Beyond CBT and MBI, what are effective behavioral interventions for modern lifestyle addictions during their engagement? Some modern activities exploit the primitive mammalian reward areas in the brain. They include immediate access to social media, video games, music, sugar, pornographic material, gambling etc. Worse, excessively engaging in these activities without inhibition may enhance the neuroplasticity of the reward centers (and undermine the plasticity of areas involved in self-control, including the anterior cingulate cortex), thus leading to long-term changes of higher reward tolerance, lower self-regulatory abilities, and other exacerbating effects. Unfortunately, most worthwhile work (e.g., proactive learning, writing, thinking about new mechanisms and concepts etc.) usually doesn't offer nearly as much dopaminergic stimulation in the mammalian reward centers of the human brain.

Next to the obvious mindfulness-based interventions (e.g., being aware of the moment and noting the emotional occupation) and cognitive behavioral therapy based approaches (CBT), what interventions have proven to be effective or are likely to be effective for the use case below (*)? References to support these techniques are welcome. Perhaps some techniques from the substance abuse literature has some application. The main focus of this question mostly deals with the following situation:

(*) An adult is currently engaging in the addictive task and wishes to context-switch to the productive task. Additionally, the person is aware that the current (addictive) task offers a lower expected utility than the productive task.

Alas there's not much in the way of interventions that can curb impulsivity on the spot. Quoting from a somewhat dated but widely cited review, Moeller et al., 2001:

  Of the operant therapies used in treating individuals
  with impulsive-related disorders, contingency management
  procedures have received the most clinical and research
  attention. Contingency management involves the
  use of predetermined positive or negative consequences
  to reward or punish (and thus deter) the occurrence of a
  target behavior. [...]

  Reinforcement and response cost contingencies have
  been used in reducing impulsive behaviors in children. In
  the classroom, token economy systems have proven to be
  an effective short-term method for reducing disruptive behavior
  and promoting on-task, academic behavior (89, 90).
  Outside the classroom, the efficacy of contingency management
  procedures has not been demonstrated, and such
  procedures are generally considered to be impractical in
  home settings (91). Furthermore, recent studies have
  shown that contingency management procedures produce
  smaller gains than stimulants like methylphenidate, and
  gains engendered by contingency management treatment
  do not persist once reinforcement is terminated (92). Thus,
  generalization and maintenance continue to be central
  problems in using these behavioral reinforcement systems.

I quoted mostly the parts relating to ADHD since this seems to be the actual interest behind your question. And nothing on adult ADHD was mentioned in that review (only studies in contingency management in substance abuse in adults were mentioned in that review.) There's a fairly interesting ongoing trial on contingency management in smoking cessation in subjects with and without ADHD; quoting from the design:

  The investigators hypothesize that prior to a quit attempt, smokers with ADHD will exhibit significantly lower levels of intrinsic motivation to quit, and equal or higher levels of extrinsic motivation to quit compared to smokers without ADHD. [...] investigators hypothesize that smokers with ADHD will exhibit relatively less readiness for change than smokers without ADHD. [...] The investigators hypothesize that the CM [contingency management] intervention will result in relatively greater change in extrinsic motivation to quit versus intrinsic motivation to quit, and that this effect will be more pronounced among ADHD smokers. [...] The investigators hypothesize that overall motivation to quit (intrinsic and extrinsic) and readiness for change will be significantly influenced by the CM intervention versus treatment as usual among ADHD smokers.

Results haven't been published; they're scheduled for 2019. One very, very small trial was completed by another group on this same topic

  The prevalence of smoking among individuals diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is twice as high as the general smoking population. The aim of this study was to test the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of delivering a smartphone-based contingency management (CM) smoking cessation intervention with 3 adults diagnosed with ADHD. Using a multiple-baseline design, participants (N = 3) used their smartphones to upload 2 daily videos showing themselves measuring their carbon monoxide (CO) levels (abstinence was defined as CO ≤4 ppm). Monetary vouchers, redeemable for gift cards, were used to reinforce smoking abstinence during tapering, treatment, and thinning phases that lasted up to 28 days. During a 1-week follow-up meeting, participants provided 1 CO sample that was not rewarded. Preliminary results demonstrated that participants decreased their exhaled breath CO relative to baseline (from a mean of 24 ppm at baseline to a mean of 6 ppm during treatment). Participants rated the smartphone application as effective, convenient, and easy to use. Results suggest that a smartphone-based CM intervention is both feasible and acceptable for initiating smoking abstinence among individuals diagnosed with ADHD.

On a related note to these two latter studies, there have been conlficting results whether methylphenidate does or doesn't increase smoking in subjects with ADHD.

One more interesting observation (which, unfortunately, does not seem to have resulted in any particular treatment approaches) is that anxiety is correlated with more impulsivity in bipolar, ADHD, and other kinds of high-impulsivity disorders:

  Further, children and adolescents diagnosed with
  disruptive behavior disorders (ADHD, ODD, conduct
  disorder), conditions characterized by impulsiveness,
  often present with co-occurring anxiety disorders; for
  example, in a meta-analysis of community-sample
  based studies of comorbidity of diagnoses among
  children and adolescents, Angold, Costello, & Erkanli
  (1999) found that the median odds ratio for the
  association between ADHD and anxiety disorders
  was 3.0 (2.1–4.3) and for CD/ODD and anxiety
  disorders was 3.1 (2.2–4.6). Thus, while our study
  did not include an assessment of behaviorally disinhibited
  temperament, prior literature supports the
  proposition that anxiety may particularly influence
  impulsivity in individuals with an underlying predisposition
  toward behavioral disinhibition.

Also worth mentioning perhaps is a recent (and very large) epidemiological study on the overlaps of ADHD, anxiety, and bipolar (alas without a separate measure of impulsivity):

  We examined the relationship between ADHD, anxiety disorders and bipolar disorder in a birth cohort of 2,409,236 individuals born in Denmark between 1955 and 1991. [...]
  Over 37,394,865 person-years follow-up, 9250 onsets of bipolar disorder occurred. The incidence rate of bipolar disorder was 2.17 (95% CI 2.12–2.19) in individuals with no prior diagnosis of ADHD or anxiety, 23.86 (95% CI 19.98–27.75) in individuals with a prior diagnosis of ADHD only, 26.05 (95% CI 24.47–27.62) in individuals with a prior diagnosis of anxiety only and 66.16 (95% CI 44.83–87.47) in those with prior diagnoses of both ADHD and anxiety. The combination of ADHD and anxiety increased the risk of bipolar disorder 30-fold (95% CI 21.66–41.40) compared with those with no prior ADHD or anxiety.

Interestingly the link between anxiety and ADHD isn't strong considering the known genetic factors (from the mega study published in Science this summer), although the genetic link of ADHD with bipolar is significant and so are the genetic links of ADHD with major depression (MDD) (which is even stronger), and of anxiety with depression. Also OCD is (genetically) linked with bipolar but not with ADHD. (Schizophrenia is genetically well-linked to almost everything psychiatric except the anxiety disorders.) Research into genetic causes of most psychiatric disorders can be considered in its infancy through (genetic factors can currently explain only a small fraction of the variance in disorder incidence).

(Yes, I know this is a fairly large divagation from the topic of the question.)


A study about preference for making relatively vs. absolute more money? I remember reading about a study. I forgot the actual details of it, but the gist of it was: people were asked in what situation they would prefer to live, one where they make \$100,000 dollars and the neighbours all make \$200,000 dollars, or one where they make \$10,000 dollars and the neighbours all make \$5000 dollars. Most participants chose the \$10,000 vs \$5,000 situation, even though they would have ended up with much less money (note: I am pretty sure I got the actual numbers wrong).

Sadly, I don't remember where I read it (thought it must have been in Predictably Irrational, but can't find it there).

Questions

What is the reference for the study
What theories explain this behavior?
Where can I read background information on the topic?

I've found Neighbors as Negatives: Relative Earnings and Well-Being by E.F.P. Luttmer (2005), although I'm not sure it's the right one. I've heard about your study as well, but I thought it was older than 2005. You can read the study I linked and look up the references. There are quite a lot that touch the same subject.


What is the name of inattention/autopilot phenomenon that results in 'swapping out' errors Suppose I am doing the laundry while simultaneously taking out the trash, so am carrying a bag of dirty clothes in one hand and a bag of rubbish in the other.  I might be on autopilot where I lift up the lid of the garbage bin, throw my laundry into it and turn to walk away before then realising what I have done: thrown the wrong bag one into the bin i.e. "right idea, wrong object".

I know that it's some sort of inattention effect that is studied in cognitive psychology, but can somebody tell me what the correct name for this phenomenon is?

edit
Dual-task interference is closer to the concept I'm looking for

The Stroop Effect is more for rapid-fire tasks and task switching.

Unconscious Thought Theory may be related.

Absent-mindedness can lead to automatic behaviors or automatisms.

Highway hypnosis is similar, where you don't remember the task you've done even though it's correct.

Otherwise, making a mistake due to habit/habituation?


