way it function with detailed explanation of every single component of the "seeing" process.
according to previous studies in the field, i will never know " what is to see" until i have a direct experience with that. Building upon that, how could we distinguish experience from knowledge for the application of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning?

If you can't see now why would you be able to see later if nothing has changed? It's not part of your capabilities.

So the statement "I will never know what is to see until i have a direct experience with that" isn't actually possible  because you can't have the experience without knowing what it is you're experiencing ... how would you be able to identify something if you have no knowledge of it?

Regardless...
Knowledge is objective - Mary had a little lamb.
Experience is subjective - It was a painful pregnancy.

So if you have no knowledge of baseball and I give you the rules book would you know how to play baseball?

Yep. Would you understand baseball? Nope.

The rules are the knowledge. The playing is the experience - giving context to the information.

Deep Blue beats the best chess players. It has no understanding of chess.


How is intelligence in children measured? Intelligence is dependent on mental age and education. So how can an IQ test be performed to check the mental/intellectual capabilities in children?

There are specific intelligence tests developed for children in different age ranges, e.g. from 4 to 8+11 months years, and 9-16 years. The site mentions that their test

  ...is a culture fair testing method. Test takers are equally assessed regardless of cultures, languages, backgrounds or education level.
  Also, the test duration is 30 minutes, which is well designed to not only suit children’s attention span but also generate precise results.

Note that I am not familiair with this website and cannot verify their claim that

  Our Phd-certified test was established in 2008. Nearly ten years since, the test has received approximately 16 million sittings.


Is there a name for highly aggressive non-violent people? I know an individual who has incredibly aggressive mannerisms including snatching things, raising voice and speaking with a very aggressive tone of voice.

However, since this person is completely non-violent - would never raise a finger against anyone, no-one ever considers them aggressive - and nor does this individual, as their response is always "I'd never hit anyone".

Is there a word or psychological term which describes this?

Passive-aggressive, hostile, officious?

Their response is also biased, we may say we'll never do something.. it's still possible we will though given the right circumstances.


Is The Chimp Model really a thing? I've come across 'The Chimp Model' that sports psychologist Steve Peters advocates for understanding human motivations. While this seems intuitive does it have much credibility in neuroscience? If there's any non-specialist papers I'd be interested.

https://chimpmanagement.com/the-chimp-model/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-KI1D5NPJs

(This isn't a complete answer, as I'm not in a position to comment on the neuroscience, but it should provide some useful background for anyone else who is interested in Peters' work.)
While The Chimp Model is based on psychology, is not intended to be an accurate nor detailed representation of the science. Rather, it is a conceptual framework that can be used to help people think about and change their behaviour. It provides a metaphor that can help coaches and individuals who want to know a bit more about the way their minds work, and enable them to make changes based on what they have learned. The idea is that it will help people use the science, but is not the science itself.
(Compare this to the idea that atoms are little coloured balls: that isn't an accurate representation of modern physics, but it is a useful way to think about many of the properties of matter in many practical situations)
The model divides the mind into three parts.

The Chimp. According to the model, this is an independent part of your mind that is not under your control. It works with feelings and impressions, and makes deductions using "emotional thinking".
The Human. This is the conscious, thinking, analytical part of your mind that operates on facts and can make logical deductions.
The Computer. This is the part of your mind that stores memories, skills and habits. It can do a certain amount of "automatic" thinking.

Peters' ideas are related to the ideas espoused by Daniel Kahneman in his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow". In this book Kahneman posits that there are two systems at work in the human mind:

System 1, which is fast, instinctive and emotional. This system can perform
System 2, which is slower, more deliberative, and more logical

Kahneman's work is much closer to "proper" (i.e. academic) psychology than that of Peters, whose motivation is practical rather than scientific.
Both Peters and Kahneman are proponents of a school of thought known as "dual process theory".


What motivates individuals to engage in cyberbullying? With the advent and proliferation of social media, forums and q&a sites, there has been a matching increase in the incidents of online-bullying, or 'cyber-bullying, that goes beyond trolling. All too many times, the consequences of this kind of bullying (like any type of bullying) can be tragic.

