What is the proper definition of psychopathy? I've seen all those checklists of psychopathy traits, read many articles and watched several tutorials - they mention like dozens of characteristics, but never make it clear about the actual meaning of the word.

Is psychopathy the lack of emotion? Is it the lack of empathy? What's the most accurate definition of the term?

Also, a lot of things that I've seen are unclear and contradictory:

A lot of explanations mention "disregard to social norms" as an intrinsic trait - but it clearly contradicts the trait of "self-interest", because by committing crimes or disregarding norms they harm themselves just as much as they harm people around. That's exactly what some psychopaths respond to allegations that they are dangerous and may commit a crime: "there's absolutely no reason or benefit of committing crime, so why would I do it?"
A lot of explanations mention "superficial charm", while it's unclear how do you even measure that objectively and what does it have to do with mental disorders? Is the evaluating therapist just supposed to tick "yes" next to "superficial charm" if they personally were charmed by a psychopath, or what? And what does it even have to do with mental health: it's not like "charm" is an aura directly projected by brain.
It's very unclear about impulsiveness, aggressiveness and impulsivity: some mention them as intrinsic traits of psychopathy, while others claim that they have nothing to do with it. It's also unclear how do they fit together with lack of emotional response or self interest, because they have nothing to do with each other or even contradict each other.
Things like "manipulation", "lack of realistic goals" or "disregard to safety" seem like things that 90% of the population would qualify for, at least at some point. What exactly is so special about "psychopathic" disregard for safety that makes it stand out from the disregard rutinely demostrated by every chemistry freshman? Is it like they are incapable of understanding the very concept of safety, or what? Are they not only remorseless and aggressive, but also intellectually retarded? Does there exist a negative thing that psychopaths aren't?

In short, to the question of what psychopathy means, everyone says entirely different things, most of which either don't make sense or are self-contradictory. It seems like a blanket term for everything that's considered "evil" by society, but doesn't seem like a real mental disorder. Is it even one disorder, or a collective name for several unrelated disorders?

The only thing that I am clear about is that psychopathy is innate (in comparison to sociopathy, which is trauma-induced).

P.S. I have scientific background, but I am not a psychologist - so it's possible that everything in psychology is as "vague", and I just don't understand how does this area of science works (although, for example, bipolar disorder was clear enough to me).

As the Wikipedia article on psychopathy makes clear, there are different definitions of psychpathy – and in fact there are different definitions of every scientific concept –, depending on which scholar you consult. This is not a problem, as every scientific publication will make clear which definition it uses.

The truth is that there is an ongoing discussion on what psychopathy is – and if it exists at all! It is no accident that both the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which is the international standard diagnostic tool for medical and psychiatric conditions, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5), which is the international standard diagnostic tool for psychological disorders, do not contain the diagnosis psychopathy.


Does data support Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreams? A friend described consistent feelings and themes during a dream. It is my understanding that the contents of our dreams are our subconscious/unconscious/preconscious processing stimuli from the day or our general state of mind. Most of which research I've found relates back to Freud and his off incorrect psychoanalysis.

I can more easily relate to Domhoff's research into dreams as a reflection of schemas. It seems scientifically valid.

What is the overall view of the reliability of dream interpretation as described by Domhoff?

References

Domhoff, G. W. (2001). A new neurocognitive theory of dreams. Dreaming, 11, 13-33
See also this question

The question body emphasizes the question whether Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreams is reliable.

Reliability is  the "consistency" or repeatability of research measures. So, a theory cannot be reliable.

I think OP (since offsite) meant to ask for the theory's validity, being the extent to which a concept, conclusion or measurement is well-founded and corresponds accurately to the real world. This interpretation also matches the question title better.

Domhoff (2001) bases his theory on findings in patients with brain injuries, showing that lesions in different areas have differential effects on dreaming. In addition, only 20–30% of REM period awakenings in children aged up to 9 years lead to dream reports and dreams of children under age 5 yrs are bland and static in content. Thirdly, Domhoff showed that dream content is repetitive and continuous with waking conceptions and emotional preoccupations. Based on these findings, Domhoff says that dreaming is best understood as a developmental cognitive achievement that depends upon the maturation and maintenance of a specific network of forebrain structures.

Domhoff's theory opposed the activation-synthesis theory theory, which was coined by Hobson & McCarley. They showed that the brain stem was activated during REM sleep. Their theory suggests that during REM sleep, random brain activation produces dreams. The theory has since been developed, as more and more is understood about REM sleep. Hobson has explicitly argued against Domhoff's theory, stating that Domhoff bases his theory on a 'misreading of the neurobiological literature and an individualistic view of dream psychology' (Hobson, 2005).

In the end, theories try to explain observations, and at this point, as far as I can see, both theories may have value. Personally, the activation-synthesis theory seems more plausible and less complicated, and hence the most parsimonious of the two. But admittedly, I'm not a dream expert.

Fig. 1. Activation-synthesis theory of dreaming. source: MacAlister College

References
- Domhoff. Dreaming (2001); 11(1), 13-33
- Hobson, Dreaming (2005); 15(1), 21-29


What explains the relative importance of physical versus mental features in human mate selection? I assume that it is the brain that has put human beings at the top of the food chain (Biped and  opposable thumbs aside).

Darwin's theory of survival of the fittest suggest that the best specimens of a species are those that have the greatest mating privileges. I assume that well developed characteristics, required by that species to ensure survival will will be sought after, not just of one particular group, but the species as a whole. So for lions it strength will be desired, and for elephants size will matter.

For humans, it is the  brain that is our evolutionary marvel. It sets us apart from all other species.  I think human physical prowess is somewhat redundant when it comes to our survival and progress.

Many highly intelligent people are still regarded as social misfits, nerds and geeks. The high school football team and cheer leaders are still very popular.
Sports stadiums are filled and televised, and the regular chess clubs are not.
This seems a bit like a limiting mechanism, where we are not smart enough to overcome our base natures and so the truly, evolutionary, superior specimens are downgraded, whilst the redundant brawny types that appeals to the apes, are still highly sought after.

What is the relative importance of physical versus mental features in human mate selection?
Do mental features receive relative little weighting?
What is the evolutionary psychology argument for the relative importance of physical versus mental features in mate selection?

In my experience, physical trumps all.  Even if you're blind, there is still smell.  I saw a show (The Science of Sex Appeal) which documented an experiment where a group of men wore t-shirts while getting sweaty on treadmills.  Once the garments were nice n nasty, they put them in jars and had women rate how turned on or off they were by smelling each jar.  It turned out that at least one of the women had a brother in the experiment and she rated his smell especially off-putting.  This led researchers to conclude that smell is important in avoiding inbreeding.  If someone's immune system is similar to yours, they will smell similar to you and you won't like it.  Similar immunities kill similar bacteria, resulting in similar smells.
We also look for things that indicate genetic health.  Nice teeth is probably the biggest.  Do you have nice eyes?  Without teeth and good vision, its hard to survive in the wild.  The caveat here seems to be access to healthcare.  Of course, we can fake our genetic flaws with contact lenses and dental work, but even wearing glasses (which is not an advantage) can be seen as sexy because it indicates intelligence (people with glasses probably don't play sports so they spend all their time reading/learning instead - its a stereotype that may or may not be true anymore).  But it doesn't have to be so much that you can fix your genetic flaws, as just having good healthcare available seems to be enough to choose partners with less genetic health.  Consider this:

After crunching the data—including the women's facial preferences, their country of origin and that country's national health index—the Face Lab researchers proved something remarkable. They could predict how masculine a woman likes her men based on her nation's World Health Organization statistics for mortality rates, life expectancy and the impact of communicable disease. In countries where poor health is particularly a threat to survival, women leaned toward "manlier" men. That is, they preferred their males to have shorter, broader faces and stronger eyebrows, cheekbones and jaw lines. The researchers went on to publish the study in this month's issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.
To a person unfamiliar with the field of evolutionary psychology, this may sound a little far-fetched. How is it even possible to link a woman's masculinity preferences to the health of her nation? The answer begins with the theory of sexual selection. It goes that women are the choosier sex because they take on most of the risk and burden of reproduction and child rearing. While a man can sleep around with 100 women in a year's time and have 100 kids, a woman who sleeps with 100 men in a year will only have one baby (barring multiples). She has more at stake in each pregnancy. Therefore, it is in her best interest to at least choose a high-quality mate. And one of the hallmarks of a quality male is good health.
But what does health have to do with masculinity? The link is testosterone, the hormone behind manly muscles, strong jaws, prominent eyebrow ridges, facial hair and deep voices. Testosterone is immunosuppressive. This means a man must be healthy and in good condition to withstand its effects on his development. Testosterone is also linked to other traits related to strength: fitness, fertility and dominance. From an evolutionary perspective, masculinity is basically man's way of advertising good genes, dominance and likelihood to father healthier kids. When disease is a real threat, as it had been—and arguably still is—heritable health is invaluable.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704100604575145810050665030.html
Intelligence, unfortunately, is not associated with health.  Much of what defines attractiveness may depend on evironment factors.  It may not always be the case that physical trumps mental if we're actually smart enough to survive no matter what the physical genetic flaw.  I wouldn't go as far as to say that we're that kind of society yet.  I continue to believe that a certain range of physical characteristics must fall in line regardless how mentally attracted one is.  If you're mentally attracted to someone and then find he is 80 years old (way past breeding age), would you still be attracted?  Evolution-wise, it wouldn't make any sense to be.  Conversely, if you met an incredible hunk of a man, but he had revolting personality and an iq near his shoe-size, he wouldn't be attractive either.  So, I couldn't say one trait has omnipotence, but I do believe the physical has an edge.
Many times we enter into relationships, not out of attraction, but because it makes sense.  The Science of Sex Appeal show also demonstrated that married women dress and dance more seductively than single women as well as having differing hormonal levels (via saliva testing).  The theory proposed to explain this is that once a woman has found a stable and sensible mate, she seeks the "bad boy" because the "bad boy" has the genetic traits for health, but the "bad boy" is a cad for a dad.  So she will get pregnant up by him and make the sensible father (whom she's not all that attracted to) raise the child.
See http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/other-shows/videos/other-shows-science-of-sex-appeal-videos.htm


Disprove that Humans are selfish Psychological egoism, can anyone provide an everyday action which a healthy human mind would carry out which doesn't have the motive of preservation of the individuals own life at heart?

