What explains involuntary imitation of behavior such as shrugging? Recently, I watched a discussion program on TV and one of the participants shrugged. I found that, not only did I do the same, but I seemed to do it in synchrony the speaker. I didn't want to do this, why would I?

It's easy to find popular discussions online about contagious yawning but I haven't found any about shrugs.

It occurs to me that there may be other such involuntary imitative movements - raising eyebrows for example.

Questions

Is there a technical name for this type of involuntary imitation? I have tried searching online but either I haven't found the right search terms or there is nothing to find.

What explanation can we give? In what way might this be adaptive behaviour?

The kind of involuntary, imitative behavior you are describing is usually called behavioral mimicry - "the automatic imitation of gestures, postures, mannerisms, and other motor movements" (Chartrand & Lakin, 2013).

Chartrand and Lakin's (2013) review is a good starting point into the research that has been done on this phenomenon. They provide references to research that has looked at a wide variety of motor movements [references deleted for readability]:

  including body posture, face touching, foot shaking, food consumption, pen playing, coloring, handshake, angle and speed, cospeech gestures, and a variety of health-related behaviors (e.g., smoking, taking the stairs rather
  than an escalator). Other research has looked at micro movements, such as finger tapping (...) People mimic facial expressions, and emotional reactions of interaction partners (...) In addition, people mimic verbal characteristics of interaction partners, including accents, linguistic style, speech rate, and syntax.

Shrugging is not part of this list, but there is also research that has used shrugging as one example of a behavior that can be imitated (Kurzius & Borkenau, 2015).

Chartrand and Lakin (2013) note that even though people can imitate others intentionally, behavioral mimicry is indeed often automatic:

  the mimicry of gross and fine motor movements (e.g.,gestures, mannerisms, finger movements), facial expressions, and vocalizations is often nonconscious, unintentional, and effortless. In fact, people often feel it is uncontrollable and are embarrassed when it is pointed out to them
  (Chartrand et al. 2005, White & Argo 2011).

There are several explanations for behavioral mimicry, and some posit that mimicry is (or has been) adaptive (as summarized by in Chartrand & Dalton, 2009).

1. Shared mental representations of perception and behavior

According to this explanation, perceiving a motor movement increases the likelihood of engaging in the same movement, because perception and action have a shared mental representation. According to this argument mimicry is an automatic and passive response, because the regions of the brain that are activated when we perceive action and the ones that are activated when we engage in an action are partly the same (see also mirror neurons, common coding theory).

2. Basic survival benefits of mimicry throughout our evolutionary past

According to this explanation, we have inherited the tendency to imitate others from our prehuman ancestors, because it may have carried important physical benefits for survival. For example, if you notice others of your group running, it may be functional to start running along instead of first scanning the environment for the dangerous predator.

3. Mimicry as social glue

According to this explanation, mimicry fulfills important communicative functions, by communicating togetherness, understanding, and therefore fosters empathy, social bonds and other positive social outcomes. In line with this view is research showing that mimicry increases liking and rapport and that people who have the goal to affiliate with others have a stronger tendency to mimic (e.g., Lakin & Chartrand, 2003).

References

Chartrand, T. L., & Dalton, A. N. (2009). Mimicry: Its ubiquity, importance, and functionality. In E. Morsella, J. A. Bargh, & P. M. Gollwitzer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of human action, Social cognition and social neuroscience. (pp. 458–483). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press.

Chartrand, T. L., & Lakin, J. L. (2013). The antecedents and consequences of human behavioral mimicry. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 285–308. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-113011-143754

Kurzius, E., & Borkenau, P. (2015). Antecedents and Consequences of Mimicry: A Naturalistic Interaction Approach. European Journal of Personality, 29, 107–124. doi:10.1002/per.1990

Lakin, J. L., & Chartrand, T. L. (2003). Using nonconscious behavioral mimicry to create affiliation and rapport. Psychological Science, 14, 334–339. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.14481


Is cognitive science hypothesis-based or bound to strict experiments involving statistics? When I look at medical journal articles on Google Scholar I see a lot of stuff based on double blind placebo tests. From this, I've gathered that medicine often performs experiments.

I've been in touch with cognitive behavioral psychological therapy, but not enough to say whether psychology is more "philosophical", in being hypothesis based, or instead bound to strict experiments using statistics.

You may want to have a look at our 40 questions to date that use the statistics tag. These may demonstrate the complexity of our applications in statistics. Wikipedia also has an entire psychological statistics page that seems intended to index other pages on specific applications. Psychological experiments commonly test null hypotheses (e.g., $H_0$: the experimental treatment and placebo control conditions will not differ in measures of an outcome variable), so experimental methods and hypothesis testing methods do not exclude one another. Moreover, concern for placebo effects implies a study may be at least loosely related to cognitive-psychology itself, as placebo effects involve cognitive-neuroscience, neurobiology, psychopharmacology, and experimental-psychology, maybe among others. Plenty to read!


What are the different theories about how the brain processes speech? When we heard speech the brain needs to go through a series of steps to go from the received sounds to a mainly conceptual meaning that follows from the words involved. This involves solving a series of problems along the way like moving from sounds into phonemes, then to words and to sentences, to a possibly holistic meaning of the whole speech. How does the brain solves this problem?

I was told there are many theories, but I don't have any names, except what some people call "the oscillatory theory of speech perception" of which I could not find much literature. Do anyone know books and papers that cover this topic, presenting different theories of speech perception, including this "oscillatory" theory?

I will greatly appreciate any linked books and papers.

This question is quite broad and since it seems to be basically a reference request, I will suffice by giving some prominent theories of speech perception with sources and references.

Speech perception theories are grouped into two:

Passive (or non-mediated) theories. These theories mostly focus on finding the identity of certain constant perceptual cues and on the ways the auditory system might extract them from the acoustic signal. These theories are basically filtering theories, and do not involve the mediation of higher cognitive processes in the extraction of these cues. It is assumed that acoustic cues are extracted in the periphery of the auditory system (source: Mannell).
Active (or mediated) theories. These theories suggest that there is no direct relationship between the acoustic signal and the perceived phoneme, but that higher level processes are involved instead that compare input patterns with internal patterns (source: Mannell).

Passive theories

The distinctive feature theory defines a set of acoustic and articulatory features that is used to generate a binary code system of yes/no decisions to allow the identification of speech sounds at a phonemic level (source: Mannell).
The acoustic theory is also based on a set of distinctive features that are largely production based. The distinctive features are assumed to be encoded directly, and passively in the periphery of the auditory system (source: Mannell).

Active theories

The motor theory (or analysis-by-synthesis) assumes that perception and production are closely linked and that motor commands in the brain that control movements of the muscles used to speak, also help us to perceive speech. It claims that humans are equipped with an innately present speech processing 'module' (sources: UC Calgary, Mannell, Libermann & Mattingly (1985)).
The trace theory assumes that there are 3 connected speech perception levels - features, phonemes and words. Facilitation of these levels is assumed to occur through connections between the levels (source: UC Calgary).

Reference
- Libermann & Mattingly Cognition (1985); 21: l-36


Mental rotation test in a virtual environment Parsons et al. (2004) found that the widely reported sex difference in performance in the pen-and-paper mental rotation test could not be reproduced in a virtual environment:

  The visuospatial ability referred to as mental rotation has been shown to produce one of the largest and most consistent sex differences,
  in favor of males, in the cognitive literature. The current study utilizes both a paper-and-pencil version of the mental rotations test (MRT)
  and a virtual environment for investigating rotational ability among 44 adult subjects. Results replicate sex differences traditionally seen
  on paper-and-pencil measures, while no sex effects were observed in the virtual environment. These findings are discussed in terms of task
  demands and motor involvement. Sex differences were also seen in the patterns of correlations between rotation tasks and other neuropsychological
  measures. Current results suggest men may rely more on left hemisphere processing than women when engaged in rotational tasks.

Since VR is much more prevalent now has this result been replicated? And/or is there more insight (say from neuroimaging) on the difference between pen-and-paper and the VR version?

I found a fairly recent redo of the "classic" mental rotation by Foroughi et al (2015) which also reproduced the "classic" results (unlike the study in my question):

  Many studies have found gender differences in mental rotation ability in young adults when completing mental rotation tests on paper and pencil (e.g., Peters et al., 1995; Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). Two previous studies have been unable to replicate these findings when testing mental rotation ability inside of a virtual environment (Parsons et al., 2004; Rizzo et al., 2001). We created a new virtual mental rotation test (VMRT) based on a full, validated test of mental rotation ability (MRT-A; Peters et al., 1995) that 128 participants (79 females) completed while wearing an Oculus Rift DK1. Our data replicate previous findings of paper and pencil tests of mental rotation ability: men scored approximately one standard deviation higher (d = .90) than women.

It's worth noting that the study of Parsons (and also Rizzo, which I didn't know about) both used  ImmersaDesk 3D, but more importantly they differed in methodology from "classics" (pen-and-paper) in that in Parsons' or Rizzo's version wasn't a multiple-choice test, but just a speed of rotation test:

  Additionally, in both studies, a base stimuli
  was presented and then replaced with a working
  stimuli. The dependent variable in these studies was
  the time it took to successfully rotate the working
  stimuli to correctly match the base stimuli.
  However, most of the traditional mental rotation
  tasks showing the gender effect use a comparison based
  test where a base stimuli is presented
  simultaneously with multiple working stimuli that
  may or may not match the base stimuli.(e.g., Peters
  et al., 1995; Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). In these
  studies, participants must then identify which
  stimuli are correct (i.e., accuracy).

