Is there a cognitive bias for ascribing agency to inanimate objects? I am curious to know if any research might have been done on this topic or if it is any way even described in scientific literature.

It's not uncommon for people to ascribe agency to inanimate objects and when objects "act" in ways that are contrary to the person's expectation (a computer that is loading files slowly, a  car that won't start, an appliance that breaks frequently) some people can become angered and feel that this specific object is behaving maliciously towards them in particular.

Even when we rationally know that a computer program does not have consciousness and cannot intentionally target us we can still feel persecuted by it. I know there are a few cognitive biases that deal with incorrectly attributing malicious intent to other people (attribution bias, hostile attribution bias, etc) but I have not heard of one regarding inanimate objects and yet it clearly exists. As a software developer I find this interesting as it impacts user experience. As an example, if software attempts to be overly personable by calling a person by their name and interacting with them so as to give the illusion that the software is "alive" might it increase the potential for people to ascribe malice to it when it behaves in ways they feel it should not or when there are frequent errors.

I want to be clear I am not suggesting that people literally or consciously believe that inanimate objects are sentient and possess agency, but that is how they behave and likely what at some level increases their frustration. When a person, for example, takes a tool that has been on the blink for a while and out of frustration smashes it or tears it apart I do not find it unreasonable to believe that the relief they feel is a shot of dopamine that they are getting for "justly" punishing the tool for it's "behavior". How many times have we heard a child or maybe even an adult exclaim, "That thing hates me!" Rationally they know the thing in question is not conscious yet at some level they feel it is actively persecuting them.

A classic example is in a Canticle for Lebowitz when one of the characters is having issues with a computer that is constantly misbehaving exclaims,

  "That thing-” he waved irritably toward the Abominable Autoscribe- "is
  a damned infidel or worse."

I was asked for scientific evidence, but I cannot provide any because that is in fact what I am asking about. Is this recognized as a cognitive bias and if so, has it ever been studied?

Personal information in messages (UX StackExchange)

Malicious Objects, Anger Management, and the Question of Modern Literature

Evil by Design: Interaction Design to Lead us into Temptation

Fortunately, some psychologists have looked into it, and in accordance to your observations, people do tend to attribute intentional agency to inanimate objects.

In the seminal work by Heider and Simmel (1944), participants were shown shapes of a triangle and disc moving around a two-dimentional landscape. They were not moving in random directions, but in ways that convinced the participants they were acting, fighting, playing or helping each other. When objects move in a purposeful manner, and not just fall to the ground aimlessly, we naturally tend to think they have intentions, belonging to the kind of beings with some kind of intelligence. See also Barrett and Johnson (2003): The Role of Control in Attributing Intentional Agency to Inanimate Objects.

Further more, this tendency is used by the camp of the skeptics, like Dan Dennet or Steven Pinker, to explain why people recognize many events around them as the actions of of gods or super-natural beings. By coincidence, they see some random event or movement, which has no obvious or natural explanation. The witness of such event looks for the agent behind it, and when one can't be found, it is attributed to a hidden or unseen intentional being. The way from there to gods, deities and religion, these thinkers claim, is very short. See Dennett's BREAKING THE SPELL.


How and why can movies take us out of our everyday physical reality and into a fantasy world? Have you ever experienced that feeling after watching a really great movie (somewhat like a dramatic one) that after watching the movie, you got carried away? Even though the movie ended well in a happy ending, there is that feeling inside you that remained. The feeling can't be explained, but the sad part of the movie remained somewhat. What do you call that feeling, and is there any explanation for this?

How and why can movies take us out of our everyday physical reality and into a fantasy world, so that when the movie ends, we are left feeling dissociated from our own lives, feeling feelings that don't belong to us, but to the fictional characters from the movie?

When we "enter" a fictional world, we imagine that we are there. The question therefore is: How can we imagine an experience? To answer this question, you have to understand how our perception of reality works.

When we perceive the world, we are not in direct contact with the world, but rather removed two steps: the physcial objects that (probably) surround us reflect light, cause sound, send out molecules and so on, and our sensory organs register these light particles, changes in air density, molecules (smell) etc. Our sensory organs then send signals to our brain, and our brains try to make sense of these signals by comparing them to information already stored in our memories. That information itself, of course, is only stored sensory input and the sense we gave it, so that in essence our knowledge of the world is like trying to decipher a text in an unfamiliar script: by observing regularities and repetition, i.e. a non-random structure, can we deduce the meaning that this text (or the world) has in relation to us. So in effect the "real" outside world, as we experience it through our bodies and in our minds, is an image.

Here is a graphic illustrating this idea (Velmans, 2008):

When we feel sad, because something sad happens in our lives, we do not actually experience any of the things that go on around us. What we experience is the image our mind creates from the sensory input. Our bodies may live in the outside phyisical reality, but our Self, as we are conscious of it, lives in a mental image of that outside world.

This image of the world is being induced in our minds by the sensory input. But there are experiences that feel totally "real", although they lack sensory input or are caused by input that does not resemble them, for example when we dream or when we halluciante. People who hallucinate cannot tell if what they "see" is real or imagined.

When you watch a movie, read a book or daydream, you know of course that you are merely reading or watching a movie or daydreaming, but you suspend that knowledge and allow the image that you create from that limited input to take up a large part of your thoughts. And like the image of the real world, this image created from text or moving pictures will of course trigger emotions. This image will be "weaker", somewhat "transparent" (in the sense that you can still see the real world through it), so the emotions it causes are weaker.

The basis of the influence of media on you is your motivation. If you watch a movie with a critical eye, refusing to forget that what you see are paid actors that will take a shower and go home after shooting that scene, no image will form in your mind, you won't "enter" that fictional world, and you will feel nothing special, except maybe a numb back from sitting in the cinema for two hours. But if you want to go to that wondrous place and allow your imagination to be transported there, then your imagination will use the movie or book to create an image that cannot but affect you.

Note:

The model of perception given above is the one most commonly held to be accurate by scientists and philosophers today. Max Velmans, from whose article I used an image to illustrate that model of perception, believes a different model, that of reflexive monism, "most closely follows the contours of ordinary experience, the findings of science, and common sense". Read the article linked to below, if you are interested in his views.

Sources:

Velmans, M. (2008). Reflexive monism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15(2), 5-50. Available online at http://cogprints.org/5730/1/reflexive_monism_final_version.pdf

I believe that this answer does not need any sources beyond the quoted image. All of the above follows logically from how our perception works, which, as it is taught in school, can be regarded as common knowledge.


Effective sampling rate in human visual system The [stroboscopic effect][1] is often explained as one of the problems of sampling. If sample rate is too low, you might have the impression of the signal frequency being low or even reverse. There are many animations on the internet describing the process but I find static sinus function graph more comprehensible:

You definitely know this effect from car wheels or plane propeller in movies. That's because the movie captures certain amount of frames. If the event is significantly shorter than capture rate, the output doesn't make any sense anymore.

My question is, how can I observe the stroboscopic effect in full light with my very own eyes? I thought there's no fixed frame-rate for human vision. I thought it's an analogous process (continuous stream), rather than digital (timed sampling).

Q: How can be human vision in non-flashing (such as sun) light be subject to stroboscopic effect? Where does the damage happen?

Yes, you can experience the stroboscopic effect under continuous illumination. This wikipedia article does a nice job of summarizing relevant findings.

As mentioned in the article, there are two competing theories for how the stroboscopic effect happens under continuous illumination in the human visual system. The first theory is that human visual processing is like a movie camera and it operates on roughly discrete frames. The second theory is that neural adaptation is responsible: the brain adapts to the very regular patterns of motion, which can cause visual after-effects where the opposite pattern is perceived. Overlaying the actual motion with the visual after-effect will 'cancel out' the perceived motion.

Kline and Eaglemen (2008) present evidence against the discrete sampling hypothesis and supporting the adaptation hypothesis. Macdonald et al. (2014) present evidence for the discrete sampling account.


In operant conditioning, how do you get the subject to "pull the lever" for the first time? We're taught early on that the rat is placed within the following setup.

In that diagram, there are no potential distractions for the rat. There's only a lever.

1) Does the rat simply 'discover' the lever, or did researchers show the rat how it's done the first time?

2) In an environment with many distractions, how would you ensure that the rat pulls the lever for the first time?

Rats and other creatures are curious and like to explore their environments. When the action is easy, such as a large lever on the wall, most animals will find it quickly, and if the action is reinforced, easily demonstrate operant conditioning. In the case where the action is hard, such as Thorndike putting cats in puzzle boxes and observing how long it took them to escape, the motivation to find the solution comes from the animal seeking to escape: https://www.simplypsychology.org/edward-thorndike.html


How does cognitive science explain the origins of intuition and intelligence, that accurately describes the laws of nature? What is the origin of non-incremental, revolutionary intuition and intelligence?

For example, a human mind like Albert Einstein's can "come up" with revolutionary ideas and theories that correctly adhere to the law of physics. On the other hand, another mind can't even understand this theory, let alone "create" or come up with one.

Where does this initial intelligence and intuition (accurately proven) come from? Or what are the means by which modern humans achieve "origins of" intelligent intuition that adhere to science or nature? (Not talking about prophecy.)

A couple of other interrelated perspectives are presented below.