For example, some may provide the example of forming friendships or falling in love. However this is ultimately because forming relationships with these people is mutually benefit since they will both have someone to rely on, crucial to Humans, who are social creatures which would struggle to survive by themselves.

Interested to see if anyone can dissuade me from this dark outlook of Humanity.

Giving a dollar to homeless people on the street serves no aid to the donor, since the only difference is who has that dollar, and clearly to have the dollar is better than not.
This action is therefore entirely altruistic.


Ambiguity in self-evaluating Likert-scale questions I am concerned that when Likert-scale type questions are used in self-evaluation questions, the results are ambiguous and would like to know if it's possible to address this ambiguity.

Interpersonal Reactivity Index

Although I have seen this in multiple questionnaires, in this question, I would like to focus on it's use in the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), which is used to measure empathy. The index is a set of questions that must be answered according to a 5-point Likert-scale ranging from "Does Not Describe Me Well" to "Describes Very Well".

Ambiguity Concerns

Consider this question from the IRI:

  I daydream and fantasize, with some regularity, about things that might happen to me.

In this case, my concern is the temporal descriptor "with some regularity". How is someone filling this survey supposed to determine what the population mean of "regular" means? Is it once a week? Once a month?

I have similar concerns about the following question:

  I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me.

What is "often"? What depth/duration do the "tender, concerned feelings" require to qualify for this question?

How to Address Ambiguity

How is this ambiguity of language, in regards to personal assessment, addressed in these types of surveys? It seems like a better designed survey would first try to establish the person's view of the general population in terms of range of feelings it's trying to describe, as well as the duration and frequency. Consequently, the person's assessment of the general population could be taken into account for their own personal assessment.

Have concerns similar to this been addressed before in other contexts?

I believe that in the first part there is some confusion of empathy and self-concept ("Does Not Describe Me Well" to "Describes Very Well"), although the basic statement refers to empathy that question is made to measure self-concept of empathy. The vast majority of tests (which do not measure performance) measure self-concept dimensions. Of course you can not measure empathy by a test, what you measure are dimensions of self-concept in relation to empathy. Empathy could be measured through behavioral registers (see attachment studies).

With regard to the second part:

Ideally the test should not be ambiguous in any item (although it is common for people to comment in this regard).
Given the impossibility in most of the tests to request frequencies of behavior are usually asked similar questions.
It must be taken into account that these questions are made in test format likert, it would be a serious mistake to ask similar questions in dichotomous format.
If there is ambiguity in the test this has to be reflected psychometrically as a low correlation and error variance, provided that questions are asked that correlate with the reference question, that is to say, that usually several questions of this type are made and their Relationships when designing the test (you can also study it on your own for a class work).
The administration of the test must be performed under conditions that allow questions to be asked and the professional (or student who must know the test in detail) should clarify any doubts to the person to whom the test is administered, therefore in some countries, someone who has not studied psychology can not administer or correct (legally or validly) a psychological test.

Personally, when I require empathy measurements I always use the TECA (acronym in Spanish)
https://web.teaediciones.com/TECA--TEST-DE-EMPATIA-COGNITIVA-Y-AFECTIVA.aspx
It allows to measure cognitive and affective components (essential in the present moment): adoption of perspectives, emotional compression, empathic stress and empathic joy. Try to translate.


Does this rdists package provide actual (predicted) response time for each observation? With the help of other packages, I've estimated Drift Diffusion model parameters of my data. Now, I want to estimate the predicted (or actual) response times for each observation with the help of estimated parameters. By going through the manual I got a sense that ddiffusion function estimates (predicts) the actual response times, basically I used this code for my own purposes:

dd1<-ddiffusion(data$rt , data$resp,a=2.16,v=1.12,t0=0.36,z=0.51).

Does this function gives me actual (predicted) response time for each observation?

Not very familiar with this package, but per manual (bold and italics added):

  ddiffusion gives the density, pdiffusion gives the distribution function, qdiffusion gives the quantile function (i.e., predicted RTs), and rdiffusion generates random response times and decisions (returning a data.frame with columns rt (numeric) and response (factor)).

So, it looks like if you want predicted reaction times, you should use the qdiffusion function (but note that it is a quantile function).


How are the brains of mathematicians different from typical people? As a biomedical sciences student who also minors in Mathematics, I am often amazed by some of my classmates who really appear to be born for Mathematics (with regards to both their abilities and passions). Is there any research from a psychology/neuroscience perspective that looks at how the brains of these exceptional individuals (or indeed someone who likes Mathematics) function differently to typical individuals?

If indeed there is not systemic evidence showing their brains are different, is there a systematic way we can describe how they view the world differently from people not trained in Mathematics?

Psychology

The first major source I would go to is the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY). It is a major longitudinal study following several cohorts of mathematically talented individuals. There are many publications regarding their interests, talents, life paths, achievements, et cetera. The study is headed by Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski.

If you could only read one article describing their psychology, I would refer to Lubinski's review article of 100 years of findings.

Lubinski (2016). From Terman to Today: A Century of Findings on Intellectual Precocity

However, there are many interesting publications from the study, and if you're interested I recommend further looking at their publications.

Neuroscience

Historically, neuroscience as a field has suffered a lot from small sample size studies (Button, Ioannidis, et al (2013)), and only in recent years do we get really large scale studies. I personally don't know of any findings that compare mathematicians with non-mathematicians that have sufficient power.

The closest thing I know of to what you're asking, is Richard Haier's book "The Neuroscience of Intelligence" which summarizes what we know and don't know about "intelligent" brains. He emphasizes that no single study is definitive, and that no story about the brain is simple. I recognize that just "intelligence" is not precisely what you asked, but I still think you would find it relevant to what you're curious about.


How do psychologists ensure they are measuring innate intelligence and not just education? Certain groups perform worse on IQ tests than other. How do psychologists ensure that those differences aren't purely related to differing levels of education between those groups?

How do we know that IQ is a real phenomenon, and not just a purely social factor based on level of intelligence?

Short answer
Any intelligence test will be designed for a certain target population. That target population's score is set at an index of 100 for the standard IQ test. The same test applied to people from a different cultural background, or other socioeconomic status may yield numbers that are unreliable, as they my not understand the question (albeit knowing the answer), or they may lack the vocabulary, or even interest altogether.

Background
IQ is highly dependent on education; For instance, an illiterate person cannot perform an IQ test at all. And indeed, education can generally affect IQ scores (e.g., Dear & Johnson, 2010). Further, IQ tests are Western constructs and do not apply in many other cultures. So IQ tests are anything but objective. They only apply validly to compare people with a certain educational background. Bush people in the outbacks of Africa may not use numbers at all, but instead may rely on 'one', 'two', perhaps' three' and 'many'. They may be highly intelligent, we simply cannot assign a number to it, simply because they don't care about numbers, geometry, classifications, logic, and other standard components of IQ tests. The APA says rightfully

  Researchers of cultural differences in intelligence face a major challenge, however: balancing the desire to compare people from various cultures according to a standard measure with the need to assess people in the light of their own values and concepts.

Reference
- Dear & Johnson, Int J Epidemiol (2010); 39(1): 1362–9


Are there any vocal chord experiments that attempt to synthesize communication externally? I have an idea for an experiment.  Basically, the experiment would be to create a novel transmission of visual information via the human vocal chords, but not as a traditional human spoken language per se.

The vocal chords are first trained by an external instrument to produce a specific pattern that is associated with an image such as a simple circle.  In addition, a "listening" machine is calibrated to process the sounds emanating from the vocal chords.

At first, this doesn't sound so different than language as we use it now and how we interact with voice-recognition technology such as Siri, but what if the vocal chords were trained to produce patterns an order of magnitude more quickly than what is currently achievable?  The current world record for speaking is 637 words per minute or 10 words per second.

Also, the patterns that I am thinking of would completely bypass our language processing centers and be immediately received by our visual cortex (or something like that).  After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.