Why is Asperger Syndrome poorly recognised in France? Asperger Syndrome is quite well-known in psychiatric circles, as well as (to a lesser degree) the general public, in many countries the western world. However, in France, Asperger Syndrome is virtually unknown to the general public. From what I have read in various sources, French psychiatry denies the existence of Asperger Syndrome, instead using alternative diagnoses and alternative treatments, some of which can be very harmful. This is not the case in other Francophone areas; the situation in Belgium, Quebec and Switzerland is better.
Below I quote the French Wikipedia article on Asperger Syndrome and I attempt to provide a translation:

Le syndrome eut du mal à être reconnu et ne l'est pas encore totalement. Il peut être ignoré par les professionnels, parfois réticents à annoncer le diagnostic à cause d'orientations théoriques personnelles ; le syndrome d'Asperger n'existe pas en tant qu'entité distincte dans les précédentes versions de la CFTMEA et n'y a été individualisé que dans la dernière version (année 2000). Notons que les termes « disharmonie de développement », « disharmonie d'évolution », « disharmonie évolutive », « disharmonie psychotique », « Trouble Complexe et Multiple du Développement (MCDD Multiple-complex Developpemental Disorder) » sont souvent utilisés en France pour décrire les troubles autistiques. Ces termes ne figurent pas dans la nomenclature internationale CIM1014 et ne devraient plus être utilisés, selon les recommandations. De fait, depuis quelques années, certaines associations dénoncent des diagnostics de « dépression infantile » qui sont de plus en plus souvent prononcés à tort, en lieu et place des anciennes « disharmonies »15[réf. insuffisante].
L'approche française se défait néanmoins progressivement d'une imprégnation psychanalytique qui propose une prise en charge singulière du diagnostic et de la prise en charge de ce syndrome.

My rough translation attempt (a native speaker is encouraged to improve):

The syndrome was difficult to be recognized and is still not fully. It can be ignored by professionals who may be reluctant to perform an Asperger diagnosis diagnosis because of personal theoretical opinions; Asperger syndrome does not exist as a separate entity in previous versions of the CFTMEA and was taken up as a separate entity only in the latest version (2000). Note that the terms "disharmonic development," "disharmony of evolution", "progressive disharmony", "psychotic disharmony", "Disorder and Multiple Complex Development (TSLS Multiple-complex Developmental Disorder)" are often used in France to describe autistic disorder. These terms are not included in the international nomenclature CIM1014 and should not be used as recommended. In fact, in recent years, some associations decry diagnostics of "childhood depression" that is increasingly often given erroneously, instead of the former "disharmony".
The French approach however defeats slowly a psychoanalytic penetration that proposes to take a unique diagnosis approach to take care of the syndrome.

Why is Asperger Syndrome so poorly recognised in France? Are there political reasons behind this (we don't want this "American" thing), does it reflect a wider culture in French psychiatry, or is there no clear cause for this?

I am by no means any sort of expert at the French mental health system, but I was curious and found a few reasons that may indicate why such a philosophy is prevalent.

In this blog, an American psychologist analyzes the differences between the American and French schools of thought on ADHD, but the observations hold for other conditions as well.  While Asperger's and ASD aren't necessarily part of the traditional psychiatric clusters, their treatment is often allocated to psychiatrists in the U.S.

From a pragmatic perspective, the very basis for diagnosis for children in France is not based on the DSM as it is in America, the French developed their own manual for diagnosis in children:

  They do not use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM.According to Sociologist Manuel Vallee, the French Federation of Psychiatry developed an alternative classification system as a resistance to the influence of the DSM-3. This alternative was the CFTMEA (Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L'Enfant et de L'Adolescent), first released in 1983, and updated in 1988 and 2000.

More importantly, as the article points out, psychiatric disorders are treated more from a psychosocial perspective, rather than a physiological or pharmacological one.  That's not to say this is wrong, but it's drastically different in taking cues from a child's social situation/"maladjustment" rather than trying to attribute a psychiatric cause to the condition.

It seems as though the French psychiatric/psychological community is likely to allocate the actual medical bases of these and other disorders to the (non-psychiatric) medical community:

  A general comment regarding the French mental health system is that the distinction between the social and the medical components of care is too often unclear, and the management of social problems is frequently delegated to medical institutions and professionals.

So, while the French psychiatric community may be less likely to recognize Asperger's, it may be that the neurological or educational communities may view it in the same light that American's do.  Certainly, I would assume that those psychiatrists more steeped in experimental methods and treatments would have some understanding of the neuroanatomical advances that are being made in autism spectrum disorders, so the beliefs you outline in the quote may not be universal.

Also from a practical perspective, because of the philosophy of treating many of these conditions from a psychosocial perspective, there aren't a lot of resources allocated to child psychiatric patients.  While a patient with Asperger's is no more or less likely to be hospitalized as another, the overall trend seems to indicate the resources dedicated to outpatient practitioners may be as scarce as those for inpatients (and from the article, does seem to have a much higher density in Southern France and metropolitan areas):

  The number of child and adolescent psychiatric beds is relatively low (0.19 beds per 1000 inhabitants) and a large number of sectors (n=182) have no child and adolescent beds at all...not driven by the pressure of cutting costs.  It was decided upon by child psychiatrists who thought the the hospitalisation of children could be replaced by day hospitalisation and community psychiatry.

Reference:

MENTAL, O. O. (2003). Focus on psychiatry in France. BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY, 183, 466-471.[DOI] [Free PDF]


The computer model of the brain I am a computer programmer or computer engineer, and am interested in comparing the brain to a classical computer in some way.  How well does this comparison hold up?

This is a general introduction to the computer/brain metaphor and its practical limitations.  Similar questions on this forum include:

Difference between parallel processing done by human brain and by computers
How does the brain generate answers to questions?
What is the data structure used by the brain to store data?
How is information stored in the brain
How the Brain Does Garbage Collection in Real Time
How does a human classify or cluster data?
Human brain v/s computer: speed comparison?
Does the brain have a 'debugging mode'?
Why can't we use 100% of the brain in a certain moment?
Is it possible to increase the capacity of human brain like “Lucy”?
In what ways do our brains use compression?
How many possible states does a brain have?
What is the capacity of the human brain?

This question's reference to a classical computer refers to a "Turing Machine" style of computation, also known as a knowledge system, in which decisions and possible results are pre-programmed using if-statements, loops, and other logical constructs.
However, most modern computer programmers and engineers are at least somewhat familiar with neural networks, used for machine learning. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are loosely based on the way the brain (a biological neural network) works.  If you want to use your computing background to understand the brain, then I recommend learning about neural networks instead.  If you already have some understanding of neural networks, then think about how Siri or Watson work.
While neural networks can certainly be thought of as storing data, executing algorithms, parallel processing, and having memory and speed measurements, they are conceptually very different from classical computers, and generally uninstructive to compare. In particular, the "von Neumann" architectural style of modern computers does not have an analog in the brain (there is no separation between areas that compute and areas that store memories, for example). If you are still interested in such a comparison, then many of the questions listed above already have great answers, so check them out.
If you are interested in modeling the brain using a classical computing methodology, then check out ACT-R, a popular architecture for modeling the brain using a modular, knowledge-based system (also see this forum question).
Artificial neural networks are not a perfect model for biological neural networks either, and if you are interested in the difference, then see this forum question.


What does the literature say about why women aren't attracted to nice guys? Dating coaches make the point that women may "like," or "appreciate" a nice man, but they aren't likely to be attracted to, or fall madly in love with such behavior (until fairly late in the relationship, e.g. steady dating or engagement).

One such person, Leil Lowndes in "Undercover Sex Signals," noted, "A woman subconsciously listens to her genes." That one quote opened up a whole new way of thinking to me.

For instance, a domineering, hard-as-nails man might not be pleasant to live with, but a woman might be attracted to him because he is signaling that he would be a good (protective and providing) father for her children. Likewise for the "bad boy," who is unconventional, independent, and seemingly courageous, even though he may be "independent" to the point of being unfaithful.

Is it true that at some level, women and men who are dating "rate" each other based on the other's presumed parenting ability (e.g. that men prefer good looks as a sign of good "motherhood")? And that members of the opposite sex that aren't perceived as good parenting material are often "friend-zoned" despite their other virtues?

Of course, dating coaches have their points of view, but they are "street smart." More to the point, they sometimes cited scientific studies to prove their cases. So what to the "scientists" have to say about this matter?

Edit: This question is not about "externals" preached by pick-up artists like Pellicer, using such techniques as body language, eye contact, or good conversation skills. This is about the theory of a woman (Lowndes) who hypothesizes that we are only one step (in evolutionary terms) away from "cavemen," and that therefore evidence of good cavemen traits (toughness and self sufficiency for men, physical appeal for women) still makes one attractive (at a visceral level) to members of the opposite sex. Even though other traits such as intelligence, humor, and empathy might be more relevant in the modern world, they might not do as good a job at sparking immediate attraction as the more primitive traits.

This isn’t a literature answer but a qualitative clarification. “Nice guy” is a conflation between two distinctly-separate behavioral patterns:

1) Passively begging for approval points via virtue-signalling in order to become her most favored suitor. This signals weakness, insecurity and/or cowardice because the male lacks thr courage to take action, risk rejection or be vulnerable by making his intentions clear.

2) Being kind, generous or gallant without expectation or necessity, as a king banking social capital and goodwill with his subjects as a demonstration of his abundant power and good character to lead and provide.

Clearly, these are two vastly-different approaches that should be considered entirely different strategies. One is genuine, while the other is wishful and deceptive.

Furthermore, considerations of how much sexual (genetic) vs. social/status (partner) value is demonstrated in order to elicit various respect and/or attraction responses. For example, males with mostly sexual value but little partner value will quickly gain mating opportunities, whereas low sexual value but high partner value males will be expected to invest much more time, money and energy before mating opportunities and be held to higher behavioral standards than the former group. Social value only demonstrated males without enough sexual or status value will be friend-zoned. Too high of status men also risk friend-zoning to protect her ego, ie auto-rejection. High sexual value men may also be initially pseudo-rejected, but it’s unlikely that a female would pass on an opportunity to gain superior biological father genes considering the time and energy commitment risks involved in child-rearing.


