Extending a 5 point ordinal scale to 9 points while maintaining comparability We have a lot of data regarding a 5 point ordinal scale with descriptors for each point like 'very little' to 'very much'.  I am worried that this scale will show insufficient variance in a further study I am designing, and would like to extend it in some way which a) captures meaningful information but b) maintains maximum comparability to the previous data.

Options under consideration:
1 - add blank items in between each of the old items on the horizontal row, rely on individuals to interpolate.
2 - invent new labels which somehow fit in between the old.  This may be linguistically challenging.
3 - convert to a numeric scale with comparably labeled beginning, mid, and endpoints
4- convert to a numeric scale using the old labels at every appropriate point, and blanks otherwise.

Adding additional questions to capture the variance is not an option, but I'm interested in any others I haven't thought of, and for and against arguments.

See this question on comparing scales with different response scales. In short, you have to do it with care. A good option for ensuring comparability is to get a sample of participants to provide responses on both response scales in order to see how they relate. This could then be used to create a conversion scale.

More generally, there is a large debate about the optimal number of response options on traditional survey items. In particular, if you are more interested in means of groups rather than individual-level measurement or if you have multiple items that are aggregated, then the move from a 5 to a 7 or 9-point scale is not going result in much more differentiation. It can be good to think about how well and how consistently your participants interpret the meaning of the scale. Adding points would increase the variance, but a question remains about whether it reflects variance in the true score of interest, or whether it reflects rating bias or something else.

Personally, if comparison with previous research is important, I'd generally leave the rating options as they were.


Can Someone Explain How Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence was Discovered? How do we eve know that fluid and crystallized intelligence exists?  It's a proposed framework of how our mind works that was proposed by Raymond Cattell in 1963 and further developed by his student, John L. Horn.  But, how did they deduce that our intelligence operates in these two different ways?  Why can't there be 4 different ways that our intelligence operates?  Why not 10?  Was there any physiological proof that our brain is divided in this way?  Or, was this all just simply a wild guess that seems to just fit with how our brain seems to operate (aka how we think)?

Has anyone actually proven with certainty that our brain actually works in this manner?  Or, has this become an accepted theory in the intelligence field merely because of a lack of a competing theory?

This is actually a fairly obscure topic in the history of psychology. According to a recent paper (starting with its conclusion), in the early 1940s Cattell mostly reforumulated an idea of Hebb, which the latter obtained by observing the differential effect (on verbal vs non-verbal abilities) of some brain injuries (lobotomies of various kinds actually). After a 20-year hiatus, Cattell published on this again (together with his student Horn) but this time with focus on the fluid intelligence as being "culture-fair".

“Cattell's” theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence is Hebb's theory of Intelligence A and Intelligence B, given another name and popularized by Cattell. Cattell's theory was Hebb's idea. [...]
In his 1943 paper, Cattell (1943, p. 179) stated that:

Hebb (1941c, 1942) has independently stated very clearly what constitutes two thirds of the present theory, for he says that “intellectual power may be needed for the first appearance of the qualitatively superior response, but not necessarily for its persistence” (Hebb, 1942), and “in any test performance there are two factors involved, whose relative importance varies with test: one factor being the lasting changes of perceptual organization and behavior induced by the first factor during the period of growth.”

[...]
Hebb's presentation (Hebb, 1941c) discussed the differences in effects of brain injury on adults and children and the finding that “certain kinds of abilities are less affected by late than by early injury.” While I do not have a copy of Cattell's (1941) APA presentation, I do have the typed version of Hebb's (1941c) in which he presented his ideas on Intelligence A and Intelligence B as follows:

It may be proposed that intellectual development includes two distinct things: (A) direct intellectual power, by neural maturation, and (B) the development of qualitative modifications of perception and behavior. The first factor is what reaches a peak somewhere around the beginning of adolescence, declining slowly thereafter; the second is the product of the first factor. [Hebb, 1941c, p. 5]

[...]
Hebb (1942, p. 287) [...] concluded by saying “The contrast is not between intelligence and knowledge, but between capacity to develop new patterns of response and the functioning of those already developed.”
[...]
The two pages that Cattell sent to Hebb for his comments include the definition of fluid and crystallized intelligence as follows:

Adult mental ability is of two kinds, which may contingently be called ‘fluid’ and ‘crystallized.’ ‘Fluid’ ability is a truly general ability to discriminate and perceive relations between any fundaments, new or old. Crystallized ability consists of discriminatory response habits built up in a particular field, through the original operation of ‘fluid’ ability, but no longer requiring a true insightful perception for their successful functioning. Intelligence tests test, at all ages, the combined action of fluid and crystallized ability, recording the level of whichever is higher.

He continued to say that: “the level of the ‘crystallized’ abilities has been largely determined by the original level of the all-round, ‘fluid’ ability. ‘Crystallized’ ability is thus a dead coral formation revealing by its outlines the limits of the original living process. Loss of any system of discriminatory habits, e.g., through brain injury, is now likely to remain more localized, i.e., to affect general ability less, and to be less remediable. For as the tide of ‘fluid’ ability recedes after adolescence the ‘crystallized’ discriminatory powers persist at a level above that at which the fluid ability is capable of rebuilding them.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, R.B. Cattell to Hebb, September 22, 1941)
[...]
Hebb showed Cattell's letter to his Head of Department, George Humphrey, and Humphrey then wrote to Cattell that “I do not think however that you should present this as your own hypothesis. It is in essence the theory on which Hebb has been experimenting all the year.” He continued to say that “Some hundreds of A.P.A. members heard Hebb put out the theory at the Evanston meeting, and I hope you will forgive me if I say that I am sure you would do your scientific reputation harm by publishing the paper in the form in which I have seen it, i.e., without giving him credit.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, G. Humphrey to R. B. Cattell, September 24, 1941)
[...] Cattell also replied to Humphrey to explain how he developed his theory. He said that “I made what seemed to me a tenable, though possible premature, generalization on his data differentiating the adult abilities which do and do not deteriorate and asked in my last letter if he approved of the passage in which I described this as implicit in his writings.” Cattell went on to say that “The further theories are however quite independent, and to the best of my knowledge were neither in Hebb's paper nor in our after dinner conversation. My views were based on two pieces of evidence not in Hebb's field of research, and I had already discussed them with Thurstone and with Miles. Hebb's third source of evidence fitted in beautifully with these and completed the picture, but two thirds of the picture was already there. Naturally Hebb and I in discussion gained clarifications, but this would have happened if I had discussed the same matter with any other man of Hebb's intelligence and liking for the subject.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, R.B. Cattell to G. Humphrey, September 26, 1941)
[...]
Finally, Cattell agreed to credit Hebb, but suggested that he was being generous in doing so: “However, I trust that the revised statement which I have sent to Hebb will be agreeable to both of us, though I confess that on re-reading it I think it goes further in acknowledging priority of parts of the theory to Hebb than my reason alone indicates that it should.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, R.B. Cattell to G. Humphrey, September 26, 1941).
[...]
As noted by Horn (1966, p. 554), Cattell did not do any follow-up research on the theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence, but “left it on the shelf” until 1963, when he showed that two general ability factors could be derived from factoring culturally embedded and culture fair intelligence test results from a sample of 277 children in the 7th and 8th grades (Cattell, 1963). In this paper he concluded that one of these factors “fits the crystallized ability factor measured in traditional intelligence tests and the other a fluid general ability measured in culture-fair intelligence tests” (p. 20). Cattell's student John Horn continued to develop the theory of crystallized and fluid intelligence (Horn and Cattell, 1966, 1967).


What contextual links would make full-text journal articles more useful? After searching PubMed or Google Scholar researchers often arrive at a publisher's full-text article page. Assuming that you have access to the full-text access, what contextual links should be included within the article? i,e links to Brain Atlas, links to Gene Databases

This is a subjective question and what is useful would depend on from which domain of cognitive science the article originated. In general, I prefer when the PDF looks like the journal article (i.e., no formatting to indicate links).

Here is a list of things that I find useful:

Links from in text citations to the location of the full reference
Links from references to the full-text resource
Links between Table and figure references with the actual figure
Table of contents tied to sections in the article
URLs and emails that can be clicked on
Tables with exportable data
If the article includes supplementary material, links to that material that work and do not require password access.

A few extra things that might be nice perhaps in the HTML version:

Ability to export both the article reference and the references in the  article in various bibliographic formats (e.g., bibtex, Endnote, etc.)
Page view, download, and citation statistics
RSS feed options for the journal


Is it generally accepted idea that a memory associated with strong olfactory stimuli will be kept longer? Question:
If you go to see flowers and don't smell them, is it likely that you will forget the event easier than when you do smell them? assuming all the other factors are constant.