After stating their result is in contrast to Parsons' they comment/repeat that

  there are many possible reasons for the differences in results.  First, we replicated a full, validated test of mental rotation (i.e., MRT-A). Additionally, we scored our test for accuracy whereas Rizzo and
  colleagues (2001) and Parsons and colleagues (2004) measured the time to rotate a working stimulus to match a base stimuli. Second, we used a
  newer technology (i.e., Oculus Rift DK1) that may
  have had a higher quality or fidelity facilitating
  performance on the test. Third, the generation of
  participants in our study may be more familiar with
  technology (e.g., smart phones, tablets, etc.) as a
  whole now that technologies are ubiquitous.
   Future research should be directed at
  determining whether scores on the VMRT are
  predictive of performance on tasks inside of VE,
  namely tasks tapping spatial ability.  For example,
  studies have shown new surgeons benefit from
  simulated VE training (e.g., Seymour, 2008;
  Seymour et al., 2002). Visuospatial skills are
  necessary to successfully interact and complete such
  tasks; thus, it would be interesting to determine
  whether scores on the VMRT predict performance
  on a simulated surgery task.

In other words, they reproduced the classic result by more faithfully sticking to the classic paradigm (multiple choice answer) in the virtual version. But it's also not clear how this impacts spatial skills the more usual ways they are used in a virtual environment.


Where do our memories get stored and how are they retrieved again? In one of Karl Lashley's 1950 papers, it is pointed out that information is not stored locally in certain area of the brain. Instead, it's stored distributively over the structure of the brain. I'm curious about how, in detail, is it stored in "structure."

So what's the process when neurons try to encode information "distributively"? How do the brain retrieve these distributed information?

Long-term potentiation (LTP) is thought to be a major mechanism of long-term learning, in which neurons throughout the brain undergo permanent physiological changes (e.g., migration of AMPA receptors to neuronal terminal buttons) that allow maintenance of the memory trace. A simpler version of this would be the famous aphorism (and oversimplication) regarding Hebbian learning -- "cells that fire together wire together."


Has anyone done a thorough comparative review of psychotherapeutic approaches? Have the efficacy of different psychotherapeutic approaches--e.g., ACT, CBT, DBT, Psychodynamic, Humanistic, Behavioral--been compared?

I'm sure each approach may be more or less effective depending on the individual and the issue being addressed, however, even a qualified comparative review would be helpful to a practitioner (or patient).

Does such a review exist?

Yes. The best reviews are done circumscribed to certain areas of focus, like disorder. For example, here is a study that examines the comparative efficacy of all "bona fide" treatments for trauma (e.g., prolonged exposure, EMDR, cognitive therapy, etc): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18055080

There are also wider comparisons, but these are fraught with controversy. Lester Luborsky and colleagues performed one of the first comparative studies in 1975. Their conclusions were that there were few significant differences between in outcomes across different therapies. This became known as the Dodo Bird Effect: "Everybody has won and all must have prizes." You can read more about this here, and also find the long list of comparative studies that have been produced ever since: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict


What is the name of the phenomenon that would make me choose A over B because I was influenced by a trend? I've looked at these 1,2,3 and I don't think they answer my question fully.

Let's say it's election time and I'm on the fence about who to vote for. I see some survey on the news and seeing party A has more vote intentions, it tends to sway my decision towards party A.

Closer to home, I see a question or answer on SE and I may feel swayed to vote +1 or -1 if there are pre-existing votes that have been cast.

What would this phenomenon be called (if there is a name for it other than simple influence or conformity)? Also, can there be a bias for going against what the current trend is?

Bandwagon effect:

  The bandwagon effect is a phenomenon whereby the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others. In other words, the bandwagon effect is characterized by the probability of individual adoption increasing with respect to the proportion who have already done so. As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.

And the reason why you were not completely happy with the other questions you found (mostly on social pressure) is that there's perhaps not a single source of "bias" for the bandwagon effect. Depending on the actual phenomenon studied, social pressure or information cascades make more sense as an explanation for a given instance of the bandwagon effect. At least with respect to SE voting patterns, probably the latter makes a bit more sense. The two causes are probably not mutually exclusive.


How does glial cell activity influence fMRI, EEG signals? Glial cells comprise about 80% of the cells in the human brain. But physiological models of EEG and fMRI often relate only to neuronal activity.

How do glial cells affect large-scale imaging modalities?

Also, does glial activity artifact dye imaging and local field potentials?

Are microscale recordings more sensitive to artifacts due to glial activity than macroscale recordings?

I'm only going to attempt to answer a small part of your question: how does glial activation affect the blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) response measured by fMRI?

Schulz et al. (2012) were able to investigate the role of glial signaling on fMRI activity by simultaneously measuring neuronal responses with invasive optical imaging and fMRI. They found that glial activation prolonged the BOLD response, as shown in this figure:

Here's how they interpret this result:

  Although these glial responses did not initiate vessel dilations, they were associated with prolonged BOLD signals, suggesting a possible contribution to persistent vascular responses.

In other words: they hypothesize that the activity of the glial cells prolongs the dilation of the blood vessels, which is detected as a prolonged BOLD response.


Is dyslexia less common among visually impaired? I couldn't find any information on whether dyslexia is equally prevalent in normally sighted people and among visually impaired people who learned reading and writing through braille?

The term Dyslexia is used to refer to a pattern of learning difficulties
characterized by problems with accurate or fluent word recognition, poor decoding, and poor spelling abilities.

DSM-5 posit: "The learning difficulties are not better accounted for by intellectual disabilities, uncorrected visual or auditory acuity, other mental or neurological disorders, psychosocial adversity, lack of proficiency in the language of academic instruction, or inadequate educational instruction"

This is one of the diagnostic criteria for a "Specific learning disorder".
Accordingly, the answer to your question is no, because in that case we should talk about another deficit.


Can short-term hunger influence anger? We know that hunger, whether short-lived or prolonged, causes physiological changes in our bodies. These may have psychological effects too as brain functions are slowed down and can have an impact on psychological processes. In fact, long-term memory formation can be enhanced by mild food-deprivation (Hirano et al, 2013). If hunger influences brain function, then it may have an effect on our emotional states.

Questions

Therefore, if one is hungry (mild food deprivation), is one more likely to exhibit anger generally more so than if one did not experience the hunger?
Are there any studies demonstrating angry responses positive influenced by hunger in people compared to responses by people who were not hungry?

References

Hirano, Y., Masuda, T., Naganos, S., Matsuno, M., Ueno, K., Miyashita, J.H. & Saitoe, M. (2013). Fasting launches CRTC to facilitate long-term memory formation in drosophila. Science, 339(6118), 443-446

yes, hunger increase philogeneticaly older brain activity and supress prefrontal cortex...
so it could be anger or some other negative affect.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763402000076

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/21/14/5304.short

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/126/6/890/


Experiments demonstrating irreligious people spontaneously developing superstitious rituals? I saw a video in which four adults were led into a room with a digital counter on the wall (see below), and a collection of random objects on the floor: small boxes, hand tools, stuffed animals, random things.

The subjects were instructed to make the counter increment to 229, 230, 231, etc, but they weren't told exactly how. Their only clue was that they must move the objects around, and move their bodies around, and if they did it correctly, the counter would increment.

The subjects tried many things, but it seemed very complicated. Every once in a while it would work, but they couldn't figure out what they had done. Their movements became more and more elaborate, and comical, and it would work sometimes, but never consistently.

After 30 minutes or so, the researchers explained to the subjects that the counter had been set to increment randomly. The subjects only believed they had control, and it led them to engage in complex, ritual-seeming behavior.

I don't remember where I saw the video. Hoping to find it again, I would like to know if there is a name for this type of experiment, a category name, something I can google to find the video again, or anything like it. I've tried quite a few search terms to no avail: "magical thinking", "illusion of control", "rain dance", "causation and ritual", and similar.

Short answer
In accordance with @ArnonWeinberg's comment, I think superstition is the term you are after.

Background
Superstition (e.g., Skinner (1948)) is:

  [A]ny belief or practice that is considered irrational[.] [F]or example [ a belief that] arises from ignorance, a misunderstanding of science or causality, a positive belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which is unknown. "Superstition" also refers to religious beliefs or actions arising from irrationality.

I may, in fact, have found a video fragment of the one you are looking for, using @ArnonWeinberg 's clue in the comments. I searched for

Skinner+Superstition+experiment+In+Humans+Video

And found this this awesome video. I had a good laugh, thanks! Pigeons, a bowl of fish, and a group of funny people trying to find meaning in chaos.

Reference
- Skinner, J Exp Psychol (1948), 38(2): 168-72


Is the weight of neural inputs in the human brain as central as it is for neurons in an artifical neural network? As an example of an artificial neural net (ANN), a neural processing unit (NPU) is able to encode previous (learned) information by storing a weighted resistance for each input. Since ANN's are biologically inspired, I was wondering whether the neurons in the human brain also have a mechanism to set the resistance for electrical current that flows through the neuron. If not, how is information (long term storage) encoded in the brain (for example, a familiar word like "house")?