What is the psychological motivation behind the cyber-bully?  Is it a consequence of them feeling empowered by their apparent anonymity?

I have read the post "Why do teenagers take the internet and cyberbullying so seriously?", but my question is focused on the psychological motivations that the perpetrator of cyberbulling has, not why it is so damaging to the victims.

I am after authoritive (refereed) articles about this.

From my understanding of the problem and my years of experience with the internet since the early days when IRC was popular and web forums were just starting to emerge, I believe I can shed some light on this subject. probably not enough for a full answer but more than just a comment.
I feel that a large part of the problem is the anonymity (or perceived anonymity) as well as the sense of detachment that communication over the internet provides us with. I think that psychologically it is much easier to be critical, mean, cruel and otherwise have a lack of empathy when not dealing with another person face-to-face or verbally. Just as text-based communication does not convey tone of voice to allow us to know when others online are being sarcastic, one can lose the sense of how much one's actions are hurting others when they are cruel online.
With respect to perceived anonymity, it becomes greatly easier to rationalize or entirely forget that one's actions have consequences. It's easy to attack someone online and never have them know who is attacking them. This is demonstrated by a 2005 study done by Qing Li of the University of Calgary (I am unable to find the actual link to the study but have found many places which reference it) that states that 41% of students surveyed did not know the identity of the perpetrators. To me this indices that the anonymity provides a means for humans to rationalize behaviors we otherwise would be ashamed to be associated with.
The paper Cyber bullying:  Clarifying Legal Boundaries for School Supervision in Cyberspace by Shaheen Shariff/McGill University, Canada and Dianne L. Hoff/University of Maine, Orono, USA also draws some very interesting parallels between cyberbullying and the 1954 novel Lord of the Flies by  William Golding, speaking to the roots of cruelty in human nature as well as lack of supervision/perceived anonymity:

Young people in cyber-space lose their inhibitions in the absence of no central power, clear institutional or familial boundaries, or hierarchical structures (Milson & Chu, 2002). As Bandura (1991) explained over a decade ago, physical distance provides a context in which students can ignore or trivialize their misbehavior, as easily as Golding’s boys did on their distant island. In cyber-space this form of disengagement is amplified
Lack of institutional and parental rules in cyber-space have the effect of creating virtual islands similar to the physical islands in Lord of the Flies. The absence of adult supervision allows perpetrators free reign to pick on students who may not fit their definition of “cool” because of their weight, appearance, accent, abilities or disabilities (Shariff and Strong-Wilson, 2005). Cyber-space provides a borderless playground that empowers some students to harass, isolate, insult, exclude and threaten classmates. [...] Without limits and clear codes of conduct, communication in cyber-space (even among adults) can rapidly deteriorate into abuse because of the knowledge and sense of security that comes with the limited possibility of being detected and disciplined.

It also talks about teenage hormones being a driving factor:

Moreover, adolescent hormones rage and influence social relationships as children negotiate social and romantic relationships and become more physically self-conscious, independent, and insecure (Boyd, 2000). Research on dating and harassment practices at the middle school level (Tolman, 2001) shows that peer pressure causes males to engage in increased homophobic bullying of male peers and increased sexual harassment of female peers to establish their manhood. During this confusing stage of adolescent life, the conditions are ripe for bullying to take place. The Internet provides a perfect medium for adolescent anxieties to play themselves out.

I associate it somewhat with the notion by Thomas Hobbes that humans are "warlike", that by our very nature we are completely self-centered, and that we form societies and governments by giving up some of our selfishness and collectively adhering to social contracts for a greater good. By the nature of online communities often we lose this sense of responsibility to the community and each other, and we are prone to regress to our more basic, warlike state. This is my personal belief; I am still searching for actual references with which I can back this up with.


Why a person may have a temptation to do something unrelated when doing especially important thing? I would like to know, why a person may have a temptation to do something unrelated (or slightly related to his current task) when doing particularly important job?