Here's the story.
These days, with my nose always covered by a mask (and only smelling my own breath all the time), I can hardly smell flowers. So, when I went to see flowers last weekend, I guessed that the event will be less memorable than those from previous years.
I'm not in the bio/neuro field, so I wanted to check if my guess was right. After a few hours of search, I concluded that the guess wasn't a bad one.
What I learned from the quick search was that:
the olfactory system pathway is different from those of visual or auditory systems. For example, optic signals are relayed to the optic chiasm, which locates beneath the hypothalamus, then to the lateral thalamus, then to the visual cortex, which is near the back head. So, they just "pass by" the limbic system. Olfactory signals, on the other hand, are directed to the limbic system, parts of which handle emotional memory(amygdala) and long-term memory(hippocampus). Except that I am not sure what that 'handle' exactly means, it seems sensible to me that electric signals directed closer to the part of the brain related to memory are more likely to stimulate memory than those signals that divert the part.
I was happy to learn something new and posted it somewhere. Sadly, one of my distant friends had to disagree with me. She has ph.D. in a somewhat related field (she may have a good reason for that) and she refused(!) to give me a further explanation :(
What did I get wrong?

In general, the answer is no - smell does not enhance memory.
But you are onto something with the proximity of the olfactory cortex to the limbic system: You are not the first to have noticed the special connection that smell might have with emotion and memory.  This idea is called the Proust Effect:

The best known example of the power of smell to evoke memories and
emotions is the “Proust effect,” ... The suddenness of the memory, and
the strong emotions attached to it, have become symbolic, in both the
realm of literary criticism and in sensory physiology, for the power
of human taste and smell. ... The olfactory pathway has privileged
direct access to [the prefrontal cortex and limbic system]; hence the
combination of intense emotion and intense cognitive effort
experienced ...

To understand this effect, let's first consider context-dependent memory:

In psychology, context-dependent memory is the improved recall of
specific episodes or information when the context present at encoding
and retrieval are the same.

This is a well-known and highly robust effect: If you see and smell flowers, then exposure to the same smell (cue) can significantly improve recall of the flowers (target) later.  However, smell does not have a privileged position in context-dependent memory - that is, any context information (such as the sounds, location, even the mood you were in) can be equally effective at cueing recall later (Herz, 1998; Herz & Cupchik, 1995).
Most of the research looking at the effect of smell on memory is about the context-dependent memory effect.  In these studies, a no-odor control condition is sometimes used where some subjects are exposed to an odor during encoding (memorizing) but no odor is used at recall (remembering).  These studies consistently find that odor during encoding has no effect on memory unless the same odor is also present at recall (eg, Parker, Ngu, & Cassaday, 2001).

In the above image from Herz (1997) for example, scent must be present in both encoding (study) and recall (test) to have an effect; in other conditions, memory is no better than if no odor is present.
According to the Proust Effect however, when emotion is involved, then odor can potentially enhance memory.  For example, if you see and smell flowers just as a car accident happens in front of you, AND you happen to come across the same smell later, then it can serve as a powerful recall cue of the event (Toffolo , Smeets, & van den Hout, 2011; Herz, 1997; Wiemers, Sauvage, & Wolf, 2014).
In reality, the smell of flowers is pleasant, and thus you might linger around longer, resulting in improved recall not from the smell, but from paying more attention to your surroundings (Morrin & Ratneshwar, 2003; Krishna, Lwin, & Morrin, 2009; Lwin & Morrin, 2012; Tortell et al, 2007).


What are the ethics (for clinical psychiatrists) of posting videos on Youtube with poorly-worded guidance about disorders? I've watched a few Youtube videos about dealing with narcissists and I noticed a few patterns.

Videos.

The videos appear to be genuine attempts to provide some help to people who are dealing with narcissistic abuse.  The people publishing them are either practitioners or coaches.  Usually they post contact information in the video descriptions to promote their practices.  This seems par for the course.  Some videos provide examples of narcissistic behavior by showing recorded episodes of interactions with extreme narcissists.  They claim to have been recorded legally, which is fine.

Comments.

I also noticed that many of the comments to the videos seem to express a great deal of hostility towards current of former narcissists in their lives.  Frankly, I am having trouble telling the difference between the narcissists, as they are described in the videos, and those who claim to be their victims in the comments.

It's not that there is just a rage directed towards those whom they perceive as having taken away their control over their lives.  It's that these supposed narcissists do not acquiesce to the victims' various demands.  Which shows both a feeling of entitlement and a lack of self-awareness.  And it is, in fact, expressed with a great deal of rage.

Contradiction.

I am having a difficult time making sense of it because, on the one hand, the "victims" do describe some patterns of behavior which the videos attribute to narcissists.  On the other hand, the "victims" themselves seem to exhibit behavior symptomatic of narcissists.

The recorded audios of narcissists abusing their victims demonstrate clearly abusive behavior.  But the definitions of narcissistic abuse, given in the videos, seem to "cast too wide a net".  They provide good guidance for what makes a narcissist, but do not provide any real tests to exclude the possibility of someone being a narcissist.   They can probably provide a justification for actual narcissists to justify their abuse of their victims, as they appear to do in the comments.

The fact that all these practitioners can correctly identify narcissists as such, but give poor definitions, as guidance for other on how to identify potential narcissists, makes me think that the practice of making such videos should be unethical.

Question.

Is it unethical though?  Is the idea of avoiding the risks of casting aspersions (through definition which are overly pathologizing of normal behaviors) a part of ethics of clinical psychiatry?

The enforceable ethical guidelines a given practitioner must adhere to are defined by several codes or areas of law: state licensure, (usually national) board certification, and employment contracts. On top of that, there are typically non-enforceable ethics codes on the profession level.

I’m not sure what the ethical concern would be in the videos you’re talking about, as long as the stated information is accurate and the limited scope (“this is not a training on how to diagnose”) is clear. There is no duty to only ever provide absolutely comprehensive information.

The only possibly applicable thing I can come up with is the Goldwater Rule against armchair diagnosing:

  "The Goldwater Rule embodies these concepts and makes it unethical for a psychiatrist to render a professional opinion to the media about a public figure unless the psychiatrist has examined the person and has proper authorization to provide the statement," said APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A.

https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-calls-for-end-to-armchair-psychiatry


Is it possible to enhance one's learning ability? I understand that the so-called brain training games like Lumosity doesn't work. But is there any exercise ( mental or physical) that I can do or medicine pills that I can take, that are proven to be able to improve one's learning ability?

I want to be able to learn fast, and I want to learn so that I can learn even faster!

I am aware that if one does a cognitive task/exercise continuously, one will get better at that task specifically, but this is not what I am looking for. I want the benefits of the exercise to spill over to learning ability.

Addendum: I found out what I was initially interested to ask: which is whether it is possible to improve one's fluid intelligence.

Interventions which try to make a person 'smarter' in pretty much any sense of the word don't really work. In particular, methods very rarely show any spillover effects whatsoever.

However, what can work is the application of good learning techniques.

Most people trying to learn stuff tend to highlight, reread, summarise, or try fancy mnemonics. These usually don't work very well and are more likely to make you think that you know what you're doing than actually facilitate understanding.

What people generally don't do but what does work are distributed practice, spaced learning, practice testing.


How do the blind dream? Lately, a friend of mine has been telling me that he's been having recurring dreams involving a certain rabbi, who died around a hundred years ago.
Since there's been some controversy surrounding the truth of several famous pictures of him (some say that the most famous images of him really show someone else), I wanted to ask my friend which picture he looked like.
Luckily, I stopped myself before I did -- this friend of mine is blind.

Therefore, I'd like to know what the blind experience when they dream -- do their dreams contain whatever types of experience they have in real life (ie, purely based on touch, hearing, smell, etc), or might they dream with vision? If they dream with vision, do they see color?
Is this impacted by whether the particular person in question had ever had sight (or partial sight) at any point in their life?

You may want to read Meaidi et al (2014). They obtained dream reports from congenitally blind, late blind, and matched sighted controls.
To quote the abstract, they found:

  All blind participants had fewer visual dream impressions
  compared to sighted control participants. In late blind participants, duration of blindness
  was negatively correlated with duration, clarity, and color content of
  visual dream impressions. Congenitally blind participants reported more auditory,
  tactile, gustatory, and olfactory dream components compared to sighted control
  participants. In contrast, late blind participants only reported more tactile
  dream impressions. Blind and sighted control participants did not differ with
  respect to emotional and thematic dream content. However, congenitally blind
  participants reported more aggressive interactions and more nightmares
  compared to the other two groups.