So, are there any vocal chord experiments that attempt to synthesize communication externally or come anywhere close to what I am proposing?

I have studied computational neuroscience, first as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago, and then as a graduate student at UCSD and the Salk Institute.

As an answer to your question, to my knowledge, and after a quick search on google scholar, there are no studies that try to reroute auditory information to the visual cortex through the vocal chords.

And I wouldn't imagine there would be. Auditory (cochlear, thalamic and cortical) and visual (retinal, thalamic and cortical) processing centers  are highly optimized for different flavors of information. Visual information is higher band-width, continuous along multiple dimensions, and relies on many parallel filters and aggregators. Auditory information is serial, and recursive.

Here's some information that might help you get to the heart of your inquiry. First, take a look at neural prosthetics in general. These facillitate information delivery directly to the nervous system, bypassing sensory input:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroprosthetics

For a look at sensory modality switching, take a look at delivering visual information through tongue stimulators (work pioneered by an interesting researcher named Paul Bach-y-Rita):

Finally, take a look at an experiment in which visual information is sent to the auditory cortex, by way of thalamic surgery in ferrets, if I have my citation correct. The auditory cortex proved to be able to adapt to the visual information by forming some structural characteristics of the visual cortex:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6780/abs/404841a0.html

Perhaps the most interesting part of that last link, in terms of your inquiry, is that the visual information did not bypass auditory processing centers. It transformed them.


High blood pressure can lead to anxiety? I know that anxiety leads to high blood pressure due to elevations of adrenaline.
It also can also increase cortisol levels which as the Mayo Clinic points out:

curbs functions that would be nonessential or detrimental in a fight-or-flight situation
alters immune system responses
increases sugars (glucose) in the bloodstream and
suppresses the digestive system, the reproductive system and growth processes.

According to Jayne Leonard in Medical News Today (2019):

having long-term high blood pressure — which doctors refer to as hypertension — can cause people to feel anxious about their health and future.

And, while interestingly she points out that:

some medications for anxiety can increase blood pressure

I am not talking about fears about health after being diagnosed with high blood pressure due to arterial atherosclerosis for example.
What I am referring to is the possibility of stress/anxiety being caused by the high blood pressure, maybe creating an elevation of adrenaline or cortisol through some kind of neural connection with the heart and blood supply.
Is this possible?
Anxiety can lead to aggression and/or other behaviours — as an example (as @starckman pointed out in the comments) there is a study by Kouchaki & Desai (2015) that showed a link between anxiety and unethical behavior in the workplace — and I was wondering if high blood pressure not caused by mental health problems could lead to those mental health problems and possibly elevate the blood pressure problems in a vicious cycle.
References
Kouchaki, M., & Desai, S. D. (2015). Anxious, threatened, and also unethical: How anxiety makes individuals feel threatened and commit unethical acts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(2), 360–375. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037796
Leonard, J. (2019). What is the link between anxiety and high blood pressure? Medical News Today https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327212

Neuroticism can lead to hostility:

Egan & Lewis (2011): "Neuroticism and agreeableness differentiate emotional and narcissistic expressions of aggression"

A key finding in this study is the influence of N on a variety of
distress types; Suls and Martin (2005) have observed the ‘neurotic
cascade’ produced by N. Hyper-reactivity, differential exposure to
negative events because of the environments high-N persons select and
create for themselves, differential appraisal for events (e.g.,
perceiving experiences as more troubling than they really are),
negative emotional transfer, and problems changing maladaptive ways of
coping with distress and challenges all combine to upset a high-N
person, which may make them hostile. However, high N does not drive
outwardly directed narcissistic aggression.

However, I am not clear about the difference between anxiety and neuroticism, as well as between hostility and aggression.
References
Egan, V., & Lewis, M. (2011). Neuroticism and agreeableness differentiate emotional and narcissistic expressions of aggression. Personality and Individual Differences, 50(6), 845-850. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2011.01.007


Behaviorist interpretations of decision field theory Decision field theory is usually presented as a dynamic cognitive model of decision making. However, in its basic form, the theory seems to only be concerned with behavior (decisions) and stimuli (initial set of choice and their associated risk/utilities). In particular, although we can view the dynamics as the change in 'preferences' with time, it is equally easy to view them as actions that would have happened if we forced the decision-maker to stop deliberating at that time point.
In general, I do not see why DFT would force us to prescribe internal mental states to the decision maker and more than a clearly behaviorist model such as Rescorla-Wagner. In other words, it seems like we can interpret DFT (at least as initially presented by Busemeyer and Townsend (1993) without any recent neurological grounding) purely in behaviorist terms, as a behaviorist theory. Hence my question:
Is there literature that provides purely behaviorist interpretations of decision field theory (or other similar models of decision making)?
References
Busemeyer, J. R., & Townsend, J. T. (1993) Decision Field Theory: A dynamic cognition approach to decision making. Psychological Review, 100, 432-459.

I am pretty sure that you will not find a paper that tries to give purely behaviorist interpretations of decision field theory (or other similar models of decision making), because that would not make sense at all.

As you noted in your initial question, decision field theory is a cognitive model, i.e., it tries to explain overt behavior in terms of internal (mental) states of the organism. Its goal is to understand and model decision making and predict behavior (e.g.  by making assumptions about the process of information accumulation, the allocation of attention, or about how choice biases might affect information accumulation). Thus, the focus of this theory is not the observed behavior, but rather the mental "mechanisms" it is based on.

Behaviorism has neither the intention, nor the concepts to interpret mental states. A behaviorist's account to decision making would only be concerned with describing the (statistical) relation between stimuli and choices/decisions, neglecting internal states of the organism at all. Therefore you will have a hard time to find a behaviorist's paper commenting on a cognitive models, because the latter are concerned with a topic that rests in the behaviorist's black box.

Nevertheless there will be behavorist's papers about decision making, but this is a whole different question.


Longitudinal mobile mood tracking app with random reminders The goal is to take simple measurements of mood using Likert scale over an extended period of time (e.g. two months).

I know there is a large number of mobile apps for tracking mood on every possible platform and there is an extensive list of those tools on Quantify Self website. All those tools allow you to record your mood in a simple format, customize your tracking, and choose yourself time when you want to record you mood. And this is exactly the point where all of those tools are missing a critical feature. To get a more reliable sample of a behaviour or experience, you ought to sample the experience in a random time during the waking day, rather then give the person a choice of the time of sampling (Csikszentmihalyi et al., 1987). Csikszentmihalyi et al. (1977) did just that by giving people pagers and send them random beeps, after which they filled the questionnaire. It's a basic rule in any longitudinal experience sampling studies that I remember from the first year undergraduate classes. The need of this kind of approach rises from the inability of respondents to provide an accurate retrospective information on their daily behaviour and experience.

So I am looking for mobile mood tracking tool that meets those particular requirements:

it allows you to set up waking time within which you want to receive random reminders,
it allows you to set up number of reminders you want to receive during the waking hours,
during the day you receive a random reminder that directs you to a single question asking you to rate your mood at the moment, for example on 1-9 scale
your response is time-stamped and saved either on the mobile phone or send directly to the server if possible.

Now, it sounds simple enough, but the only app I found that matches some aspects of it is Mappiness. They DO send you random reminders, and their project, idea, and app execution are awesome. But the problem with Mappiness is that it collects a lot of extra information that I don't need, and I personally got very annoyed with the length of their questionnaire (check yourself if you got an iPhone). I want a random notice, single question, 5-seconds of your time to respond, and some data export option.

Am I missing something here or such app doesn't exist and I need to write it? I realise that this question might be more relevant for http://productivity.stackexchange.com but it's hard to say, it's kind of a middle-area.

References:

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Larson, R. (1987). Validity and reliability of the experience-sampling method. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 175(9), 526.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., Larson, R., & Prescott, S. (1977). The ecology of adolescent activity and experience. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 6(3), 281–294.

The best thing I can find is somebody's side project on experience sampling (the code is on github), so not sure if it's being maintained or anything, but it does appear to do exactly what you want.


How to understand what a low score or high score is for a particular measure? I am trying to use a survey tool to recommend a particular decision.  In my case, I am using the Ten-Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; link here: https://gosling.psy.utexas.edu/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/JRP-03-tipi.pdf) and want to understand what a good binary or ternary cut off would be to recommend a choice.  Should I use the mean score or 33% percentiles respectively or is there a better way to think about it?  Also, more generally when taking a survey test, how do you recognize if you are "low," "average," or "high" on a particular measure?  For instance, when you take a personality test and your results state you are low in neuroticism, where does that ordinal value come from?

Lastly, it should be useful to note that from the research paper I linked, I don't yet know the mean values/percentiles, so if that is the right answer, using an example referencing the paper would be most beneficial to my problem.

First, a minor point is that the TIPI is a very poor measure of individual-level personality. Two item measures of personality are rarely justifiable. Standard errors of measurement are unnecessarily large.

In general, you are talking about the topic of norms and standardized scores.
Any introductory book on psychological measurement will discuss topics related to standardised scores and norms.

General thoughts about defining a high and low score:

1. Define your population.

You need to define your target population. E.g., Just males? Just females? What ages? What country? etc.