What's the difference between repression and suppression? These two terms are closely related, and thus easily confusable as synonymous. Is there a difference?

Repression is the unconscious exclusion of impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind, while suppression is the conscious exclusion of similar thoughts.


Is there a criterion to distinct between a philia and a paraphilia? The terms "Androphilia" and "Gynephilia" describe the two major romantic and/or sexual orientation/s of humans → towards "masculine" humans and "feminine" humans, respectively.
Generally any human (including Asexuals which only lack the desire to have sex but   not the romantic connection desire) will likely be classified by some in society as a "heterosexual", "homosexual" or "bisexual", according to that person's romantic and/or sexual orientation/s and in the context of gender.

One can say that attractions to FTM transgenders and attraction to MTF transgenders are separate major philias "Andromimetophilia" and "Gynemimetophilia"(as somewhat accurate yet probably bad terms).

One could speak of a third and forth philias (or fifth and sixth philias, depending how one counts) to Male-oriented intersex individuals and Female-oriented intersex individuals.

One could go to the extreme and speak about philias to FTM and MTF detransitioned people.

My problem
Any of the above philias can have one or more paraphilias, which can be not harmful or does harmful but it is unclear to me if there is a criterion to distinct between a philia and a paraphilia.
Non harmful examples

A man with gynephilia (heterosexual) can have a paraphilia such as for women in army uniform and on the contrary, a man with androphilia (homosexual) can have a paraphilia for men in army uniform.

A man with gynephilia (heterosexual) can have a paraphilia for women with Gothic appearance and on contrary, a man with androphilia (homosexual) can have a paraphilia for men with Gothic appearance.

Harmful examples

The first harmful example is pedophiliac paraphilia:
A man with gynephilia (heterosexual) can have a paraphilia for little girls (say under sexual maturation) and on the contrary, a man with androphilia (homosexual) can have a paraphilia for little boys (say, under sexual maturation).

Another harmful example is zoophilia which includes exploitation of animals who cannot give consent and might be raped.

Both pedophilia (not to be confused with hebephilia which is attraction to young teenagers) as well as zoophilia, are rare paraphilias that may manifest themselves in harmful or illegal behavior.
Interim note
As I have shown, the "philia" term can describe both sexual orientations and their sub components (not harmful and is harmful).
My question
Is there a criterion to distinct between a philia and a paraphilia?

This question encapsulates the question:

Does the term Philia exists in psychological literature for describing romantic and/or sexual orientation/s and not just fetishes, or alternatively, as a standalone term?

As far as I am aware, there is no such word in the English language as Philia, but it is a suffix within words.

Also, the suffix of -philia in a word does not necessarily denote anything sexual.

The -philia suffix denotes one of the following (Merriam-Webster, n.d.):

friendly feeling toward(as in Francophilia)
tendency toward(as in hemophilia)
abnormal appetite or liking for(as in necrophilia)

The term paraphilia

  denotes any intense and persistent sexual interest other than sexual interest in genital stimulation or preparatory fondling with phenotypically normal, physically mature, consenting human partners (APA, 2013 p.685).

So a man or woman in uniform will not be a paraphilia. For more on paraphilias see McManus, et al. (2013).

On the subject of -philias, there is one point you made which is not entirely accurate. You said

  Both pedophilia and zoophilia are rare harmful paraphilias that require hospitalization, therapy, surveillance and generally also chemical castration.

I am not sure on zoophilia, but:

paedophilia and hebephilia is extremely common and therefore not rare (Gerwinn et al., 2018).

  Contrary to public perception, child sex offending (CSO) and paedophilia are not the same. Only half of all cases of CSO are motivated by paedophilic preference, and a paedophilic preference does not necessarily lead to CSO. However, studies that investigated clinical factors accompanying and contributing to paedophilia so far mainly relied on paedophiles with a history of CSO.

Estimates on the prevalence of paedophile CSO are wide ranging, and more accurate with better reporting, but they include:

12.7% (Stoltenborgh, M. et al., 2011)
24.7% (Oluwatosin, & Akinbo, 2017) and
27% girls and 16% boys (Finkelhor et al., 1990)
60% girls (McConaghy, 1998).

there are hebephiles and paedophiles who do not act out on their desires, and there are helplines such as Stop It Now! for those who are worried they may act out, so therefore
these sexual tendencies do not necessarily need hospitalization, therapy, surveillance and chemical castration.

Chemical castration is an idea put forward to deal with pedophilia, and even made mandatory in states such as Alabama (LegiScan, 2019). However, there is no strong scientific evidence to back the idea that this helps to stop pedophilia or hebephilia, and many criminologists argue that police investigators treating castrated men as less likely to reoffend than non-castrated men may cause an investigation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy (Horne & Lovaglia, 2008; Sismondo & Greene, 2015; Fridell, 2016).

References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Pub.

Gerwinn, H., Weiß, S., Tenbergen, G., Amelung, T., Födisch, C., Pohl, A., ... & Wittfoth, M. (2018). Clinical characteristics associated with paedophilia and child sex offending–Differentiating sexual preference from offence status. European Psychiatry, 51, 74-85. doi: 10.1016/j.eurpsy.2018.02.002

Horne, Christine; Lovaglia, Michael J. (2008). Experiments in criminology and law: a research revolution. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-7425-6027-7

Finkelhor, D., Hotaling, G., Lewis, I. A., & Smith, C. (1990). Sexual abuse in a national survey of adult men and women: prevalence, characteristics, and risk factors. Child abuse & neglect, 14(1), 19. doi: 10.1016/0145-2134(90)90077-7

Fridell, Lorie A. (2016). Producing Bias-Free Policing: A Science-Based Approach. Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-33175-1

LegiScan. (2019). Alabama House Bill 379.
In LegiScan API Retrieved from: https://legiscan.com/AL/bill/HB379/2019

McConaghy, N. (1998). Paedophilia: a review of the evidence. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 32(2), 252-265. doi: 10.3109/00048679809062736

McManus, M. A., Hargreaves, P., & Lee Rainbow, L. J. A. (2013). Paraphilias: definition, diagnosis and treatment. F1000prime reports, 5. doi: 10.12703/P5-36 pmcid: PMC3769077

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). -philia. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved from: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/-philia

Oluwatosin, S. A., & Akinbo, O. T. (2017). Prevalence and Public Perception on Causes of Paedophilia in Osun State Nigeria. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 4(24). doi: 10.14738/assrj.424.3847

Sismondo, Sergio; Greene, Jeremy A. (2015). The Pharmaceutical Studies Reader. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-89654-9

Stoltenborgh, M., van Ijzendoorn, M.H., Euser, E.M., & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J. (2011) A global perspective on child sexual abuse: meta-analysis of prevalence around the world. Child Maltreat, 16(2), 79-101, doi: 10.1177/1077559511403920


How do emotions influence the language structures we use? What are the verbal signs of subjectivity?

I am doing research about the linguistic content of media (debates, talk-show, sport comments). It occurs that once the participant gets nervous or excited, the grammatical structure of the sentences and word choice (growing amount of modal verbs, judgmental adjectives, not politically correct nouns, dynamic verbs) can change.

That is why I am looking for sources that give me some research results about how emotions affect our verbal expressions (e.g., sentence structure, word usage, etc).

My research is in Polish and Dutch.

This is by no means exhaustive, but is a beginning, as these links also provide links.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
A Neural Dissociation within Language: Evidence that the Mental Dictionary Is Part of Declarative Memory, and that Grammatical Rules Are Processed by the Procedural System

The following study links the effects of emotional arousal on these two memory systems, thus linking the effects of emotional arousal on speech.

Effects of emotional arousal on multiple memory systems: Evidence from declarative and procedural learning
Stephan Steidl, Salwa Mohi-uddin, and Adam K. Anderson

How Emotion Shapes Behavior: Feedback, Anticipation, and Reflection, Rather Than Direct Causation
Roy F. Baumeister  Kathleen D. Vohs  C. Nathan DeWall  Liqing Zhang

A review of paradoxical performance effects: Choking under pressure in sports and mental tests
Roy F Baumeister  Carolin J. Showers

Choking under pressure refers to the failure of a person to perform tasks that they are highly skilled in, when placed under pressure to perform. This could well apply to people speaking on a talk show.

This study shows the effects of various emotions on the actual voice quality, which is also useful.

THE EFFECTS OF EMOTIONS ON VOICE QUALITY
Tom Johnstone and Klaus R. Scherer
University of Geneva


View fMRI results with AAL3 atlas I have an fMRI overlay that was output from meta-analysis software, so I only have the .nii results file, no raw data. I would like to view this file in conjuction with the AAL3 atlas.

I usually use FSL but I cannot work out how to get the AAL3 atlas to work in FSL (I've managed to get the aal3v1.nii file into the right place but when I try to select it in the atlas pane, it hangs).

I'm less familiar with MRICron but I did manage to get the AAL3 atlas to load. I cannot, however, get the brain region labels to show and it's the labels that I need.

I have never used SPM before. I've tried following several instruction manuals/tutorials but cannot even work out how to view my overlay. The AAL3 instructions are for SPM and talk about setting up contrasts and so on but I only have the .nii file - I don't have any data to analyse.