The general biological term for this kind of mechanism is synaptic plasticity. Synapses are the biological structure that allow neurons to communicate via the exchange of neurotransmitters. The strength of the synapse (the effectiveness of the link between the neurons) can be modified over time.

One important kind of modification is long-term potentiation, first reported by Bliss and Lømo in 1973. They demonstrated that short term bursts of activity in a neural pathway can cause long term augmentation of the post-synaptic response. In artificial neural network terms, they were able to demonstrate something akin to an increase in the connection strength between two neurons.


How common is the form of amnesia depicted in fictional works? There are any number of movies and television shows based on some variation of the same premise:

A character suffers some sort of mishap (the most frequent mishap being a bump on the head), which renders them incapable of remembering who they are.  They assume a new life, often as someone totally different from their former self, hilarity ensues, and eventually, they are cured of their affliction.

The premise is so common that it has become a trope.  Examples include the Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell vehicle Overboard, the movie Muppets Take Manhattan, and too many episodes of television shows to count.

How common is this form of identity amnesia in the real world?  How often does someone forget everything about who they are?

What you are referring to is something called dissociative fugue. It is characterized as an official psychiatric disorder and dissociative disorder in the DSM-5, and its prevalence has been estimated at 0.2%, though it is much more common in connection with wars, accidents, and natural disasters.
The disorder is characterized by reversible amnesia for all aspects of the self: identity, personality, memories, personal history, etc. These episodes of 'fugue' can be caused by stress (in those with the characterized disorder), but similar episodes are not considered to be 'fugue' if they were induced by other factors, such as drug ingestion, head trauma, or other conditions such as dementia. The fugue itself typically lasts anywhere between a few hours and a few days, but can occasionally last a lot longer (up to several months). It usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and in some cases can lead someone to form a new identity.
After recovery, the person typically has no recollection of what happened during their amnesiac state. However, they typically remember everything that they had previously forgotten about their identity. If the episode was caused by a specific stressor (e.g. an abusive figure), the stressor may remain forgotten upon recovery.
For the cases in which the amnesia was caused by a traumatic event, drug use, or physical trauma, then it is usually referred to as retrograde amnesia. Similar to dissociative fugue, those who undergo retroactive amnesia typically make a spontaneous recovery.

Retrograde amnesia usually follows damage to areas of the brain other than the hippocampus (the part of the brain involved in encoding new memories), because already exisiting long-term memories are stored in the neurons and synapses of various different brain regions...It usually results from damage to the brain regions most closely associated with declarative (and particularly episodic) memory, such as the temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex. The damage may result from a cranial trauma (a blow to the head), a cerebrovascular accident or stroke (a burst artery in the brain), a tumour (if it presses against part of the brain), hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the brain), certain kinds of encephalitis, chronic alcoholism, etc.
Retrograde amnesia is often temporally graded, meaning that remote memories are more easily accessible than events occurring just prior to the trauma (sometimes known as Ribot's Law after the 19th Century psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot), and the events nearest in time to the event that caused the memory loss may never be recovered. This is because the neural pathways of newer memories are not as strong as older ones that have been strengthened by years of retrieval and re-consolidation. While there is no actual cure for retrograde amnesia, “jogging” the victim’s memory by exposing them to significant articles from their past will often speed the rate of recall.

(Source)


Psychology of timbre processing Are there any studies concerning the psychological aspects of timbre processing in the brain, e.g. while listening to music? In particular, can any lower-level correlates be discerned when trying to answer questions like:

what makes particular timbres more pleasing than others? (e.g. a trumpet vs pure sine wave)
what accounts for different preferences between people? (e.g. preference for piano sound over trumpet)

For a general discussion of neural correlates of music perception, check out the review by Koelsch et al (2005).

Menon et al (2002) provide a starting point for learning about neural correlates of timbre processing. I quote the abstract. But have a look at the article for more info

  Timbre is a major structuring force in music and one of the most
  important and ecologically relevant features of auditory events. We
  used sound stimuli selected on the basis of previous
  psychophysiological studies to investigate the neural correlates of
  timbre perception. Our results indicate that both the left and right
  hemispheres are involved in timbre processing, challenging the
  conventional notion that the elementary attributes of musical
  perception are predominantly lateralized to the right hemisphere.
  Signiﬁcant timbre-related brain activation was found in well-de- ﬁned
  regions of posterior Heschl’s gyrus and superior temporal sulcus,
  extending into the circular insular sulcus. Although the extent of
  activation was not signiﬁcantly different between left and right
  hemispheres, temporal lobe activations were signiﬁcantly posterior in
  the left, compared to the right, hemisphere, suggesting a functional
  asymmetry in their respective contributions to timbre processing. The
  implications of our ﬁndings for music processing in particular and
  auditory processing in general are discussed.

Halpern et al (2004) provide another relevant study:

  The generality of findings implicating secondary auditory areas in
  auditory imagery was tested by using a timbre imagery task with fMRI.
  Another aim was to test whether activity in supplementary motor area
  (SMA) seen in prior studies might have been related to
  subvocalization. Participants with moderate musical background were
  scanned while making similarity judgments about the timbre of heard or
  imagined musical instrument sounds. The critical control condition was
  a visual imagery task. The pattern of judgments in perceived and
  imagined conditions was similar, suggesting that perception and
  imagery access similar cognitive representations of timbre. As
  expected, judgments of heard timbres, relative to the visual imagery
  control, activated primary and secondary auditory areas with some
  right-sided asymmetry. Timbre imagery also activated secondary
  auditory areas relative to the visual imagery control, although less
  strongly, in accord with previous data. Significant overlap was
  observed in these regions between perceptual and imagery conditions.
  Because the visual control task resulted in deactivation of auditory
  areas relative to a silent baseline, we interpret the timbre imagery
  effect as a reversal of that deactivation. Despite the lack of an
  obvious subvocalization component to timbre imagery, some activity in
  SMA was observed, suggesting that SMA may have a more general role in
  imagery beyond any motor component.

References

Menon, V., Levitin, D. J., Smith, B. K., Lembke, A., Krasnow, B. D., Glazer, D., ... & McAdams, S. (2002). Neural correlates of timbre change in harmonic sounds. Neuroimage, 17(4), 1742-1754. PDF
Halpern, A. R., Zatorre, R. J., Bouffard, M., & Johnson, J. A. (2004). Behavioral and neural correlates of perceived and imagined musical timbre. Neuropsychologia, 42(9), 1281-1292. PDF
Koelsch, S., & Siebel, W. A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(12), 578-584. Koelsch, S., & Siebel, W. A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(12), 578-584. HTML


Where to post online psychology studies for participant recruitment? A common challenge when running psychological studies is getting enough participants.
Of course, there are many general strategies for recruiting participants, but I was specifically interested in forums and web pages that are specifically designed for posting links about online psychological studies.

For a given forum, are there any rules about what can be posted? is there any indication of the likely response rate?

Sites:

The social psychology network has a page for posting online social psychology studies. There are a range of requirements. In particular, it needs to be closely related to social or personality psychology.
SampleSize Subreddit is a community dedicated to completing surveys. They like it when results will be provided at study completion. It has close to 10,000 subscribers at time of posting. I have also seen posts to other subreddits such as the psych subreddit. However, such forums do not always react positively to such postings. If there is particular alignment between the topic and the reddit forum, then there is more likely to be a positive response.
Psychology Research on the Net is a site maintained by Dr John H. Krantz at Hanover College. It lists a lot of different studies.
Online Psychology Research UK contains several hundred studies and is maintained by Dr Kathryn Gardner from University of Central Lancashire.
PsychStudies is maintained by Andrew Thomas from Swansea University.
Psych Forums has a section for posting studies to a section of their forum. However, they do require some form of payment for posting.

General observations

Most of these forums require that you have ethics clearance.

Other strategies

As @lmjohns3 mentions Mechanical Turk is a more general strategy
http://beta.cognilab.com/ looks like it might try to make the process of using Mechanical Turk simpler
Many general purpose forums on the internet have an "off-topic" section, which can be effective if the topic of the study is aligned with the topic of the forum. In particular, I have heard about people getting very large samples when posting research surveys to appropriately themed SubReddits.


Is depression part of who a person is? I have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, commonly known as depression.

Some days ago I had a discussion with my therapist about whether or not depression is part of the person I am. She says that indeed it is and that I should accept it as a part of my being. I should not fight it, but rather accept it. I should not see it as a "demon" trying to mess with my life, but rather as a part of me asking for attention, rising from the dark depths of my mind where I try to bury it. It is a helpess child, my own inner child, crying and asking for help for only apparently no reason, and I should not "beat it up" and yell at it to "go back into its room", but rather ask what's wrong and cuddle it.

I disagree, as I think that I have depression, but I am not my depression. I'm suffering from a depressive episode, but I am not a depressed person, as I am a completely different human being when I'm not going through an episode. I have an illness, I am not my illness. I might come to terms with the fact that I indeed have depression and that I have to deal with it, but this doesn't mean accepting it as a part of me. I fight it as I fight a flu or a cold. I accept the fact that I have come into contact with the virus, I can't be mad for that, I can't just willingly remove it from my body simply because I don't want it, but that illness is not a part of me, though it affects my everyday life and forces me to feel and act in ways I'd rather not.