Like, when preparing for an important math test under a time pressure, to spend time on consulting grammar book on why some sentence were constructed in that particular way and what are the rules for constructing the sentences of this kind, then finding some question while studying this and switch to stydying the new question and so on. As a result spending much more time on "unrelated" things rather than on the important one?

What mechanisms lie behind this behaviour? Is there a scientific description of this phenomenon?

I'll rephrase the initial question:
Why a person may have a strong subconscious temptation to distract oneself from doing very important job?

This is a partial answer to your question.

It is something that I do frequently - often it is a case of having several tasks that must be done in varying degrees of important and urgency.  What seems to happen is that the main, most urgent, task is 'deferred' whilst performing the less urgent and less important smaller tasks - effectively shrinking the 'to do' list.

A phenomena that seems to relate to what you are asking is known as 'mind-wandering', in the article "Tracking the train of thought from the laboratory into everyday life:
An experience-sampling study of mind wandering across
controlled and ecological contexts", (McVay et al. 2009), asserts that mind wandering is symptomatic of people being unaware of conscious activity.  That mind-wandering

  increasing with stress, boredom, sleepiness, or chaotic environments, and
  decreasing with concentration, effort, successful performance, enjoyable tasks, or happiness.

Also, according to the article "The Importance of Mind-Wandering", (Lehrer, 2011), assert that,

  Activation in medial prefrontal default network regions was observed both in association with subjective self-reports of mind wandering and an independent behavioral measure (performance errors on the concurrent task).

In the article, there is a suggestion that normally opposing neural systems ('executive' and 'default') work cooperatively.

So, while it may seem as self-distraction or procrastination, it appears to happen often and is a normal function.


How to determine an unbiased estimate of threshold in a single-stimulus forced choice experiment? Objective

I need to estimate the unbiased threshold of detectable speed difference in a car-following task. The details are as follows:

Experiment Design

This experiment was performed in a driving simulator. In each trial, the participant drives a car in a single lane.

Procedure

Initially, the participant's car and the lead vehicle (car or truck) moved at 100 km/h (27.78 m/s). The lead vehicle was at one of the two distances from the participant's car in a given trial: 50 m or 100 m.
After few seconds, the 'Observe' message appeared on participant's windscreen. At the onset of this message, the lead vehicle began to change its speed (increase or decrease) by 1 m/s or 3 m/s at the rate of 0.5 m/s (e.g. it would take 6 seconds to decrease speed by 3 m/s).
Once the speed difference was complete (e.g. lead vehicle reached 27.78 - 3 = 24.78 m/s speed), the participant was given 4 seconds to observe this change in speed. Then the 'Change Speed' message appeared. At this point, participants were forced to push either the gas pedal or the brake pedal to indicate that they noticed a positive speed difference (e.g. +3 m/s) or a negative speed difference (e.g. -3m/s). They had to provide their reaction even if they did not see any speed difference. Please note that the instructions were given before the experiment began.

Details/Limitations

There were no catch trials, i.e. there was no trial in which a speed difference was not created.
The trials were done with random combinations of spacing and speed difference. Sometimes negative speed difference trials were done consecutively; in other cases the trials were positive speed difference followed by a negative one. For example: 50 m and +1 m/s -> 50 m and +3 m/s -> 100 m and -3m/s -> 100 m and -1 m/s. These could be in any order.

Possible sources of bias

A smaller distance of 50 m is relatively unsafe compared to 100 m, especially when the lead vehicle is a truck. So, with small distance, small speed difference and/or a truck, participants might be biased to apply brakes even if the lead vehicle accelerates.

Results

I now have proportions of correctly detected responses for each combination of distance and speed difference.

Question

How do I determine an unbiased measure of the threshold of speed difference in each case? Does a speed difference that is correctly detected in at least 75% of the trials an appropriate threshold?

Kindly share any beginner-friendly resources for estimating threshold in a single stimulus forced choice task. Thank you in advance.