Can anyone offer an idiot's guide to viewing an overlay with the AAL3 atlas, please, in any program? I've spent so many hours trying to work this out but I'm totally lost.

I think to use the MRIcorn is the easiest way,
You can put the AAL3v1.nii.gz and AAL3v1.nii.txt into the mricron-templates folder.

by the way which software you use to do fMRI meta-analysis?
best,
Hui Zheng
Shanghai Mental Health Center


How do we localize pain? I know that different points of the brain correspond to different point of the body. But how a sensory information reaches its correct corresponding area?

For example, let say I put a pencil's extremity on position A of the thumb tip and then on position B always of the thumb tip.
How do I discriminate between A and B?
Does these electrical activities travel trough two completely different pathways?

NOCICEPTORS AND THE PERCEPTION OF PAIN

The pain from nociceptors remain in bundles for that region until they reach the spinal cord at which time the signal begins to be processed to the appropriate pathway with primitive intelligence (like instinctive jerk away) till the signal reaches the brain and is processed by sentient intelligence (form a plan to avoid these situations in the future). The resolution of pain is something like 100x the size of a nerve branch equal to one bundle in theory but the minimum resolution of pain varies from person to person.


If reality is just hallucination, how come different people see same objects I wanted to ask this question for a long time but couldnt find any thing to support my argument. Today i found this https://www.ted.com/talk/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality#t-694887, where the speaker Anil seth  theoretize that our reality is just a hallucination. Exchange of information happens both ways inside and outside, i.e, we not only perceive the world around us but also actively generates it.

Perception is an active constructive process. To summarise,

Hallucination is uncontrolled perception, then
Perception is controlled hallucination.

My question is, If thats the case then how two people would agree on the same state of world?

According to Anil Seth, in this talk, consciousness is an active construction process. In that view, for the subject to have an experience about world, physical signals from mind independent objects are processed by brain and a highly probabilistic mental content of the physical is experienced. Even though I mentioned objects, it could be material things and features.
But our sensory abilities are not inherently cable of perceiving everything. The range of vision is 360-400 to 760-830nm. Similarly, for audition its 20Hz to 20,000Hz. There are other phenomena like aftereffects and adaptations, which too work along with perception. The information thus processed by sensory faculty is further compared with prior data that is stored in the brain and brain tries to come up with a decent construction of mind-independent objects. This experience can be called a controlled hallucination as there are other possibilities for such construction.
The general organization and working pattern of typically developing humans brains are very similar, especially in the early processing of sensory signals. Similarly, the physical signals that it processes of mind-independent objects are also very similar. Given these two, it is highly likely that two people have similar experience, even though we cannot confirm it and can only say that we share a human like experience.
Reference:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_perception

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2888317/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4763133/


Is there any recent work on modeling how we rapidly acquire new knowledge? I work with neural network models of human cognition a lot, and one thing that bugs me about them is the timescale: they learn over thousands of trials whereas humans seem to learn after a couple examples. So I've been wondering if this discrepancy has studied, and if so, what terminology has been used to study it. Specifically, I'd be very interested to see some work trying to get neural network models to learn at a more human timescale.

A good example is learning to play a new video-game. We can do this in a few minutes if there is a tutorial explaining the basic game mechanics to us. However, modeling the same process would involve slowly strengthening perceptual-motor associations and could take a very long time indeed.

Note that I know about one shot learning, and that is not quite what I'm talking about. That literature mainly revolves around image recognition and learning after a single presentation, whereas I'm curious about rapid learning more generally. This sounds a little vague, but the question "why do our models learn several orders of magnitude slower than us?" seems specific enough to have come up in the literature.

Humans actually exhibit both slow and fast learning and they have somewhat different properties. One distinction is between "declarative" memory (for example, facts like "tigers have stripes" or "Paris is the capital of France") and "procedural" learning (such as perceptuo-motor skills like riding a bike or playing a musical instrument). Declarative memory lends itself to fast learning but procedural memory requires a lot of practice.

Perhaps even more relevant to your question is that neural network models are also capable of fast and slow learning, depending on the sparseness of the representations and tolerance for disruption. One of the foundational papers on this topic (McClelland, McNaughton, & O'Reilly, 1995) described a neural network model with two "complementary learning systems": (1) A fast-learning hippocampal memory system that relies on sparse representations and is not able to maintain previously-learned information when learning new information (sometimes called "catastrophic interference"). (2) A slow-learning neocortical system that relies on distributed representations and is able to integrate many different examples into an overall structure that can support generalization.

References:

McClelland, J. L., McNaughton, B. L., & O’Reilly, R. C. (1995). Why there are complementary learning systems in the hippocampus and neocortex: Insights from the successes and failures of connectionist models of learning and memory. Psychological Review, 102(3), 419–457.


How many genders are there? As I understand it gender is a self-assigned identity and is correlated but not wholly determined by sex.

Sex is presumably determined by the sex chromosomes present in the DNA of the cells of the individual? The sexes are presumably male and female and intersex?

Is there a list of possible genders?

The subject of gender can be a very personal subject and the subject of gender is discussed among the LGBTQIA+ community.
The LGBTQIA Allyship is

the practice of confronting heterosexism, sexism, genderism, allosexism, and monosexism in oneself and others out of self-interest and a concern for the well being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual people.  Is founded on the belief and believes that dismantling heterosexism, monosexism, trans oppression/trans misogyny/cissexism and allosexism is a social justice issue (see the UCDavis link above)

The social sciences have a branch devoted to gender studies. Other sciences, such as sexology and neuroscience, are also interested in the subject.
The social sciences sometimes approach gender as a social construct, and gender studies particularly do, while research in the natural sciences investigates whether biological differences in males and females influence the development of gender in humans; both inform debate about how far biological differences influence the formation of gender identity. In some English literature, there is also a trichotomy between biological sex, psychological gender, and social gender role. This framework first appeared in a feminist paper on transsexualism (Yudkin, 1978).
Genders
There is the binary gender (male or female) and some identify themselves under a third (non-binary) gender of either:

non-binary,
genderqueer,
gender fluid,
bigender,
trigender,
pangender,
agender,
nongendered,
genderless,
genderfree, or
neutrois

See also: Gender Identity
Gender identity vs Sexual Orientation
Gender identity is separate from sexual or romantic orientation, and non-binary people have a variety of sexual orientations, just as transgender and cisgender people do.
A non-binary gender is not associated with a specific gender expression, such as androgyny. Non-binary people as a group have a wide variety of gender expressions. People who are non-binary have gender identities that are not exclusively masculine or feminine. They may identify as having an overlap of gender identities, having two or more genders, having no gender, having a fluctuating gender identity, or being third gender or other-gendered. Recognition of non-binary genders is still somewhat new to mainstream Western culture (McGee & Warms, 2011).
Gender Identity and Society
Historically, many if not most societies have recognized only two distinct, broad classes of gender roles, a binary of masculine and feminine, largely corresponding to the biological sexes of male and female.

Most cultures currently construct their societies based on the understanding of gender binary—the two gender categorizations (male and female). Such societies divide their population based on biological sex assigned to individuals at birth to begin the process of gender socialization. (Nadal, 2017).

In addition to these traditionally recognized third genders, many cultures now recognize, to differing degrees, various non-binary gender identities.
Gender neutrality is a movement to end discrimination of gender altogether in society through means of gender-neutral language, the end of sex segregation, and other means.
Quantifying genders
Genders can only be quantified to a certain extent.  As indicated, there are binary and non-binary genders.  Binary being male or female and non-binary being others which don’t follow the binary convention. So, you could say there are three genders, but that is oversimplified.  The genders in the third (non-binary) gender category is numerous, and can be bigger than the list I provided.  It is all down to how people identify themselves in the way of gender.
References
McGee, R. J. & Warms, R. L. (2011). Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Nadal, K. L. (2017). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Psychology and Gender
Yudkin, M. (1978). Transsexualism and women: A critical perspective. Feminist Studies. 4(3): 97–106. doi:10.2307/3177542 jstor: 3177542


Does sitting idle for one month without work leads to depression? Does sitting idle for one month without work leads to depression?

Following case is an example:

If a human do 8 hours job before Computer. Because of no work or a few work; generally sitting idle for one month. and when work came after a month; then that human do not want to do it because:

Symptoms which generally such human is facing:

1) that humans head remain heavy; always feel like outing. Even if that human go to outing and come back to office feel like go out again.

2) It is like nothing is in that human head. Just sounds "shaaan shaaaan".

3) Sometimes it is like that human need to get my ear clean from ENT; may be due to that head is heavy. but nothing is there in that human's ear , because that human use to clean my ears during bathing.

4) Life becoming dull. Now work came after 1 month; that human being lazy not to attempt that work. that human do not want work now.

5) Not agreeing to any external Motivation and self motivation is becoming zero.

6) Just looking at Facebook, Amazon and doing nothing. Not a like on facebook; but looking just. It is like NOTHING NEW.

7) if reading news forget the story after 15 minutes. Forget the work that human's family member says.

8) that human feel like that human is blunder; that human do mistakes; you all leave that human; throw that human out of computer company.

Could anyone please figure out situation of that human's mind!!! is that human getting mad or depressed?