2. Obtain estimates of norms for that population.

You then need to get a sample estimate of that population. In some cases, the test manual may provide this. In other cases, you can look to the published literature to see various normative samples.

3. Calculate statndardized scores

You then need to compute a standardized score that relate an a particular respondent's score to the norms. Percentile ranks are one way of doing this. Other approaches are based on z-scores (i.e., where the raw score is scales to mean of zero and an standard deviation of 1). For example, t scores are the same as z-scores, but mean is 50 and standard deviation is 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score

Note that these standardized scores are always contingent on your norm sample.

There are also a range of more sophisticated approaches that are sometimes applied. For example, if you are doing cognitive testing in children, you can interpolate norms between ages, so for example, the norm for a 6.5 year old is different to a 6.8 year old.

4. Define cut-offs

The definition of high and what scores are low, average, and high is somewhat arbitrary. You probably want to think about your application and what the consequences will be of these categorical designations.

That said, I think based on natural language, I think a reasonable starting point (using z-scores where mean is 0 and standard deviation is 1) would be:

Low: z-score < -1
Average: -1 < z-score < 1
High: z-score > 1

I'd probably use language to also say that

Very low: z-score < -2
Very high: z-score > 2

Assuming a normal distribution, about a sixth of the distribution would be the low category, and another sixth would be in the high category.
If the distribution is not normal (e.g., you have floor or ceiling effects), then you may prefer percentiles for the full distributions or raw scores, but in cases of published articles, you probably wont have that.

Applying to the TIPI Example

Thus, for sake of illustration, here is how you would apply this to the above

For extraversion where the mean is 4.44 and SD is 1.45, then you might have cut-offs of low < 2.99 < average < 5.89.

Anyway, as noted above, the publication present several different norms by gender and race. You may even have your own norms that is more relevant to your context.


Are perceptions of beauty and the ideal partner mostly determined by mass media? Mass-media marketing seems to strongly influence people's beliefs.

Are perceptions of beauty and the ideal partner mostly determined by what mass media proposes?

Sexual attraction has mostly but not only a biological roots.
Can this particular woman bear healthy children for me? Do I want this man? Can he be a good father? In a few seconds, someone can evaluate this simply in his/her mind
(evaluate such factors as: height, weight, balance, hips, hair, smell, voice, how healthy the person looks, etc.)
Also, social factors have an influence on our expectations.  Mass media is part of our life, we live in its circle, it forms our culture, makes trends, and influences the path we are making and choices in our life.
The power of influence depends on few factors: the place someone lives (open/close to mass media), the family (all we are from our childhood), and some basic physiological factors we were born with, etc.
Locus of control defines the orientation of a person (internal/external) while choosing the way of living. For some it's more important that their partners are good from the society view (from mass-media view); for others it's not so important.
From Wiki, not very close, but interesting:

Consumer research
Locus of control has also been applied to the field of consumer research. For example, Martin, Veer and Pervan (2007) examined how the weight locus of control of women (i.e., beliefs about the control of body weight) influence how they react to female models in advertising of different body shapes. They found that women who believe they can control their weight ("internals"), respond most favorably to slim models in advertising, and this favorable response is mediated by self-referencing. In contrast, women who feel powerless about their weight ("externals"), self-reference larger-sized models, but only prefer larger-sized models when the advertisement is for a non-fattening product. For fattening products, they exhibit a similar preference for larger-sized models and slim models. The weight locus of control measure was also found to be correlated with measures for weight control beliefs and willpower"

Also there is a good test: Locus of Control .
Your question can be answered simply; it has deep roots and looks interesting for me too. I'll try to find some more modern research to post here.


What's the neurological basis for "practice makes perfect"? I was reading Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind:

  This (practice makes perfect) is really is quite curious. You might expect, instead, that the more you learned, the slower you would get-from having more knowledge from which to choose! How does practice speed things up?

Another related observation is that more practice also make things less effortful, to the extent that people can "autopilot" after practicing for long enough, like driving. But what makes this shift from consciousness to unconsciousness possible? What happens in the process?

The cortex and more of the higher centers are involved in a process when we first learn it. For example it has been tested that basketball players can improve by simply thinking about shooting baskets and not actually doing it. Prior to puberty a lot of neurological " pruning" takes place. This was eloquently discussed in Satinovers book " The Quantum Brain" which talks about models of machine learning based on our understanding of the human brain. Once a process has been repeated over and over again several things seem to happen and one is definitely that neural pathways are reinforced and neural connections get stronger the more we use them. This is only part of the picture however. It appears that older parts of the brain, things closer to what we would call " reflexes" can take over a process that has been rehearsed over and over again. This would be a process occurring in the cerebellum that once required the cortex to fully participate in the process before it was rehearsed over and over. My college piano teacher told me that even though i had not practiced piano a lot in my 20's it would still be easier for me to learn piano again because i studied in my teens. This is an example of the neural connections being maintained even after years of non use, though anecdotal of course, but certainly there are millions of such examples. Hope this explanation helps. Now everyone go get that 10 000 hours in and become experts. :)


Is there a Big Five personality assessment under an open-commercial license? I am currently working on a project with a few students. It's an app that can test the big 5 personality test. The problem is, I am having trouble finding one that is under an open license and that we could use. We are currently using a free non-commercial use for research purposes, but we are starting to explore the possibility of using it commercially one day.

Please list even ones that we might have to pay for.

The IPIP scales are in the public domain: https://ipip.ori.org/
They are intended to have no restrictions on use.

https://ipip.ori.org/newPermission.htm

  Because the IPIP has been placed in the public domain, permission has already been automatically granted for any person to use IPIP items, scales, and inventories for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial..
  It is not necessary to contact the IPIP site author (Lew Goldberg) or the IPIP Consultant (John A. Johnson) for permission to use IPIP materials. Requests for permission to use IPIP materials will be answered by sending the requester a link to this page.


Does language and/or culture affect an individual's cognitive capacity? Some languages have multiple expressions to identify, address, comprehend, and interpret a single concept and/or experience.

Are limits placed on understanding and describing aspects of cognition due to the finite lexicon being used to explain a mental concept or experience?

Does language create a bottleneck situation where the available lexicon used to define certain aspects of cognition and its experiences are inadequate for understanding the true definition of that experience?

This is a hot topic of debate, so my answer will be an incomplete one.
There are actually two separate questions here. One is on language and the other one is on environment.
Language:
My answer is no; different languages do not limit the conceptual repository of human mind. The current ongoing debate is partially on the Pirahã language. Everett studied this language and after seeing that it does not have syntactic recursion, he claimed that it demonstrates that Pirahã community somehow could not think recursively. Of course this is a very simplified view and may be a little misinterpreted and/or a provocative understanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. But I believe that the main problem is on the theoretical grounds of grammar. Steedman's CCG shows a very powerful alternative way of looking to grammars. It is computational and combinatorial. I don't know any particular studies on Pirahã with combinatorial grammars, but that would be an interesting issue to investigate. My personal opinion is that this thinking of "language effects the way of thinking" is also a bit dangerous and open to manipulations too much.
Environment:
Environment definitely affects the cognitive abilities. There are several studies on this. You can search the internet for papers such as Gathercole (1999) or Gleitman, Elissa, Newport (1995). These are the ones that came to my mind immediately. One of the facts is that late exposure to language entirely limits the grammatical abilities. Environmental feedback is also essential. It may be hard to observe physically impaired children but there are also studies that focus on deaf children in hearing families in the absence of sign language. These are interesting studies, but the bottom line is: yes, environment affects cognitive abilities.


Is there an actionable branch of cognitive science? I'm not sure what is the name of a branch of cognitive science that deals with the application of cognitive science to the real world.

I know that in Biology, there are fields like genetic engineering or biomedical engineering, where the principles of science of Biology are applied to development of products.

In physics there's mechanical and electrical engineering.

I did a search and found that there are several applied cognitive science labs at various psychology departments in the US.

Is there some branch of cognitive science that is focused on using the knowledge to create products or services? Am I thinking of the applied cognitive science, psychology, psychiatry or something else?

Thank you!

The answer depends on how you are defining cognitive science and what threshold you use to attribute that actionable component.

If you are talking about cognitive sciences in the broad sense that we use on this site, then you encompass disciplines including psychology, psychiatry, neurobiology, and so on.
This opens up a much broader set of applied fields.

There is also the question of what is meant by cognitive science in action. There is a whole spectrum in the degree to which fields would draw on cognitive science findings.

A few applied fields that stand out as having very close links with psychology, cognitive science, psychology, and neurobiology (i.e., what we mean on this site by cognitive sciences) include:

Applied Psychology including clinical, organisational, educational, counselling, sports psychology, etc. as well as a wide range of counselling, social work, and related roles
Psychiatry
Human factors, ergonomics, usability, user experience, etc fields
Various medical fields related to neurobiology
Education and related fields

Then there is a whole raft of fields which draw on such knowledge to a greater or lesser degree:

e.g.,

Management, human resources, marketing, market research, etc.
Occupational health and safety, work design, product design, etc.
etc.

No doubt many other fields could be mentioned. I think this is partially explains the popularity of psychology as an undergraduate subject.