  Our data show that blindness considerably alters the
  sensory composition of dreams and that onset and duration of blindness
  plays an important role. The increased occurrence of nightmares in congenitally blind
  participants may be related to a higher number of threatening
  experiences in daily life in this group.

In summarising previous research they note that:

  previous studies seem to suggest that individuals who
  become blind after the age of 7 years retain visual imagery in their
  dreams, though congenitally blind or early blind (onset of
  blindness before the ages of 5–7 years) individuals do not.

They cite a number of previous studies that have looked at dreams of blind people that you may want to check out:

[5] Kerr NH. Dreaming, imagery and perception. In: Kryger MH, Roth T, Dement WC, editors. Principles and practice of sleep medicine. Philadelphia, PA: W.B. Saunders Company; 2000. p. 482–90.
[6] Amadeo J, Gomez E. Eye movements, attention, and dreaming in subjects with life-long blindness. Can Psychiatry Assoc J 1966;11:501–7.
[7] Berger R, Olley P, Oswald I. The EEG, eye movements, and dreams of the blind. Quart J Exp Psychol 1962;14:183–6.
[8] Kerr NH, Foulkes D, Schmidt M. The structure of laboratory dream reports in blind and sighted subjects. J Nerv Ment Dis 1982;170:286–94.
[9] Hurovitz CS, Dunn S, Domhoff GW, Fiss H. The dreams of blind men and women: a replication and extension of previous findings. Dreaming 1999;9:183–93.
[10] Kirtley D. The psychology of blindness. Chicago, IL: Nelson-Hall; 1975.
[11] von Schumann H. Träume der blinden. Basel: S. Karger Co.; 1959.
[12] Sabo KT, Kirtley DD. Emotions in the dreams of the blind. Int J Rehabil Res    1980;3:382–5.
[13] Cason H. The nightmare dream. Psychol Monogr 1935;46:1–51.
[14] Kirtley D, Cannistraci K. Dreams of the visually handicapped: toward a   normative approach. Am Found Blind Res Bull 1973;27:111–33.
[15] Spielberger CD, Gorsuch RL, Lushene PR, Vagg PR, Jacobs AG. Manual for the state-trait anxiety inventory (Form-Y). 2nd ed. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting    Psychologists Press, Inc.; 1983.

References

Meaidi, A., Jennum, P., Ptito, M., & Kupers, R. (2014). The sensory construction of dreams and nightmare frequency in congenitally blind and late blind individuals. Sleep medicine, 15(5), 586-595. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2013.12.008


How does posture affect cerebral blood flow? This is a follow-up question to an answer on Quora:

  In the upright posture, venous outﬂow is considerably less pulsatile
  (57%) and occurs predominantly through the vertebral plexus, while in
  the supine posture venous outﬂow occurs predominantly through the
  internal jugular veins. A slightly lower tCBF (12%), a considerably
  smaller CSF volume oscillating between the cranium and the spinal
  canal (48%), and a much larger ICC (2.8-fold) with a corresponding
  decrease in the MRI-derived ICP values were measured in the sitting
  position. [1]

I don't quite get the answer though. I know that the cerebral blood flow distribution is more complex than we think, but does the overall blood flow increase or decrease with an upright posture?

Blood pressure decreases as one stands up.

A model of cerebral blood flow has been created in Modeling Cerebral Blood Flow Control During Posture
Change From Sitting to Standing:

  The characteristic features are that after standing up for 60 s, the pressure (both systolic and diastolic values) drops signiﬁcantly from a mean pressure of approximately 95 mmHg to a mean pressure of approximately 58 mmHg. At the same time, the blood ﬂow velocity also decreases followed by an increase. However, it should be noted that while the mean velocity decreases, the decrease is not as big, because of a large widening of the pulse-amplitude (systolic value minus diastolic value).

Other studies back this claim up such as Cerebral Circulation In Various Physologic States:

  Although our studies have not revealed a quantitative relationship between alterations in the arterial pressure and cerebral blood flow in the same
  person, there was a definite fall in cerebral blood
  flow with the fall in effective cerebral arterial
  pressure on standing.

More specific studies on posture and blood flow have also been performed to learn how to the best way to reduce blood pressure, which is important in head injury patients.
From Effect of head elevation on intracranial pressure, cerebral perfusion pressure, and cerebral blood flow in head-injured patients:

  There was no statistically significant change in CPP, CBF, cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen, arteriovenous difference of lactate, or cerebrovascular resistance associated with the change in head position. The data indicate that head elevation to 30° significantly reduced ICP in the majority of the 22 patients without reducing CPP or CBF.

This means that Inter-Cranial Pressure (ICP) was significantly reduced in most patients without reducing Cerebral Blood Flow (CBF). This means changes in pressure do not always equate to changes in blood flow of the same relative magnitude.

Reading more into those articles will give you more insight into the complexities of how the flow changes in posture, but unless you have a more specific question I believe that covers what you asked.


Is there a difference between physiological stimulations and psychological stimulations? From what I understand, physiological stimulation (or stimulus or sensation) "refers to sensory excitation, the action of various agents or forms of energy (stimuli) on receptors that generate impulses that travel through nerves to the brain (afferents)", while psychological stimulation (or conceptualized stimulation) involves cognitive process like perception, reasoning, emotion, experience. However, reading the Wikipedia page of stimulation, I feel like the two concepts are the same.

Are they the same or different? I guess we can say that psychological stimulation is physiological stimulation because it can explain (or be explained by) these phenomenons:

Brainwaves are combinations of harmonic oscillators range from 0.5 to 700 Hz
Synesthesia, when some people can literally see an orange triangle in space when they hear a trumpet

If so, how does this energy change in the brain related with perception, reasoning, emotion, experience?  Is there any experiment that support or against this?

FYI: Physically, when the oscillators aren't aligned, the wave will not jump:

But if they are aligned, the wave will jump:

Related:
• Does neurodynamics have any relation to psychodynamics?
• Why do brains oscillate within specific frequency ranges?
• Is there a relation between large-scale oscillations and small-scale oscillations? in Physics

Psychology and physiology are at different levels of explanation or levels of analysis. The answer depends entirely on how you view the relationship between such levels and in particular (mental) causality within and between levels. As this is still heavily debated, this metaphysical consideration is a precursor for giving a more specific answer to your question. Some options:

The physicalist and reductionist answer is probably the simplest: they are the same thing, only physical stimulation is the only real one! According to this view, Psychology is an (epiphenomenal) abstraction which is entirely realized by lower levels. Therefore, there can only be psychological stimulation in the presence of physical stimulation, but the latter may occur without the former being intrinsic to that. As an example, you present a snake to the subject to elicit psychological fear, but the physical stimulation (photons tranduced by the retina and the pressure transduced by the cutaneous receptors in the skin) is a necessity for this to happen. If you count neuronal activity as physical self-stimulation, then fearful memories could be cast in the same language.

Others try to keep the relationship between levels less well defined. For example, if you align more with emergentism, poetic naturalism, or the like, you acknowledge the underlying physical reality, but you want to keep the causal language such as "the snake made him fearful" within a given level of analysis rather than crossing levels. So the answer to your question is that there IS no difference, but you better act as if there is because you'll miss something or get confused if you don't.

A dualist, of course, would hold that physical stimulation and psychological stimulation can (at list in principle) occur in its own right. Usually, they have great difficulties answering the very question you pose, and even though most people in their day-to-day lives tend to think dualistically (as intuitive psychologists), very few defend dualism in academia nowadays.

There are other positions as well, and each of the above has many branches. But the above should give some search terms to get acquainted with the heavy players in the field.


What are the techniques to get over the learning plateau? I often end up having loads of things which I am learning. One of the pattern which I have observed over time is that I often end up leaving things half way - for months and then, I have to restart doing the basics again. I feel that if only I ended up taking a few steps more, I could have gained much more from my revisions.

I have a couple of questions -

Is this good practice?
Is there any cognitive reason behind this?
How does one overcome/control this tendency to start off something new before finishing the older ones?

Increased spacing between learning sessions has been found to improve long-term learning when studying for tests. The key is to study less per session, but more often. To develop a habit, you could start by connecting your time of study to a habit that you have already established. For example, if you always brush your teeth, you could associate putting the toot-brush back with walking over to your study area and opening a book.

Repeated learning further enables learning. This is one of the reasons spaced learning works. Once you have studied a chapter the previous session, you go back to the same chapter, skim it, and think about the concepts that you have learned. Repetition is key to rote learning.

Facing the hard parts requires a very thorough understanding of the basics. Know the basics. Don't be afraid of your brain working harder on some problems. The more advanced stuff will take more time to learn. That is the natural course.