The first perspective comes from the article Artificial Intelligence, Logic of Discovery and Scientific Realism (Alai), where they state, using scientific discovery as an example (as per the example in the question), that

  if the process of
  discovery is rational, mustn’t it therefore follow rational criteria and rules, hence a
  logic? On the other hand, it is well known that chance, luck, and insight often play an
  important role in discovery.

Effectively, almost like a case of someone 'tripping over' the final piece of their theorem.  The author goes further, contending that if their were a rational set of steps, thus

  if
  discovery were just a matter of rule following, why couldn’t anyone learn the necessary rules and become a great scientist? Or why couldn’t the scientists themselves just follow
  the logic of discovery and program in advance new discoveries, and rapidly achieve
  such results as a cure for cancer, or the cold fusion of atom, which while sorely needed
  still elude the efforts of researchers?

Meaning, according to this article's perspective, that luck, chance and insight play a major role.

The final factor, insight, is alluded to in the website Einstein's Pathway to Special Relativity (Norton), taking the example scientist from the question, Albert Einstein and how he developed, for example, the Theory of Special Relativity, which started when

  he began to think about ether, electricity, magnetism and motion.

Essentially, he had insight by

  pondering these developments that led Einstein to discover the
  special theory of relativity in 1905.

A key point made is that

  The discovery was not momentary.

This is crucial, the ideas didn't just 'pop' into his head, the theory was the outcome of having learned and developed an insight in the background information, latest developments in relevant disciplines and of course,

  in Einstein's own reckoning, seven and
  more years of work.

As an independent researcher, (and I am not comparing myself to Albert Einstein), the discoveries that I have found, have had successfully peer reviewed and have been published come from having some specific insight, through background reading, training, education etc, to topics and skills required relevant to the discovery, as well as a lot of work to bring these insights together with new observations to make a discovery.


What are shortcomings of query bases tools for measuring Situation Awareness? A review compared many different ways for assessing Situation Awareness (SA), such as query based tools, external observers and self-report tools.

The paper argues that query based tools, such as the SAGAT (Endsley, 1988) and the (SPAM; Durso et al., 2004), are the most reliable way of assessing SA, compared to the other methods. What are the shortcomings of these query based methods, however?

References

Durso, F. T., Dattel, A. R., Banbury, S., & Tremblay, S. (2004). SPAM: The real-time assessment of SA. A cognitive approach to situation awareness: Theory and application, 1, 137-154.

Endsley, M. R. (1988, May). Situation awareness global assessment technique (SAGAT). In Aerospace and Electronics Conference, 1988. NAECON 1988., Proceedings of the IEEE 1988 National (pp. 789-795). IEEE.

Endsley, M. R. (2013). Situation awareness-oriented design. The Oxford handbook of cognitive engineering. Oxford University Press, New York, 272-285.

Short Answer

The SAGAT is incredibly intrusive and relies on the subjects' memory, which is fallible. The SPAM is less intrusive and is less dependent on the subjects' memory. However, it is difficult to match the SPAM questions to the decision making process of an operator. More complete explanations of the methods can be found in papers of Pierce (2012) and the review of Endsley (2013).

Long Answer

SAGAT
The most well known query based tools are the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Tool (SAGAT; Endsley, 1988). The SAGAT is used by periodically asking a set of questions about the situation at hand, thereby covering each of the three levels of SA (See Table 2 for examples in the Train Traffic Controller domain). The amount of correctly answered questions is the measure for the quality of SA.

The main drawback of the SAGAT (or any query based method) is that situation specific questions need to be formulated. The researcher must thus know what will happen in the simulator and how the subjects will try to gain SA and tackle the problems.
Secondly, the SAGAT requires that the task is frozen for a while. The task is thus incredibly intrusive and is not well suited for field studies, because you cannot pause the task in real life. In simulators, the freezes may greatly impact the flow of the task and, subsequently, how the task is performed.
Beside the freeze, the screen is also made blank, to prevent the subject from looking up the answers. The subject is thus entirely reliable on his memory. Memory is fallible, however, and it may very well be possible that the subject was aware of a cue a couple of minutes ago, but at the moment the SAGAT questions are shown not anymore. On top of that, it isn't even necessary to remember every piece of information; the operator perceives the information, acts on it, and can then forget about it an focus on other parts.
Finally, with the SAGAT you only get a general idea of one's SA, because of two reasons: (1) without asking hundreds of questions you cannot capture the entire SA of the operator and (2) you only get one score of SA (the sum of correct answers). In other words, you will never understand how SA varied throughout the task.

SPAM
In an attempt to simplify SA measures, Durso et al (2004) developed the Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM; see also Pierce et al, 2012). The SPAM uses the same questions as the SAGAT but presents them while the task is ongoing. Instead of a large list of questions, only one or two questions are presented at a time. The questions are in general presented every two to three minutes. The correctness of the answers plus the response times (RTs) are measures of SA. The idea is that when RTs are short knows (where to find) the answer and is therefore aware. Conversely, when RTs are long, the operator did not know the answer or where to find them, and is therefore considered to be less aware.

The first and foremost shortcoming of the SPAM is that it is extremely difficult to formulate the questions and plan them at the right moments. Decision processes may vary between subjects. Some questions may thus be shown too early for some subjects (they had not attended that information yet), whereas it would be too late for others (it may have been forgotten already).
Moreover, some subjects may find the content of the question irrelevant; One's SA may thus differ from another, which is not necessarily better or worse. One or two question can also impossibly capture the entire SA. To minimize these issues, it is again extremely important to understand what happens in the scenario and how the subjects will tackle the issues.
The temporal resolution is also still lacking. Only one or two questions can be asked every two-to-three minutes. Although this is much better than the SAGAT, it still leaves room for a lot of interpretation.
Finally, because the questions are presented while the task is ongoing, it can greatly increase the amount of workload. Moreover, it may fundamentally change the dynamics of the task; the questions may probe the subjects to focus on particular aspects, thereby losing the natural way of performing the task.


Are all psychological problems only biochemical in nature? Are all psychological problems only biochemical in nature or do some 'mental' components ( that is some form of conceptual 'conditioning' caused directly or indirectly or 'subconsciously' by the person involved), does this effect the development of an 'abnormal' behavioral pattern. If the 'mind-brain' is really just a 'biochemical' behavioral algorithm management mechanism then this would imply all 'mental' disorders are just biochemical mismanagement problems. So are all psychological problems only biochemical problems?

At some level, it's true that psychology reduces to biology and chemistry. If it didn't, then the widely-accepted view of physicialism/materialism would be wrong. But just because psychology can (in theory) be reduced to biochemistry, reductionism may not be the most productive way to approach the problem, for a couple of reasons:

The causes of psychological phenomena are likely to require such complex interactions at the level of biochemistry, that by the time you get around to explaining these interactions you're basically back at the level of describing the problem in terms of psychological constructs. Imagine trying to describe something like earthquakes using only concepts from quantum physics. It's theoretically possible, but not productive.
Psychological phenomena may have multiple ways of being instantiated. This is called multiple realizability. The key insight here is that two people may have thought processes that are very similar at a psychological level, but might be instantiated in different ways at a neural level. In such a case, the most productive way to describe the phenomena would probably be at the psychological level, since this is where the commonalities exist.


Paper (s) on enhancing self-control I am interested in learning more about self-control and how and if people have increased or enchanted it. I looked on Google scholar, but I don't think I am using the correct key words. Do you know of any papers that are on this topic?

EDIT:
Specifically about either increasing daily exercise or something tied to physical health.

Along with many others, Google Scholar came up with the following articles for me

American Association for the Advancement of Sciencetalks about the relationship between health and a sense of control old age
National Academy of SciencesExperimental and economic studies suggest large-scale programs aimed at self-control to improve citizens' health could reap benefits
International Association of Applied Psychology
Self-Regulation Assessment and Intervention in Physical Health and Illness: A Review
Book - The Self-regulation of Health and Illness Behaviour


Cognitive Techniques to train Working Memory? What are some practical techniques/methods which can be used to train/improve your working memory and what studies have been done on this subject?

There are a few commercial packages that provide training for verbal and visuo-spaital working memory. The most well-known is CogMed (http://www.cogmed.com). Another popular one is Jungle Memory (http://junglememory.com). Both of these packages have been used in research studies (comment about these results below) There is also a myriad of online working memory games that promise to improve working memory, e.g. some games in Luminosity (http://www.lumosity.com). The content of these games is very similar, but there are fewer independent scientific studies of them as far as I'm aware.

As a caveat, the scientific evidence about the benefit of WM training is mixed at best. Training on WM tasks improves performance on them. This improvement also transfers to similar tasks (near transfer). However, there is currently little evidence for transfer to other tasks or improvements in everyday function (far transfer). For example, have a look at this report from a randomised control trial of working memory training in children: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/desc.12068/full


Differential equations in psychology I am wondering (and searching with no success) if there are any examples of differential equations in psychology?

I mean, no tutorial explaining what is differenetial equations or even partial differential equations, but a research (like in emotions or social psychology, or cognitive psychology) by psychologists that use these equations to model the data?