Does anger increase your body strength? Will anger increase your body strength or not? If you get angry, you may think that i can break anything or fight anyone but sometimes you almost lose control on your body completely (or probably always).

So, if you are ordered to break a brick, will you break it easily when you are angry or when your emotions are under control?

There could be a correlation between negative emotions, such as anger and hostility, and muscle strength (Tolea et al., 2012). This, however, is a post-hoc examination around the relationship between personality traits and muscle strength and may not infer that 'body strength' actually increases during anger and hostility.

  "In spite of the evidence for relationships between personality,
  physical activity, and muscle strength, to our knowledge, only one
  study reported on the association between personality and muscle
  strength (Jorm et al., 1993). In that study, Jorm and colleagues
  investigated correlations between neuroticism and extraversion and
  muscle strength in a sample of older community-dwelling Australian men
  and women. Neuroticism but not extraversion was found to negatively
  correlate to strength in women only."

A study conducted on physical performance and anger could support that there are positive correlations between anger and physical performance (Davis et al., 2010). Note that this only focuses on physical performance and does not necessarily indicate that anger directly increases actual body strength (i.e. cardiovascular, resistance level, power).

  "Consistent with previous research (e.g., Woodman et al., 2009), anger
  facilitated performance of the peak force task. The signiﬁcant
  inﬂuence of trait anger and anger-out on physical performance provides
  additional evidence of the role of anger’s action tendency in
  performance (Smits et al., 2004). This ﬁnding supports Lazarus’s
  (2000b) proposed inﬂuence of anger on performance; that is, the action
  tendency of anger appeared to align with the task demands and
  performance was facilitated by the induction of anger."

This may well tie well in addressing your question:

P1. There is evidence to show that anger facilitates performance of a peak force task.
P2. Breaking a brick involves a peak force task.
P3. X is angry and required to break a brick.
C. It is likely that anger would facilitate X's need to break the brick.

As for anger regulation, the same article touches upon the significance of anger regulation strategies towards anger and physical performance. My intuition would be to say that a response such as anger is more likely to help one "break a brick" when ordered rather than being in a controlled state. Anger is more likely to increase reactive motor skills which could maximise power exerted. I'm not an expert on physical fitness but emotional states of mind would seem to impact physical behaviours in my view.

References

Toleaa, M.I., Terracciano, A., Simonsick, E.M., Metter, E.J. & Costa
Jr., P.T. (2012). Associations between personality traits, physical
activity level, and muscle strength. Journal of Research in
Personality, 46, 264-270
Davis, P.A., Woodman, T. & Callow, N. (2010). Better out than in: The
inﬂuence of anger regulation on physical performance. Personality and
Individual Differences, 49, 457-460


Who first proposed using ROC curves in a psychological context? On Wikipedia it is written that

  In the 1950s, ROC curves were employed in psychophysics to assess
  human (and occasionally non-human animal) detection of weak signals.

Green and Swets (1966) is cited as attesting to that fact. I don't have any way of accessing that book, and nor would it necessarily constitute the first proposal of ROC curves for usage in psychology.

Green, D. M., & Swets, J. A. (1966). Signal detection theory and psychophysics. Society, 1, 521.

I worked out the answer to the question just as I was about to post it.

Swets (1973) writes of a 1954 conference that

  Peterson and Birdsall had presented it a year earlier in a technical
  report. So it is fair to say, from the vantage point of psychology,
  that Peterson and Birdsall showed us how to plot the data.

Unless Swets is mistaken, the answer is Peterson and Birdsall (1953).

Peterson, W. W., & Birdsall, T. G. The Theory of Signal Detectability (1953). Technical report No. 13, Electronic Defense Group, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Swets, J. A. (1973). The relative operating characteristic in psychology. Science, 182(4116), 990-1000.


Human memory - remembering sequences of letters vs numbers There are 10 digits and 26 letters. In computer science you'd need 4 bits to store a digit value and 5 bits do store a letter value.

Does the same apply to human brain? Is a statistical person able to remember more digits than letters, or is there no difference? Or maybe it varies from person to person?

I am not sure I completely understood your question but I will try to answer it. Different numbers and different letters can be easier or harder to remember based on the order, meaning that, depending on their sequence, it can be either way.
Ex.
a r d q
is easier to remember than
9 4 6 0
but
z n k r
is harder to remeber than
9 8 3 0.
This is because the letters are used in the English language in a way that allows you to make them into a certain sound but only if you have the right letters.

I hope that was helpful (even though it has been almost two years),


How does subjective experience arise from matter? Forgive me for lacking rigor, but if what I know is correct, it is established that consciousness and other higher functions characteristic of humans are a consequence of our cortex, specifically neocortex. However, what has always puzzled me is the neurobiological basis that gives rise to the phenomenon that we associate our bodies with ourselves – i.e., why does my brain think of my physical body as "me" and make me care for it? In other words, why is me me at this particular point in time and not some other body living e.g. centuries ago? Why do I not associate "me" with multiple bodies living at the same time, or have identity at all?

A naive, materialist answer would perhaps be that given our nervous system etc., "me" is only a sort of an illusion created by the brain which acts as a kind of "least thinkable unit" that has no neural connections to other physical bodies. Still, what is the process that "picks" precisely my brain and my body to become "me" – why have I not sensed reality from the viewpoint of e.g. Albert Einstein or Brad Pitt?

I wonder if any empirical answers to such questions can be given, or at least if these questions have been reformulated to a set of more well-defined questions in the light of modern neuroscience.

UPDATE:
A better way to form this question would be: if two bodies come to exist at the same time, and consciousness is an emergent, materialistic phenomenon of the body, why do I experience the emergence of consciousness in one specific body (i.e. the one I call my own) and not in another?

This is partially an aspect of the binding problem.

  Sensory information arrives in parallel as a variety of heterogeneous hints, (shapes, colors, motions, smells and sounds) encoded in partly modular systems. Typically many objects are present at once. The result is an urgent case of what has been labelled the binding problem. We must collect the hints, bind them into the right spatial and temporal bundles, and then interpret them to specify their real world origins. (2003, 97)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/attention/

The bottom line is that our senses are integrated and some of our most important senses (smell, sight, hearing) all have their organs located very close together.  Spatial perception is (at least partially) stored in the parietal lobes. The parietal lobes integrate information from somatosensors like muscle spindles to relay the body's position in space as well as the eyes (and ears), which help form a perspective of the environment.

You might also consider Tononi's framework for consciousness: integrated information theory which presumes:

  (i) the quantity of consciousness corresponds to the amount of integrated information generated by a complex of elements; (ii) the quality of experience is specified by the set of informational relationships generated within that complex. Integrated information (Phi) is defined as the amount of information generated by a complex of elements, above and beyond the information generated by its parts. Qualia space (Q) is a space where each axis represents a possible state of the complex, each point is a probability distribution of its states, and arrows between points represent the informational relationships among its elements generated by causal mechanisms (connections). Together, the set of informational relationships within a complex constitute a shape in Q that completely and univocally specifies a particular experience.

I think the deeper question we need answered before we get to your specific question is "how does a subjective experience arise from matter in the first place?".  Other than that, your question is no different than "why did that rock not get this rock's blemish?".  It was mostly likely just a matter of chance in initial conditions.


The article "Vector reconstruction from Firing Rates" of Abbott and Salinas Is anyone familiar with this article?

I am reading it, and it is basically very clear.
But still, some points are not clear to me.

For example, how is equation (7.1) in page 12:

  $Q_{i,j}^{-1} = F(\overline C_i \overline C_j)$

It it said there that

  "By rotational invariance, the correlation matrix element $Q_{i,j}$ and the corresponding inverse element $Q_{i,j}^{-1}$ can only depend on $\overline C_i \cdot \overline C_j$".

Does anyone here, by any chance, know what is "rotational invariance"?

Thank you!

What they mean is that as long as you rotate $C_i$ and $C_j$ by the same amount, the dot product will be the same.  This is rotational invariance because the dot product is invariant to coherent rotation of the relevant vectors.

In neural terms, the correlation between the activity of two neurons (in a population representing a one dimensional circular variable) is a function of the difference in their preferred orientations and does not depend on the absolute direction of their orientations.


Paradoxical senses of scale: Are they common or is it just me? It doesn't happen anymore, but when I was younger I would often get strange sensations regarding scale that I never heard anyone else report.

There were two different flavors. One felt like the room and everything in it were both small and large at the same time. If I were to ask myself, "Do I feel like I'm small in a small room, or huge in a huge room?" I would say, "both, at the same time".

The other happened only in my mind. Roughly speaking, it was a kind of tactile sensation. It felt like I was sort of... "handling" an object, perhaps pencil-shaped, that was skinny and fat at the same time.

It happened most often when I was about to fall asleep, but it sometimes occurred in the middle of the day.

Is this sort of thing known and documented? Is there any sense to be made of it? I tried to search online but had no luck. What would I even search for?

The symptoms belong to the Alice-in-Wonderland Syndrome, which is supposed to be very common in childhood. An interesting article appeared in the New York Times.