Any estimate you make is going to be pretty bad. To answer this question requires so many assumptions about the data, experiment, and intended usage, it is just not possible. You would be better off running the experiment again after consulting someone who knows more about experimental design. Beyond that, you could hire a stats consultant.

Apart from the lack of catch trials, you only have 2 speeds. Even if you get lucky and they bracket threshold (e.g., d' of 1 or 75% correct), without more theory (or data), you cannot interpolate between the points.


Do students exhibit rational behavior in determining study time? While I teach some economics classes, I must admit to near complete ignorance on the optimization processes students undertake when studying.  We often say that the "best" students are those who earn the highest grades.  However, from (naive) economic first principles, a rational student might be expected to endeavor not to maximize her grade, but rather to study until the marginal benefit of additional study equals its cost.  Thus, we view students as grade producers who transform labor into grades.

Have there been any studies that investigate the optimization problem these "grade producers" are solving when they choose how much to study (and especially on how they assess the benefits of grades)?

I think this is a very interesting question that I'm not sure we know the answer to. As we move towards online-based instruction, the question of whether students "optimally" determine their study time is extremely relevant. For instance, if students are allowed to "self-pace" themselves, will they do so optimally? Going to lectures in part may serve as a "commitment device" to go to class.

The only good economic study I know of is by David Figlio et al "Is it Live or is it Internet?: Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning". It also has the virtue of (attempting) to be a randomized controlled trial. However, I'm sure that there are probably other behavioral economics or psychology studies worth visiting.

The authors write,

  "Without the nudge of having to attend classes, the authors suggested,
  it can be easy to let recorded lectures pile up unwatched. Indeed, it
  is common at Florida to see students in libraries cramming viewings of
  a dozen lectures back to back before exams."

Here is a link to the paper (gated, unfortunately):
http://www.nber.org/papers/w16089

Also a popular press description:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/05/us/05collegeside.html


Names of branches of neuroscience and related fields dealing with hunger, taste, attachment, and digestion, and their relationship to other perception I would like to know what the branches of neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and psychiatry related to what happens when the tongue touches and other possible related mouth sensors, touch, or come into touch, with food, in the mouth, possibly interacting, with saliva and salivary glands and allocation, the back of the tongue and the back part of the hard palate or soft palate, the uvula, and swallowing and interaction with the tongue while swallowing and peristalsis through the throat, other than the feeling one gets when food is being digested by the stomach, gallbladder, and bowls, and related cognitive processes and psychology.
Also, what are the food and sense of taste disorders described in the DSM V?
What are the interactions of attachment theory with these processes?

Short answer / Intro
This question is (superbly) broad, and I've merely attempted to try to give some pointers, without even trying to be complete in any way.

Background

  I would like to know what the branches of neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and psychiatry related to what happens when the tongue touches...

Neuroscience: neurophysiology
Cognitive science: theoretical neuroscience
Psychology: psychophysics
Psychiatry: ?
Health sciences: Otorhinolaryngology

In terms of disorders, Hummel et al (2014) say:

  These functions reflect the complaints of patients with smell and taste disorders: Patient complaints include loss of “fine taste”, inability to detect the odour of a partner or child, and the occurrence of, for example, food poisoning. In general the value of these senses is only recognised when they are lost. It is assumed that about 5% of people exhibit functional anosmia.

Anosmia being:

  the loss of the sense of smell, either total or partial. It may be caused by head injury, infection, or blockage of the nose.

In terms of psychiatric illness I'm moving into unfamiliar territory, but there seems to be mention in the literature of a correlation between taste dysfunction and psychiatric disorders (Mott et al., 1993)

References
- Hummel et al., GMS Curr Top Otorhinolaryngol Head Neck Surg (2011); 10: Doc04
- Mott et al, Dental Clinics North Am (1993); 37(1): 33-71


How did the concepts of left and right direction develop in the human mind? I hope this is the correct forum to ask; if not, please migrate to a better place.