You might ask to clarify what I mean with "part of who a person is", so let me try to explain further: is depression part of someone's personality, consciousness, temper, character? Or is it, as a disease, a negative and abnormal influence on someone's regular and healthy behavior? Am I someone who tends to be negative, irritable, hopeless, unexplainably sad and tired, self-loathing, apathetic, suicidal, because that's who I am, or do I suffer from such symptoms of my illness?

Depression can be defined as "a state of feeling sad" (Merriam-Webster), which is an emotion or a feeling in the heart.

Depression can develop as a reaction to a thought, demand, event or word someone said to you.

You may have a certain "character" or "temper" that makes you vulnerable for things that hurt you and make you sad. So, it is correct to say that you are not depressed as a person but you may be prone to become depressed when something hits you.

Depression is a feeling and not a disease and it usually does not come from an underlying disease, but from the conflicts in your thoughts, attitudes, believes and relationships - which you can accept or change, as appropriate. Depression can make you stop functioning, which you can call a disease, but depression on its own is not already a disease.


Does the brain's architecture change while growing up? If we are somehow able to record and store all the neural connection in the brain of a child and also the brain of the same individual when he is old will there be difference between the two ?

Is the brain capable to destroy and create neural networks (neurons) on its own, namely to store, process and retrieve memories? Or does it uses a fixed network instead, i.e., the network which each individual is born with )?

If the brain does create new networks, can you please provide a link to the resource where I can read this from ?

Short answer
The brain is a highly dynamic organ that changes constantly through life. During adulthood, there is a general decline in the number of cells. Memory formation is generally thought to be regulated through synaptic connections rather than at the whole-neuron level.

Background
First of all, aging results in a steady decline of the number of nerve cells, so the 'architecture' of the brain changes dramatically regardless its function.

Secondly, memories and other dynamic processes in the brain are typically controlled by altering synaptic connectivity and not so much at the level of the whole-neuron.

Thirdly, neuronal regeneration is confined to but a few areas in the brain, for example the hippocampus where it may, or may not be directly involved in memory formation.

But yes, the brain does dynamically control the synaptic connectivity and notably the synaptic strength of synapses. As Fizz here correctly states, that is called neuroplasticity. Intensive use of certain synaptic connections may result in synaptic strengthening,for example by long-term potentiation (Lynch, 2004). Reversely, abandoned connections may be downregulated through long-term depression.

A general reference work best suited for your basic question would really be a general Neuroscience text book, such as the following online work:

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

Or for something more up-to-date, yet not online, the bible of Neuroscience:

- Kandel et al. (eds.). Principles of Neural Science

Reference
- Lynch, Physiol Rev (2004); 84(1): 87-136


Why are the founding figures of major religious faiths credited with superhuman qualities? The founding figures of various religions are usually believed to have superhuman qualities, such as omniscience, ability to predict the future, impeccable control over their own emotions, invulnerability, miraculous healing powers, and so forth. An absolute conviction about the unquestionability of such beliefs form the bedrock of many religious faiths.

What is the psychology behind such compelling collective beliefs? How does one analyse them in terms of various psychological parameters?

Perhaps the most compelling explanation of the origins of religions using purely psychological explanations is the theory of religious figures having a high incidence of frontal lobe epilepsy. Of course, this doesn't explain their rise in influence and  - which I think should be left to historians since it goes beyond the realm of science that could prove to be reductive and merely speculative in this case.

However, there is a tremendous amount of literature of the psychology of religion, which would be difficult to summarize in one answer. The reason behind this is that this is a multidisciplinary subject involving social psychology, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology and so forth - none that can alone provide a compelling answer. The Wikipedia page on this topic can be very helpful. I have tried to quote some sources regardless:

This quoted paragraph gives a flavor of the different ways to answer this problem. In this case, the author mentions the semantic memory theory of religious transmission:

  Where religious ideas are expressed in words (e.g. transmitted through
  oratory), it is likely that the orators themselves will rise above the
  common herd. Most religious traditions of this sort have cel- ebrated
  leaders, who may take the form of gurus, messiahs, prophets, divine
  kings, high priests, mediums, visionaries, disciples, or simply great
  evangelists or missionaries. The very fact that there are so many
  different types of, and terms for, religious leadership is an index of
  how widespread and important the phenomenon is. Partly through their
  skills as orators, these leaders become marked out as special. But, at
  the same time, their pronouncements (real or attributed) pro- vide the
  central tenets of a belief system, and their deeds become the basis
  for widely-recounted religious narratives, transmitted orally. Both
  forms of knowledge are stored primarily in semantic memory.

Primary Source:

Modes of Religiosity: a cognitive theory of religious transmission.
Whitehouse, H. (2004).
Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

Secondary Sources:

"Religious Thought and Behavior as By-Products of Brain Functions"
Boyer, Pascal.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, pp 119–24

Inside the Cult: Religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea.
Whitehouse, H. (1995).
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

To get a picture of the TLE theory of the origins of religious figures, you should try understanding the behavioral changes caused by Temporal Lobe Epilepsy that involve intense religious experiences and hypergraphia, the intense desire to write - which could account for the cross-cultural production of religious scriptures:

  Revered in some cultures but persecuted by most others, epilepsy
  patients have, throughout history, been linked with the divine,
  demonic, and supernatural. Clinical observations during the past 150
  years support an association between religious experiences during
  (ictal), after (postictal), and in between (interictal) seizures. In
  addition, epileptic seizures may increase, alter, or decrease
  religious experience especially in a small group of patients with
  temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE). Literature surveys have revealed that
  between .4% and 3.1% of partial epilepsy patients had ictal religious
  experiences; higher frequencies are found in systematic questionnaires
  versus spontaneous patient reports. Religious premonitory symptoms or
  auras were reported by 3.9% of epilepsy patients. Among patients with
  ictal religious experiences, there is a predominance of patients with
  right TLE. Postictal and interictal religious experiences occur most
  often in TLE patients with bilateral seizure foci. Postictal religious
  experiences occurred in 1.3% of all epilepsy patients and 2.2% of TLE
  patients. Many of the epilepsy-related religious conversion
  experiences occurred postictally. Interictal religiosity is more
  controversial with less consensus among studies. Patients with
  postictal psychosis may also experience interictal hyper-religiosity,
  supporting a "pathological" increase in interictal religiosity in some
  patients.

Primary Source:

Spirituality and religion in epilepsy.
Devinsky O1, Lai G.
Epilepsy Behav. May 2008 ; 12(4):636-43.

Secondary Sources:

"Norman Geschwind's contribution to the understanding of behavioral changes in temporal lobe epilepsy: the February 1974 lecture".
Devinsky J, Schachter S (August 2009)
Epilepsy Behav (Biography, History article) 15 (4): 417–24.

"Hypergraphia in temporal lobe epilepsy. 1974."
Waxman, SG; Geschwind, N (March 2005).
Epilepsy & behavior : E&B 6 (2): 282–91.


Open data for behavioral psychology experiment? I have a model I'd like to compare to the Drift Diffusion model, which is commonly used to model response times and error rates in two-alternative forced-choice tasks.  Lots of publications use the random dot motion task like this [1] or this [2] and collect response-time data.

My question is - does anyone know of publicly available response time datasets that I could use for model comparison?

[1] https://neuronaldynamics.epfl.ch/online/Ch16.S1.html

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Random-dot-motion-task-a-An-array-of-dots-is-moving-into-random-directions-with-a_fig2_226279128

There are some example data sets associated with these tutorials https://osf.io/pbwx8/

See 'get_all_data.R' in the tutorial subdirectory.

You might also be interested in some of the surrounding discussion, which is all about  the process of comparing new models with the existing ones.

Hope this helps!


Are schizophrenia and OCD genetically related? Schizophrenia has a genetic component.

Persons with OCD and first parents having OCD have a higher probability to develop schizophrenia.

So, it seems that a possible overlap exists between schizophrenia and OCD. And I found this paper dealing with the genetic aspect of the relation.

So it seems like there can be a possible relation between schizophrenia and OCD, but I cannot find enough research to support it.

So, my question is: is there a definitive genetic correlation between schizophrenia and OCD?

Yes, there is almost certainly a genetic overlap between schizophrenia and OCD.

Quantifying the overlap in variation requires genotyping a large number of individuals, and a lot of this cross-disorder work is done by consortia. The Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium estimated the genetic correlation due to common polymorphisms between ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity), BPD (bipolar), SCZ (schizophrenia), MDD (major depression), and ASD (autism spectrum) (Wray, N.R. et al. 2013). Their key findings may interest you:

  The genetic correlation calculated using common SNPs was high between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (0.68 ± 0.04 s.e.), moderate between schizophrenia and major depressive disorder (0.43 ± 0.06 s.e.), bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder (0.47 ± 0.06 s.e.), and ADHD and major depressive disorder (0.32 ± 0.07 s.e.), low between schizophrenia and ASD (0.16 ± 0.06 s.e.) and non-significant for other pairs of disorders as well as between psychiatric disorders and the negative control of Crohn's disease.

But OCD wasn't on their list, likely because not as many cases have been genotyped for OCD as for the five disorders listed. A review in Science from 2015 shows the number of cases involved in the largest genome-wide association study for each of 13 classes of psychiatric disorder at that time, including OCD, for which 1,889 subjects had been genotyped (Geschwind, D. H. & Flint, J., 2015). Most likely, as the sample size of OCD cases increases, OCD will be incorporated into the PGC's cross-disorder studies.