What are the limits of language with respect to communicating the actual reasons that go in making a decision? Simon Sinek in his book 'Start With Why' claims how the brain might fail to communicate the actual reasons behind a made decision and instead at best rationalize it in retrospect (post hoc), due to the logic-emotion dichotomy (rational thought is a product of the neocortex while emotional weight which might have a greater role in decision-making, comes from the limbic system). I want to know more on this and other related limits as applicable (of course, assuming their existence has been scientifically proven or at least speculated). Book recommendations are being specifically asked for.

Perhaps oxytocin can be associated with Sinek's why. I think this article can be helpful:
Oxytocin and the Biopsychology of Performance in Team Sports

From the discussion:

  The ability to perceive and understand the mental state of others is very important for an athlete in a sport and especially so in a team setting where working together toward common goals is key. Athletes have to infer internal states in order to make sense of or predict a teammate or opponent’s behavior.

Simon Sinek describes the process of finding a common thread in all your actions. He calls this "your why". Sinek states that the why is an unconscious part of your mind. The why is discovered by searching for patterns in situations where you feel motivated. A slogan-like phrase should then be developed in order to represent the why. The purpose of the phrase is to enable you to be conscious about the motivational drive. You should use the phrase as a guide in order to make your life more meaningful. Even though Sinek talks a lot about "finding your why", then he doesn't talk much about techniques of applying it. I think that the why-phrase can be used in a couple of ways:

As a guideline in making new decisions.
As a tool for unconscious focusing through priming. This is the main function of slogans: The Psychology of a Smart Slogan
As a starting point for building an identity, that reminds you about your why. An example of this is the military, where a motto is the equivalent of a "why-phrase". The uniforms and the etiquette also represent the unconscious why.


What is the meaning of behaviorally oriented outside-in nature of therapy? What is the meaning of behaviorally oriented outside-in nature of therapy? I am especially interested why this outside-in word was used but please provide me a wider context of this type of therapy. Especially as it is meant on the following page.

https://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/1126691/depression-treatment-behavioral-activation/

Could you possibly give some resources such as scholarly articles or book chapters where this method is used? My problem is that I am a non-expert on psychotherapy but need a starting point on the above issue. Thank you.

The concept of "outside-in" within the context of the article involves looking at how your environment is affecting your mental health. In other words, how the world around you (people you see, people you talk to...) is causing or worsening the depressive feelings and work on changing those things first.
There are a lot of articles online concerning Behavioural Activation, which is the form of behaviour therapy developed by Skinner discussed in the article you linked.
One meta-analysis (Cuijpers et al. 2007) found it very effective, and there are a couple of books on the subject.

Behavioral Activation for Depression: A Clinician's Guide by Christopher R. Martell, Ruth Herman-Dunn, and Sona Dimidjian (2010)
Behavioral Activation: Distinctive Features by Andrew M. Busch, Jonathan W. Kanter, and Laura C. Rusch (2009)

References
Cuijpers, P., Van Straten, A., & Warmerdam, L. (2007). Behavioral activation treatments of depression: A meta-analysis. Clinical psychology review, 27(3), 318-326. doi: 10.1016/j.cpr.2006.11.001


What maladaptive behaviours or cognitive distortions develop as a result of chronic childhood illness? It's fairly well documented that childhood trauma (such as chronic illness) can lay the neurochemical groundwork for conditions like depression later in life. A paper, "The link between childhood trauma and depression: insights from HPA axis studies in humans", states:

  We here summarize results from a series of clinical studies suggesting that childhood trauma in humans is associated with sensitization of the neuroendocrine stress response, glucocorticoid resistance, increased central corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) activity, immune activation, and reduced hippocampal volume, closely paralleling several of the neuroendocrine features of depression. Neuroendocrine changes secondary to early-life stress likely reflect risk to develop depression in response to stress, potentially due to failure of a connected neural circuitry implicated in emotional, neuroendocrine and autonomic control to compensate in response to challenge.

"Late Consequences of Pediatric Chronic Illness" has some related findings too.

I'm interested in what psychological groundwork might be also laid by early life stress such as childhood illness, also contributing to the development of mental health conditions. For example, I've read of cases where chronic childhood pain may cause the patient to have an unhealthily high acceptance (not tolerance) of stress as an adult, meaning they persist in stressful situations where others would not. They've learned that pain is to be accepted and worked through to an extent beyond which many would think reasonable, and this may lead to stress related illness.

Are there any other maladaptive behaviours, cognitive distortions or similar that commonly occur in adults who experienced chronic childhood illness?

(Also interested in evidence related to my anecdotal example.)

EDIT (31st Dec 2013): Thanks to caseyr547 for his answer. To clarify, I'm particularly interested in answers using the behavioural, cognitive and psychodynamic models, as opposed to the biological or stress-vulnerability models.

There are many psychological models for abnormal behavior so there are many ways to answer your question.
The Stress-Vulnerability model of mental illness is a well established biological theory. It states that biology provides from vulnerabilities to mental illnesses which are activated by stress and trauma. It would dictate that the stress/anxiety caused in the past and present by a bad childhood could result in any mental illness based on what biological vulnerabilities were present in the person.

I think you should read "Chronic childhood disease: An introduction to psychological theory and research", "The occurrence of maladaptive health-related behaviors and teacher-rated conduct problems in children of chronic low back pain patients" and "Abnormal illness behaviour: childhood experiences and long-term consequences", "Relating Parent and Family Functioning to the Psychological Adjustment of Children with Chronic Health Conditions: What Have We Learned? What Do We Need To Know?"


Why do soldiers seldom "fight to the death" even if they are going to be killed anyway? At the siege of Masada, a group of heavily outnumbered Jewish soldiers elected to commit suicide en masse, rather than to be captured by the besieging Romans, who would probably have committed them to a tortuous death by crucifixion. Such an action is highly unusual, almost unique in the annals of history.

During the Spartacus slave revolt, some 6,000 rebels were captured and crucified. Why did they choose this over death in battle? (As rebelling slaves, they were outlaws, not foreign prisoners who could expect to be allowed to live.) And why might this be true of others in similar straits (e.g. partisans captured by Nazis in World War II)?

Why does prey, when caught in the jaws of an animal whose bite and build is powerful enough to carry them, cease to struggle? I remember an old quote from psychology, recounting first-hand, a lion attack. I cannot find it now. The narrator said that once the lion had him in its mouth, it shook him (physically) and thus disoriented him. He said that he felt no pain, and he said that it must have been because of adrenaline. I forget how, I think a local intervened, but he survived to describe the experience.
Why does a fish, when laid on ground, cease to struggle? Yet waggle when touched and escape when released? Morale?
Why do bucks, when vying for supremacy by engaging in contests of strength, not aim to kill their opponent? This case is slightly different, because the foe is conspecific. While humans understand the concept of mutually-assured destruction, animals seem to understand this too, and that it's evolutionarily folly when fighting one's own species.

Sorry for an incomprehensive answer, but I hope my insight spurs the ultimate answer.


Why are disorders discrete? Disorders are usually discrete. For example, if you are given a test for, say, ADHD, they are usually only two results "you have ADHD" or "you don't have ADHD". Autism is treated as a spectrum, but this spectrum is by no means continuous, also being in discrete parts.

Why is this? Why can't you get a result of "76% ADHD"? Intelligence, for example, is measured continuously, as is personality (psychometrics). Of course, tests can't be continuous, having a finite number of questions, but neither are rulers, which measure the continuous quantity of length, or IQ tests, which measure the continuous quantity of IQ.

So, why are disorders measured discretely? For example, if one person has 38% of a disorder, they may benefit from different treatment than someone with 87% of a disorder in a predictable way.

Why are disorders discrete?

The question is why sometimes we report certain psychiatric conditions as being discrete (henceforth categorical) and sometimes as being dimensional (or in a spectrum).

The answer is related to the history of psychiatric classifications. By the time DSM-III was designed, there was an increasing resistance to psychoanalysis in America. Psychoanalysis tended to organize disorders in a dimensional fashion (have a look at this podcast. So the final product (DSM-III) translated that resistance by organizing all conditions in categories, increasing significantly their number as well.

In the past 10 years the lack of success (this is questionable, but psychiatry did not developed as well as, say, oncology)  of the field made some scholars rethink about the exclusive use of categories.

It seems that categories are suited health insurances and legal objectives. For instance, judges are normally interested to know whether someone has or not a condition in order to decide about responsibility (necessary and sufficient conditions). The same with health insurance companies.

The problem is that psychiatry should be thinking on advancing the field, instead of satisfying the legal system or the health insurance companies (these are very important issues as well, don't get me wrong, but they are secondary).

Now the question is: are mental disorders really dimensional things? What are the evidences for thinking this way? I will only mention on argument and then I will suggest some readings to read all the other findings that suggests so.

The level of co-occurrence of mental disorders (co-morbidity) are very high. So that alcoholism is commonly accompanied by anxiety and depression. Depression and anxiety are themselves commonly found together, and the same for almost all the other hundreds of conditions. That means that perhaps a dimensional approach would be a better one to treat theses concepts.

Why do we accept that personality and intelligence are the type of things that should be treated as dimensional, then? Because the psychologists have been working without giving as much attention to politics than the psychiatrists in the last half-century. And they developed the statistical scaffolding for their theories on personality and intelligence, quite independently from psychiatrists. That is why these subjects are treated today as dimensional, whereas mental disorders are treated as categorical (note though that personality disorders also exists in the classification systems and DSM-5 attempts to introduce some dimensional approach on the subject).