[update, 29.05.2016] Stack Community always reminds me that the quality of the answers depends on the question asked. Just as a good question is half of the problem.
I'll try to make myself clear with an example. I thought about an article in psychology, say about cognitive dissonance, emotions, coping or else, that use differential equations to decribe phenomenon without invoking physics or chemistry or other hard science. Article by Deboeck & Bergeman introduces pendulum model(Christiaan's comment). But I don't have to refer to physics when doing ordinary squares regression, so that's why I thought it is possible to use differential equations without explicite references to physical models.

June 2, 2016: I never suggested we could "use differential equations without explicit reference to physical models". I have always said the same: the mathematical interpretation of cellular processes has lost prominence (owing to further research). The biological processes obviously remain; the interpretation has not been able to hold.  Teresa Pelka

The Hodgkin and Huxley model of neuronal firing is based on non-linear differential equations. A significant portion of research on sensation and perception is based on such models.


What are the estimates in total neurons and average connections per neuron for each of the processing areas of the visual cortex? I am trying to find ballpark estimates for the number of neurons in each functional area of the visual cortex (V1, V2, V3, etc). While nice if known, the numbers themselves are not as important to me as the relative size differences of the areas, so this information would be just as welcomed.

Also, if known, are the total synapse averages fairly consistent between areas, or do they change dramatically?

I have found rough estimates for V1 here: http://www.vision.caltech.edu/~harel/fun/v1.html but am having trouble finding this sort of information out for subsequent areas.

I found a table listing the relative volumes of 39 different BAs in the supplementary material of:
Hazlett, Erin A. et al. "Cortical Gray and White Matter Volume in Unmedicated Schizotypal and Schizophrenia Patients", which seems to be open-access.

This data is from MRI scans of 148 healthy controls. The mean total brain volume was 1216cm.

Not sure how the density of neurons differs across areas.

Here is a link to the supplementary pdf


Able to type promptly, but doubt validity when spelling it out? I was unable to frame a search query for my question, hence decided to post it out here.

I am normally able to type passwords, numbers and other tiny bits of text very fast. However if I have to spell/say this to some other person, let's say a Customer Service Rep, my mind doubts whether the information is correct or incorrect.

I hope you can follow my question, could anyone explain any scientific term that defines this condition of mind, where recalling a text via motor skills (hands) is faster than recalling and speaking it out?

I'm not sure I know a name for the phenomenon, but the general idea is that for patterns of info you retrieve consistently in certain ways (e.g., typing into a standard phone key pad), you have formed consist mappings between your cognitions and your motor responses. The original work on this was done by Richard Shiffrin and Walt Schneider (1976, 1977?). Their works is real low-level, but what you have done is automatized a certain retrieval-execution circuit that "fires off" less-optimally when someone asks for that info in a different circumstance (e.g., on the phone with someone you have never talked to before like a tech rep), and you have to generate it without other tactile and visual cues (like a keyboard).

Hope that helps. If you google scholar "skill automization" there will be a rabbit-hole of information 40 years deep. I think there is a chapter by Reason in 1990? that has come cool, easy to digest implications of automization for errors in behavior and thought (e.g. "Freudian slips").


What is the name of the condition where you feel like you have been somewhere before? It happens many times when you visit a place you have never been before, you feel subconsciously you have been there already. And the events and people you are meeting and experiencing have already taken place sometimes back and you are just re-experiencing it.

What is this condition called? Is there any scientific study on the same?

The term is typically called déjà vu..

There's a section on wikipedia discussing scientific research.

Brown (2003) looks like a good starting point for a more rigorous scientific analysis.

Kusumi (2006, PDF) has another scientific review article on the topic.

References

Brown, A. S. (2003). A review of the déjà vu experience. Psychological bulletin, 129(3), 394.
Kusumi, T. (2006). Human metacognition and the déjà vu phenomenon. Diversity in cognition: Evolution, development, domestication, and pathology, 302-314.
http://www.educ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/cogpsy/personal/Kusumi/dejavu.pdf


What is the purpose of hemispheric specialisation in the brain? What is the benefit or purpose of having different hemispheres of the brain contribute more to different cognitive processes?

First, biological features do not always arise from some intrinsic benefit.  They can also be byproducts of other adaptations, or spandrels.

That being said, one example of a possible benefit is specialization.  For instance, birds will develop asymmetries in their visual system based on light inputs to their outward-facing eye (one eye faces the eggshell, the other is obscured within the egg).  Distinct asymmetries in the brain allow birds to use one eye or brain region for finding and tracking prey (a very robust detail-oriented object identifier), and the other will be turned towards the sky, looking out for predators (and isn't as detail-oriented).

From Encoding asymmetry within neural circuits:


Are animal instincts and preferences based on some brain micro structures? I'm thinking about the mechanism by which an animal has built in preferences for some visual objects in the real world. The most well known example is the seagull chicks and pecking at a red dot or stripe:

I can think of other examples that expose preferences:

Human male preference for nubile females
Human baby preference for human face over a rock
Human observers being able to predict election results based solely on photos of candidates

It seems that in each case there's some very rapid analysis of visual features taking place, and in case of newborn babies, there's not enough time to be "taught" to perceive something specific. This makes me ask:

Are there any structures (adaptations) within the human brain which are responsible for our built in instincts and preferences?

There is the structure called the Fusiform-face area (FFA), which is located in the low tempero-parietal region. In human studies, the FFA has shown to highlight strongly when you look at a human face, as opposed to any other (inanimate) object. This is what the region got its name from.

However, it is believed that the FFA is not necessarily a face area (See "Function and Controversy" on the Wiki page). Instead, researchers argue that the area is a visual expertise area. Where we, as humans, are experts in recognizing faces, zebras, for instance, are incredibly good at distinguishing the stripes of other zebras.

This even goes for within-species differences. Western people that have never worked with Chinese symbols will show little to no activation in the FFA, whereas Chinese people that use it daily will show this activation. This would also explain cross-race recognition (thanks Josh) i.e. it is easier to distinguish people from the same race then someone from different races.

With regard to your question about preferences: I don't know for sure. I have heard that people like what they know. That would imply that whatever the FFA is expert in, is more preferable to the person/animal. I have no reference, so if anyone does have some, I welcome you to edit my answer or post your own.


Is the Myer Briggs Type indicator (MBTI) a reasonable scientific theory? Background:
MBTI stands for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. It's a theory that suggests that people can be divided into 16 types, based on the way they percieve and analyse information (whether they make decisions based on logic or their feel, rely more on intuition or direct sensoric perception, and whether they are more on judging or percieving approach to things happen).

All of these "preferences" are fit into the "consciousness model" in the way, in which you can understand the appearance or behavior of a certain "type" by looking what are the dominating preferences (feeling against thinking, sensoric perception against intuition, judging vs percieving).

For a comprehensive overview, see the wikipedia article on the MBTI.
Go here for another discussion of the MBTI.

Questions

Does the MBTI have a fundamental background?
Were there any scientific experiments conducted?
Are there any "type" theories that are based on actual brain research?

From what I remember, the MBTI has been compared in some studies to the Big Five (or OCEAN) model of personality. If you've not heard of it, the Big Five is the primary theory of personality that is accepted by researchers who do this sort of thing. Here are some papers comparing the two approaches:

Recent comparison and another.

The main point is that a number of the MBTI traits are correlated with the Big Five traits, though the MBTI can be criticised for various reasons (e.g., it's binary approach to personality). I think from what I remember is that the main criticism revolves around the fact that the MBTI has no place for neuroticism whereas the Big Five does.

That should be enough to get you started (e.g., reading their intro and seeing where this has been cited). There's also a somewhat useful infographic available here.


How do you decide how many trials to have in an experiment? I'm currently designing an experiment with several conditions - how do I decide how many repetitions / stimuli within each condition?

I know that I can justify sample size with an a priori power analysis...is there any common way to choose how many trials within each of my conditions?

I was using sample size/power as an example of something where there is a particular approach to help decide.....what I am actually asking about is the number of trials i.e. if I have three conditions in my experiment, how many stimuli should I design for each of the conditions?

A power analysis is typically based on the difference in the mean to be detected and the expected standard deviation of the data. The amount of variation in the data (i.e., the size of the standard deviation) typically depends on individual differences in the subjects and measurement noise. The measurement noise depends on a number of things, but in many experiments can be reduced by running more trials. In the minimal risk experiments I am most familiar with, we run so many trials that we reduce the trial related noise to inconsequential amounts. We tend to use wildly inefficient methods for collecting the trials also (our stimuli and response interval are too long, we use multiple intervals, and our adaptive procedures are not optimized).

In order to minimize the data collection/maximize power (and this should not be the only goal) the stopping rule generally cannot be a number of trials, but rather a precision criteria. There are procedures (e.g., ZEST) which can be set up to use a fixed number of trials or a target precision.


Why could too much BDNF be detrimental in terms of depression and memory? I am interested in looking at the effects of too much BDNF and other proteins such as repressor element one silencing transcription factor (REST). Most research suggest that elevated levels are protective, however there is a small amount of research suggesting that too much (over expression) may actually be detrimental (Cunha, et al. 2009).

  Our results demonstrate that chronic BDNF overexpression in the central nervous system (CNS) causes learning deficits and short-term memory impairments, both in spatial and instrumental learning tasks. This observation suggests that a widespread increase in BDNF in forebrain networks may result in adverse effects on learning and memory formation.

I was wondering if there is any more research, or theories as to why too much of a protein that is considered to be protective could be harmful? Thank you.