A recent study used the PGC SCZ data plus data collected from 370 Spanish OCD cases to estimate the shared polygenic risk between the two disorders. They claim that SCZ polygenic risk from the PGC data explains 3.7% of the phenotypic variance in their OCD data, which represents an overlap in the genetics (Costas, J., et al., 2016).

This study's results likely underestimate the true genetic correlation between the disorders for two reasons: 1) the sample sizes to date for OCD have been too small to identify genome-wide significant GWAS hits, so our understanding of OCD genetics still has quite a way to go, and 2) this study focused on exonic regions, while most of the polygenic risk for psychiatric disease is not found in exons.

References

Costas, J., Carrera, N., Alonso, P., Gurriarán, X., Segalàs, C., Real, E., López-Solà, C., Mas, S., Gassó, P., Domènech, L., Morell, M., Quintela, I., Lázaro, L., Menchón, J. M., Estivill, X. & Carracedo, Á., 2016. Exon-focused genome-wide association study of obsessive-compulsive disorder and shared polygenic risk with schizophrenia. Translational Psychiatry, 6(768).DOI: 10.1038/tp.2016.34

Geschwind, Daniel H. & Flint J., 2015. Genetics and genomics of psychiatric disease. Science 349(6255), pp. 1489-1494.DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa8954

Wray, Naomi R. and The Cross-Disorder Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, 2013. Genetic relationship between five psychiatric disorders estimated from genome-wide SNPs. Nature Genetics 45, pp. 984–994DOI: 10.1038/ng.2711


What is the history of self-experimentation in cognitive science? I am looking for a source on the history of self-experimentation in the cognitive sciences, or experimental psychology in general. I am specifically interested in knowing when it stopped being the norm.

The Wikipedia article on self-experimentation has no sources for psychology.

Short answer
Based on the general developments in drug and medical device development research, 1970 was a major milestone, as randomized controlled trials were marked as compulsory for new drugs to be marketed through the FDA regulations.

Background
The question is quite broad, but in terms of clinical trials I can say that since 1970 the FDA required that drug producers submit randomized controlled trials (RCTs) results with new drug applications, heralding a new era of the RCT in drug approval regulations (Meldrum (2000); Bothwell & Podolsky (2016)). An RCT is defined as

  [A] type of scientific (often medical) experiment which aims to reduce bias when testing a new treatment. The people participating in the trial are randomly allocated to either the group receiving the treatment under investigation or to a group receiving standard treatment (or placebo treatment) as the control. Randomization minimizes selection bias [...]. The RCT is often considered the gold standard for a clinical trial.

Now you are referring to questions on Cognitive Sciences or Psychology in general. Drug research and medical device investigations include the widely used psychoneuropharmaceuticals such as the antidepressants and antipsychotics, as well as medical devices such as deep brain stimulators and sensorineural implants to treat e.g.., epilepsy and deafness/blindness, respectively. All of these can be included in the disciplines of Cognitive Sciences and Psychology.

References
- Bothwell & Podolsky, N Engl J Med (2016); 375: 501-04
- Meldrum, Hematology/Oncology Clinics of North America (2000);
14(4): 745-60


Impaired verbal communication, but normal reading and writing skills? Is there any cognitive disability or disfunction that impairs both speech production and listening comprehension, while reading and writing skills are at a normal level or better?

Just a reminder that Stack Exchange is not an appropriate place to get a diagnosis; a vague description of symptoms may indicate a variety of possible outcomes.  See a doctor instead.  That said:

One general term for disorders that affect some language modalities and not others, when the cause is psychological rather than physical (ie, not deafness, muscle weakness, paralysis, etc), is aphasia:

  To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's speech or language must be
  significantly impaired in one (or several) of the four communication
  modalities following acquired brain injury or have significant decline
  over a short time period (progressive aphasia). The four communication
  modalities are auditory comprehension, verbal expression, reading and
  writing, and functional communication.

Aphasia is most commonly associated with stroke or dementia, and several sub-types involve both speech production and verbal comprehension difficulties, while not necessarily affecting reading or writing abilities.

Other diagnoses are also possible, as language disorders may consist of a combination of a variety of possible aspects of language ability, while not affecting others.  For example, children with both receptive (comprehension) and expressive (speech) delays may be diagnosed with specific language impairment (SLI):

  ... diagnosed when a child's language does not develop normally and
  the difficulties cannot be accounted for by generally slow
  development, physical abnormality of the speech apparatus, autism
  spectrum disorder, apraxia, acquired brain damage or hearing loss.

Though relatively rarely, it is possible for literacy to be largely unaffected by SLI.

Additionally, comorbidity is also possible, such as a combination of speech agnosia and apraxia, and if other symptoms are present, then yet other diagnoses would apply, such as autism, where again, it is possible for some language skills (such as verbal communication) to be impaired while others (such as literacy) are largely unaffected.

For a general overview of the field, see speech and language impairment and communication disorder.  A summary of technical terminology used to classify symptoms can be found here.


Just because masturbation doesn't interfere with everyday life, why aren't higher rates considered an addiction? The common theme in most studies/articles about masturbation is that as long as the act does not interfere with everyday life, it's not considered a problem.

However, just because it doesn't interfere with everyday life, why is frequent NOT considered an addiction?

(For example, some people are addicted to marijuana or cocaine but are still functional, however, it is still an addiction.)

  This depends on the age, health, and personal needs of a guy. For
  instance, a survey on a popular masturbation site found that the
  average 13-year-old masturbates three times a day with over 10 percent
  masturbating over 6 times!

It sounds pretty clear that there is a strong, overpowering urge (regardless of reason) that has the individual repeating the act, in some cases many times a day.

So just because they can still get to work or turn in assignments at school/college, why is this not an addiction?

Ref. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_often_do_most_males_masturbate

The frequency of a behavior is not what makes that behavior an addiction.

For example, take walking. Most people take hundreds, if not thousands of steps each day. Nevertheless walking is not considered an addiction in most cases. Why? It is not something that the organism must do to survive, it is a voluntary behavior, yet no-one would think you addicted to walking because you did not take the elevator or did not drive the 400 yards to the supermarket. On the contrary, it is generally recommended to walk whenever you can, for reasons of health.

The urge for a behavior does not make that behavior an addiction, either.

For example, most people feel a strong urge to eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and none of these behaviors are considered an addiction. Maybe sexuality is a physical need, and in the absence of a partner masturbation is better than "going hungry"?

The problem with masturbation is that even scientists find it difficult to look at it neutrally, because it is hard not to see it through the filter of our cultural norms on sexuality. Walking is not a taboo, it can be done in public and with anyone you want. Eating and sleeping can be done in public, although to a lesser degree, and even defecating is not suppressed with the same vehemence as sexuality: a man urinating against a tree in a park is not something you find overly idyllic, but most people would not call the police, because they know how it hurts to hold in, while a man masturbating in the same spot will find himself arrested rather quickly. Masturbation has been forbidden by religious rules, thought to cause illnesses, and today has the stigma of presumably signifying an inability to find a partner.

Once you strip away the morals and prejudices and look at masturbation with a cold eye, you will realize that many children indulge in it and only take a break while they are dressed. Children stop masturbating (in the presence of witnesses) only if they experience negative reactions to their behavior, i.e. only once they learn the norm that masturbation is something to be ashamed of.

It is this normative view from which a masturbating teenager might appear addicted. For the scientist, masturbation is a normal and healthy behavior, especially in a 13 year old teenager, who has gained a new function and a new level of sensory pleasure. For the scientist, it appears unnatural not to explore this ability.

As for masturbation in adults, as far back as 1948 Kinsey found that masturbation alleviates nervous tension and that men who masturbate lead a more balanced life. Sexuality appears not as voluntary as riding a bike, but rather has strong physiological and psychological effects that make sex appear to be normal and healthy behavior for an adult human being.

And if we have come to consider sleep lengths between four and twelve hours to be perfectly normal for adults of our species, why would we not be equally broadminded regarding sexuality? Maybe because indulging in any kind of pleasure is frowned upon in our performance-oriented society?

Sources:

Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., & Martin, C. E. (1948). Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.


What is the effect of mindfulness practice on cognition? The following article by ScienceDaily reported on a paper in Psychological Science (Mrazek et al., 2013), claiming that mindfulness training led to improved working memory and GRE scores. These studies always pique my interest, but there is always some hole in it that makes me think "Waait a minute!"

In the case of the present study, my concern is that participants in the experimental condition were required to practice mindfulness in their daily lives, while those in the control nutrition condition were not required to alter their diet. The concern is whether the improvement came from practicing mindfulness, or from practicing something, but this is not my area, and it could be that prior research has already accounted for that somehow. Usually I would leave it at that, but this seems well suited for my first CSci.SE question.

My full question is thus: What is the state of the field regarding the effect of practicing meditation on cognition, over and above other forms of practice?

References

  Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797612459659

General Review of Mindfulness Meditation on Cognitive Performance

There is a review article Chiesa et al (2011) which would provide a good starting point. They review 23 studies looking at the effect of mindfulness meditation on performance on objective cognitive tests.