Finally, why Autism has been taken as a spectrum condition? Simply because its study has gained traction only recently, and also because the main researchers in the area used methods from psychology to develop their ideas.

So the answer is that your perception that disorders are discrete is something inherited by the long use of classification systems like DSM, but that it will change shortly.

References:

Bentall, R. P. (2004). Madness Explained: Psychosis and Human Nature. Penguin.
Volkmar, F. R., & McPartland, J. C. (2014). From Kanner to DSM-5: autism as an evolving diagnostic concept. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 10, 193–212. http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032813-153710
APA. (2013). DSM 5. American Psychiatric Association. http://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596.744053
Zachar, P. (2000). Psychiatric disorders are not natural kinds. Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology, 7(3), 167–182.


Qualitative scoring for responses to design fluency task Before I can ask my questions, I have to give a little background information.  I'm involved in a study using a measure of design fluency.  Subjects are shown a page full of squares, like the one shown below.  Each square contains 5 dots.  Subjects are given 60 seconds to generate as many different designs as fast as they can by connecting dots in each square.  The criteria for correct designs are that the designs must contain 4 lines and that all the lines in the design must be continuous.  There are 2 trials in the test: one with 5 black dots and one with 5 black dots and 5 white dots.  In the second trial, the extra dots are included as form of interference.

Here are examples of correct designs produced in the first trial of the design fluency task.  Similar designs would be likely produced under the second trial.

The way this measure is usually quantified is by counting the number of correct designs produced.  However, I'm interested in looking at this task a little differently.  I want to know if members of a clinical group, say Alzheimer's disease (AD), will produce a quality of designs that is different than normal controls.

One way I thought about doing this was by looking at the frequency of designs produced.  This has been observed for tasks of verbal fluency, with patients with AD producing words of a greater frequency than controls.  The problem is that while counts of word frequency are readily available, there is no equivalent source for production on the design fluency task that I know of.

Here's how I thought about approaching this.  I'd start by taking the responses produced by a large number of controls and coming up with a way of classifying them, say 4 or 5 types of designs.  Then I'd count the number of times each of these design types occurred in the control sample and apply a weight to them so that design types with lesser frequency would have a greater weight (think inverse document frequency).  I'd then look at a smaller AD sample and a equivalent control sample matched on demographic variables.  I'd count the number of each design types produced by each subject in both groups, and multiply the number of each design type by the weight assigned to it.  The average frequency would be calculated for each subject for each trial type (the 5 dot trial and the 10 dot interference trial).  Group performance would then be compared in a repeated measures ANOVA.

There are the two questions that I have. The control sample that I have to determine the frequency of the design types is small: less than 70 subjects.  Is this too small for determining the frequency and weights of the design types?  Secondly, when comparing the clinical sample to a control sample, would it be possible to draw the small control sample from this larger control sample used to derive the frequency and the weights, or is there some reason that I should not do this?

Thanks in advance for your attention and response.  Any input would be greatly  appreciated.  I realize this question may be off topic for this site.  If you feel that's the case, would you mind suggesting a more appropriate forum.  I've previously posted this question on Cross Validated, with no replies, so I'm hopeful for better reception here.

To measure the frequencies of different patterns (do some patterns occur more frequently that others based on group) I see this as a chi-squared test of independence. If you are unfamiliar with the test, a quick example is here. For your situation, all participants would get the same placements of dots, and you would count how often each possible pattern is drawn. In this design you would have two variables: 1 being control/AD, and the other being "design" with levels of every design drawn (if there are low frequencies on the designs, check out Fisher's Exact Test).

As you mention, the only way you could get enough data for RM ANOVA is to add up all of the frequencies for all of the graphs. Not knowing the theoretical backing for this measure, are all of them designed to be equivalent? At the very least it seems that the 5 dot and the 10 dot should be separated...

All my 2 cents, but on to your real questions:

1) Your "control sample" would be, in essence, a normative group (you would be determining what the "normal" person's frequencies were). These samples tend to be quite large and drawn with very rigorous designs. Check out your standard errors of your measures and see if they are acceptable (if they are, then the representativeness of your population may be your large concern with a small normative sample).

2) Double dipping is almost always a big "no-no." Idiosyncrasies in your initial "control sample" would drop down to your "clinical sample," casting doubt on the internal validity of the study. If the classifications are made for/from one group it usually follows that, in comparing to a second group, the second group with almost always not meet perfectly with the classification. In regression, this concept is that of "overfitting the model." One way you can get around this is create your classifications with, say, half of the control group, and use the other half as the clinical group. This has two problems, though: you further reduce your sample size; and I'd cast questions on the validity of "making classifications" (especially with so small a sample). Perhaps look at making all possible connections their own level of a categorical variable (combining only reflections and rotations).


Open source software for running Internet psychological experiments that collect reaction time data I've often used Inquisit to run psychological experiments online. The software enables delivery of stimuli (e.g., text, images, etc.) and collection of reaction times.

Obviously general purpose programming languages provide one avenue for delivery of online experiments. There's also a good listing of software for psychological experiments here. I've also seen PsyToolkit which is GNU licensed software for programming psychological experiments, but I'm not aware of any online option.

Are there any open source options for online delivery of psychological experiments, particularly ones that enable reaction time measurement?

For an open source JavaScript/HTML/CSS solution, check out jsPsych: http://www.jspsych.org. It  can be used for reaction time measurement and interactive designs. An article describing the library was recently published in Behavior Research Methods.

A subsequent article investigated the properties of reaction time distributions collected with JavaScript compared to those collected with MATLAB and Psychtoolbox. The main result is that JavaScript was 10-40ms slower, but had equivalent variance across different experimental conditions and equal sensitivity to the experimental manipulation of set size in a visual search task.

There are several good answers to this related question about the validity and accuracy of response time measurements online. Many of those answers discuss findings that are relevant to JavaScript libraries like jsPsych.

de Leeuw, J. R. (2015). jsPsych: A JavaScript library for creating behavioral experiments in a Web browser. Behavior Research Methods, 47(1), 1-12.

de Leeuw, J. R., & Motz, B. A. (2015). Psychophysics in a Web browser? Comparing response times collected with JavaScript and Psychophysics Toolbox in a visual search task. Behavior Research Methods, advance online publication.


Has "induced savantism" been further explored beyond Snyder 2009? The Mechanism/Neurological subsection of the Wikipedia article Savant Syndrome says:

  Savant syndrome results from damage to the left anterior temporal lobe, an area of the brain key in processing sensory input, recognizing objects and forming visual memories.[citation needed] Savant syndrome has been artificially replicated using transcranial magnetic stimulation to temporarily disable this area of the brain.(16)

and reference (16) links to:

Snyder, A. (2009). Explaining and inducing savant skills: privileged access to lower level, less-processed information. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1522), 1399-1405. doi:  10.1098/rstb.2008.0290

The article describes experimental work earlier than 2009 in which savant-like skills were "artificially induced by low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation."

My guess is that almost ten years on induced savantism would have been explored further experimentally and either 1) refuted, or 2) more thoroughly proven and potential explanations tested with more complex experiments.

Has either happened?

See also this substantial answer from 2012.

There are no other studies I can find where TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) was used in the same way, but there is a paper mentioning Snyder (2009) whilst discussing safety and other ethical considerations required regarding neural enhancement using noninvasive brain stimulation.

Hamilton, et al. (2011) said the following about Snyder (2009)(References re-numbered for formatting purposes and converted to APA style)

  Finally, one set of cognitive skills in which the role of TMS and tDCS has been especially controversial is the unmasking of so-called savant-like abilities. Snyder2 argued that inhibition of the left anterior temporal lobe (LATL) with brain stimulation interferes with semantic networks that normally impose top-down constraints on human perception—in short, making conception play a diminished role in perception. These investigators suggest that suppressing the LATL increases access to less-processed information, improving performance in perceptual abilities on tasks such as drawing, proof-reading, numerosity judgment,1 and other cognitive processes in which conceptual knowledge biases performance.3,4

  Snyder, A. W., Mulcahy, E., Taylor, J. L., Mitchell, D. J., Sachdev, P., & Gandevia, S. C. (2003). Savant-like skills exposed in normal people by suppressing the left fronto-temporal lobe. Journal of integrative neuroscience, 2(2), 149-158.DOI: 10.1142/S0219635203000287PDF: http://howieswebs.ipage.com/pdf/savantskills.pdf
  Snyder, A. (2009). Explaining and inducing savant skills: privileged access to lower level, less-processed information. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1522), 1399-1405.DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0290PDF: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1522/1399.full.pdf
  Gallate, J., Chi, R., Ellwood, S., & Snyder, A. (2009). Reducing false memories by magnetic pulse stimulation. Neuroscience letters, 449(3), 151-154.DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2008.11.021PDF: http://www.centreforthemind.com/publications/FalseMemories160109.pdf
  Oliveri, M., Romero, L., & Papagno, C. (2004). Left but not right temporal involvement in opaque idiom comprehension: A repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation study. Journal of cognitive Neuroscience, 16(5), 848-855.DOI: 10.1162/089892904970717PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Costanza_Papagno/publication/8506415_Left_But_Not_Right_Temporal_Involvement_in_Opaque_Idiom_Comprehension_A_Repetitive_Transcranial_Magnetic_Stimulation_Study/links/09e4150b4c7a9f03be000000.pdf

Regarding the safety of TMS, Hamilton, et al. (2011) said the following:

  There are known and possibly unknown safety concerns associated with noninvasive brain stimulation. The most important safety risk associated with TMS is the risk of inducing seizures. Since the introduction of published safety parameters for the use of rTMS, the incidence of induced seizure is exceptionally rare. All current evidence indicates that tDCS is extremely safe; its main safety risks are mild headache and a mild burning or itching sensation under the electrodes. Given the newness of these methodologies, one caveat is that not much is known about the chronic effects of either magnetic or electrical brain stimulation. Future studies may reveal unsuspected side effects and risks that are more serious than those associated with some conventional methods of behavioral cognitive manipulation (e.g., psychotherapy)....