References

Cunha, C., et al. (2009) Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) overexpression in the forebrain results in learning and memory impairments. Neurobiology of Disease, 33(3), pp. 358—368DOI: 10.1016/j.nbd.2008.11.004

This is a fairly open-ended question...  One example of the potentially negative consequences of overexpressed BDNF is its effect on the likelihood and frequency of epileptic seizures.

I guess the short version of this effect is that BDNF appears to promote neuronal growth, including neurogenesis, axonal and synaptic sprouting, and neuronal excitation, in exactly the areas of the brain that are associated with epilepsy.  Epileptic seizures are essentially hyper-excitations of neurons, so any factor that increases the excitability of neurons in brain areas associated with seizures can be a culprit.

A good, fairly recent, and open access review of the role of BDNF and its primary receptor TrkB in epilepsy is McNamara & Scharfman (2012):

  Intrahippocampal infusion of BDNF and transgenic overexpression of
  BDNF or TrkB increase seizure susceptibility or severity. Conditional
  knockout of TrkB eliminated epileptogenesis altogether in the kindling
  model.

That is, in epileptic mice, adding BDNF increased seizure frequency, and removing it eliminated seizures entirely.  The authors suggest several mechanisms by which this might happen:

  ... long-term potentiation (LTP) of excitatory synapses between
  principal cells may contribute to limbic epileptogenesis; that
  is, potentiation of these synapses may facilitate propagation of
  seizure activity through synaptically-coupled neuronal populations
  throughout the limbic system and beyond.

  One interesting possibility is that enhanced TrkB activation reduces
  expression of the K-Cl cotransporter, KCC2, ... an important molecular
  and cellular mechanism contributing to limbic epilepsy.

  The effect of estrogen on NPY levels could be mediated by BDNF,
  because BDNF induces NPY synthesis following TrkB activation

In other words, (1) BDNF-induced LTP - the mechanism that underlies memory and learning - increases the excitability of neurons, potentially causing seizures; (2) BDNF may inhibit KCC2, itself a synpatic inhibitor, again increasing the excitability of neurons; and (3) hormone-induced BDNF may moderate neuron hyperexcitability through its effect on yet another another protein, the neurotransmitter NPY.

Another recent review, though not open access, is Iughetti et al (2018).  Similar to the previous review:

  ... BDNF has excitatory effects in neuronal cultures and animal brain
  slices.  Furthermore, both BDNF and its conjugated receptor (... TrkB)
  are increased  in animal models and humans with epilepsy, particularly
  in the temporal and hippocampal areas. Acute injection of BDNF in
  brain of mice induces seizures, which are almost or totally abolished
  [by] blocking its transcription and pathway.

The authors also implicate the effects of BDNF on axonal sprouting and neuronal hyperexcitability, KCC2 and NKCC1 downregulation, and NPY synthesis on seizure likelihood and frequency.

Neurochemistry is complex and not well understood, and there is indication that BDNF can also have protective properties against epilepsy under certain conditions (eg, long-term in low doses).  Lots more detail is available in the reviews cited.


Does increased neural complexity slows down brain operation speeds? If a sensory input is perceived, one needs to process this input from the sensory end organ (sensation) up to the brain (perception). Does a more more complex neural network consume more time than a simple one? For example, does a house fly process visual images faster than a human being?

Short answer
Increasing neural complexity only increases processing times when neurons are serially linked together.

Background
Neuronal conductance of action potentials takes time, as neuronal signals travel at a speed of 0.5 to 150 m/s through the axon (Purves et al., 2001). Furthermore, synaptic transmission between neurons takes time. A chemical synaptic transmission takes approximately 0.5 ms (Katz & Miledi, 1965). As a consequence, stringing neurons together increases processing time.

For example, if we look at the pain response, the reflex arc is very short, covering as little as two synapses (Fig. 1). The moment you touch a hot pan, you pretty much instantly draw away your hand. This process precedes even before you become consciously aware of the fact you touched something painful. This is because conscious awareness happens in the brain, involving a longer distance to be covered from your finger, and because it involves many more synapses including the brainstem, lower cortical areas and higher cortical areas (Fig. 2).

Processing time does not necessarily have to increase when processing complexity is increased, as long as the processing takes place in parallel. For example, multiple visual pathways in the human brain run in parallel, for example the 'what' and 'where' processing in the brain in the ventral and dorsal streams (Van Polanen & Davare, 2016), as depicted in Fig. 3.

Fig. 1. Pain reflex arc. source: Owlcation

Fig. 2. Conscious pain pathway. source: neuwritewest

Fig. 3. Parallel processing of 'what' and 'where' information in the visual system. source: Brainscape

References
- Katz & Miledi, J Physiol (1965); 181(3): 656–70
- Purves et al. (eds), Neuroscience, 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates
- Van Polanen & Davare, Neuropsychologia (2015); 79: 186–91


Can we be both agreeable and disagreeable at the same time? Understanding the big five personality traits appears to give the promise of understanding ourselves better.  However, it is clear that our behaviour is variable, for example:

individuals may be highly agreeable (or disagreeable) in the presence of family and close friends yet be the opposite unfamiliar situations.
anxiety (neuroticism) may not be a problem in familiar situations yet be strong in unfamiliar situations.

Questions

The Big Five suggests that we behave consistently irrespective of the situation. How can this be true given the apparent differences in behaviour that exist in each situation?
How should individuals take this into account in their career choices?

There are two main theories of behaviour, trait theory and situationism.
What you are referring to is known as situationism. A doyen of trait theory was Raymond Cattell who was the father of modern personality testing (his 16PF test was a forerunner of the Big Five).  An assumption of trait theory is that individuals have inherent personality traits and will therefore behave consistently irrespective of the situation. Conversely, situationists suggest that the situation an individual finds themselves in has a significant impact on the individual's behaviour.  The extremity of the situationist argument is that individual's do not have personality traits at all and that the situation is sufficient to predict and individual's behaviour. Both trait theorists and the situationists have evidence to support their positions and I think it is generally accepted that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. To resolve the trait theory versus situationism argument are the emerging computational approaches such as cybernetics and system dynamics. Unfortunately, these emerging fields are in their infancy and nothing to report at this time.
All of the above was a long-winded and round-about way of saying that the Big Five is not perfect, but probably the best you can do just at the moment.


Please recommend a book about codependency that is not in regards to substance abuse I would like to find a book that would be helpful to a codependent person with the following criteria.

The book focuses on relationships with needy people who don't care for themselves, instead of focusing on relationships with substance abusers.
The book emphasizes leaving and avoiding these kinds of relationships instead of helping the reader improve these relationships.

Most any book on codependency will mention substance abuse, if for no other reason than the concept began there. Treatment of codependency is about empowering the person who is the caregiver to stop that sort of behavior. The best book I can recommend (I'm a LMHC) is Codependent No More. I would also suggest looking at Attachment Theory, as some researchers believe it can encompass the problems ascribed to codependency in a wider-reaching theoretical approach. To that end you might read Attached.


Cognitive models for transfer of skills Recently a question was asked about the benefit of playing chess on cognitive abilities. More specifically, how chess would improve understanding technical texts. Many other questions are also focused on learning and skim the topic of transfer of learning (e.g. Does learning one discipline improve performance in another discipline?, Why is training better when following an easy-to-difficult schedule?, How does task difficulty schedule affect the rate and efficiency of perceptual learning? ). However, it is not entirely clear to me how transfer can be explained, independent of the type of tasks.

What does recent scientific research say about transfer of skill, or are there cognitive models that help explain it?

Short Answer

A cognitive model is made that decomposes any skill in smaller elements or production rules. These elements (or combinations thereof) are often context independent and can be used for multiple tasks. The requirement for transfer of skill is that the tasks need to have some sort of overlap in how it is performed.

Long Answer

I found a cognitive model that tries to explain how transfer works (and thereby acknowledges its existence). The theory is called primitive elements theory of cognitive skills (PRIMs; Taatgen, 2013). The model is implemented based on the ideas of the cognitive architecture ACT-R. I will not go in to that too much, but in Figure 1 is the PRIMs representation of ACT-R:

According to PRIMs, each production rule represents part of a cognitive task. While initially each production rule is a separate cognitive step, with learning you can accumulate these production rules into one (See Figure 4 for an example).

The idea is that some of these elements (gray and white ones) are context independent. Steps like "check for empty working memory" and "check for visual input" are used in almost any task that requires visual input. Being context independent makes it not necessary to learn this over and over for every new skill you want to learn. The final figure (Figure 9) shows how counting, or to be more precise, an iterative component of counting, can be transferred to a Semantic task (answering questions like "is a canary a bird?"). The essence of transfer is thus that the tasks need to have some overlap in how the task is performed (in terms of basic cognitive elements).

Taatgen, N. A. (2013). The nature and transfer of cognitive skills. Psychological review, 120(3), 439.
ISO 690


Is an autistic person's brain different from a non-autistic one? Are there any differences between the autistic person's brain and the non-autistic one?

To be more specific, are there any differences in brain structure or brain activity, that can be used to distinguish between autistic and non-autistic person by analysing their brain structure and brain activity while performing various tasks?

If so, can functional imaging itself be used for diagnosing autism? Is there any research with that theme?