  Twenty
  three studies providing measures of attention, memory, executive
  functions and further miscellaneous measures of cognition were
  included. Fifteen were controlled or randomized controlled studies and
  8 were case–control studies. Overall, reviewed studies suggested that
  early phases of mindfulness training, which are more concerned with
  the development of focused attention, could be associated with
  signiﬁcant improvements in selective and executive attention whereas
  the following phases, which are characterized by an open monitoring of
  internal and external stimuli, could be mainly associated with
  improved unfocused sustained attention abilities. Additionally, MMPs
  could enhance working memory capacity and some executive functions.
  However, many of the included studies show methodological limitations
  and negative results have been reported as well, plausibly reﬂecting
  differences in study design, study duration and patients' populations.
  Accordingly, even though ﬁndings here reviewed provided preliminary
  evidence suggesting that MMPs could enhance cognitive functions,
  available evidence should be considered with caution and further high
  quality studies investigating more standardized mindfulness meditation
  programs are needed.

In general I take a very sceptical perspective on the potential capacity of mindfulness meditation to improve cognitive performance. A lot of research shows that IQ is difficult to manipulate, and that much of what we learn is domain specific and is developed by practicing or learning about that particular domain. That said, I would be somewhat more open to the idea that mindfulness meditation might improve capacity for attention or motivation control.

Review of Mrazek et al

The study used several measures of cognitive performance. Notably verbal GRE and working memory were both used. Significantly greater improvements (pre versus post) were found in the mindfulness condition relative to the control nutrition condition.

I am generally sceptical that mindfulness meditation could lead to a lasting improvement of something as grand as a verbal ability factor. While it is possible that the program was effective, I would expect there is an alternative explanation.

The first issue is the small sample size (albeit the pre-post element of the design is good). There were only 48 participants. There has been ample discussion of issues with small sample experimental studies like this. It is easier for small sample studie to be conducted, and therefore they are more likely to be published when effective. Type 1 error is an explanation. Likewise, without wanting to cast dispersions on any one study, broadly there is greater potential in small sample studies for little analysis decisions to dramatically increase the potential for a Type I error rate to arise (see for example the discussion of the effect of flexibility in data analysis by Simmons et al 2011).

Similarly, even in the absence of any flexible analytic strategies, there still is the publication bias towards statistically significant and interesting findings.

Mindfulness participants appear to have improved verbal GRE accuracy from around 43% to around 53%. This is probably close to a one standard deviation improvement in verbal ability. Even if mindfulness meditation was effective, it seems a little implausible to expect such a large increase given how presumably an equivalent increase might take three or four years of education to achieve with traditional means.

Even if the finding was replicable, an alternative interpretation would be that the effect was due to some form of effort related factors that varied based on condition (e.g., some form of placebo - effort interaction).

Putting the small sample to one side, this appears to be a well-designed study. That said, based on my prior understanding of mechanisms of cognitive change and the many alternative interpretations mentioned above for the findings, I am not persuaded that mindfulness meditation is effective in changing verbal ability.

References

Chiesa, A., Calati, R., & Serretti, A. (2011). Does mindfulness training improve cognitive abilities? A systematic review of neuropsychological findings. Clinical psychology review, 31(3), 449-464. PDF
Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797612459659
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D., & Simonsohn, U. (2011). False-Positive Psychology Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant. Psychological Science, 22(11), 1359-1366.


Is there actually a correlation between emotional trauma and homosexuality One of the key talking points I hear to disparage homosexuality is that it stems from "a lack of a strong male figure" or some variation of that, putting aside the obvious irrelevancy of argument. I still am curious, is there any truth to the idea that trauma is correlated with homosexuality? And if so, can someone elaborate on it ie. is it equal across both genders? Does it result in Bisexuality or Gay more often? etc

The widely accepted answer to this question is that homosexuality is not a choice but science has no concrete answer as to exactly why people are homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual (or any other sexual orientations that one may identify with).

The Wikipedia page, Homosexuality, offers many great references and indicates that science has not definitive answer for what the 'cause' of homosexuality, only that it may be an interplay between generics, hormones, and environment.


What human factors play part in traffic congestion? Traffic congestion is a daily phenomenon that costs people a lot of time, is bad for the environment and may even cost some money. There are many obvious causes for traffic congestion, such as the amount of cars, size of the road, situational factors on the road such as accidents etc.(e.g. this blog or (Wiki).

It seems that increasing the capacity of the road capacity is not a solution to the problem, since it only appears to attract more users (Arnott and Small, 1994). Therefore, I was thinking whether there were any other factors that could influence congestion. It is obvious that each car has a human drive (well almost each car). Perhaps, their behavior could likely also play part in causing congestion.

Is there any scientific evidence that behavioral factors (e.g. excessive de- and acceleration or lane switching) may promote/prevent traffic congestion?

References

Arnott, R., & Small, K. (1994). The economics of traffic congestion. American scientist, 446-455.

Kesting, Treiber and Helbing (2000) created an Intelligent Driving Model (IDM) based on actual data on the German highway. The model is a single lane model, assuming that the trailing car tries to fixate the distance of the leading car by accelerating and decelerating only.

From Kesting, Treiber and Helbing (2008):

  The IDM acceleration is a continuous function incorporating different driving modes for all velocities in freeway traffic as well as city traffic. Besides the distance to the leading vehicle s and the actual speed v, the IDM also takes into account velocity differences ∆v, which play an essential stabilizing role in real traffic, especially when approaching traffic jams and avoiding rear-end collisions (see Fig. 3). The IDM acceleration function is given by:

work in progress. To be continued


Is the desire to impress others a major goal? Is the desire to impress others a goal of everyone?

Does a person get a job, go to the gym, etc., to signal worthiness of another person's approval?

In their classic work, Crowne and Marlowe (1964) conceived of a new psychological construct, the "need for approval". Approval motivation (as it is also called), while present or absent in varying degree in different individuals, is based on the common fundamental human need "to form and maintain strong, stable interpersonal relationships", the "need to belong" (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Individuals with a high need for approval behave in a way that they perceive to be socially desirable, with the intention to be accepted into a group or culture and not rejected.

Approval motivation is measured with the Marlowe-Crowne scale that consists of 18 items that, Crowne remembers (1991), seemed so extreme to the two researchers, "that few people could agree to them. But if they did, we thought, their endorsement would have to reflect a potent motive to respond in a socially desirable manner." One sample item is: "No matter who I'm talking to, I'm always a good listener." Note the modifier "always".

Sources:

Baumeister, R. F., & Leary, M. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497 Available online at http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/the_need_to_belong-_desire_for_interpersonal_attachments_as_a_fundamental__human_motivation.pdf
Crowne, D. P. (1991). From response style to motive. Current Contents, 16, 18. Available online at http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1991/A1991FW06500001.pdf
Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1964). The approval motive: Studies in evaluative dependence. New York: Wiley.


What do depressants treat? Are they used in bipolar to treat mania? I don't understand the Wikipedia article on depressants.

This is what I have gathered:

Depression and anxiety disorders are treated by antidepressants.
Narcolepsy, ADHD, obesity, smoking addiction, lethargy are treated by stimulants.
The opposite class drug of a depressant is a stimulant not an antidepressant.

So what do depressants treat? Bipolar? Mania? Impulse control disorders? I couldn't find any articles on treating bipolar with depressants. What I have found are Lithium and mood stabilisers.

The Wikipedia article said depressants can treat OCD, anxiety or depression. Why? This seems a little odd for terminology. Depression is treated with a depressant?

Depressants belong to a general class of drugs that decrease activity in one or more parts of the nervous system. Depression in the usual sense of the word comprises a particular subset of depressed states, particulars as it refers to lack of happiness or drive. Not all depressed states are considered depression in the common sense of the word. Similarly, not all stimulated states are the opposite of this depression. Different parts of the brain can be depressed or stimulated, and the affects of these effects come in many forms and resulting psychological states. Generally speaking, a depressant can be used to treat a condition if that particular depressant decreases activity in a part of the nervous system that is overactive in that condition. Anxiety, as you have mentioned, is a prime example condition where one part of the brain is overactive, for which certain depressant drugs can calm that part of the brain to effect relief from the anxiety. If a particular case of depression is caused by overactivity in one or more brain regions, then it could in theory be possible to treat that depression using depressants that decrease activity in those particular brain regions. The key thing to keep in mind here is that mental depression can be caused by over or underactivity in various brain regions, so there is a possibility of using either specific types of stimulants or specific types of depressants to effect relief.


Do people who experience a psychotic episode ever go back to normal? Do people who experience a fully blown psychotic episode ever go back to their pre-psychosis self?

Short answer

Because some neuroses can involve psychotic episodes, it depends on the cause of the psychotic behaviour.

Longer Answer

When looking at the difference between neuroses and psychoses, although BPD, Bipolar Disorder and PTSD are generally neuroses, they can involve psychotic episodes in some cases.

For example, with Bipolar Disorder (Mind, 2018):

  Psychotic symptoms can include:

  delusions, such as paranoia
  hallucinations, such as hearing voices

  Not everyone with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder experiences psychosis, but some people do. It's more common during manic episodes, but can happen during depressive episodes too. These kinds of experiences can feel very real to you at the time, which may make it hard to understand other people's concerns about you.

Psychotic episodes in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) can involve flashbacks (the sense of being back at the traumatic event) through hallucinations affecting touch, taste, smell, sound and sight either affecting one of the senses or a combination of them.

Once the PTSD or Bipolar Disorder has been resolved through the relevant treatment required, the psychotic effects will not return as the underlying cause has been sorted, and the person will "go back to their pre-psychosis self".