Two answers:
The first, and most important one: do not ask any online forum whether you are getting depressed, since usually there will be many opinions about your situation from people who are not qualified in the field, be it psychiatry or psychotherapy. Please: if you do not feel well, and if your current situation is worrying you, seek help from your general physician or better if accessible to you a psychotherapist/ a psychiatrist with whom you can talk personally. There is no shame in seeking help from these persons, and in case you find out together with them that you truly need some kind of help, they will know ways of help that are based on evidence from empirical research and likely better and better fitting to your individual situation than suggestions on the internet.

Second: Your question's title implicitly asks whether sitting one month without work in front of a computer always leads to depression. It might and it might not depending on many factors (such as coping strategies with gratification crises, previous episodes of depressive disorders, social support, and many more, which differ from person to person). The danger of answers to a question stated like this is that yes-answers might lead you to think you are depressed, even though you are not, or no-answers lead you to think you aren't depressed even though you might need help. This is to say, the danger is to mistake such an answer for a diagnosis, which are two completely different things. A diagnosis needs to be done by a person qualified to do this, such as psychotherapists or psyhiatrists. They, too, will know further steps in case a diagnosis is given.


How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer? As a computer programmer, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: If I am stuck on a particular problem in my work, often if I stop thinking about the problem and do something else, the answer will suddenly come to me.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? How does this work? Has any research been done on this? How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer?

Edit: I remember now where I heard about this phenomenon: on the Charlie Rose Brain Series, Eric Kandel of Colombia University says (at 43:20 in)

  [The unconscious] can do many processes at the same time. You can either focus on one
  thing  or another, you can't focus on two or three things at the same time. Because
  consciousness is very limited in what it can do; unconsciousness is much broader. And
  although we know very little about the true nature of creativity, one emerging theme that
  comes out of this is that, if you're trying to solve a mathematical problem... if
  you're trying to solve any intellectual problem... you keep on focusing at it, you may
  get stuck. Taking a break, taking a shower, going for a walk, playing golf, you come
  back refreshed. And often doing the other activity, boom, the idea will come to you.

But then they change the subject! What is the concept he's talking about, and where can I read more about how it works?

It sounds like you're talking about a classic example of Incubation.

  Incubation is defined as a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time.

Here's a great article by John F. Kihlstrom: Intuition, Incubation, and Insight: Implicit Cognition in Problem Solving. Basically it is believed that Incubation or stopping conscious thought on a problem allows one to find more creative solutions to a problem:

  In these cases, Wallas argued, thinkers enter an incubation stage in which they no longer consciously think about the problem. Wallas (1926) actually distinguished this phenomenon between two forms of incubation: "the period of abstention may be spent either in conscious mental work on other problems, or in a relaxation from all conscious mental work" (p. 86).

  Wallas believed that there might be certain economies of thought achieved by leaving certain problems unfinished while working on others, but he also believed that solutions achieved by this approach suffered in depth and richness. In many cases of difficult and complex creative thought, he believed, deeper and richer solutions could be achieved by a suspension of conscious thought altogether, permitting "the free working of the unconscious or partially conscious processes of the mind" (p. 87).1 In either case, Wallas noted that the incubation period was often followed by the illumination stage, the "flash" (p. 93) in which the answer appears in the consciousness of the thinker.

Kihlstrom's references contain many good experiments backing up the claims made.

A reason incubation may work is because it releases "fixation"; that case of being "stuck" which is a sort of mental rut which prevents one from thinking of new answers or methods of solving a problem.

We become stuck on an idea that we believe should work but doesn't, which may hold us back from thinking of a different solution which actually does work, one we may have previously not considered or disregarded.

A great dissertation by Bo T. Christensen
 covers both ideas of Fixation and Incubation in depth: Creative Cognition: Analogy and Incubation.


Is it possible to block out reality completely? Is it possible for an individual to block out all reality and see objects, colors and hear voices and sounds that are non-existent non-stop?

Yes, it is. Seeing objects, colors, hearing voices and sounds are electrical impulses translated by our sensorial organs and sent to the brain. There are cases of blind people which can "see" (feel?) a whole load of abstract images, and are actually bothered by it.

A person could have no sensing organs and still have electrical impulses by means of artificial brain stimulus, or due to a neurological damage; tinnitus comes to mind (no pun intended).

  When TMS [transcranial magnetic stimulation] is applied with a single pulse to motor or sensory cortex, it is possible to evoke a motor or sensory response. When the sensory cortex is visual cortex, the response is a phosphene.4 Phosphenes are the sensation of light in the absence of visual stimulation.


Dialectical Behavior Therapy's Biosocial Theory - Social Environment Validates Patients' Maladaptive Behavior - As Defined By Who/What? In Wikipedia's article about DBT, in the overview section it says:

In DBT's biosocial theory of BPD, clients have a biological predisposition for emotional dysregulation, and their social environment validates maladaptive behavior.

According to the theory, "maladaptive behavior" - as defined by who/what - the patients' view of their social environments' various norms or the scientific-concesus of maladaptive behaviors (or something else)?
In some cases, patients' environments' view of what reoccuring behavior in the patient is maladaptive, there no agreement between that and the scientific concensus - that's why it's important for me to know which one the theory refers to.
I'm assuming the article refers to the scientific concesus definition of "maladaptive behavior" but I want to make sure.

Just as a point of note, you said you are quoting from Wikipedia, but it is actually WikiWand you are linking to.
The article cited Little, et al. (2018) which states that (emphasis mine):

DBT is based on a biosocial theory of BPD, which posits that the core difficulties seen in this diagnosis stem from the relationship between two factors. Firstly, those diagnosed have a biological dysfunction of the emotion regulation system; and secondly, their environment is invalidating, inhibiting the use of positive behavioural skills and reinforcing the use of less helpful ones (Feigenbaum, 2007; Linehan & Kehrer, 1993)

Feigenbaum (2007) states (again, emphasis mine):

The DBT model assumes that: (i) individuals with BPD lack key interpersonal and self-regulation skills, and (ii) personal and environmental factors may frequently block and/or inhibit the use of behavioural skills or reinforce maladaptive actions.

In psychology, when evaluating the client's environment, you need to look at things from the client's viewpoint, and reading those papers, it highlights that the term maladaptive actions or maladaptive behaviours refers to the consensus that they are as Anestis, et al. (2007) points out:

actions for which cost outweighs benefit [and] is a defining feature of a host of psychological disorders, including depression, eating disorders, and substance abuse disorders (Bornovalova, Lejuez, Daughters, Rosenthal, & Lynch, 2005; Claes, Vandereycken, & Vertommen, 2005; Fischer, Anderson, & Smith, 2004; Joiner, Metalsky, Katz, & Beach, 1999; Keel & Mitchell, 1997)

The client believes that their environment backs up their notion that their behaviours are justified and therefore blocks any move towards more helpful behaviours.
References
Anestis, M. D., Selby, E. A., & Joiner, T. E. (2007). The role of urgency in maladaptive behaviors. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 45(12), 3018–3029. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2007.08.012
Feigenbaum, J. (2007). Dialectical behaviour therapy: An increasing evidence base. Journal of Mental Health, 16(1), 51-68. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638230601182094
Linehan, M. M., & Kehrer, C. A. (1993). Borderline personality disorder. In D. H. Barlow (Ed.), Clinical handbook of psychological disorders (pp. 396–441). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
Little, H., Tickle, A., & das Nair, R. (2018). Process and impact of dialectical behaviour therapy: A systematic review of perceptions of clients with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 91(3), 278-301. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12156


Why do humans' eyes enter an unfocused gaze when recalling a memory or imagining something? The question is self-explanatory (I hope).

Is this trait unique to humans?

Does the direction of the unfocused gaze indicate anything about which physical part of the brain is being utilized?

Is the hippocampus physically linked to the optic nerve and muscles surrounding the eye?

Is this effect related to other phenomena that are life threatening and deprive areas of the body and/or perception deemed unnecessary for survival?

The unfocused gaze and eye direction when recalling a memory or imagining something.

Eye movements assist in recalling spatial visual memories. The eyes move in the direction of where the object was in relation to the person, when perceived. Restricting eye movements impairs memory recall.

  In a recent study we reported that when eye movements were prohibited for participants who orally described pictures from memory, their recollections became altered and impaired (Johansson, Holsanova, Dewhurst, & Holmqvist, (in press). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance). (1)

...

  Results provide evidence that eye movements do have an active and supportive role when visuospatial information is recalled by highlighting the circumstances under which a visual memory is hampered. Additionally, findings suggest that the influence of "eye movements to nothing" is primarily related to the processing and retrieval of spatial information. (1)

The hippocampus store long term spatial memory.

The hippocampus is the storage centre for long term spatial memory, as it is central to the storage of much our the brains long term memory. It is not physically connected the the optic nerve, nor is it connected to the eye muscles.

Image: Optic nerves,  Gray's Anatomy  (copyright expired)

Image: Hippocampus within the brain, Gray's Anatomy (copyright expired)

This post How do memories come up for no apparent reason? Is this evidence that we remember everything? offers some idea about memory storage types.

This is not a complete answer, I have not referenced comparable studies with other species.

Is this effect related to other phenomena that are life threatening and deprive areas of the body and/or perception deemed unnecessary for survival?

No, it is simply the way the body processes and recalls spatial information. The eyes move into the direction they were in when recalling spatial information to place the person in the same spatial orientation from that object.