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital compared raw EEG data from 430 children with autism to data collected from 554 control subjects, all ages 2 to 12. They found that children with autism displayed consistent EEG patterns which indicate altered connectivity between brain regions. They found evidence of altered connectivity throughout the brains of children with autism. Most remarkably, they found a pronounced reduction in connectivity in regions of the left hemisphere controlling for language areas of the brain. Young children with autism showed increased connectivity between brain regions that were farther apart, suggesting they may have developed a compensation mechanism for other connectivity problems.

http://unpa.pro/Articles?mode=PostView&bmi=985722

References

Duffy, F.H. & Als, H. (2012). A stable pattern of EEG spectral coherence distinguishes children with autism from neuro-typical controls-a large case control study. BMC Medicine, 10, 64. PDF


Is there a named psychological condition for people who find every bad thing to be someone's "fault?" Suppose person X is looking for something he has lost. Instead of thinking he left it somewhere, he is convinced that person Y has taken it. X is so convinced of this that he will not even look for the object. Instead, he badgers person Y for the location of said object.

In another example, person X is sitting in the rear of a vehicle. He feels cold. The temperature for the rear of the vehicle is controlled by a panel of buttons immediately in front of X. Instead of changing the temperature, he gets angry at person Z. His first instinct is to assume that person Z changed the temperature so he would be cold.

This behavior almost reminds me of Capgras syndrome. Person X attributes every negative circumstance to the malevolent intent of another individual, usually someone close to him he fears or sees as oppressive. He thinks of most people around him this way, and he sees himself as their victim. X responds this way to everything: lost items, a hamburger served differently than he ordered it, tripping and getting hurt, changes in cellular reception while driving along a freeway, etc. While some of these may be someone's fault, he attributes fault to the wrong person.

Is there a name for this type of behavior?

I thing what you are looking for is scapegoating :

  Scapegoating is the practice of singling out any party for unmerited
  negative treatment or blame as a scapegoat. Scapegoating may be
  conducted by individuals against individuals (e.g. "he did it, not
  me!"), individuals against groups (e.g., "I couldn't see anything
  because of all the tall people"), groups against individuals (e.g.,
  "Jane was the reason our team didn't win"), and groups against groups.

  A scapegoat may be an adult, child, sibling, employee, peer, ethnic,
  political or religious group, or country.

  ...

  Unwanted thoughts and feelings can be unconsciously projected onto
  another who becomes a scapegoat for one's own problems. This concept
  can be extended to projection by groups. In this case the chosen
  individual, or group, becomes the scapegoat for the group's problems.

Hostile Attribution Bias is another possibility, defined as the tendency to interpret the behaviour of another as having hostile intent even when the behaviour is ambiguous, neutral or benign.

References :

Roy F. Baumeister & Kathleen D. Vohs, 2007, Encyclopedia of Social Psychology
Berkowitz and Green, 1962, the stimulus qualities of the scapegoat, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 7, 202-207
Gemmill, G., 1998, The dynamics of scapegoating in small groups, Small Group Behavior, 20, 406-418


Using a Linear Non-linear Cascade with a Non-Random (deterministic) Stimulus I'm attempting to use a computational model, in particular a linear non-linear cascade (LNP) to encode the spiking of a neuron responding to a thermal stimulus. In a LNP, it assumes that the stimulus is 'radially symmetric' [1], for example having a Gaussian probability distribution. However, is it possible to use a LNP model (or another well known encoding model) when the stimulus is deterministic? The stimulus I'm using is a ramping thermal stimulus.

[1] Chichilnisky EJ (2001) A simple white noise analysis of neuronal light responses. Network (Bristol, England) 12: 199–213.

The short answer is yes. The longer answer involves a more precise meaning of deterministic and a number of research considerations.

In the strict sense of deterministic, which means that given the same input, the same output will always occur, any probability distribution modeled on a computer is deterministic, since most digital computers have a deterministic instruction set. However, this isn't quite relevant for your task, since the samples from the distribution that your model sees are largely uncorrelated with the model properties, making them appear random to the model.

Researchers often use probabilistic or stochastic stimuli because they are the simplest option and because they do not want to introduce a number of potential biases that occur when the model interacts with or entrains to specific patterns in deterministic stimuli. Such patterns would produce effects that are not representative of the general properties of the model, which may be misleading. Introducing a probability distribution therefore becomes a simple way to explore more of the state space of the model. Additional reasons why people introduce noise (through a stochastic stimulus) include the fact that real neurons tend to exist in noisy environments (modeling considerations), and the fact that some kinds of proofs about model performance are easier to perform for probabilistic stimuli.

Your choice as to whether you want to use a deterministic stimulus depends largely on your goals in this research project. Do you want to know what happens when the model sees a specific pattern? Do you care if this pattern has noise in it? Do you want to perform mathematical proofs? Do you care about perturbation stability (some deterministic models may falsely appear stable because they are not moved off of their tiny equilibrium point by noise)? What process are you modeling?

Given these considerations, you should be able to choose what kind of stimulus to use. Your model will accept many kinds of stimuli as input, but the choice of stimulus affects what you will learn from the specific simulation.


Is there an accurate online IQ test for measuring 160+ IQs? Is there some (preferably free) online and accurate IQ test?
One which does not give me an genius IQ and then tries to sell me a diploma.
I need one which measures upto 160 sd15 (or higher). Such a test would probably document its norming process somehow.

There are at least two problems with measuring high intelligence:

(1) Any IQ test has a maximum difficulty. That means that all subjects above a certain intelligence answer all questions correctly and get the same maximum score. This is called the "ceiling effect".

Now you might say, that we simply need to construct a test that is difficult enough for even the most intelligent person to make some mistakes.

(2) The problem with special "high IQ" tests is that you cannot draw a large enough sample to norm this test. An IQ score is not an absolute value, like height, where you measure from a zero point to a certain length and each length has a meaning in itself in relation to that zero point. IQ does not have a zero point (there is no measurable total absence of intelligence), and the values of an IQ test are defined in relation to the average intelligence of the population that person comes from.

To norm a test, it is applied to a large sample of the population, and the mean and the shape of the distribution are calculated. The mean is defined as 100, the distribution is defined by the standard deviation, which for an IQ test is 15. The norming is done for different countries and at different times. This also means, that you cannot compare an IQ score from France to one from Spain, and that you cannot compare an IQ score from 1950 to one from 2007, at least not without some mathematical trickery similar to calculating the temperature in Centigrade from one given in Fahrenheit.

Now, since there are very few very intelligent people, even if all of them took the test your sample would be too small to reliably calculate a mean and the distribution. (And you couldn't test any of them ever again, because they already took the test and know the questions.)

Finally, you wouldn't know how the scores from this test relate to scores from other tests. In an IQ test with which you test the whole population, the average is set to be 100. Since all different IQ tests are normed for the whole population, you can set all their means at 100 and compare their scores. For a test that tests only a non-average subset of the population, like very intelligent people, the average must be somewhere else, because of course highly intelligent people are not of average intelligence. But where do you set it in relation to the 100 of the average population? You would need their scores from a normal IQ test to calculate this, but (now the circle closes) since a normal IQ test cannot measure them due to the ceiling effect, you don't know where they are in relation to the average IQ of 100.

Conclusion:

While you can create an intelligence test to measure the intelligence of highly intelligent people, this test will not give you a result that has any meaning in relation to the IQ, so in fact it is not an IQ test.

IQ is not intelligence (a trait), but a construct. IQ is what is measured by an IQ test, as the saying goes. A high intelligence test measures a different construct.


Performance of a group solving a cognitive task: How does it scale? Some intellectual, cognitive and perceptual tasks can be solved collaboratively. It is common knowledge that group performance is better than that of each single individual due to exchange of information (and without going into issues of motivation).
One widely known phenomenon is Wisdom of Crowds - when a group decision is much more accurate due to the averaging of individual biases. However, it is not the only possibility. Sometimes, a task can be divided into parts (and each participant works efficiently on his/ her own). Sometimes there are tasks too difficult to solve but easy to demonstrate that an answer is correct (and it suffices to have only one person in the group who answers correctly to make the group decision correct).
What I am interested in is, how the group performance scales with the group size?
(The measure of performance can be error rate, time needed to complete a certain task or the deviation from the right answer.)
The question is motivated by one of my recent works, arXiv:1109.2044.
EDIT (clarification):
I am the most interested in low-level cognitive tasks (e.g. perceptual or linguistic), especially two-choice decisions (but also multiple choice, counting of blobs, solving a puzzle...). However, other quantifiable measures for cognitive task (including, say, time to complete a certain programming project vs number of programmers) are of my interest as well.
When it comes to the relation to my paper, I am curious if I miss an important reference or if my theoretical results can be supported (or undermined) by any existing experimental results (or even related in other context).

It's a big topic. The relationship between group size and performance on a cognitive task is going to vary by several factors.

Here are a few thoughts:

The form of interdependence adopted by the group on the task will matter. When everyone can just work independently (e.g., taking calls in a call centre), then it makes sense that output would increase almost linearly with increasing group size, in the absence of motivation or learning issues.
In the context of project teams, software teams, and so forth, I imagine the issues would be a lot more complex and that in some situations increasing group size might even reduce performance of the team. There a few articles cited here that discuss this.
A classic study in the context, albeit from a motor task, of the relationship between group-size and group performance is that by Ringelmann (see the wikipedia article) that looked at rope pulling power as a function of group size. The basic finding was that average pulling power declined with group size. This has been interpreted as evidence of social loafing, but their are also coordination issues as well.
Some tasks are heavily influenced by the performance of the weakest or strongest member. For example, a musical group will often sound bad if only one member plays poorly. Or other tasks it will be strongest member, as you say if you have are playing at a trivia night, and you have one person with all the right answers on the table.