How did humans came to agree on a distinction between the directions "right" and "left"? I could think of two alternative ways:

Biology: the right hand is usually stronger, so humans can agree that the direction of the stronger hand is "right" and the other direction is "left".
Astronomy: in the northern hemisphere, when people look to the direction of the rising sun (= east), they see it turning slightly to the right of them (= south). So they could agree that the direction the sun turns to is "right" and the other direction is "left".

Is there any evidence to one or the other or to another explanation?

There is a perspective called the "sociological imagination" that can be used to "frame," or interpret, perceptions. In part, this perspective involves an awareness toward the linkages between history and biography, between social structure and consciousness, and between "knowledge" and its socio-cultural contexts.

The words you question are simply tools or descriptive labels applied to some "sense" and useful for both individual and communal understanding of space-time.  There is a class of words (called "closed" class words) -- called so because, unlike nouns and verbs, it is tremendously difficult to invent new words (icons or symbols) for the associated concepts.  These words fall into a class of words that have their foundation in protolanguage -- with associated, generally-accepted, emerging concepts from early hunting and gathering societies 100,000BC-80,000BC.  At this early stage, knowledge transfer (education) was through socialization of the young (largely an informal process where children learned both through their play and through observing and imitating their elders).

Specifically to your question, some close class words indicate relative direction (to, from, through, left, right, up, down) in the manner of vectors.  Other words such as above, below, in, on, at, next to, and by serve to orient relative to other objects.

Suppose one had to explain the meaning of the words “left” and “right” to someone who had never heard those words before. Further suppose, that you had to explain such in a purely verbal manner -- without drawing pictures or pointing at things or otherwise making gestures.  One would perhaps start by appealing to a shared experience, communal concept, or draw upon mathematics (geometry).  But what if one were constrained to make no assumptions about where the person is coming from or how much geography he or she knows? You then might hope that they knew something about the stars or the sky.  One could begin with up and down and move on to the motions of objects in the sky.

Another way the concept of "left" and "right" could have emerged to common understanding is through anatomy (human or otherwise).  Socializing methods of butchering flesh, combat training, and burial rites all would include relative orientation, placement, and direction.

The cognitive origin of the notions of "left" and "right" emerge from common experience and/or how experience relates to tangible objects or phenomenon.

This rabbit hole goes a lot deeper; however, for the sake of being cogent and succinct, I am observing some self-imposed boundaries.  There are egocentric coordinate acculturation conventions and spatiality (geo-centric, stellar-centric, (sub)atomic-centric) traditions that can shake things up a bit but I believe such begin to tangent off point.

References:

Calvin, W. (2004). A brief history of the mind: From apes to intellect and beyond. New York: Oxford University Press.
The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings: Third Revised Edition. By Martin Gardner. 2005.
The Handedness of the Universe. Roger A. Hegstrom and Dilip K. Kondepudi in Scientific American, Vol. 262, pages 108-115; January 1990.
Alien Pizza, Anyone? On other worlds, biochemistry could have taken a different turn. Davide Castelvecchi in Science News, Vol. 172, No. 7, pages 107-; August 18, 2007
THEORIES. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3, 2015, from  http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/theory.html#imag


Is stacking cans really a sign of Asperger's? Wikipedia says:

  People with Asperger syndrome often display restricted or specialized
  interests, such as this boy's interest in stacking cans.

How predictive is this of Asperger's: What percentage of normal boys and boys with Asperger's display this type of behavior, respectively?

Symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome

difficulty recognizing social cues
awkward body language
social isolation
aloofness
fixation on certain objects

The picture (and idea) that “stacking cans” is in itself a sign of Asperger’s is misleading at best.
One could just as easily say this child is making “a tower”, a common activity amongst children.

Asperger at Psychotherapy Collective

Stacking objects can be a child development tool.

Childhood development tools


Can rewards incentivise shortcuts to be taken which wouldn't be done otherwise? With a rewards-based system, some may be so incentivised by these rewards that they end up losing the end goal of what is meant to be the aim of gamifying otherwise boring, repetitive activities.