TLDR:

No.
A lack of repetition, spacing, and knowledge of the fundamentals.
See above.


People do not like change, but need diversification? Is that not contradictive? People generally resist change, yet they have a desire for diversification.Of course, both is possible. Just like the need of safety but the desire for new discoveries and adventures.

But what is the psychological explaination? Is there anything I misunderstood?

Balancing a combination of 'sticking with what you know' and 'exploring new things' is optimal in a lot of environments. What the optimal balance is depends on a bunch of factors like your planning horizon, the distribution of good things in the world (common/rare & similar/dissimilar), and how you interact with them (reusable, like a shortcut, depleting, like a gold mine, or one-shot interaction like buying a house).

People are really surprisingly good at this! Fun search terms for google scholar might be "explore/exploit tradeoff" or "multi-arm bandit problems" [with humans]. But it's a big and complicated literature, actually I'd recommend starting with a popsci version, "Algorithms to live by" by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. I think you might enjoy it, it's a great book, very readable, and it goes into some detail on this question and a few of its near neighbors.


How can STDP fit with reciprocal connectivity? I have rather technical question regarding STDP dynamics.
I am working on a neural network implementing an STDP learning algorithm, and have noticed that it is extremely anti-reciprocal. When two neurons have bidirectional connectivity between them, the conditions that will strengthen one direction will inevitably weaken the other, as far as I can understand. If B consistently fires immediately following a spike in A, the A->B synapse will strengthen, however the B->A synapse would weaken, as the pre-synapse / post-synapse roles are reverse.
This wouldn't be much of a problem if it weren't for empirical evidence of high reciprocity in cortical connectivity.

Am I missing something? Is this a known shortcoming of the model?

Consider that elimination of such a phenomena is not ideal. It's been proposed that actual neuronal networks exist under the tension of synchronous decoupling.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627308001281

To answer your question though, you probably should consider that reciprocal connections might not be between two individual neurons. Rather, axons in the cortex are clumped into minicolumns, each one having 20+ pyramidals in supragranular layers. It's conjecture, but it's possible that the reciprocal connections are between different pyramidals within minicolumns (or even different pyramidals within columns or whatever other macro-structure you want).


Are there benefits to learning to write with your non-dominant hand? There are some articles on the web that recommend learning to write with your non-dominant hand to get in touch with your inner child or a higher power, increase your creativity and be more open-minded or some such thing. I don't usually believe random stuff from the internet, but:

One of my drawing teachers told us to try drawing with the non-dominant hand. What I discovered was that I was very much better at getting proportions right with the non-dominant hand. I only had to use the dominant hand to clean up the shaky lines, because my non-dominant hand has poor fine motor control.

So there is obviously something that happens, when I use the "other" hand, something that has to do with how my perceptions are processed and my hand movement is controlled. But these "switches" while I draw are just temporary. What is sometimes recommended on some websites is a more fundamental change: to switch hands for all tasks.

Is there research on the effects of switching hands for all or certain tasks?

I have no idea which tags I should select. Please edit my tags, if you feel you know better.

Yes, there are benefits, but I don't think it requires long-term switches.  Studies have used this as a manipulation to try and increase self control and have found that it decrease aggression.  Based on this, once one has mastered using the non-dominant hand, it seems like the benefit of continuing to use that hand might be over (as it no longer requires effort).

See: Denson, T. F., Capper, M. M., Oaten, M., Friese, M., & Schofield, T. P. (2011). Self-control training decreases aggression in response to provocation in aggressive individuals. Journal of Research in Personality, 45(2), 252–256. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2011.02.001


What statistics can compare individual survey responses & others that were measured as a group (from which we need to extract individual responses)? The organization I belong to studies indigenous populations through primarily survey research. One study for example aims to identify the relationship between culture and the evaluation of odors. We are looking for a statistical procedure that can be used to compare a larger amount of individuals. Some records were measured directly on individuals, while others were measured by a group spokesman. In the case of groups, however, individuals should be "downscaled" in order to be able to compare these data records with the data sets of individuals measured. The group speakers of a group are not always the same people from a particular group, but different people can respond on behalf of the group. The group size can vary within the measurement. A mean number of group size, ratio between man and woman and age is estimated per questionnaire/measurement (data set). Due to the difficulties collecting data in indigenous contexts, this is the only way we found to be possible. We are looking for a statistical method that can compare individual survey responses, if some were measured individually, and others were measured as a group (from which we need to extract individual responses).

Sounds like you're looking for a hierarchical model. You might find some joy in  BDA, http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/book/ (in particular, chapter 5)

To quickly get some idea if this sort of thing is right for you, you could check out this blog-post on one particular example here http://andrewgelman.com/2014/01/21/everything-need-know-bayesian-statistics-learned-eight-schools/

Whether this will work for you also depends quite a bit on what you want to ask (what does 'identify the relationship' mean?) and the target audience. If you do head over to Cross Validated (strongly recommended!) make those things as clear as possible in your question.


Bringing dreams to conscious awareness Background:  All of us have dreams at night, and I believe that all of us wonder how a dream of a lapse of seconds could convince our consciousness that this has taken the span of a lifetime.
As far as I know, the REM phase – in which we have dreams – does not take more than 20 min, while we can feel after a dream that it's a year after the last time we have been awake...Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Another interesting aspect in dreams is that space and time are subject to distortion, and the capacities of the mind to handle information is far away from its capacities in the awakened state, so the acuity with which someone can paradoxically "resolve" problems while asleep is no wonder, and by that I mention lucid dreaming.

Drugs can alter our capacities to perceive our environments and ourselves, so that someone can ignore even the worst feeling of pain while he is taking barbiturates for instance, and the point of this is that what can be illogical within some context can be possible and therefore logical in another context.
Not to mention that hypnosis can bring a hidden aspect of our personality to higher levels of consciousness, make someone think he is another person or even another "thing" and so on...

I wonder if it is possible to provoke a state that is similar to lucid dreaming in a person that is awake...The idea is intuitive, even childish, and I received a comment that it's not logical, as lucid dreaming while awake contradicts the definition of awakened/sleep states...Of course this should be illogical at the first glance, but that is the point of my question.
I hope I found the right words to explain my idea...

My question:
Is it possible to provoke a fusion between dreams and reality so that our brains handle information of the real world in the same way as it happens in dreams?

Just speaking from personal experience, I've never experienced time distortion in my dreams as extremely as you describe. I've experienced moments scattered throughout narratives that would take longer than 20 minutes to elapse in real life, but since I never recall experiencing every single moment of those narratives, I wouldn't assume my sense of time had altered while dreaming. Maybe I'd just skipped around, experiencing only 20 minutes' worth of the dreams' narratives, or maybe I'd only imagined those moments as joined by an implicit narrative and not really experienced time passing during any one of them. I'd love to see empirical research on this, but it's somewhat hard for me to imagine how reliable information on these matters could be collected.

The duration of REM sleep is more objectively observable than the contents of dreams; I was surprised to find that Google produces a reference immediately in response to the query, "duration of rem sleep":

  The first REM period of the night may be less than 10 minutes in duration, while the last may exceed 60 minutes. [Stevens, 2013]

While cognitive function is clearly different while dreaming, I'm unaware of any evidence that it's enhanced in any ways that would be desirable during wakefulness. If you or anyone else can find any references to support your ideas, we could probably have a much more productive discussion here. Similarly, I'm skeptical of the comparisons of lucid dreaming to hypnosis and intoxication. These may be very different states of consciousness, and I definitely wouldn't call them "higher states".

Just to preserve the coherence of your response to my answer, here's the old content worth keeping:

Lucid dreams are by definition both conscious and occurrent during sleep, therefore:

It's not logically possible to have a lucid dream while awake. If you're trying to refer to a similar state that is not a dream, please define it directly rather than by analogy to a dream state.
Lucid dreams do not need to be brought to the boundaries of consciousness; they occur within those boundaries by definition. Maybe you mean to ask for ways of making ordinary dreams lucid.

The old "Let me Google Scholar that for you" offers plenty on lucid dreams and means of induction.  I'll even copy, paste, and format some below...(I'm absolutely not vouching for their scientific validity BTW. "Medical Hypotheses"? Sounds legit...) Looks like there are about 2,878 more where these came from.