Difference between "Social Roles" and "Social Groups" The two terms "Social Roles" and "Social Groups" sound similar and I don't know if these terms are often just used interchangeably.

Is there a specific difference between "Social Roles" and "Social Groups"?  Social Groups have group norms. But Social Roles appear to have social norms too. But again, what's the difference between the norms that the two terms have, "Group Norms" and "Social Norms"?

Background thoughts

The
Wikipedia articles on social norms, social groups, and social roles  provide a reasonable starting point. Standard sociology textbooks will cover this material.

Let's think of the example of a family.

A particular family with two parents and two children is a social group. We could say that there are social roles for parents (e.g., around setting boundaries, providing a safe environment for the children, etc.) and social roles for children (e.g., learning, having fun, being respectful to parents, etc). We could also describe social norms that operate in the family (e.g., around interaction patterns, styles of dress, eating habits, etc.).

Difference between "Social Roles" and "Social Groups"

Groups are sets of people. Roles describe a set of features of a position in a social structure. Roles are not a person, but represent a position filled by a person in a social context.

E.g., A family is a group; parent or father or breadwinner is a role.

Difference between "Group Norms" and "Social Norms"

The term "group norms" is often used to describe  the norms (i.e., the expectations and typical ways of acting) that operate in a particular group or set of groups.

E.g., the norms in a particular family or in a set of families in a particular community; the norms in a particular work team

I see the term "social norms" as more general.  When used in the context of  describing expectations and typical human behaviour, all norms are "social". Thus, social norms can apply to social contexts that transcend any one group (e.g., face the door when waiting in an elevator; don't laugh when attending a funeral service).


Why do programmers work at night? I can be described as a morning person, where waking up at 4:20 AM to catch a flight is no problem. My colleague on the other hand go to bed no earlier than midnight and often later than that.

We're both programmers, and if we're in a critical phase of a project, my colleague works until 3AM, and I start at 4AM. Still both times are in the middle of the night and we tend to get most work done at off working hours.

Question is why that is?

Probably both a combination of being more tired and fewer distractions. Most other people will be asleep during the night. Programming is adversely affected by context-switching, thus night-time with stimulant-enhanced soda is more likely to provide you with long periods of interruption free coding.

Update: The above situation creates the conditions where Csíkszentmihályi's Flow is most likely to take place.


Why compare a target group to a control group when population norms are available? I am reading now many studies about juvenile offending and delinquency, and there are always compared offenders´ results from different tests (for example personality, IQ) with control group. I am asking myself why, when there exist norms that are representative for normal population?

Say your juvenile offender are on average 16 year old boys from Britain, and the control group consists of (on average) 16 year old British boys who haven't done anything wrong. The only difference between these groups are the fact one has a criminal record or not. If you would look at the true norm, you could be looking at the world wide norm of both boys and girls from both Britain and other countries that may or may not have a criminal record.

The control groups (and actual participants) are thus chosen (and tested) specifically to factor out unforeseen variability. Depending on the question authors want to answer, different control groups may be necessary.


Role of declarative memory in learning skill In Neil Taatgen's paper on primitive information processing elements (PRIMs) he notes that as a result of saving the used PRIMs in declarative memory (which is fast) as opposed to procedural memory (which is slow), the declarative memory can serve as a scaffold for to build skills by combining the aforementioned PRIMs.

This seems to be making two assumptions:

Procedural memory is slower than declarative memory
Declarative memory is important to building skills

Are either of these assumptions true based on empirical evidence?

My understanding of the difference between the two is that you cannot declare what is procedural. For example, you can't tell a person how to balance on a bicycle or how to ice skate backward. You can show them different movements, and that is declarative in nature, but ultimately is not the same thing.

Whether or not declarative memory is "faster" has probably not been tested (and if it has, I would question the results). I'm not even sure it would make sense to evaluate given there are fundamentally different learning processes taking place.

Declarative knowledge can definitely be important in building skills. In almost every manual procedure exists a set of instructions which can be written and transmitted. These procedures can function as a scaffold and help the learner figure out how to do the tasks whose performance can only be demonstrated. An example of this could be a work instruction for how to ride a surfboard. They can tell you how far out from the shore to go, where to place your feet, how to get on the board, etc. but cannot actually tell you how to ride the wave. That is something you'll have to figure out on your own after doing everything you can to follow the instructions


Are there any benefits to having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder? OCD is a chronic mental health disorder. It is a major handicap when trying to lead a normal life.

But are there any positive effects of having the disorder? Is there any such thing as high functioning OCD?

I'm guessing that OCD correlating with conscientiousness is probably an advantage. The 2015 study by Inchausti et al. that made this finding had other anxiety disorders as controls. I don't know if that difference still holds vs the general population... An older paper (Samuels et al., 2000) found negatively in this direction. As summarized in Rector et al. (2002):

To our knowledge, examination of the FFM [five factor model] in OCD has occurred only recently in a single
epidemiological study (Samuels et al., 2000). Participants with a lifetime diagnosis of OCD were
compared with community participants without a lifetime history of OCD and matched on gender,
race, and age. Patients with OCD were found to score higher on neuroticism (all facets) and lower
on extraversion (i.e. assertiveness facet only) versus community controls. In addition, participants
with OCD were found to be less agreeable, although no differences were observed on the domains
of openness and conscientiousness.

Rector et al. themselves did a fairly complicated study in which they found that OCD patients (surprisingly) had below average conscientiousness (compared to non-ill controls) but this turned out to mirror the patients' level of depression; while a simple F-test between groups was statistically significant, a MANOVA with the depression score as covariate was not. The graph below is kinda suggestive of that because the conscientiousness subscores for OCD and major depression look pretty similar.

Rector et al. did not exclude OCD patients with comorbid depression (or vice-versa), which explains well enough the above because:

In the ECA study (Reiger
et al., 1988) 31.7% of OCD patients were diagnosed as having a co-morbid MDD.

Which kinda makes it difficult to get meaningful results from such studies... do we (only) care what the personality advantages/traits of those OCD but without depression are? Etc.
A 2009 study on perfectionism and OCD by Wu and Cortesi found that

content conceptualized as "adaptive" perfectionism showed no correlation with any obsessive-compulsive symptoms

As the paper explains there's however disagreement in the literature whether it is appropriate to distinguish maladaptive vs adaptive perfectionism (this paper obviously takes the view that the distinction makes sense).

There are some blogs that assert that OCD is correlated with higher IQ. But while looking into this I found a press release for recent (2017) meta-analysis to the contrary:

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is not associated with a higher intelligence quotient (IQ), a myth popularized by Sigmund Freud, according to researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), Texas State University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The study, published in the Neuropsychology Review, is believed to be the first analysis of existing data on the link between IQ and OCD sufferers verses the general population. The authors tracked the origins of the myth to the French philosopher, physician and psychologist Pierre Janet in 1903, but it was Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, who popularized the hypothesis in 1909.
"Although this myth was never studied empirically until now, it is still a widely held belief among mental-health professionals, OCD sufferers and the general public," says Dr. Gideon Anholt, a senior lecturer in BGU's Department of Psychology.
The researchers conducted a meta-analysis of all the available literature on IQ in OCD samples versus non-psychiatric controls (98 studies), and found that contrary to the prevailing myth, OCD is not associated with superior IQ, but with normative IQ that is slightly lower compared to control samples. The authors suggested that the small reduction in IQ scores in OCD sufferers may be largely attributed to OCD-related slowness and not to intellectual ability.
The popular misconception about OCD has been further promoted by TV programs like "Monk," which show an individual with OCD using his superior intelligence to solve challenging mysteries. Yet, such beliefs about OCD may facilitate the misconception that there are advantages associated with the disorder, potentially decreasing one's motivation to seek professional help.

And the actual meta-analysis:

Across studies, small effect sizes were found for FSIQ and VIQ, and a moderate effect size for PIQ, exemplifying reduced IQ in OCD. However, mean IQ scores across OCD samples were in the normative range. Moderator analyses revealed no significant moderating effect across clinical and demographic indices. We conclude that, although lower than controls, OCD is associated with normative FSIQ and VIQ, and relatively lowered PIQ.

Likewise there are popsci assertions (e.g. the aforementioned blog) that OCD correlates with creativity. It wasn't too hard to find a study that supports at least some of that

OCD was unrelated to the self-rating [of creativity] but was correlated with the Biographical Inventory of Creative Behaviours.

And interestingly this study also found OCD correlating positively with conscientiousness. I personally don't see the correlation with BICB they found as significant because there's no mention of correcting for multiple comparisons and there are well over 20 comparisons made:

The problem with studying creativity with statistics is that there hasn't been a widely accepted test for creativity. I remember trying to answer here a question on the link between schizophrenia and creativity (let me see if I can find the link). The results were all over the place depending on what measure of creativity was used. And due to the varied measures, no luck in finding a meta-analysis. Even for disorders much more popularly associated with creativity, e.g. bipolar or schizophrenia, there are serious methodological concerns which prompt continued skepticism in some (but not all) researchers.