If the psychosis is a "pure" psychosis such as Schizophrenia, the problem cannot be cured, but the psychosis can be managed with medication and psychiatric help (Schizophrenia Society of Canada, n.d.).  Schizophrenia requires lifelong treatment, even when symptoms have subsided (Mayo Clinic, 2018).

Minimizing the impact of the illness depends mainly on early diagnosis and, appropriate psychosocial treatment and medication.  One problem with this is that people with schizophrenia sometimes lack insight into their illness, and therefore do not see the need for medication or other mental health help. Also, medication sometimes has unpleasant side effects and this may discourage individuals from continuing to follow their prescription.

References

Mayo Clinic (2018). Schizophrenia Diagnosis & Treatment[Online]Retrieved from: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/schizophrenia/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20354449

Mind (2018). Bipolar Mood Symptoms [Online]Retrieved from: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/bipolar-disorder/bipolar-moods-symptoms

Schizophrenia Society of Canada (n.d.). Frequently Asked Questions [Online]Retrieved from: http://www.schizophrenia.ca/faq.php


Does the brain stop processing data when the eyes move? I was reading this question and remember back to the 70s when our local newspaper changed formats. In an article about why they made the changes that they did, one of the points they mentioned was that by making the columns narrower, you would retain more because the brain didn't process the words when the eyes were moving.

Over the past few years working in instructional design, I've often wanted to cite a reference for my newspaper's statement, or at the very least a reference that debunks it. I've been unsuccessful finding anything on google, but I'm not sure if I'm asking the right questions or not. It may very well be that this was a theory in the 70's, since disproven, junk science, or something very real for which I've not stumbled upon the right search terms.

In any case, it seems to me that I'm the only person in the world whose ever heard this idea, and I'd like to find some reference, positive or negative, to it. Can anyone direct me to some research on the topic?

I'm sorry you happened upon that research from the 70s. Should it have been true those with Nystagmus (constant involuntary eye movement) would never learn anything so it must be in a general sense false.
Here is a current thoughts and research into the subject:

Eye movement-related brain activity during perceptual and cognitive processing
For several decades researchers have been recording electrical brain activity associated with eye movements in attempt to understand their neural mechanisms. However, recent advances in eye-tracking technology have allowed researchers to use eye movements as the means of segmenting the ongoing brain activity into episodes relevant to cognitive processes in scene perception, reading, and visual search. This opened doors to uncovering the active and dynamic neural mechanisms underlying perception, attention and memory in naturalistic conditions. The present eBook contains a representative collection of studies from various fields of visual neuroscience that use this cutting edge approach of combining eye movements and neural activity.
The majority of the articles in the eBook combine the measurement of eye movements with the recording of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in human subjects performing various psychological tasks. The most common methodological approach is examination of the EEG activity time-aligned to certain eye movement events, such as the onset of a fixation or a start of a saccadic eye movement (Fischer et al., 2013; Frey et al., 2013; Henderson et al., 2013; Hutzler et al., 2013; Nikolaev et al., 2013; Richards, 2013; Simola et al., 2013). Several works employ the time-frequency and synchrony analysis (Fischer et al., 2013; Hoffman et al., 2013; Ito et al., 2013; Nakatani and Van Leeuwen, 2013; Nakatani et al., 2013).


for a persistent perceptual experience, why is video able to have a lower frame rate than audio? In film, images are typically shown to us at around 24 frames per second, but modern sound files will often have 44100 or 48000 samples per second.
There's a threshold above ~12 fps where we will perceive successive frames as unified motion instead of individual pictures (c.f. phi phenomenon, persistence of vision, beta movement). But to get this unified experience in the auditory domain, we need a much higher "framerate". Why is this?

Sound is pressure waves; young humans can hear (aka, detect pressure waves) up to about 20 kHz. To produce these high frequency waves with a speaker with a time-domain signal, it is necessary to have a sampling rate at least 2x the highest frequency that will be represented. In practice, those very high frequencies aren't included in music, and definitely aren't included in speech, so ~44kHz is sufficient. There is a membrane inside the cochlea that is structured to vibrate at different frequencies along its length. At the higher frequencies, neurons don't actually respond to every sound wave, they respond to the envelope, so it is possible to respond to frequencies much higher than the frequencies that neurons can even fire at.

Vision depends on detection of photons. A photon hits a photosensitive molecule in a photoreceptor in the retina, which causes a chemical change. That changed chemical binds to a protein, which causes a cascade of events that ultimately causes a change in the release of a neurotransmitter. Vision is slow: the cascade in response to a single photon takes on the order of 100s of milliseconds. We can detect things a bit faster than that because the visual system responds to changes so the slope of that response is a relevant feature, but overall this slow process means that light information is low-pass filtered. As long as a signal is sufficiently faster than this low-pass filter, differences between a frame-by-frame versus a smooth signal are mostly not noticed. However, it isn't true that 24 frames per second is a limit. Modern monitors often operate much faster, such as 60-144Hz, because these faster frame rates are important for perception of smooth motion at high speeds. Slower frame rates are sufficient when changes are small, however.

In nature, a lot of things vibrate a high frequencies into the 1000s of Hz, so there are good evolutionary reasons to detect high frequency sounds. However, very few things move at those speeds, and those that do are typically not behaviorally relevant (e.g., you don't need to see every sweep of an insect's wings to detect it as an insect).


What is the relative importance of shape and color in object recognition? Do people recognize objects faster when both shape and color are present? Can color introduce more cognitive load to identify the object?
Let's say there is a row of icons. Users need to quickly (no more than 3 seconds) decide which icon to click on. Which icon configuration would lead to quicker decision making?

shape only (no color)
shape and color

Do people react to color or shape first?

People are generally faster to find a dissimilar stimulus when it differs along two dimensions (color+shape) from the rest, but only if they are looking for those dimensions (e.g. find all objects that are red diamonds is faster than find all objects that are red). However, if they are looking for dimensions which are not present, this effect reverses (e.g. find all objects that are not blue is faster than find all objects that are not blue circles).

The reasons behind this are still a matter of debate, but one model (Buckingham et al, 2012) suggests that the best explanation is that both dimensions are processed simultaneously. See here for more information on why this model fits the data: Two perceptual anomalies explained by a statistically optimal model.

Buckingham, S., de Gardelle, V., Avery, S., & Summerfield, C. (2012). Two perceptual anomalies explained by a statistically optimal model. Journal of Vision, 12(9), 1053-1053.


How are tactile pleasure and pain differentiated in the somatosensory cortex? A recent question here  asked about (mostly) how pain and pleasure are differentiated in pathways involving reward/aversion cues. But there was some confusion as to what the question really wanted to ask as it also mentioned "somatosensory mapping".
A reasonably different but also good question is how are pleasure and pain decoded before it gets to any feedback/reinforcement pathways, i.e. how are pain and pleasure distinguished in the somatosensory cortex. This discussion probably involves considering the way such stimuli are transmitted/encoded from the peripheral nervous system, (e.g. Lloyd, et al. 2015)

The skin senses serve a discriminative function, allowing us to manipulate objects and detect touch and temperature, and an affective/emotional function, manifested as itch or pain when the skin is damaged. Two different classes of nerve fibre mediate these dissociable aspects of cutaneous somatosensation: (i) myelinated A-beta and A-delta afferents that provide rapid information about the location and physical characteristics of skin contact; and (ii) unmyelinated, slow-conducting C-fibre afferents that are typically associated with coding the emotional properties of pain and itch. However, recent research has identified a third class of C-fibre afferents that code for the pleasurable properties of touch - c-tactile afferents or CTs.

To keep answers to this question reasonably short, let's ask just how is tactile pleasure distinguished from (tactile) pain in the brain.
References
Lloyd, D. M., McGlone, F. P., & Yosipovitch, G. (2015). Somatosensory pleasure circuit: from skin to brain and back. Experimental dermatology, 24(5), 321-324. doi: 10.1111/exd.12639Free Full Text: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/exd.12639Free PDF: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/exd.12639

Obviously, pain and touch receptors are represented by entirely different receptors in the skin, i.e. nociceptors and mechanoreceptors, respectively. Each has physically different afferents that carry the signal to the brain. Pleasant touch is mediated by C-tactile afferents to the brain, represented by low-threshold non-myelinated C-fibers (Nees et al., 2019. Pain is mainly mediated via Aδ and C fibers (Beissner et al., 2010). Hence, different afferent pathways to the S1 exist from the periphery to the brain.
Once in the brain, there is no such thing as a single localized 'pain center', as proposed by Descartes in the early days (Ha, 2000). In fact, SI cannot be called the 'pain center', as ablation of this cortical region leads to an altered perception of pain, rather than its disappearance (Backonja, 1996). Pain perception involves many more brain centers, including S2, and those involved in higher cognitive and emotional-motivational processes, such as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the ventral striatum (VS), and the insular cortex (Nees et al., 2019.
In the brain, pleasant touch seems mediated by a set of brain regions overlapping with that of pain, involving the insula, considered to be the primary somatovisceral cortex and connections to the striatum (Migliorini et al., 2013) and ACC. Interestingly, however, pleasant touch was also shown to activate the nucleus accumbens (Kreuder et al., 2017).
In all, to me it seems the pathways largely overlap centrally, barred the activation of the nucleus accumbens for pleasurable tactile stimuli, which is consistent with it being a pleasure center. I think there must be specific connections that are separated very early in the very periphery through a different set of skin receptors that signal to different neurons in brain regions that largely overlap between the two modalities.
References
- Backonja, Pain Forum (1996); 5(3): 174-80
- Beissner et al., Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences 2nd ed., 2014
- Ha, MSc thesis, McGill University, Montreal, 2000
- Kreuder et al., Human Brain Mapping (2017); 38(9): 4525-34
- Migliorini et al., Drug and Alcohol Dependence (2013); 133(2): 661-8
- Nees et al., Neurobiology of Pain (2019); 5: 100025


Are inhibitory synapses the cause of not doing something? Imagine you are driving your car, in front of you, you see a wall. What prevents us from driving against the wall? Is this accomplished by the brain having inhibitory synapses established here?