There is quite a bit more on the safety and other ethical considerations, which I will leave you to read.

References

Hamilton, R., Messing, S., & Chatterjee, A. (2011). Rethinking the thinking cap: Ethics of neural enhancement using noninvasive brain stimulation. Neurology, 76(2), 187-193.DOI: 10.1212/WNL.0b013e318205d50d


What are the neurological differences between varying types of love? It stands to reason that the biochemical cascade involved when a person experiences love, gives a feeling of well-being and drive.

  Studies in neuroscience have involved chemicals that are present in the brain and might be involved when people experience love. These chemicals include: nerve growth factor, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin. Adequate brain levels of testosterone seem important for both human male and female sexual behavior. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are more commonly found during the attraction phase of a relationship. Oxytocin and vasopressin seemed to be more closely linked to long term bonding and relationships characterized by strong attachments.

and

  Romantic and maternal love are highly rewarding
  experiences. Both are linked to the perpetuation of the species
  and therefore have a closely linked biological function of crucial
  evolutionary importance. 1

There's a lot of research about romantic love and parent/child love. Apparently there are correlations, between the neurological patterns observed with romantic and maternal love.

I am wondering, do we know what the neurobiological differences are between romantic, maternal/paternal, platonic love and the  love of non-human entities for example a pet?

1. The neurobiology of love
S. Zeki*
University College, Department of Anatomy, Gower Street, London WCIE 6BT, United Kingdom

It is very difficult to offer a response in the sense proposed, different researchers may have very different views. One of the keys in these research is to have clear differences between: attachment, attraction, sexual behavior, esthetics (philosophical theme), likes, interests, and very huge etc.

One can begin by reading Neil R. Carlson's chapter about reproductive behavior (Carlson, pp. 319-366) which addresses both hormonal and neural control of sexual behavior as well as maternal behavior from basic and general psychophysiological approaches.


Can the brain work better in stressful conditions? I was watching a documentary about the brain the other day, BBC's Human Body - Brain Power. It said that the perception power of the brain increases when you are in a tense situation. For example; if you know that you are about to die because your house is on fire, the brain will perceive everything more quickly than normal. In other words, the brain works better when you are under stress or tensed a lot (because brain wants you to survive; this is only in life or death situations of course)

I was wondering if the same thing happens to a student during an exam. Is it good for a student to be tensed a bit while taking an exam? I mean if you are solving a question at home, you usually make a lot of mistakes, but the frequency of those mistakes decreases during an exam.

Is my observation correct? Or does a student need to be completely calm during an exam?

A little stress is good, as it leads to greater psychological arousal, but lots of stress will decrease performance. This is known as the Yerkes–Dodson law, from the famous experiment by Yerkes and Dodson (1908) which related strength of motivational electric shocks to performance; performance increased up to a point and then plummeted.

One more comment about something you said:

  For example; if you know that you are about to die because your house is on fire, the brain will perceive everything more quickly than normal.

People do report subjective time dilation for scary events but quantitative attempts have found no evidence for such, see Stetson et. al. (2007).

References

Stetson, Chess, Matthew P. Fiesta, and David M. Eagleman. "Does time really slow down during a frightening event?." PLoS One 2.12 (2007): e1295.

Yerkes RM, Dodson JD (1908). "The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation". Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology 18: 459–482.


Does referring to each other by number in group meetings lead to better results? I've learned that the pilots of the Red Arrows never refer to each other by name but by number in the briefing room in order to avoid conflict.
Is there a name for this trick? Do any studies say this kind of psychological trick leads to better results? Are there any applications in other fields?

This is way outside of my area, but reducing identity expression definitely can increase group conformity. This is the basic idea underlying e.g. school uniforms and cultural restrictions in totalitarian regimes. It might be important to keep in mind that identity expression could promote many positive outcomes (greater creativity, more flexible approaches to problem solving, etc) in addition to increased conflict.


Is there a database of disgusting images for stimuli for experimental study of disgust? I'm looking for a set of images that evoke a disgust reaction. In particular, I'm looking for disgusting objects (e.g. feces, maggots). Is there a database of images like this? It would be especially useful if there were norming or rating data on how disgusting people found the images.

Try the IAPS--International Affective Picture System; they have disgusting images as well as norming procedures and data.  You can read about it here and request it (as long as you have a faculty advisor) here.


What are science-based methods to memorize large sets of best practices? I am a writer. In every book about writing fiction there are some recommendations, which I need to remember during the process of writing. Examples of best practices may include:

In every scene, it is necessary to describe where the characters are, what they look like (incl. how they are dressed), what time is it, plus information that competing media cannot replicate (smells -- books compete with movies and describing smells is one way to make a book more immersive than a movie).
Balance of description and action: Two paragraphs of description, then something must happen.
You cannot just tell what happens like a journalist. Instead, you need to paint a picture by using metaphors and comparisons.

What are scientifically proven strategies to memorize long list of items (best practices in this case)?

I know I could do a giant checklist of text improvement processes and go through it while editing every chapter. I already tried that and it didn't work that well. There were over a hundred methods from different books, organized by writing stage (ideation, plotting, writing first draft, editing).

I'm using Anki to increase my vocabulary (I'm not an English native speaker) and would like to have something similar for lists of best practices. However, Anki isn't really suitable for this purpose because it trains your ability to give correct answers to questions (not remember a set of best practices at a certain stage of writing).

In another question the use of flash cards was suggested. If I understand it correctly, this method requires me to create a flash card with following data:

Question: What things do you need to do at the beginning of chapter design phase?

Answer:

Define the event that the chapter is describing.
Write down the beat sheet.
Find on the Internet the images of places and objects that are featured in this chapter.
Write down the goals of the chapter.

This is fine, if the list of items is relatively small. But what if there are 40 or 100 things that I can do at the beginning of a phase (chapter design in this case) and I want to remember them all without a checklist?

An answer to this question suggests attaching emotions to the things I want to memorize. I probably could invent some stories to memorize. But I still don't feel like this is the "full solution" (even if I invent stories that trigger my emotions for every of the 100 best practices, I am still not sure that I will remember them all).

We, as human beings, are generally not able to MEMORIZE that quantity of information. I suggest there are two ways to approach this issue:

1) Remembering WHERE information is as opposed to what information there is.
This works with top-notch scientists and I am particularly fond of this strategy. For example, instead of remembering the parts of the neuron, you could remember where you wrote them down or how you can quickly find those out and you can refer back to those. Or, in your example, instead of remembering what you have to describe, you could remember where your checklist or notes are regarding that and just look it up every time. Now, all you have to remember is that only certain information goes into the description and where you can look that up. (similar to chunking as mentioned by one of the previous replies)

2) Experience -> Incorporating that much information can be done easily only if you have deliberately practised it A LOT. The more information there is, the more practice you need. By the sounds of it - you may need a lot if there are so many rules. I would assume, much like the scientific work I am involved it, at one point it will become second nature to you and you will feel when something is not described or written well.

I realize that these two points do not address your question directly: Generally if you want to remember a long list of items it all boils down to the strength of the connections you build. Build your own associations. In one incredible study, for example, an undergraduate long-distance runner managed to increase his memory span from 7 (which is the average) to 79 digits (in some cases this could also be chunks which can increase the amount of remembered information) after 230 hours of deliberate practice (1h a day 3-5 days/week). He did that by "recoding" long strings of numbers into associations - e.g. 3492 -> 3 minutes 49.2 seconds near world record mile time; 1944 -> near WWII end and so on (Ericsson, Chase & Faloon, 1980).

So, it is possible to remember that amount of information but I strongly discourage you to do so as it would limit the amount of creative work you can accomplish in the meantime.

P.S. Just as an example of how effective 2) is -> In order for me to recall that study I remember that a lot of hours of deliberate practice increase working memory recall span and I remembered that there was a case study. Then in order to remember exactly what the study was, I recalled where it must be (Somewhere in my Memory-related notes) and so that I can sort through them quickly I recalled that there was something with WWII and recoding strategies. I managed to find it within 30-45 seconds among A LOT of notes!

Hope that helps.