Why do rewards manage to detract users from the example of good behaviours in a non-game environment, and how should implementers of gamified systems work around this issue?

TL;DR
When a boring, repetitive task is being gamed for rewards, there are two things that you need to look at. First, the problem definition and whether it is accurately defined (keeping in mind that autonomy is not lost). Second, the conditions of the reward and what is the actual behavior that is being rewarded.

There are two main factors influencing how effective or ineffective the system is for encouraging a certain behavior and they are:

The Problem Definition
The Reward Conditions

I will use two examples to discuss this problem:

First, the task of folding and putting in envelopes 40 letters.
Second, the task of proofreading 20 articles.

The Problem Definition
The first and foremost thing to look at is the problem itself. We are well-aware of human tendencies well before we even start to define a gamified system and so, I feel, it is the responsibility of the designer to be smart in defining the problem.
In the first example, the task itself consists of folding letters, and then putting them into envelopes. In this, a person may fold a letter in any way, any number of times, and may even just stuff it into the envelope. One way of reducing individuals from succumbing into bad habits is to redefine the problem to: fold letter, put in envelope and seal the envelope. Just this small change will now make it less likely for people to stuff an unfolded letter into the envelope as they themselves have to close it as well.
However, it is important to remember that one of the biggest motivators for gamified systems is autonomy, and over-defining a task will reduce it, thereby reducing the motivation to participate at all.
In the second case, there are multiple avenues by which the actual task can be avoided (read a few pages, read a few papers, etc.). So, its pretty clear, that this task has significant chances of being gamed.
Now, we come to the second factor that affects good behavior in a gamified system and how it can be leveraged to regulate it.
The Reward Conditions
The rewards being offered can be divided into three major types:

Participation-Contingent: The reward is awarded if the individual simply starts the task. In the first case, if the person, just does even one envelope, then he is given the reward. Similarly, in the second case, if the individual proofreads even one paper, he is given the award. This as can be seen will be least effective and promoting good behavior over long periods of time.

Completion-Contingent: The award is given to the individual if he completes the task, irrespective of the quality of the results. That is, all envelopes filled with letters folded (however they may be) and all articles proofread, not looking at accuracy or errors missed.

Performance-Contingent: The individual is rewarded if the quality of the work done is above a certain fixed threshold. None of the envelopes have any bulges anywhere and seal easily, and 18/20 articles are error-free. This is the most effective in preventing individuals from falling into bad behaviors within the system.

Therefore, it is important to think clearly about what the reward is and what is actually being rewarded.
Summary
Be aware of the task and what it requires an individual to do, and also, what a reward encourages and what is the minimum that needs to be done to get it.


Is there a downside to using more than the typical 20/40 trials in an IAT? Most resources mention using 20 'practice' trials categorizing both targets and attributes, followed by 40 'real' trials categorizing both targets and attributes. Note that this is after practicing with targets and attributes alone. Is there a downside to using more than 20/40 trials? (I know some recommend using extra practice trials when learning the new target/button assignment.)

The main threat to a design's validity from increasing the amount of trials in any experiment comes from participant motivation and attention. After sitting in front of a monitor for a while, participants get tired, as anyone would. As a personal rule of thumb, a session should therefore not go beyond 40 minutes without breaks if possible. Rather than going with my anecdotal advice, though, I suggest you run planned analyses to check and/or control for any decline in performance.

Given recent developments, it would seem there is generally more of a downside to using the typical rather than to not doing so. The methodological skeletons have come tumbling out of the field's closet one after the other the last few years, and as we are seeing in recent open access efforts such as Many Labs, power matters.

Instead of going with the tried and (maybe, possibly) true, run a power analysis to determine your ability to detect an effect size of the magnitude you expect to find and set your sample size and trial length appropriately. If you don't find an effect or a different sized effect with a well-powered study, well, that's basically publishable these days. Especially if you pre-registered it!