What's the opposite of major depressive disorder? Bipolar disorder, BD, involves manic episodes and depressive episodes.

If someone has a depressive episode, that person may have major depressive disorder, MDD or BD.

If someone has a manic episode, that person may have ___________ or BD.

So, what is the opposite of MDD?

It seems that "mania" is a term that describes an episode. So "mania" is the opposite of "depression" rather than "MDD".

Is there a major mania disorder? I have heard of kleptomania and pyromania which appear to be classified as impulse control disorders but nothing that appears to be analogous to major depressive disorder

There are two ways to interpret/answer this question. First, is there a recognized disorder that is characterized by mania in the absence of depression? Second, are there people who experience mania in the absence of depression?

The answer to the first interpretation is no. There is currently no "major manic disorder" or "unipolar mania." Given the DSM-5 criteria, a person with mania in the absence of depression would likely receive a diagnosis of Bipolar I Disorder, which is the same diagnosis that they would get if they had mania with depression.

The answer to the second interpretation is obviously more difficult. I don't have concrete data, but it appears to be rare. See the following link for an interesting discussion.

Why no unipolar mania listing in DSM-IV?


Cheapest way to measure arousal levels I'm interested in performing a psychological experiment from my own home (the research is controversial; not that it's unethical, but rather I won't be able to aquire funding for it) and in it I would like to measure the arousal level of my participants as accurately and - possibly even more important - as cheaply as possible. I have a regular computer with USB ports, and even though I prefer to work with OS X, I could use Linux, and, if I really was forced to, even Windows.

I'm thinking that galvanic skin response is the best measure because of the method's temporal responsiveness, but I guess heart rate could be used as well.

Does anybody know of any good and cheap instruments that can a) measure arousal level and b) can be connected to a regular computer?

I think you may have answered your own question.

You can build a GSR meter or purchase one online. You do not necessarily need to hook it up to your computer; if it has an LED you can simply record the results with pen and paper. If you want to measure heart rate, buy a stethoscope. Or if you want to be really cheap, check your pulse using two fingers; it's free.

Note that I have no experience with building my own GSR meter or using the GSR meter that I've linked to. I cannot vouch for the accuracy or reliability of these devices. The familiar adage is probably appropriate: you get what you pay for.


"Need" vs "Want" in psychology In marketing the terms needs and wants are usually used to refer to different concepts. It is not clear to me what exactly they mean.

In psychology what are the definitions for needs and wants? What is the difference between them?

Research in neuroscience allowed to distinguish two concepts: "liking" and "wanting". Berridge and colleagues distinguished two different brain mechanisms for that.

By injecting a tiny droplet of amphetamine drug in the nucleus accumbens (dopamine system), they noted an increase of the incentive salience that cues trigger for their reward without altering other components of desire or reward.
Experimentally, they also found that the generation of pleasure “liking” is more restricted neurochemically: opioid stimulation but not dopamine stimulation in some limbic strutures can enhance “liking”, whereas “wanting” is enhanced by both.

Research suggest that liking and wanting belongs to two different pathways mediated by opioid and dopamine circuits.
This distinction between liking and wanting could lead to ambivalent processes individuals could like what they do not want and want what they do not like.

To conlude, according to Berridge there are different "hedonic hotspots" in the brain that, according to the types of valences of the external stimuli, may modulate different processes such as: wanting, liking and 'needing'

References :

Wanting and Liking: Observations from the Neuroscience and Psychology Laboratory


Are there parts of the brain which don't change over a lifetime? We know that during our lifetime the brain develops new neural connections. In addition, there is pruning of neural connections. These phenomena together are called neuroplasticity.

Is there any research on part(s) of the brain that are fixed in terms of structure and other properties? In other words, are there regions in the brain where neuroplastic changes do not occur?

First off, 'neuroplasticity'is a broad term. Although structural changes are the most visible form of neuroplasticity, for example neurogenesis and axon outgrowth, generally subcellular changes are also taken into the definition of plasticity as well, for example the strengthening of synapses that occurs at the molecular level:

  Neuroplasticity occurs at different levels: structural plasticity (new neurons born, growth and shrinkage of neurons), functional synaptic plasticity (enhancing/diminishing the functional connection between neurons) and all the molecular and cellular mechanisms that accompany these changes

Secondly, the 'is there an exception to the rule' questions are notoriously hard to answer, as most scientific research reports pertain to the publishing of positive data (descriptions of neuroplastic changes in areas of the brain).

To cite Aguire:

  ...[A]s long as there are neurons, there is a potential for neuronal plasticity...

Hence, given the broad definition of neuroplasticity, I dare to state that it basically occurs in every brain region. In some more than others, however. The hot spots in the brain where neurogenesis takes place even in the adult brain, e.g. the hippocampus, are obviously the prime examples of high potential for gross plastic changes to occur.


What causes people to remember events which did not take place? How do we "remember" events which did not take place, or future events? I'm using remember as a way of describing the experience of recalling a future scenario. For instance, when you were little say your mom promised you a soda at the grocery store, but then didn't give you one. You might have created, imagined, a scenario where this did happen, memorized it as such, and then later when you didn't get the soda you remembered the other, expected, imagined. It's not the expectation I'm focusing on, but the act of creating, and remembering something that never happened, and is expected in the future.

I've read a few articles, mostly philosophical, about this sort of thing, and what I've gotten from that is we know about the future because we have a memory of the past. So in a way this is a question about memory itself.

I don't understand why we are able to remember events which did not happen, like events in the future. What causes the brain to be able to do this? Do we know yet, or is there research on-going?

There is some misinformation out there put forth by Brooks Agnew about "remembering the future".  This is the same guy who advocates a "hollow earth" theory.  It's not grounded in science, I'm afraid.

We predict and imagine the future.  Often our predictions aren't even conscious (reflexes, for instance, can be programmed in the lower brain; we're often not conscious of our reflexes until right after they've done their job).  But reflexes are a product of the past, either genetically, or through experience (depending on the reflex).

In fact, we generally consider it one of the arrows of time that humans remember the past and not the future; with Newtonian physics, deterministic physics implied events were completely invertible (reversible in time) while remaining valid.  This is one of the interesting features of classical physics.  There are now, many physically observable arrows of time, though: entropy, expansion of universe, quantum arrow (wave function collapse).

just a wiki article to get you started,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time


Are reaction time and memory physiological measure or behavioral observation? I think that the choice made by a subject in a choice task should be behavioral observation. But I am not sure about reaction time and memory, which is more about ability instead of intention.

It may help considering whether the phenomenon is under some  control by the participant. Pupil dilation is a physiological measure, but the speed at which I hit a key (reaction time) is a behavioral measure. Memory is a phenomenon. If you meant recall, recognition, or another memory retrieval task, how could you measure that physiologically? Memory is generally measured through (somewhat controlled) self-report. However, it could also be probed through less controllable, more automatic reactions.


What does "dimensionality of power distance" mean? The BBC's article Cracking India's mystifying nod code is an interesting read and contains the paragraph:

  However, there is more to the Indian head wobble than just a cultural quirk passed through the generations. In renowned cultural scientist Geert Hofstede’s exhaustive research on cultural norms across different countries, India scored 77 on the dimension of Power Distance – the extent to which people expect and accept power inequalities within their own society – compared to a world average of 56.5. This high score indicates a deep respect for hierarchy and limited scope for disagreement with those considered superior in any way.

and links to the website hofstede-insights.com where one can compare countries (cultures?) I've spent over a decade in the US and Taiwan each for example, and certainly the following comparison using the tool on that website rings true per my personal experience:

The terms "dimensionality" and "distance" have meanings to me in mathematics and physics, but I'm not familliar how they might be used in Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory.

Could someone help me understand the terms "dimensionality" and "distance" in the current context, using language accessible to one not familliar with the field, Hofstede's work, or formal psychology in general?

Does "the extent to which people expect and accept power inequalities within their own society" sum it up completely, or do "dimensionality" and "distance" carry more meaning than just "extent of expectation and acceptance"?

Hofstede has developed a cultural dimensions theory to compare countries, which uses factor analysis to assign values across 6 dimensions of culture.
These dimensions are:

Power Distance Index
Individualism vs Collectivism
Masculinity vs Femininity
Uncertainty Avoidance Index
Long Term Orientation vs Short Term Orientation
Indulgence vs Restraint

That's all their seems to be when it comes to defining the term 'dimension': a measurable aspect of a situation. As for power distance, as you have already quoted as "the extent to which the less powerful members of institutions and organisations within a country expect and accept that power is distributed unequally", basically means how readily the people of the culture accept hierarchies and inequalities of power. A larger power distance would imply a wider gap between people at different levels of the hierarchy, and greater acceptance of this gap with lesser questioning or asking for justifications.


Are the findings of the Rat Park experiments applicable to porn addiction? Many people say porn is addictive, but the conversation around this sounds quite similar to the conversation around drugs -

https://www.yourbrainonporn.com/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4600144/

which hold that substance and not setting is the main driver of addiction.
In the Rat Park experiments the addictive power of morphine was negligible if the rats had a happy social scene instead of a blank cage to live in - see here for clever cartoon on it

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/comic/rat-park/

http://www.brucekalexander.com/articles-speeches/rat-park

Extrapolating from rats to people, is it possible that porn addiction is less to do with the 'substance' and more to do with the social setting of the user ?
(Note: there are critiques of flaws in rat park experiment but I don't know where to find them).