References
· Barrett, D. (1992). Just how lucid are lucid dreams? Dreaming, 2(4), 221–228.
· Garfield, P. (1975). Psychological concomitants of the lucid dream state. Sleep Research, 4, 184.
· Gillespie, G. (1983). Memory and reason in lucid dreams: A personal observation. Lucidity Letter, 2(1), 8–9.
· Green, C. E. (1968). Lucid dreams (Vol. 1). Institute of Psychophysical Research.
· Hearne, K. M. (1983). Lucid dream induction. Journal of Mental Imagery, 7(1), 19–23.
· LaBerge, S. P. (1980). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: A case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 51(3f), 1039–1042.
· LaBerge, S. P., Nagel, L. E., Dement, W. C., & Zarcone Jr, V. P. (1981). Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 52(3), 727–732.
· Sergio, W. (1988). Use of DMAE (2-dimethylaminoethanol) in the induction of lucid dreams. Medical Hypotheses, 26(4), 255–257.
· Stevens, M. S. (2013).  Normal sleep in adults, infants, and the elderly. Medscape: Normal sleep, sleep physiology, and sleep deprivation. Retrieved from http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1188226-overview.
· Tart, C. (1979). From spontaneous event to lucidity: A review of attempts to consciously control nocturnal dreaming. In B. Wolman, M. Ullman, & W. Webb (Eds.), Handbook of dreams: Research, theories and applications (pp. 226–268). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
· Tart, C. (1984). Terminology in lucid dream research. Lucidity Letter, 3(1), 4–6. Retrieved from http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/terminol.htm.
· Tholey, P. (1983). Relation between dream content and eye movements tested by lucid dreams. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 56, 875–878.
· van Eeden, F. (1969). A study of dreams. In C. Tart (Ed.), Altered states of consciousness (pp. 145–157). New York: Wiley.


Has the perception of time changed over the last century? (e.g. 1960's vs. now) How does one measure perception of time? And has it changed over the last century? My gut feeling says that people in the 50s & 60s found time to be passing slower compared to people in the present generation.

Time perception also changes as we grow older. For older people it seems to pass more quickly than for the young.

I think, for a start, that you are absolutely right that time passes faster for older people. How can you do research to show this? It's a silly comment. Life itself shows that this is the case. When you're young (under your teens), normally, you enjoy life every day, crying and laughing. The days seem to last "forever". Although it is said that time flies by when having a good time. But I think the last is the case for older young ones (like Einstein said when having a good time with your girlfriend time seems to pass much faster than holding you're hands on a hot object for a minute). Though it could be possible that in a Hopi society (to name an example) this isn't the case, but I'm 100% are it's the case when growing older.
Considering your question. It is said we are living in fast times these days. It's a rat's race. Are living fast and the perception of the speed of time connected? I think indeed. When I lay in my bed the whole of the day while feeling depressed, I can tell you that time passes slowly! Except when you sleep, of course. When I have many things to do (which I like) there can't be plenty of time enough, so time flies by. On the contrary, doing a job you hate for eight hours, will slow down your perception of time. Always looking at the clock: when can I go home?
I think this has been the case in all eras we are looking at. Why shouldn't it? I think a physical clock will have no effect on that. In almost all, if not all, cultures a physical clock is present. It's not a Swiss-made precisely ticking clock or an atomic clock, but one that resides in Nature.
So my answer: No.


Calculate criterion values for each confidence level (within SDT) Take a 2AFC task, where people also give a measure of confidence.
In the framework of signal detection theory, the criterion values for each confidence level are simply additional criteria, placed on the same internal response axis as the (first order task) decision criterion.

Can I estimate the values of these additional confidence criteria from the data of a subject? If so, how? Would I simply take all trials with (say) confidence = 3, and calculate the criterion based on those trials alone?

There's actually a very simple answer to this question: calculate criterion of confidence level = 3 by counting as hits only those trials where the answer was correct (and the target was there), and confidence was equal or higher than 3.

This is also what Rahnev et al did in the following paper:
Rahnev, D., Koizumi, A., McCurdy, L. Y., D’Esposito, M., & Lau, H. (2015). Confidence Leak in Perceptual Decision Making. Psychological Science, 0956797615595037. http://doi.org/10.1177/0956797615595037


Relation between Nengo, SPA and NEF with respect to other Neural Models I'm working through How to Build a Brain and I keep getting confused on the relation between Nengo, the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) and the Neurological Engineering Framework (NEF).

Are there general names and a general way to describe these components? I'm assuming the individual tasks they are performing are not unique, although I do believe that the result is unique. For example, I believe the role performed by SPA is similar to the one proposed by the Neural Blackboard Architecture, but I would really like to know if there is an equivalent to NEF and/or Nengo. Also, where does ACT-R fit into this whole thing?

I haven't read the book, just googled, so:

NEF is a mathematical model that simulates neural systems. It consists of formulae that you can use to (manually) compute the behavior of neurons.

NENGO is a software (version 1.0 in the programming language Java and is scriptable in Python, version 2.0 is pure python) that implements the NEF, so that it computes the behavior of neurons (according to the NEF) for you.

You can think of the relation between NEF and NENGO as similar to that between arithmetic (the rules for computation: addition, subtraction etc.) and a pocket calculator (which "knows" those rules and calculates for you).

SPA is another mathematical model. It uses the basic neural functionality modelled in the NEF to build a large scale cognitive model. In the book, NENGO is used to implement SPA/Spaun.

You can think of the relation between NEF and SPA as similar to that between arithmetic (the basic rules of calculation) and algebra (a more complex set of rules that uses the basic rules of arithmetics to solve more complex problems).

There are two websites explaining it all:

http://nengo.ca/
http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/research/spa.html

You will find the relevant pages explaining what I summarized above through Google.


What types of sounds do young infants prefer? I've learned through course lectures that infants can recognize faces shortly after birth (Slater & Quinn, 2001), and have a visual preference for human features as young as 1-month-old (Sanefuji et al., 2011)[pdf]. Infants are also known to prefer hearing their mother's voices (DeCasper & Fifer, 1980) and motherese (Fernald,1984). Prefences for higher-pitched singing also suggests that babies may in general prefer higher pitches (Trainor & Zacharias, 1997).

In general I would like to know more comprehensively what types of sound preferences do young infants have? And when is the youngest age for which these preferences are observed?

Quote from article at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23805119

  Infants prefer speech to non-vocal sounds and to non-human vocalizations, and they prefer happy-sounding speech to neutral speech. They also exhibit an interest in singing, but there is little knowledge of their relative interest in speech and singing. The present study explored infants' attention to unfamiliar audio samples of speech and singing. In Experiment 1, infants 4-13 months of age were exposed to happy-sounding infant-directed speech vs. hummed lullabies by the same woman. They listened significantly longer to the speech, which had considerably greater acoustic variability and expressiveness, than to the lullabies. In Experiment 2, infants of comparable age who heard the lyrics of a Turkish children's song spoken vs. sung in a joyful/happy manner did not exhibit differential listening. Infants in Experiment 3 heard the happily sung lyrics of the Turkish children's song vs. a version that was spoken in an adult-directed or affectively neutral manner. They listened significantly longer to the sung version. Overall, happy voice quality rather than vocal mode (speech or singing) was the principal contributor to infant attention, regardless of age.


When does anchoring improve our judgement? Anchoring is the behavioral pattern where the first piece of information we receive about a situation is what all other data points are compared to. For example, the price of the first menu item we see at dinner, the degree of physical pain experienced when exercising, or perceived positivity or negativity in an interaction with a person -- whatever our first experience of these contexts might be, we're likely to view all information received afterward as being either worse or better than those initial impressions.

When I’ve read about anchoring, its been discussed as a cognitive bias, and it appears to be viewed as a huge blind spot in human reasoning. But if this is such a strong tendency, it must serve us in some contexts (or have served us at one point in time).

So, does anchoring ever improves our judgement, instead of deprecating it?

The underlying cognitive process that produces the "anchoring bias" in decision-making is the same one that produces the "primacy and recency effect" in learning and memory. Your attention is drawn to novel, salient and recent stimuli, and are more likely to learn about and remember more about the first example of something and the last (most recent) example of something. This means that you are able to learn and adapt faster than you would be able to under an unbiased learning method; in some situations, you can effectively generalize from only one example (you only have to touch a hot stove once). For real-world situations, this speed of learning gives you an enormous advantage. For an additional set of real- and abstract- cases, you will have the opportunity to revise and improve your anchored estimate with small or zero penalty. In all of these cases, having a fast-learning, pattern-seeking heuristic-based cognitive system beats a slow-learning but unbiased cognitive system (which you still have, running on top of the faster system).

It is less powerful in cases where you are doing abstract numeric reasoning (for which there is no plausible estimate) or are negotiating competitively with another person who is faster/better/more informed/able to deceive you through anchoring or other techniques. In these cases, the drawbacks of the system predominate.