References:

Eye movements play an active role when visuospatial information is recalled from memory
Johansson, et al  doi: 10.1167/12.9.1256 (1)
Spatial memory and the human hippocampus.
Shrager Y, et al
Spatial Memory and Hippocampal Function: Where
are we now?
Mark Good


What is the difference between getting high( i.e. using alcohol or similar things) and getting unconcious using general anesthesia? I  searched the internet about the difference but couldnt really understand it.I am not asking about the difference in the type of drugs used, Iam interested in the difference in the state of unconciousness.(Iam not sure whether "getting high" can be called unconcious.)

The short answer to what the difference between getting high and getting unconscious using general anaesthesia - It simply boils down to a matter of dosage levels and medical supervision!

And now to clarify ...

When you are put under general anaesthetic the attending anaesthesiologist will be administering possibly multiple drugs that work together to achieve the required effect of preventing you from moving your body, and your brain from being aware of whats happening to your body.
   The precise dosages and the timing of there administration are carefully chosen to ensure you stay blissfully unaware and immobile for the duration of the procedure.

Now compare that to you going out for a night on the town where ideally the only one administering any drugs is you (for better or worse) - barring any accidental overdoses from you pounding down a full bottle of spirits in one turn - the dosages you put in your system are thankfully just not in the same league as what you would receive on the operating table and so you just get high or obnoxious as apposed to getting into what is technically a medically induced coma.

One of the major characteristics of that induced coma is that your body looses its protective reflexes and your at the mercy of the attending medical teem to prevent you from choking on your own tongue - when you hear of someone outside of a hospital dying from an overdose whether it be drug or alcohol, a lot of the time the cause of death isn't the toxicity but that same loss of protective reflexes that doesn't save them as they asphyxiate on there own tongue or vomit after slipping into a deep sleep (or coma).


What does it mean statistically for there to be significant differences in average IQ scores between racial groups? Charles Murray (in his book, "The Bell Curve") reported that there are real differences between the mean IQ scores of different racial groups. He also points out that IQ variation within said groups is greater than the variation between the groups. I'm struggling to reconcile these two statements.

If by "real differences", he means statistically significant differences between group averages--doesn't that entail the variation is greater between groups than within them?

That is, isn't the statistical test for inter-group mean differences (e.g. ANOVA) based on a comparison of the variances within vs between groups?--(if the inter-group variance is comparatively large enough, this constitutes a statistically significant difference between the groups?)
If not, then what does it mean to say that the groups are significantly different from eachother?

Statistical significance in this context is determined by:

the underlying size of the group differences,
the group sample sizes, and
your threshold for statistical significance (traditionally .05).

Even if there were very small group differences, if you had a large sample size (say 1000s of people from each race doing an intelligence test), then you would be highly likely (i.e., high statistical power) to find a significant group difference.

However, Murray's point is not  about statistical significance. I.e., it's not about ruling out the null hypothesis. Observed  differences in intelligence test scores are often fairly large, and this is a heavily studied area with very large sample sizes. So ruling our the null-hypothesis is not a problem. The differences in a given study are statistically signifiant.

Murray's point is about translating the quantitative differences in group means into something that is linguistically meaningful. There are various ways of doing this. For variables that are intrinsically meaningful, we often talk about the raw scales (e.g., you could talk about the gender pay gap in dollars earned per year or you could compare races in height using centimetres or inches).
However, in psychology, we often have scales that lack intrinsic meaning, which leads to the use of standardized measures of effect.

The most common standardized measure of group differences is often labeled Cohen's d. I.e., it is the difference between group means in terms of the standard deviation. So for example, IQ scores have a standard deviation of 15. So if one group has a mean of 110 and another has a mean of 95, then that's a cohen's d of 1.0 (i.e., (110 - 95) / 15 = 1.0). Rules of thumb have been proposed based on an examination of the psychological literature which suggests that .2 is small, .5 is medium, and .8 is large in terms of an effect.

From memory, some observed differences in intelligence test scores between races are in that 0.8 to 1.2 range (see for example IQ knowns and unknowns). So by conventional rules of thumb for effect size, this would be labelled a large effect or a large group difference.

However, this is not a finding of mere academic interest. This finding can have profound negative consequences for people's lives. Specifically, the fear is that this finding will reinforce negative stereotypes and that people in the group that tends to scores lower on IQ tests will be given fewer opportunities in life (e.g., education, work, immigration, political policy, etc.). And that the finding would support bigotry.

In particular, there is a real danger that people will rely on a group stereotype rather than judging a person on their merits. For example, it is reasonable to hire a person for a job because they show the most aptitude for the job based on measures of the competence and experience. It is unreasonable to hire a person because they come from a racial group that happens to on average perform better on the job.

Murray uses an alternative index of effect size to say that between group variance is less than within-group variance. Thus, if you do a regression with group as the predictor variable, then only when you explain more than 50% of variance will group explain more variance than there is variance within groups. I think you need a cohen's d of 2.0 to get 50% of variance explained.

Here's a simulation in R:

x <- data.frame(group = "a", dv = rnorm(100000,0,1))
y <- data.frame(group = "b", dv = rnorm(100000,2,1))
df <- rbind(x, y)
fit <- lm(dv ~ group, df)
summary(fit)

Basically, I'm simulating data for two groups and their group means differ by two standard deviations and the result is 50% of variance explained (and 50% variance unexplained; i.e., within group variance):

Coefficients:
              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) -0.0007719  0.0031664  -0.244    0.807
groupb       1.9974176  0.0044780 446.050   <2e-16 ***
Multiple R-squared:  0.4987,    Adjusted R-squared:  0.4987

In general, a group difference of 2.0 is very large.
Here's another article that talks about different indexes for group differences (Table 1 is particularly interesting).

So, in general, Murray is presumably making the point that even though group differences are fairly large by conventional standards, there are many people in the lower scoring group that score higher than the higher scoring group. So please don't use this finding to stereotype or marginalize people.

Follow-up

You asked in the comments:

  Given the group differences, is it technically accurate to say that a randomly selected individual of a lower scoring group is more likely to have a lower score than a randomly selected individual of a higher scoring group?

Yes, that is accurate.

To answer that question see Table 1 here.

"Probability that person from experimental group will be higher than person from control, if both chosen at random (=CLES)"

no group differences: 50% chance
0.5 SD difference: 64% chance
1 SD difference (i.e., what has sometimes been found historically for some race IQ differences): 76% chance
2 SD difference: 92% chance


Fitting equal-variance signal detection model to ROC data I posted this question in the programming forums but think I might get some answers if I post here as well... hope that's ok.

I'm trying to follow the steps in this paper to reproduce the excel table shown, but for some reason I'm unable to reproduce the 'estimated' values on the right hand side of the sheet, despite correctly calculating c for each of the six levels. I'm confused as to how the author arrived at those values, so I would appreciate if anyone could point out what's going on.

The cross posting make it hard to answer, but I would rather the points here ...

Apart from not running on my machine (something about convert_to_proportions that I don't care to debug or understand) the code you posted seems conceptually correct. Looking at an abridged version of the code

### Input the signal and noise values
## "sure signal", "likely signal", "guess signal", ... ... "sure noise"
signal = [1230, 496, 358, 272, 215, 165]
noise = [111, 216, 349, 540, 625, 895]

# cumulate them
csignal, cnoise = np.cumsum(signal), np.cumsum(noise)

# convert them to proportions and correct so that all but the last elements will never equal 1
propsignal = convert_to_proportions(csignal)
propnoise = convert_to_proportions(cnoise)

# calculate d' for all, except for the last element which is always 1.
d_primes = [get_d_prime(i[0], i[1]) for i in zip(propsignal[0:-1], propnoise[0:-1])]

# calculate c in the same way
cs = [get_c(i[0], i[1]) for i in zip(propsignal[0:-1], propnoise[0:-1])]

#estimate the noise and signal curves.
#*** This is where my numbers disagree with those in the paper.
estimated_noise = [stats.norm.cdf(-c) for c in cs]
estimated_signal = [stats.norm.cdf(np.mean(d_primes) - c) for c in cs]

you do not actually need to calculate cs. I suggest instead just do

cs = np.arange(-10, 10, 0.01)

This way cs varies over the entire range of interest and makes a smooth curve and you avoid issues from interpolating between the points. When you do this, the fitted curve passes very close to the third data point, but in the manuscript the fitted curve passes very close to the fourth data point. The discrepancy between the paper and your plot seems to arise from

stats.norm.cdf(np.mean(d_primes) - c)

It turns out that np.mean(d_primes) is very close to d_primes[2] (i.e., the $d^\prime$ associated with the third category). If we replace the offending line with

stats.norm.cdf(d_primes[3] - c)

everything seems to line up.

From a conceptual standpoint, I think that d_primes[3] is the best estimate of $d^\prime$ since that corresponds to the division between possible signal and possible noise on the 6 point rating scale. That said, there may be a method for which np.mean(d_primes) is the best choice. It is also worth noting that the numbers in the excel table in the paper do not match the figure in the paper.

In summary, if you want to get the numbers in the table, use np.mean(d_primes), but if you want the figure to match use d_primes[3].


What became of the CAM-Brain project in Kyoto? In The Age of Spiritual Machines, Ray Kurzweil mentioned a project at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Lab in Kyoto that was building a brain with a billion artificial neurons. He said that when it was completed, it would be set free to read the internet.

My initial exploration of this revealed that this project was headed by Hugo de Garis, who apparently retired some years ago now. What was the result of the project? It seems like it never reached the stage envisioned by Kurzweil and I would guess this is due to funding issues, but I’m seeking some kind of confirmation of whether or not this is correct.

Hah! That's funny, I was just looking for information about this project too. However, I was one of the guys involved (in Robokoneko project, more specifically).