Besides that, there is rarely a downside to gathering more data, provided your statistical methodology is appropriate to your research question and you know how to interpret it correctly. The more observations you make, the more confident in your increasingly narrow inference you can be. If performance declines substantially, it will show up in the data.


How to measure your stress levels? If someone has eutress it supports his/her mental development and learning of new skills. It is so called optimal level of stress as illustrated in the figure below.

Are there any ways to measure that you are within these limits of eutress in that curve?
For my experience it is quite difficult to detect that you don't go to the distress side of that curve.

Only things that I know to measure it is resting heart rate and sleep quality, but I would like to know if there are some other ways to do it also.

The term eustress was coined by endocrinologist Hans Selye, consisting of the Greek prefix eu- meaning "good", and stress, literally meaning "good stress".

There is also the Yerkes–Dodson law which is an empirical relationship between arousal and performance dictating that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point.

The curve diagram you provided in your question is a rehashing of the Yerkes–Dodson law curve (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) — See also Diamond, et al. (2007).

This version is the most common version and often incorrectly cited in text books (Source).

Your question

Are there any ways to measure that you are within these limits of eutress in that curve?

Well detection of peak eustress levels would be practically impossible and one person's eustress levels can be very different to another person.

Le Fevre, et al's (2003) revised version of Spector’s (1998) model which incorporates all three tenets drawn from the literature on occupational stress

  Selye's concept of eustress or “good stress” appears to be largely ignored in the literature, while the Yerkes Dodson Law is illustrated as a model for management practice. We suggest that the meaning assigned to the word stress has shifted from Selye's original formulation, and that this shift, in conjunction with the use of the Yerkes Dodson Law leads to inappropriate management of stress in organizations.  We conclude that the concept that some stress is good and enhances performance should be rejected in favour of more useful and accurate concepts (Le Fevre, et al. 2003).

Le Fevre et al. (2003) also says:

  From the point of view of the individual, it is only they themselves who can manage, through perception and interpretation, to what degree they experience their organisational environment, including its demands and resources, as distress or eustress. They are themselves responsible for their eustress or distress. As such, it is the individuals’ responsibility and choice to reflect on, and manage their interpretation of the stressors inherent in their occupation, and to endeavour to make interpretations that increase eustress and decrease distress.

  From the management standpoint, it seems to us that a key contribution of management lies in assisting employees to experience the stressors of the workplace as eustress. First, when employees can be supported to make positive interpretations of their environment, support should be given. This may necessitate investment in coaching and a variety of related personal development interventions. Second, when demand and resources can be modified to reduce stressors identified by employees as distress, then management should seek to address these stressors. Management should not assume that any particular stressor is experienced as eustress or distress but should rather engage in understanding the employees’ experience of the stressor.

References

Diamond, D. M., Campbell, A. M., Park, C. R., Halonen, J., & Zoladz, P. R. (2007). The temporal dynamics model of emotional memory processing: a synthesis on the neurobiological basis of stress-induced amnesia, flashbulb and traumatic memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson law. Neural plasticity, Vol. 2007.DOI: 10.1155/2007/60803

Le Fevre, M., Matheny, J., & Kolt, G. S. (2003). Eustress, distress, and interpretation in occupational stress. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 18(7), pp 726-744.DOI: 10.1108/02683940310502412

Spector, P.E. (1998), A control theory of the job stress process. In: Cooper, C.L. (Ed.), Theories of Organizational Stress. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp 153-169.

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit‐formation. Journal of comparative neurology, 18(5), pp 459-482.DOI: 10.1002/cne.920180503


What pro- or anti-environmental behaviors are feasible to measure objectively rather than with self-report? One of the central challenges in understanding pro-environmental behavior is measurement. Currently, most researchers (including myself) lean on self-report of behavior.

I'm looking for a brainstorm. What kinds of pro-environmental behaviors might be realistically measured by researchers? I think there's room for more creativity. I'd love to hear some ideas. For example, recycling bins have been measured at the curb for weight (time-consuming), electrical meters have been read by students (time-consuming), household water usage has been measured by partnering with a water district (long-term negotiation due to privacy).... there are also laboratory tasks such as recycling, donation, and turning out the lights, but these are lower-quality measures because they only occur once.