Inhibitory synapses allows one brain region to suppress activity in another. Since the car is in motion per the laws of motion and momentum, it would be incorrect to say that suppressing one brain region would cause the car to stop moving toward the wall. The closest thing would be if those inhibitory synapses caused one part of your brain to inhibit the part that causes your foot to press the accelerator pedal. For example, dopaminergic neural processes from the basal ganglia (particularly the substantia nigra) indeed suppress motor impulse indirectly (see here and here). However, more activity than simply releasing the pedal is required in most cases to avoid hitting something. In short, you most certainly need both inhibitory and excitatory synapses to help you avoid running into something on the road or on your path as you walk. These functions are probably very complex, involving a great many of both types of synapses in several brain regions.

It is important to remember that many if not most neural circuits are primarily for very specific actions in the body or mind. Most "actions" in the common sense that a person can undertake are the result of a great many action potentials in the brain. Perhaps in some very small (such as microscopic) creatures, a single action potential is needed to initiate an activity such as feeding, but larger creatures with bigger brains have so many neural pathways that most observable actions of the animal require many internal actions of the processing system.


How to efficiently locate existing psychology and social science measures? Whenever I start a new research project, I typically have to find questions and scales that have proven validity in measuring constructs of interest (e.g., psychological / political science / social science scales). This can often be quite time consuming, and often there are issues of cost and copyright to consider.

Questions

What are general tips for efficiently and cost effectively locating measures for a given construct?
Are there any databases that make it easy to locate such measures?
Is there anything like a StackOverflow/PatternLibrary/Best Practices compendium of measures or advice on locating measures?

The APA has a general tutorial on finding psychological tests with a range of tips.

Finding measures

PsychTESTS is a new product by the APA that aims to make it easier to find psychological tests. It is a subscription service. Thus, you would probably have to pay for it yourself or get it through a university or other body that subscribes to it
Read the method sections of the articles that you are incorporating in your introduction and literature review. If you are going to do research you'll need to familiarise yourself with existing research. See what measures have been used in the past.
Ask a question on cogsci.se: Well formulated questions asking for recommendations for measuring particular psychological constructs are welcome on this site.

Measures on a budget

Some tests are free to use. Academics and others often make such tests available on their website (e.g., the IPIP).
For tests developed by academics, you can often just contact the academic by email and ask for permission to use the test. Be clear, be polite, be professional. In some cases they might ask that you share any data from the test with them.
For commercial tests, you may wish to contact the publishers to find out whether they permit free or discounted use for research purposes.

Whether to create your own test

Also as a general point, there is often a decision between whether to buy a test or build your own. Sometimes, the construct being measured is sufficiently novel, that there is no existing measure. However, if the construct does have an established and validated measure, there are strong arguments to use it. Building a well validated psychological test takes substantial time and resources.


Is there any chromatic analogue of the Shepard tone? Is there any chromatic analogue of the Shepard tone?  I am imagining that each pure tone would correspond to a pure wavelength of light, transformed in such a way that the middle of three consecutive octaves would correspond to the peak sensitivity of the R, G, and B cones respectively.  Would the light have the corresponding description of "always getting bluer (redder)"?  If, say, one had been spending a long time immersed in a game like this, would it create the illusion of accelerating toward (away) without actually moving?  Any references to similar ideas?

One similar idea is the Blue Diamonds Optical Illusion, is a series of identical things
that appear to be a series of darker and darker and darker things, indefinitely.
It shows that the Cornsweet illusion can be repeated over and over again.
This reminds me of the way the Shepard tone plays the same thing over and over again,
but the pitch seems to get higher and higher.

I suspect a similar approach might be able to construct an illusion that appears to be "always getting bluer".


Meaning of "attitudinal acceptance" I found an interesting study called "A Comparison of Family Functioning, Life and Marital Satisfaction, and Mental Health of Women in Polygamous and Monogamous Marriages" by Al-Krenawi et al. It is about the negative impact of polygamy on numerous aspects of the wifes' wellbeing. As an erstwhile physicist I understand statistics, but the terminology in psychology and psychiatry is totally new for me.

I want to ask about the precise meaning of the word "attitudinal in "attitudinal acceptance". The context is the following:

  Previous research suggests that education and attitudinal acceptance of polygamy are inversely correlated...

Google search returns a plethora of scientific articles, but so far I haven’t spotted a definition. The general definition of "attitudinal" from Webster reads:

  relating to, based on, or expressive of personal attitudes or feelings

and seems to suggest that any acceptance would be attitudinal. Thus, I believe it must carry a specific meaning in psychology.

For more context, the passage in Al-Krenawi & Graham (2006) reads as follows on page 12.

  Previous research suggests that education and attitudinal acceptance of polygamy are inversely correlated (Heaton & Hirschl, 1999; Maziak et al., 2002; Nevadomsky, 1991); other findings are less conclusive (Nevadomsky, 1991). The Bedouin-Arab community is in a massive state of transition, part of which includes higher attainment for youth. Respondents in monogamous marriages therefore may have had greater opportunity for education; and the potential for less acceptance of polygamy may be modestly influential on the cohort.

My interpretation is that research indicated by 3 papers suggests that where education is high, acceptance of polygamy is low, and where education is low, acceptance is high.  The acceptance is shown through attitude.

As @ArnonWeinberg pointed out, "attitude" would normally refer to "expressed attitude" measured via a survey or interview or similar report.  In this case it was questionnaires.

  Questionnaires were structured; data collectors were present during the interview, completed the questionnaire forms with the respondent and, for those with limited reading or writing skills, the researchers read to the respondent and filled in the questionnaire according to the given responses (pages 7—8).

References

Heaton, T., & Hirschl, T. A. (1999). The trajectory of family change in Nigeria. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 30(1), 35-55. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41603608

Al-Krenawi, A., & Graham, J. R. (2006). A comparison of family functioning, life and marital satisfaction, and mental health of women in polygamous and monogamous marriages. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 52(1), 5-17. DOI: 10.1177/00207640060061245

Maziak, W., Asfar, T., Mzayek, F., Fouad, F. M., & Kilzieh, N. (2002). Socio-demographic correlates of psychiatric morbidity among low-income women in Aleppo, Syria. Social science & medicine, 54(9), 1419-1427. DOI: 10.1016/S0277-9536(01)00123-X

Nevadomsky, J. (1991). Attitudes of Nigerian students toward marriage and family relationships. International Journal of Sociology of the Family, 21(2), 201–212. Retrieved$nbsp;from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23029820


Does associating a color with numbers improve math learning? I have heard a number of reports that some mathematical savants associate particular colors with numbers.  It got me wondering, if colors are associated with numbers during mathematical teaching, would this improve ability?

For example, if every time I showed my child the number 2, it was colored red, and every time I showed her 3, it was blue, and so on, would she learn arithmatical skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division faster?

Further, would it matter which colors were associated with which numbers?  Should 5 be purple?

I don't know of research that answers this question directly, but I'm going to guess the answer is no, it wouldn't help, based on the following reasoning.
First, people tend to learn math less well when superfluous visual richness is added. I think adding color to numbers counts as superfluous visual richness.

Brown, M. C., McNeil, N. M., & Glenberg, A. M. (2009). Using concreteness in education: Real problems, potential solutions. Child Development Perspectives, 3(3), 160–164.
Mayer, R. E., Sims, V., & Tajika, H. (1995). A Comparison of How Textbooks Teach Mathematical Problem Solving in Japan and the United States. American Educational Research Journal, 32(2), 443–460.

Second, in general, associating something you want people to recall with a larger number of cues is going to help recall.  (Sorry I don't know a citation for this off the top of my head, but I think it's a general principle of information theory.)  In this case, the colors and the numerals are both cues for numbers, which should lead to better recall than if you only had the numerals.  However, you are looking at learning arithmetic and not learning the number sequence.
Learning numbers MIGHT go faster with this additional cue. However, I'd be concerned whether there might be some negative impact on ability to use numerals once the color cue is removed, as it inevitably will be.
Presenting numbers together with analogue representations of magnitude does aid in learning arithmetic facts:

Booth, J. L., & Siegler, R. S. (2008). Numerical magnitude representations influence arithmetic learning. Child Development, 79(4), 1016–1031.

However, analogue representations of magnitude are a cue that's relevant to the actual meaning of the numbers, while colors are not. I doubt colors would deliver this particular benefit.
With all that said, I haven't considered motivational issues.  If children are motivated by brightly colored number blocks, then I'd say go ahead and use them.  I doubt that the cognitive effects would be strong one way or the other, so even if negative, they'd probably be outweighed by any motivational benefits.