No, it wasn't due to funding issues. Explaining what actually went wrong is a bit lengthy process and goes deeply into philosophy of mind, so to put this as short as possible: what do you think could be achieved in terms of understanding human mind by randomly evolving neural networks? If a being was created, fully aware of its existence, would you be able to tell what led to forming its consciousness? Their goals were absolutely pointless. Costly and hopeless, and with no applications.

There is no need to recreate complex natural processes, especially with (still) very basic understanding of brain machinery, if what needs to be done can be achieved with abstract constructs. My criticism of their approach led to denying me PhD studies and broke my career in science in general. On the other hand, in terms of software and engineering a lot of great people were involved.


Why is conditioned taste aversion an example of classical conditioning (rather than operant)? The internet seems to be in complete agreement that conditioned taste aversion is an example of classical (Pavlovian) conditioning. My (admittedly limited) understanding of classical conditioning is that it's a process in which two stimuli are paired in such a way that the response to one of the stimuli changes. I'm having trouble spotting what those stimuli are in this case. This seems more like operant conditioning, in which unpleasant consequences (the symptoms) mold behavior by causing us to associate the taste of that food with those symptoms.

Am I misunderstanding operant/classical conditioning? Am I overcomplicating things?

The conditioning of aversion to taste is part of learning studies in which there is an association between food and flavors with positive reactions such as food preferences or satiety and negative reactions such as lack of appetite, gastric discomfort, etc.

For example, it has been shown that patients with gastric discomfort acquire aversion to food, or patients (who have received prior chemotherapy) are averse to food when going to receive new sessions (chemotherapy usually causes nausea).

It is usually considered a classic conditioning learning. For example, foods that are neutral or independent stimuli before learning, produce conditioned responses (after the learning process), for example nausea, so foods are conditioned stimuli that produce conditioned responses (conditioned responses never they are exactly the same as the responses of the absolute stimulus).

Not only stimuli (foods or flavors) can produce a conditioned response but also events (such as being close to another session of chemotherapy).

Stimuli > CR

Events > CR

This is why in general it is considered classic conditioning, since the person (or animal) can not control the consequences with their behavior as it occurs in instrumental learning.

If for example you are thinking about the learning process of a person who tastes a food (with control over being able to try that food for the first time) and the food does not like it, in that case it is evidently instrumental learning. Of course, in relation to food learning, not everything is classical conditioning. The fundamental thing is to handle the concepts of analysis of the types of conditioning.

It is essential to read the section on Learning to taste aversion in the book by Michael Domjan. Principles of learning and behavior. Pages 72 to 74 in the 3 edition. It is interesting to review the studies indicated in this section.


What is the relationship between Big 5 personality and the theory of planned behaviour? The theory of planned behaviour is a popular model of human behaviour. I.e., Broadly the model suggests that intentions to act are a function of attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control. And behaviour is a function of intentions and actual ability to act which is reflected typically in perceptions of control.
The theory of planned behaviour has been applied to many domains (e.g., smoking, exercise, gambling, etc.).

I was curious whether any researchers have attempted to integrate modes of trait personality, and the Big 5 personality in particular with the theory of planned behaviour. I assume that any such integration would be somewhat domain dependent.

What theories have been proposed relating Big 5 personality factors with theory of planned behaviour?
What relationships have been obtained in empirical studies between Big 5 personality and theory of planned behaviour?

Edit: Didn't want this question to be stuck with only that first answer I gave, so here is what I believe you were looking for more specifically.

  Psychol Health. 2011 Sep;26(9):1113-27. doi:
  10.1080/08870446.2011.613995. The theory of planned behaviour: reactions and reflections. Ajzen I. Abstract
  The seven articles in this issue, and the accompanying meta-analysis
  in Health Psychology Review [McEachan, R.R.C., Conner, M., Taylor, N.,
  & Lawton, R.J. (2011). Prospective prediction of health-related
  behaviors with the theory of planned behavior: A meta-analysis. Health
  Psychology Review, 5, 97-144], illustrate the wide application of the
  theory of planned behaviour [Ajzen, I. (1991). The theory of planned
  behavior. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 50,
  179-211] in the health domain. In this editorial, Ajzen reflects on
  some of the issues raised by the different authors. Among the topics
  addressed are the nature of intentions and the limits of predictive
  validity; rationality, affect and emotions; past behaviour and habit;
  the prototype/willingness model; and the role of such background
  factors as the big five personality traits and social comparison
  tendency.

Abstract doesn't help us much.
No worries, I got the full text too.   You can download it here for free:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08870446.2011.613995 or just read the relevant except I took from it:

  As have other investigators in the past (Courneya, Bobick, & Schinke,
  1999; Rhodes & Courneya, 2003), Rivis et al. (2011) examined the role
  of the ‘big five’ personality traits – openness,
  conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism (Costa
  & McCrae, 1985) in the context of the TPB. In addition, they also
  assessed the general tendency to compare oneself to important others.
  Interestingly, however, rather than postulating a simple effect of
  these kinds of background factors on intentions and behaviour, their
  within-subjects methodology allowed them to examine the possibility
  that these variables influence the predictive validity of intentions
  relative to perceived prototype similarity (see the earlier discussion
  of this construct). Although the effects of the big five personality
  traits and social comparison tendency were quite small, this
  investigation – like earlier studies by Trafimow and Finlay (1996),
  Sheeran, Norman, and Orbell (1999) and others –
  shows that there may be stable individual differences that influence the relative weights of the different predictors in the TPB.

So it looks like this paper's research has found that the effects of the Big 5 personality traits (as well as social comparison tendency) weren't very significant.  But, because of the way in which some of the studies ran their methodology or perhaps certain other variables they measured they were able to see a few patterns that at the very least point towards what looks like (unnecessary quote again? yes.) "stable individual differences that influence the relative weights of the different predictors in the TPB."  Now I don't know what these differences are as they essentially left that vague.  Could they be Big 5 indicators or some other measurement they took?  I don't know as I can't access the citations, but....For convenience, I have each of them listed below though in case you do have access.  These are all the in-text citations from that excerpt.

  Courneya, K.S., Bobick, T.M., & Schinke, R.J. (1999). Does the theory
  of planned behavior mediate the relation between personality and
  exercise behavior? Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 21, 317–324.

  Rhodes, R.E., & Courneya, K.S. (2003). Relationships between
  personality, an extended theory of planned behaviour model and
  exercise behaviour. British Journal of Health Psychology, 8, 19–36.

  Rivis, A., Sheeran, P., & Armitage, C.J. (2011). Intention
  versusidentification as determinants of adolescents’ health
  behaviours: evidence and correlates. Psychology and Health, 26,
  1128–1142.

  Costa Jr, P.T., & McCrae, R.R. (1985). The NEO Personality Inventory
  manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

  Trafimow, D., & Finlay, K.A. (1996). The importance of subjective
  norms for a minority of people: Between-subjects and within-subjects
  analyses. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 820–828.

  Sheeran, P., Norman, P., & Orbell, S. (1999). Evidence that intentions
  based on attitudes better predict behaviour than intentions based on
  subjective norms. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 403–406.

It will make more sense to flip the order of your questions:

  "What relationships have been obtained in empirical studies between Big
  5 personality and theory of planned behaviour?"

It looks like there isn't much linkage between the two according to the research that has been summarized in that paper.  There is a weak affect, but that's not very exciting.  If you have access to the journals you may be able to see more of the details but they're already pretty much summarized for you in the paper.

  "What theories have been proposed relating Big 5 personality factors
  with theory of planned behaviour?"

Now they did mention something about how they were able to see some sort of pattern in regards to "individual differences" towards the TPB - but it's somewhat unclear if that's because of other factors or because of interesting patterns they saw in the Big 5 --> TPB data.  The full text of those articles would probably reveal that though.  I can't pay $50 for each of them though, ha.  So that seems to be the most relevant theory regarding their relationship - and depending upon the semantics of the authors as they were somewhat vague.

Once again, they said:

  this investigation – like earlier studies by Trafimow and Finlay (1996),
  Sheeran, Norman, and Orbell (1999) and others –
  shows that there may be stable individual differences that influence the relative weights of the different predictors in the TPB.

Perhaps Big 5 Traits relate to a certain "stable individual difference" that then tends to relate moreso to a factor/weight in the TPB. They may have found that out in other variables they measured in those studies they cited....there doesn't seem to be much more theory about it out there.

But, as I did before, I'll postulate my own that involves the "Edge Effect" theories and how they could overlap and become a predictor not only psychologically but on a physiological level as well.

Edge Effect Theory

This is essentially a theory in how certain global neurotransmitters create your personality.  There's a bunch of tests he gives to determine your archetype.
I feel like all three of these could overlap and then concrete evidence could be obtained from that overlapping in the form of maybe even potential physiological studies.

This guy doesn't really cite much (alot of it is just coming from his head - and overall broad definitions of neurotransmitters) but gives some interesting definitions of people based upon their physiology.  In particular, relating to dopamine, serotonin, gaba, and acetylcholine dominance.

He classifies personality traits among many other things according to your dominance in these domains.  He even provides tests you can take.

Essentially, you can take this book and you can find the references or at least be pointed down the path towards them as you're trying to connect the two theories you cite.