Does a person experience release of dopamine while doing something she/he enjoys? I am wondering if a person would experience an increase in the level of dopamine while doing something she/he enjoys such as playing guitar or reading a book. And what are some other neurotransmitter that would be released?

Like many topics in neuroscience, this is a controversial subject.  While dopamine is very popular among the public as a mechanism for pleasure, recent research challenges that view and has started to tease apart pleasure from motivation, finding a distinction in dopamine.

John Salamone's opinion:

  Low levels of dopamine make people and other animals less likely to work for things, so it has more to do with motivation and cost/benefit analyses than pleasure itself.

and his peer reviewed research:

Salamone, John D. and Correa, Merc. (2012).  The Mysterious Motivational Functions of Mesolimbic Dopamine.  Neuron, 76:3, pp.470 - 485.

It's more likely that the experience of pleasure is a distributed circuit phenomena, not down to any one neurotransmitter:

Smith, Kyle S.; Mahler, Stephen V.; Peciña, Susana; Berridge, Kent C.
Kringelbach, Morten L. (Ed); Berridge, Kent C. (Ed), (2010). Pleasures of the brain. , (pp. 27-49). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press, viii, 343 pp.


What is the psychological basis for people coming together during a disaster or major event? Something I have witnessed several times, and got me wondering, what is the psychological basis for people coming together in response to a disaster or a major event?  Be it large scale or local.

An example is one that I was right in the middle of (and at one stage was in very serious danger) - the Queensland floods of 2011, which is encapsulated nicely in this video-editorial "Hope Lives Here". Now, a couple of points from the editorial - the narrator states that as the city of Brisbane has grown, people have become more distant and are not likely to even know their neighbours' names.

This is obviously not just pertinent to the example above, but is repeated in many places.

However, when push comes to shove, and when a community of strangers are faced with a catastrophe, destruction, loss and are basically 'forced into a corner' - this is when the community comes together. Following the example, a 'Mud Army' started up of people helping strangers get back on their feet (I was involved in that, despite just coming out of surgery a few weeks before).

When the danger passes, life goes back to normal (generally) and we all seem to go our separate ways.

What is the psychological basis (more in depth than the linked editorial) for why we come together in a disaster or major event?

This article might be helpful. In particular, humans need social connections (according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Stress initiates people to come together. It was thought that women would come together during disaster and men would fight (i.e. the fight and flight response). However men also come together during disaster.

A distinction must be made between acute and chronic stress. Acute stress (e.g. once in a life time natural disasters) promote social bonding and connection. Chronic stress (e.g. smoking, ruminating a lot, etc.), however, does not seem to produce the same effect. When the acute stress is removed, there is no imminent need for social bonding with strangers.

From a biological basis, it seems that oxytocin might play a key role. In particular, oxytocin is released as a reaction to a social experience. So if a people see others in distress they may release oxytocin which promotes prosocial behavior.


What is the Golden Standard of Testing Fluid Intelligence? Not much to add to the title- what is the currently accepted "best" test of fluid intelligence? How was it determined to be the best?

You'll find an answer here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence#Measurement_of_fluid_intelligence

As it mentions, Raven's Progressive Matrix is a popular option that has been shown to load highly on both g and Gf (fluid intelligence).

In terms of gold standard, it is probably preferable to have a battery of measures that are relevant to Gf and take some composite of these. For example, the WAIS performance subscales.

In general, a good measure of fluid intelligence would be inferred from its correlations with other measures. It should also have good reliability and other validity properties. Specifically, when administered in a large battery of cognitive ability measures, a factor analysis should indicate that the test loads highly on a factor that looks like fluid intelligence (i.e., that other measures of fluid intelligence load on). There's more to it than that, but perhaps a starting point.


What neural mechanism explains the tendency to visually attend to the whole scene before attending to details? I have the intuition that human vision first attends to large-scale objects and then small-scale details. Is there any mechanism in the visual cortex that will explain this phenomenon? Is there a resolution refinement process when we look at scenes?

First, it is not only your intuition - there are many experimental results showing that we first perceive the gist of scenes (for example, is it outdoors or indoors?), then the major parts of it (was there an animal, or a human figure in it?) then more and more details (is that figure male or female? what is her expression?) [1] [2]. Note, however, that it is not exactly related to the size of the object, but more to its perceived importance or relevance. (See also this great video about change blindness, that exemplifies that)

Reverse Hierarchy Theory [3] proposes a mechanism for that - the activation in the network flows mostly "bottom up", but conscious perception starts at higher level, and then actively (through attention) accesses "lower level" details as they are needed. or in their words:

  Classically, the visual system was seen as a hierarchy of cortical areas and cell types. Neurons of low-level areas (V1, V2) receive visual input and represent simple features such as lines or edges of specific orientation and location. Their outputs are integrated and processed by successive cortical levels (V3, V4, medial-temporal area MT), which gradually generalize over spatial parameters and specialize to represent global features. Finally, further levels (inferotemporal area IT, prefrontal area PF, etc.) integrate their outputs to represent abstract forms, objects, and categories. The function of feedback connections was unknown. Reverse Hierarchy Theory proposes that the above forward hierarchy acts implicitly, with explicit perception beginning at high-level cortex, representing the gist of the scene on the basis of a first-order approximate integration of low-level input. Later, explicit perception returns to lower areas via the feedback connections, to integrate into conscious vision with scrutiny the detailed information available there. Thus, initial perception is based on spread attention (large receptive fields), guessing at details, and making binding or conjunction errors. Later vision incorporates details, overcoming such blindnesses

[1] Potter, M. C. (1976). Short-term conceptual memory for pictures. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 2(5), 509. link

[2] Rensink, R. A., O'Regan, J. K., & Clark, J. J. (1997). To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in scenes. Psychological Science, 8(5), 368-373. link

[3] Hochstein, S., & Ahissar, M. (2002). View from the top-hierarchies and reverse hierarchies in the visual system. Neuron, 36(5), 791-804. link


How to design an experiment to measure coffee preferences? Imagine a population of people in an office environment.  There is a small war going on about whether this brand of coffee machine is better than that one.

How would you go about testing which coffee maker is truly most preferred?

My current plan is to take 10 people out of that population and make them each drink two cups of coffee, one made by each machine.  People will be given the choice of preparation styles for their individual trial, black, milk, sugar, or both.  Both cups will be made in the exact same way for that individual trial.  Whether a given cup will have coffee from machine "A" or "B" will be randomized to avoid people's preference for their first taste being taken into account.  Neither the participants, nor the administrator of the test will know which cup was made with which machine, to avoid unconscious biases.  Lastly, each participant will be independent of each other to avoid a bias forming from everyone else choosing a particular cup.  (Though the randomized nature of the study should make this a moot issue, but still.)

Is there anything I'm forgetting to make this a more perfect study?  I would love to have a larger sample than 10, but alas, that's not an option.  Also, I'm worried that allowing people to choose how their coffee will be prepared will skew the results, but as long as both cups within a trial are made the same way, it shouldn't be a problem, right?

The study design sounds pretty good. Some of the good things you are proposing:

Using a repeated measures design will give you more statistical power than a between subjects design, which is particularly useful when your sample size is small.
Randomising or counterbalancing for order should mostly control for order effects.
Double blind will focus the test on taste rather than branding and as you say limit experimenter effects

A few further suggestions:

You could provide a little bread and water between the two tastings or separate the tastings by some longer period of time to limit any residual taste effects from the first taste.
And yes, as you say, increasing sample size will increase your statistical power. That said, if your sample is your population (e.g., you have an office of 10 people), then the smaller sample size doesn't matter.
You should consider how the response scale you will use for rating taste. You could simple get a binary preference. But I think it might be better to use some form of scale that rates preference in addition to an explicit question at the end about preference.


Direction of electrical information flow in the brain (and output locations) I am interested in the general electrical flow through the brain and found this very useful answer highlighting a good amount of it, but what I can't seem get any detailed visuals for on Google anywhere is where the outputs of the brain come from. (The one in the link is super simplified)

For example, where and how do the muscle outputs for eye come from after passing through the complex visual cortex(es). There are tons of visuals displaying the crossing inputs, but nothing for the outputs. Ideally, I would like to have clear visuals for all the output pathways.

Does the information processing happen slowly outwards toward the grey matter and at the point of the grey matter these outputs get combined into nerve pathways down the side of the brain or does the brains output appear to be travelling back parallel down along the inputs?

As @AliceD pointed out in her comment, the concept of output of the brain is too broad. If you are interested in how eye movements are generated, I suggest you read about the frontal eye fields(FEF). This area of the prefrontal cortex is very closely related with the generation of eye movements, or saccades. However, its function is still not entirely clear. It participates in the generation of saccades, but also in the sensory processing and decision making.