There's room here for more creativity. What other pro- or anti-environmental behaviors can be observed by researchers in the real world or in an online survey? I'm looking for a brainstorm, not a literature review. I work in this area and know the key papers well. Thank you for any suggestions!

This is barely on-topic here (as it's more of an economics question), but Kurisu (2016) says

  This chapter provides an overview of pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). There is no catchall definition or way to categorize PEBs; therefore, I propose various definitions and ways to categorize PEBs. Two main definitions for PEBs are shown here: purpose oriented and fact oriented. [...] I summarize behaviors proposed by various environmental agencies and present a list of 200 PEBs. In the list, the main classification is based on the major targets for reduction, such as greenhouse gases, air pollutants, water pollutants, resource consumption, and disturbance of nature, with 12 categories under the main targets, which are standard in many places.

Since the whole list is obviously too long to give here, here's an examples table

Kurisu also notes at least two government lists, one by the UK in Annex A of "A Framework for Pro-Environmental Behaviours", which has something like 30 PEBs and one by the US' EPA, "At Home and in the Garden". (There's was also a Japanese one "Challenge 25", which is a dead link.)

Alas Kurisu doesn't have a chapter on objective measures (only has one on subjective surveys and one on [objective] life-cycle assessment).

But there's a (2014) meta-analysis comparing declared with actual PEBs:

  Do self-reports match objective behavior? We performed a meta-analysis to quantify the association
  between self-reported and objective measures of proenvironmental behavior, and to evaluate the
  moderating influence of two socio-demographic and seven methodological moderators. Data from 6260
  individuals or households, involving 19 measures of association in 15 studies, revealed a positive and
  nominally large (Cohen, 1988) effect size (r = .46). However, this means that 79% of the variance in the
  association between self-reported and objective behavior remains unexplained, which is especially
  troubling given the environmental context. We conclude that although this effect size is conventionally
  large, it is functionally small for testing theory and devising intervention campaigns, possibly leading
  researchers to draw misleading conclusions about the usefulness of theories that employ self-reports to
  predict objective behavior. These findings highlight a crucial need for research that strengthens the
  validity of self-reports for well-defined types of environmental behavior.

What could be useful from this paper is its list of studies that have performed actual PEB measurements (see their table 1). Alas this isn't too encouraging or creative; there are only two dozen studies or so in that table, and most measured stuff that's easy to measure: energy usage or recycling behavior. Of these, Kaiser (2001) probably has the most extensive list in a single study, with 14  PEBs.


Does reading a book out loud make you better in social situations? Suppose a person reads a book out loud for 1 hour straight. Would this "exercise" the parts of the brain involved in speech? Would this make the person a better communicator in social situations?

Based on general principles of skill transfer:

Reading a book aloud should improve your skills in reading books aloud, and in particular it should improve your skill in reading the particular passages that you are reading. So if you are going to be reading a particular text in a public setting, it makes sense to practice reading that passage of text.
Likewise, if you are preparing to give a lecture, then practicing giving the lecture should improve your performance giving that talk.
Reading a book aloud is unlikely to help you in social situations because the dynamics of reading are quite different to the dynamics of social situations. Communication in social situations is interactive with its own specific set of conventions that need to be learnt. In contrast, reading a book aloud is not interactive. The rules that govern reading a book aloud are very different to those that govern social situations.

Based on the same principles, if you want to be a better communicator in social situations, your time would probably be better spent (a) studying social interactions, and (b) engaging and reflecting on social interactions.

Update: @ofri makes a good point. If a bottle neck on your social skills is actually articulating words clearly, then practicing that skill, such as would occur when reading, should be effective. Ofri uses a good example of a second language learner. The case I'm thinking of above is where the person is fully competent in articulating words verbally, and where problems with social skills relate more to knowing what to say when.