Anyways the book is called the "Edge Effect" by Eric R. Braverman.  Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Edge-Effect-Longevity-Advantage/dp/1402722478 (not an affiliate link)

I have the book, obviously, and found it to be pretty interesting in how he relates the neurotransmitters to all sorts of things.  If you read it you may find some things start to make sense on an intuitive level no matter how global or generalized they may be and that...he really didn't need citations.  There's all sorts of tests he'll have you take that actually do predict many things about yourself - and then he talks about what you should try to eat amino acid wise to naturally balance out certain neurotransmitters.

I know his theories have been criticized as a bit of a global generalization of neurotransmitters....but my defense against that is he is simply bringing them down to a practical level.  Otherwise, practicality becomes lost in the complexity.

So another new theory has been proposed by me based upon our potential earlier findings of a potential overlapping 3rd variable instead of direct correlation between the Big 5 & TPB.  :)


Problems with using personal feedback to motivate participation in an online psychological experiment? I am planning on running an online psychological experiment where participants must learn about various simulated environments and then make inferences about them. Because completing the experiment would require a nontrivial amount of attention and time, I have been toying with the idea of giving personal feedback at the end of the experiment (i.e., using gamification).
I am considering giving participants feedback regarding how their responses compare to our computational model's predictions and/or to the average. The hope is that receiving a "score", even when it's made clear that such a score is not evaluative or absolute, will get people to pay more attention and will make them more likely to complete the task. The feedback would only be offered following the experiment itself, and its precise nature would not be revealed until that time. Moreover, I wouldn't specify how our predicted scores are derived. Calculating the exact values by hand would be extremely time consuming, so even if the derivation is explained I don't see how anyone could realistically bias their responses with that knowledge.
Questions

Does giving personal feedback raise any ethical problems?
How might it affect response patterns?
Will giving personal feedback elicit higher completion rates and more attentive responding, without any significant complications?

Ethics of Feedback:

The APA's code of ethics (2010) as well as the Advisory Group on Conducting Research on the Internet (AGCRI) report (2004) summarize ethical issues related to conducting offline and online psychological research.  Feedback is normal in psychological experiments, and researchers are encouraged to debrief participants, before, immediately after, or as soon as the research conducted reasonably allows without risking an effect on results.

Research proposals should undergo an Institutional Review Board (IRB) review prior to initiation.  A consideration with respect to feedback is if it might reasonably be construed by participants as being on a positive-negative dimension (ie , the feedback could be considered negative), then you may want to reconsider providing it, whereas if the feedback is on a neutral dimension (an example would be a personality trait such as placement on an introvert-extrovert dimension), then there is unlikely to be any concern.

Effect of Motivation:

Of course, feedback provided after task completion cannot affect task performance.  Presumably however, the promise or expectation of feedback at the end of a task may have an effect.  Without knowing the nature of the research, the general findings on the effect of incentives on results are that they are negligible if any.  For example, Mason and Watts (2009) find that "Accuracy ... is not reliably different for
different wages," and similarly, a review of online studies conducted on Mechanical Turk (2011) reports that "most workers are not motivated primarily by the financial returns and genuinely care about the quality of their work," and result validity is quite high after some basic spam filtering is applied.

Nonetheless, I would recommend testing the effect of your chosen incentive if at all possible.  This can be done either by comparing results from unincentivized participants to those of incentivized participants, or through validity checks - for example in surveys common practice is to include multiple questions with similar meanings but different wordings to check that they all get similar responses as a way of confirming that answers are legitimate and not just trying to get through the survey as fast as possible.

Completion Rates:

The effect of incentives on task completion in general is very mixed.  Online studies do consistently see greater participation for higher paid experiments, but for non-monetary incentives the results are more complex.  The overjustification effect is an example where incentives may actually reduce task completion rates or performance quality, though this effect is not very robust in practice.      Houmanfar and Hayes (1998) report that "the results indicated no effects of either private feedback or public feedback on task completion," Conrad et al (2010) find that "feedback can improve their experience though not necessarily their completion rates."

The difference between a simple score at the end of the experiment, and more typical notions of gamification may be considerable however.  Gamification in general does have an overall positive impact.    Gamification typically involves a variety of interactive features that come into play throughout the task.  So if at all possible, I would recommend incorporating say, a progress indicator, badge system, storyline, or any other gamification feature that can reasonably be added.  Note that gamification features are not uniformly successful, so some experimentation may be necessary to determine what works best in your particular situation.

Non-contingent Incentives:

One final note: You didn't mention if the feedback would be contingent on completion of the experiment.  While the idea of providing incentives only on task completion may seem intuitively sound, there is substantial evidence that non-contingent incentives are generally more effective.  For example, if you promise to provide a score only on task completion, then fewer people might attempt the task than if you promise to provide a score regardless, and even if completion rates are much lower you might get higher participation overall.  Say only 10 people attempt the task for a contingent incentive, and have a 50% completion rate, then you get 5 results.  On the other hand if 100 people attempt the task for a non-contingent incentive, and have a much lower 10% completion rate, then you get 10 results - twice as many.  Worth considering I'd say.


Is there any evidence to suggest telling puns to a child makes them enjoy it when they are older? My own experience was that my father and grandfather retold many puns as I was in my childhood and teens; at the time, I thought it was abysmal.

Now I think they're the funniest things ever.

Is there any evidence to suggest that telling puns to children makes them enjoy those puns when they are older? I.e., are puns 'conditioned'?

Nostalgia for fond memories commonly produces positive emotion (for further review, see Zhou, Wildschut, Sedikides, Chen, & Vingerhoets, 2012). As for the increase in your appreciation of these particular puns, I've mentioned in a very recent answer of mine to another very recent question about humor that positive emotion alone may encourage the sense that something is funny. Depending on the nature of the particular puns, they might also appeal to a certain sense of humor you've had to develop with age and experience.

This last point is just conditional speculation though; I also admit that the article I've cited doesn't pertain to humor directly, and I can't provide more direct evidence of the sort your question requests offhand. I hope someone else can!

Reference

Zhou, X., Wildschut, T., Sedikides, C., Chen, X., & Vingerhoets, A. J. (2012). Heartwarming memories: Nostalgia maintains physiological comfort. Emotion, 12(4), 678–685. Available online, URL: http://www.wildschut.me/Tim_Wildschut/home_files/emo-2012-05385-001.pdf.


Bias in survey questions based on either positive or negative wording I have this impression that if you ask respondents in a survey, questions such as "do you like the item X/ person X" or "which one of the two variations do you like more", or "what in particular would you like about the item X/ person X", etc, you would get a lot of bias and rationalizations. That is, "say vs think vs do" would be extremely disparate.

At the same time, I would expect negative questions such as "is there something you dislike about the item X" or "could you list top three shortcomings of the item X/ person X", etc, to render quite objective responses; I would expect strong consistency between what respondents would say compared to what they actually think or feel and then compared to what they would actually do.

(Of course, I exclude some extreme cases of social desirability.)

Given that I am speaking about my subjective impressions, based on my personal limited observations, I would like to ask, is there such a pattern indeed and if so, how could it be possibly explained?

I think your examples can be explained with the Anchoring bias (aslo know as focalism).

  Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common
  human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information
  offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision making,
  anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information
  to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments
  are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias
  toward interpreting other information around the anchor.

A theory that explains anchoring is selective accessibility.

  selective accessibility proposes that when given an anchor, a judge
  (i.e. a person making some judgment) will evaluate the hypothesis that
  the anchor is a suitable answer. Assuming it is not, the judge moves
  on to another guess, but not before accessing all the relevant
  attributes of the anchor itself. Then, when evaluating the new answer,
  the judge looks for ways in which it is similar to the anchor,
  resulting in the anchoring effect.

The Anchoring is a type of priming. The following extract is from Brain Bugs by Dean Buonomano :

Below is the definition of priming :

  Priming is a technique whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a
  response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or
  intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly
  following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD. Priming can
  be perceptual, semantic, or conceptual.


Effect of time limits on problem solving I recently took part in psychological testing as part of a recruitment process to a job. I was not happy about the evaluation I got and I asked for a feedback discussion with the psychologist. The psychologist told me (among other things), that I could perform well in a situation that was undisturbed, when I could concentrate and when there was no time limit. But isn't that true about all people?

Do there exist individuals, who start performing better when there is time pressure?
Of course there may be such individuals, but what would be a general rule that would apply to most normal mortal individuals?

The scores I got were slightly above average in IQ tests (there were also personality tests). So I should not have problems with solving problems fast, too. At least I performed like other normal average people do. Still the psychologist wanted to stress the fact that I can perform well when I can concentrate and there is no time limit.

There were no tests in which I would have been disturbed in any manner. The tests were largely automated and the test room was a quiet classroom. Other applicants, other test subjects like me, were all also doing their tests quietly in front of computers. As far as I can recall, most IQ tests did have a time limit.

This ted talk video would probably interest you.

It seems the current understanding is that it would depend on both the individual, and the type of task they are performing. Here are the general tendencies I've seen/been taught.

For physical tasks or tasks where the important factor is strength and effort, time constraints and rewards tend to increase the pace at which someone finishes the task. A simple example is track and field, where the contestants are generally able to perform better with the added pressure/motivation of the competition. No records are made in practice.

For more mental and creative tasks, time constraints and rewards tend to diminish one's ability to finish a task. For instance, musicians rarely make great music when they are told they have to.

Both of the above situations however, can be affected by the person completing the task. If youlook at sporting events with very tense situations, there is an understanding that some players "rise to the occasion" and some "shrink under pressure." One's anxiety level and self confidence will affect the psychology of how they approach a task, which will certainly affect the result of that task.