Anatomically, the connections of the FEF are shown in the scholarpedia article I linked above, but I'll also copy it here.

Your question, however, seems to assume that the information in the brain has a definite bottom-up direction, which somewhat neglecks the fact that brain regions have abundant recurrent and top-down connections. This is part of the reason FEF is involved both in motor, perceptual and higher cognitive processing. Nevertheless, you should take a look at the motor cortex, that will give you some insight to which brain regions are associated to motor commands, i.e. outputs.


Do different methods of testing memory for character sequences result in different brain activation? Assume a certain sequence of N characters, displayed on a screen one by one, that should be memorized. The speed of the display is such that it doesn't produce much extra stress. You may assume that the test person might vary display speed within a reasonable range.

There are several ways to test memory:

A multiple choice format that presents several control sequences.
A control sequence where you should point out differences from a given sequence.
A control sequence, displayed character by character, and the opportunity to push a button as soon as you spot a difference.
Write down what you've memorized.

Do these different ways of testing activate different parts of the brain? If so, where in the brain do these differences occur?

Yes, they do, but not all of these are different methods for testing memory.

Because of the way you've set up the stimulus presentation here, these are effectively all serial verbal working memory tests where the neurocognitive basis may differ or not depending on a number of unstated factors such as stimulus modality or type (e.g., Polyn et al., 2005), that I suspect you are uninterested in. Not all of these tasks would traditionally be considered memory tasks, either--everything involves memory to some extent, and in some cases it is more your choice of a complex stimulus, rather than the test as such, that adds the memory dimension.

I'm going to focus this answer on the test format (i.e., the retrieval aspect) where possible, and clarify where not.

1. Serial recognition

A multiple choice format that presents several control sequences along with the stimulus sequence corresponds to a serial matching recognition memory test. Habeck et al. (2005) reported fMRI evidence for increased activity in the cerebellum, thalamus and part of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions, plus decreased activity in a broad set of other regions, on a relevant delayed match-to-sample task.

  Areas of increasing activation across set size were found in the bilateral cerebellum, left lateral PFC (BA 9,46,47), and thalamus. Areas decreasing in activation were more widely distributed and located in parietal, frontal, temporal, and limbic lobes as well as basal ganglia (see detailed listing in Table 3).

2. Parallel recognition

A control sequence where you should point out differences from the stimulus sequence, assuming I am reading that correctly, corresponds to what I'm going to call a parallel recognition memory test, except I don't believe there have been any studies along these lines for serial memory. Usually, this is studied in the context of visual rather than verbal recognition memory, but even here, the neurocognitive evidence is sparse (probably because visual memory gets very little attention compared to verbal memory). Mazumder et al. (2015) reported the following from a "spot-the-difference" task in a recent chapter, which was primarily about novel EEG feature extraction methods:

  The results also suggests that the brain activation is dominant at the frontal, parietal and temporal region.

3. Go/no-go

A control sequence, displayed character by character, and the opportunity to push a button as soon as you spot a difference, corresponds to a complex go/no-go task. This is traditionally an attentional task, which of course involves memory, but does not in itself differentiate between retrieval processes. For posterity's sake, a large meta-analysis of go/no-go fMRI studies reported that neural activity for this task is largely task-dependent, but also finding support for an association with a small set of regions (Simmonds, Pekar and Mostofsky, 2008).

  The simple and complex tasks demonstrated distinct patterns of concurrence, with right dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior parietal circuits recruited under conditions of increased working memory demand.

4. Free recall

Just writing down what you've memorized corresponds to a free recall test (cf. cued recall). Free recall of serial items has often been studied within the context of the primacy and recency effects, referring to the dual tendencies for items at the beginning and end of a sequence to have markedly higher retention and/or faster response times than items in the middle of that sequence. Depending on the item's serial position, different brain regions may show increased activity (Zhang et al., 2003).

  Recalling the middle item was associated with more extensive activation in the left parietal and visual cortex, basal ganglia, and dorsal cerebellum. Recalling items from different serial positions also resulted in different activation time courses in the bilateral primary auditory cortex, left prefrontal cortex and left premotor cortex.

References

Habeck, C., Rakitin, B. C., Moeller, J., Scarmeas, N., Zarahn, E., Brown, T., & Stern, Y. (2005). An event-related fMRI study of the neural networks underlying the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval phase in a delayed-match-to-sample task. Cognitive Brain Research, 23(2), 207-220.
Mazumder, A., Ghosh, P., Khasnobish, A., Bhattacharyya, S., & Tibarewala, D. N. (2015). Selection of Relevant Features from Cognitive EEG Signals Using ReliefF and MRMR Algorithm. In Advancements of Medical Electronics (pp. 125-136). Springer India.
Polyn, S. M., Natu, V. S., Cohen, J. D., & Norman, K. A. (2005). Category-specific cortical activity precedes retrieval during memory search. Science, 310(5756), 1963-1966.
Simmonds, D. J., Pekar, J. J., & Mostofsky, S. H. (2008). Meta-analysis of Go/No-go tasks demonstrating that fMRI activation associated with response inhibition is task-dependent. Neuropsychologia, 46(1), 224-232.
Zhang, D. R., Li, Z. H., Chen, X. C., Wang, Z. X., Zhang, X. C., Meng, X. M., et al. (2003). Functional comparison of primacy, middle and recency retrieval in human auditory short-term memory: An event-related fMRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 16, 91–98. 10.1016/S0926-6410(02)00223-9


Is there a such thing as collective narcissism? Maybe I'm referring to the dominant ideology, but is it possible for people to get together and combine their narcissistc ideologies together and share them? Are there any good papers on this subject?

Possibly worth considering: Theodor W. Adorno.  "What Does Coming to Terms with the Past Mean?" (1959) included among selected writings in "Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader (2003).

Adorno wrote: "On the subjective side, in the psyche of people, National Socialism increased beyond measure the collective narcissism, simply put: national vanity. The individual’s narcissistic instinctual drives, which are promised less and less satisfaction by a callous world and which nonetheless persist undiminished as long as civilization denies them so much, find substitute satisfaction in the identification with the whole. This collective narcissism was severely damaged by the collapse of Hitler’s regime, but the damage occurred at the level of mere factuality, without individuals making themselves conscious of it and thereby coping with it."


any reliable sources or any help for bransford and johnson's laundry experiment? My classmates and I are conducting a written paper on bransford and johnson's laundry experiment, but we cannot find good reliable sources on the original experiment to provide context and explanation on how exactly it was performed. any help please?

There was no laundry experiment per se.  What you are referring to is part of an experiment to do with investigations of comprehension and memory recall.
The following is a passage from Section 3.4 of the free online course Starting with psychology at the UKs Open University [with a link to the pdf provided by Erik M. Altmann of Michigan State University Psychology Department added by myself]

John Bransford and Marcia Johnson (1972) carried out a number of experiments which illustrated the role of schemas in our understanding and recall of information. In one experiment the participants were read the passage below and then asked to recall it as accurately as possible. However half of the participants were given a title for the following passage and the other participants were given the passage without the title.

The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups… Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo any particular endeavour. That is, it is better to do too few things at once than too many. In the short run this may not seem important, but complications from doing too many can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well… At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one never can tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials into different groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will have to be repeated. However, that is part of life.
(Bransford and Johnson 1972 p. 722)

The passage was given to 2 groups — 1 with the topic of the passage, and 1 without the topic.

The instruction sheet for the toipc before Ss included the additional sentence, "The paragraph you will hear will be about washing clothes" (Bransford and Johnson, 1972 p. 722)

References
Bransford, J.D., & Johnson, M.K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11(6), 717-726. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(72)80006-9


Is there a clinical definition for the psychological disorder/personality disorder for people who like to get under people’s skin? I have noticed in my 50+ years of life that there are people who take joy (sometimes great joy) out of “getting under” another person’s skin.  Is there a clinical definition for this behavior?  Perhaps it is a personality disorder.
(There is a non-clinical way to describe such a person but civility restrains me).
I have noticed that people who exhibit this behavior seem to be looking for a reaction.  And by seeing a reaction to what they say, they see their control over another person.
It may also be the only way the person knows how to impress others (possibly due to low self-esteem).
I have searched the internet and all I have found so far is information on how to deal with such a person.

Taking joy in irritating others is unlikely to be classifiable as a personality disorder, however, the Dark Triad describes individuals with disagreeable habits. In combination with other extremely adverse behaviours, it is perhaps classifiable as Conduct disorder or Narcissistic personality disorder.


Is there a standard definition of a "hallucination"? As far as I understand, there is a compelling sense of reality to sensory hallucinations. Do hallucinations (as, e.g. in the DSM) substitute for the sense and experience of a real reality?