As a therapist working with patients suffering from all kinds of addictions – drugs, porn, computer games, social media, gambling, sex, etc. – the simple answer is that addictive behavior is influenced by:

currenct life circumstances (Rat Park versus cages, if you want)
personality (some people are more prone to addiction than others)
life experiences (childhood abuse and other trauma)

So yes, a person in a happy romantic relationship with a supportive network of friends and family working a satisfying job will most likely not become addicted to porn from masturbating to it every now and then, just as they won't become addicted to THC from smoking a joint on Saturday evenings, but the influence of these life circumstances do not protect someone from becoming addicted when they make traumatic experiences such as the death of a child or when their personality is "addiction prone" (e.g. high neuroticism, low conscientiousness, high impulsivity, high reward and threat sensitivities, and so on).


What characterises people who stay calm in crisis situations? When something critical and bad happens, like a house on fire with people inside it, people react very differently.

Some persons will usually panic, cry and can barely be soothed.
Some persons will usually manage to stay calm, think rational and
actively do the best out of the situation.
Sometimes people go into shock, freeze
and are unable to act.

For a long time I have wondered what is the difference between people with different reactions. What characterizes those who always seem to keep calm? What is the reason that some never seem to be able to stay calm? What happens mentally when someone freezes and neither panics/cries nor acts?

I suspect this has to do with Big5 Neuroticism or Big5 Openness facet #3("Feelings").

This is measured with the Big5 Neuroticism#6 facet: Vulnerability.
This trait measures how an individual reacts to stress, including emergency situations:

  High scorers on Vulnerability experience panic, confusion, and
  helplessness when under pressure or stress. Low scorers feel more
  poised, confident, and clear-thinking when stressed. - See more at:
  http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-big-5-aspects.htm#sthash.PmuKOUm0.dpuf

http://www.psychometric-success.com/personality-tests/personality-tests-big-5-aspects.htm

This facet has shown to be the one more important for being able to make decisions and depending on others (page 153):
\http://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Watson14/publication/257044687_Procrastination_and_the_five-factor_model_a_facet_level_analysis/links/0a85e52fd0aa495d2f000000.pdf

This suggests that the panic, confusion and helplessness experienced may be due to being unable to make a decision on how to act and react.


What is an acquired taste? Some foods are delicious. People love eating them, and the experience has a positive reinforcement. Thus, people will eat the food again.

Some foods are instead "challenging", at least initially. For example, spicy or unfamiliar food. There are some foods which are considered particularly challenging like Durian fruit or Century eggs.

Why don't people simply stop eating this food, and instead acquire a taste for it?

One explanation for the development of 'acquired tastes' is a form of reinforcement learning called flavor-flavor learning. The name sounds a bit odd on its own, but should best be seen in relation to the concept of flavor-nutrient learning.
What flavor-flavor learning is
When a previously unexperienced flavor is encountered with familiar flavors, the eater may learn to associate these tastes. This is called flavor-flavor learning. There is some experimental evidence to suggest that flavor-flavor learning is automatic when eaters are hungry (Brunstrom and Fletcher, 2008). The study is not as well powered as might have been preferred, however, so the chance of false positives should be kept in mind.
How flavor-flavor learning explains taste acquisition
Supposing the Brunstrom and Fletcher result is not a false positive, we then have a plausible idea of how acquired tastes might develop from a flavor-flavor theoretic viewpoint: people are exposed to novel flavors in combination with liked flavors at meal times, either through parents or friends or just eating out. Since we tend to eat when we are hungry, in the long run this induces flavor-flavor learning and hence taste acquisition.
If you want to know more, a forward Scholar search on the Brunstrom and Fletcher paper lists some subsequent studies that deal with acquired tastes in additional detail.
References

Brunstrom, J. M., & Fletcher, H. Z. (2008). Flavour–flavour learning occurs automatically and only in hungry participants. Physiology & behavior, 93(1), 13-19.


Excitatory impulse speed vs inhibitory Is there a difference in speed of impulses created by excitatory and inhibitory neurons?

There is a wide variety of inhibitory neuron classes.  See here for a review of interneurons in the hippocampus: P. Somogyi, T. Klausberger, J. Physiol. 562, 9–26 (2005)..

Different classes of interneurons have different spike durations (e.g. "fast-spiking" or FS cells, generally used as a marker of putative PV+ interneurons).  Additionally, different classes of interneurons have different post-synaptic receptors with specific temporal and other characteristics.  For example, GABA-A receptors have time constants of ~10ms, whereas GABA-B receptors have time constants of ~100ms (and yes, there are subtypes of those receptor classes).  You can see a modeling paper I wrote for exploration of a use for different receptor classes, as well as more references for further research. H. Sanders, M. Berends, G. Major, M. S. Goldman, J. E. Lisman, J. Neurosci. 33, 424–429 (2013)..


Are you more successful if you publicly commit to pursuing a difficult goal? If you have an ambitious goal, does it help to publicly commit to that goal? For example, if someone is training for a long distance triathlon but doesn't know whether he/she will be able to pull it off or not. This person could tell his/her friends about my goal or post it on Facebook. What consequences does it have for people, if they do that? On the one hand, it might push them more, because they don't want to be embarrassed in front of others if they fail. On the other hand, this is a pretty negative focus and might be distractive.

Ok, I found something. Gollwitzer and colleagues (2009) have published an interesting paper on this question.

First of all, they say that, yes, publically stated intentions should lead to commitment, because the person wants to act in way that is consistent with the communicated intentions (e.g., Cialdini, Wosinka, Barrett, Butner, & Gornik-Durose, 1999). Second, public intentions should increase accountability (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999), which should also lead to an commitment effect.

However, they show that sometimes this can go wrong. Such public commitments may often be made in domains that are highly identity relevant and may thus be a means to reach some overarching goal. For example, committing to a triathlon may serve the goal of being a successful athlete. Now, symbolically, publicly committing to triathlon training may already help reaching this identity goal (because other people take notice of this effort). And thus ironically, it may be less necessary to actually reach the goal and diminish goal striving.

In line with these ideas they found that

  Identity-related behavioral intentions that had been noticed by other people were translated into action less intensively than those that
  had been ignored (Studies 1–3). This effect was evident in
  the field (persistent striving over 1 week’s time; Study 1)
  and in the laboratory (jumping on opportunities to act;
  Studies 2 and 3), and it held among participants with
  strong but not weak commitment to the identity goal (Study
  3). Study 4 showed, in addition, that when other people
  take notice of an individual’s identity-related behavioral
  intention, this gives the individual a premature sense of
  possessing the aspired-to identity

I should boast with the finished triathlon on Facebook only afterwards, I guess.

References

Cialdini, R.B., Wosinka, W., Barrett, D.W., Butner, J., & GornikDurose, M. (1999). Compliance with a request in two cultures:
The differential influence of social proof and commitment/consistency on collectivists and individualists. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 1242–1253.

Gollwitzer, P. M., Sheeran, P., Michalski, V., & Seifert, A. E. (2009). When intentions go public: Does social reality widen the intention-behavior gap? Psychological Science, 20, 612–618. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02336.x

Lerner, J.S., & Tetlock, P.E. (1999). Accounting for the effects of accountability. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 255–275.


Marr's analysis for ball pursuit Marr (1982) identified three levels at which we can describe information processing systems, including the human mind: the computational level, the algorithmic/representation level, and the implementation level.

Now I'm wondering which level is depicted by this situation:
A theory that baseball players estimate how quickly to run to catch a ball by fixating on the ball, beginning to run, and adjusting their running speed so that the angle of their gaze remains constant.

The computational level is about available information and in-principle what can be derived from that information. For catching a ball, this would be, for example, an analysis of what information is available to a fielder using a particular perceptual device, and what possible inferences could be drawn from that information. From the flux of light projected on a stationary 2D retina, is it possible to derive where the ball will be when? What if the 2D retina can move in response to the light, then is it possible? What if there are two eyes (i.e., stereo vision)? Your description of the procedure for catching a ball assumes that the information used by procedure is sufficient, but does not explicitly analyze and prove it, so your description is probably not best thought of as the computational level.

The algorithmic level is about the particular representation and process for computing an inference and making a response. There are usually many different ways to compute an answer. For example, adding two numbers can be done with Roman numerals and a difficult process, or with binary numerals using a power-of-2 place system and a simple process. Your description of a procedure for catching the ball seems closest to the algorithmic level, but the description would have to specify more details to be a fully fleshed-out algorithm.

The implementational level is about "hardware". How do the optical tracts of the brain encode and process the signal, and how does the body implement the motions requested by the brain? Your description of a process for catching the ball does not rely upon or mention these details, so is probably not best thought of as the implementational level.

(At least, that's my take on it. I think that the levels were intended as a useful framework for organizing and thinking about theories and how they interconnect. Marr suggested --if I recall correctly-- that it was valuable to do a computational analysis before diving into algorithmic particulars. But discussants sometimes devolve into heated philosophical debates about the "correct" interpretation of this or that. I hope this answer does not generate too much heat.)