For example, if a "hallucination" involves someone's face to be covered in maggots, would that entail a completely life-like, 'opaque', and entirely believable experience of that perception?

Elliot et al. (2008) define a hallucination as:

  A sensory experience which occurs in the absence of corresponding external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ, has sufficient sense of reality resemble a veridical perception (i.e. the perception seems to be "real"), over which the subject does not feel direct and voluntary control, and which occurs in the awake state.

They define illusions as:

  These are false perceptions of a real external stimulus, for example a change in shape, size, color or texture. In some cases, where the external stimulus is minimal, the differentiation nosologically (nosology: the classification of diseases) from hallucination can be difﬁcult, although illusions carry different aetiological and diagnostic implications.

and delusions as:

  [A]bnormalities of thought rather than perception (although they may develop from the latter) and may be defined as ‘fixed false beliefs, strongly held and immutable in the face of refuting evidence, that are not consonant with the person’s education, social and cultural background.' [I]ts exact meaning and usage have evolved continuously, reflecting trends in psychology. Delusional themes commonly include: guilt, worthlessness, ill-health, persecution, reference, grandeur, love, jealousy, poverty, infestation, and religion. [...]

Regarding the difference between a hallucination and an illusion, which are the most closely related ones among the three, the Stanford Encyclopedia gives a clear-cut example, namely:

  For example, when one has a visual experience as of a red object, it may be that one is really seeing an object and its red color (veridical perception), that one is seeing a green object (illusion), or that one is not seeing an object at all (hallucination).

Reference
- Elliot et al. Epilepsy Research (2009); 85: 162-71


Negative thoughts as cause or consequence of depression Simplypsychology.org page on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy mentions that

Lewinsohn (1981) studied a group of participants before any of them became depressed, and found that those who later became depressed were no more likely to have negative thoughts than those who did not develop depression. This suggests that hopeless and negative thinking may be the result of depression, rather than the cause of it.  [...]

Lewinsohn, P. M., Steinmetz, J. L., Larson, D. W., & Franklin, J. (1981). Depression-related cognitions: antecedent or consequence?. Journal of abnormal psychology, 90(3), 213.

Has there been more research into the cause/effect relationship of negative thoughts and depression since then? If so, is there some kind of consensus on this cause-effect relationship? Or has the inquiry been judged not terribly interesting or (non-)productive?

Short answer
The cause of depression is thought to be one of neurochemistry, resulting in depressive thoughts.

Background
I think the general consensus is that depression is a psychological disorder with neurochemical causes. In particular, the serotonin hypothesis of depression has received much attention, basically due to the success of the serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) that increase overall serotonin levels in the brain. The serotonin hypothesis basically states that depression is the result of a lack of serotonin and its metabolites in the brain (e.g., Nemeroff (1994)). However, the story is of course more complicated that that. For example, other monoamine systems in the nervous system may also be affected.

The general idea is that the consequences of that monoamine imbalance in the brain include depressive thoughts, among other (more physical) effects, such as a loss of weight. The DSM-V criteria for depression include:

  Depressed mood most of the day.
  Diminished interest or pleasure in all or most activities.
  Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt.
  Recurrent thoughts of death (APA, 2000, p. 356).

Reference
- Nemeroff, Clin Chemistry (1994); 40(2): 288-95


What are the highest ranked neuroscience journals that use double-blind review process? In terms of impact factor (for a lack of a better proxy), what are the highest ranked neuroscience journals that use double-blind review process?

I would be submitting a paper that combines neuroscience, psychology and machine learning.

Nature Neuroscience offers such a possibility.

http://www.nature.com/news/nature-journals-offer-double-blind-review-1.16931

See also

Does anyone know of any clinical psychology journals that use a double-blind review process?


Is psychotherapy more effective when examining free association speech than writing? Is there a difference between free association speaking vs free association writing? Is psychotherapy more effective when examining free association speech?

Free association is an integral part of depth psychological therapy (such as psychoanalysis), which is still prevalent around the world (e.g. in Germany depth psychological therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy are the only two therapies paid for by health insurance).

The problem with writing would be that it slows down the interactive process between therapist and client. It has been suggested and there is anecdotal evidence that outside of a therapy, free association writing can be a useful tool for self-knowledge. Within a therapy free association is only one part of the methods and its usefulness is dependent on other processes such as transference and countertransference, which need the presence of a therapist.

To my knowledge, there have been no attempts at purely written (e.g. online) depth psychological psychotherapy. I believe such an impersonal setting and slowed down communication would hinder the interpersonal processes and actually the spontaneous workings of the subconscious needed for depth psychological psychotherapy to work.


Does the effect of naturalistic exposure on second language acquisition vary with age? A while back, I watched the movie The Terminal and the main character played by Tom Hanks learns to speak fluent English while he is stranded in the airport for more than a year. Which seems somewhat superfluous as I was of the opinion that picking up a new language when you grow older is not easy. But Tom Hanks' character manages to speak English quite fluently given his background.

Dr Martha Young-Scholten of University of Newcastle mentions that the movie accurately describes how someone would acquire a second language under naturalistic exposure:

  Misrepresentations of complex issues such as adult second language (L2) acquisition are rife in the news media; one does not expect Hollywood to differ. Yet the 2004 film The Terminal (2004) gets it right. Stranded in a NY airport for a year, Tom Hanks’ character accurately depicts the early stages of acquisition and demonstrates how ample naturalistic exposure leads to advanced L2 proficiency. Hollywood also manages cultural nuances; initial communication fails because the authorities assume Hanks is attempting to immigrate when his purpose is one of pilgrimage.

If an individual is forced to use a language he is almost unfamiliar with, would it help him make significant progress in acquiring that language, regardless of his age?

(Unfortunately, the links appear to be broken, so I will reply to the title and bolded question.)

Being forced to use a language you are unfamiliar with as a language technique is known as immersion learning. I could not find direct comparisons of adults and children, but based on evidence from educational systems, it appears that early immersion does not change the helpfulness of immersion learning outcomes compared to late immersion, but interestingly, it does appear to change the way we obtain those learning outcomes (Harley and Hart, 1997).

  Evidence is found to support the main hypothesis that in late immersion starting in adolescence there will be a positive relationship between L2 [second language] outcomes and an analytical dimension of language aptitude, whereas in early immersion beginning in grade 1 a positive relationship will hold between L2 outcomes and memory ability. A further hypothesis that early immersion students will have higher language aptitude as a result of their early L2 exposure is not supported by the findings.

This would appear to at least partially satisfy the question. Since the question is about a fictional movie, I'll go out on a limb here and say that speculatively, an unrelated earlier study might be helpful in explaining why this could be the case.

Newport (1990) reported support for the hypothesis that language learning abilities decline because of the expansion of nonlinguistic cognitive abilities. It's conceivable this allows individuals increasing freedom to avoid using second language, but these nonlinguistic abilities may be unhelpful in cases of extended immersion learning as depicted in The Terminal.

References

Harley, B., & Hart, D. (1997). Language aptitude and second language proficiency in classroom learners of different starting ages. Studies in second language acquisition, 19(03), 379-400.
Newport, E. L. (1990), Maturational Constraints on Language Learning. Cognitive Science, 14: 11–28. doi: 10.1207/s15516709cog1401_2


Tendency to see novelty in mundane and trivial statements There exists a psychological phenomenon whereupon a person may encounter a rather trivial or mundane statement or thought, but would not recognize it as such; instead a person would experience a sense of revelation and even pride in being able to think about that particular statement.

The above phenomenon may happen to everyone occasionally, but some people are considerably more prone to it and may experience trivial "intellectual revelations" on a regular and frequent basis. I recall reading an article on the topic, and apparently the phenomenon is well recognized and even has a proper name (something derived from Greek, if I'm not mistaken). Would anybody be able to remind me of that name for the sake of further research?

Might apophenia be the term you are looking for?

  The term is attributed to Klaus Conrad by Peter Brugger, who defined it as the "unmotivated seeing of connections" accompanied by a "specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness". Apophenia has come to imply a universal human tendency to seek patterns in random information, such as gambling.

Also, as mentioned somewhere above, it is commonly found in patients with schizophrenia.


Can one claim that a person is having cognitive distortion and be always correct? What is cognitive distorion?
According to Wikipedia, "cognitive distortion are thoughts that cause individuals to perceive reality inaccurately". It is a negative outlook on reality, sometimes called negative schemas (or schemata), and can reinforce negative emotions and thoughts.

Criticisms on cognitive distortion

Common criticisms of the diagnosis of cognitive distortion relate to epistemology and the theoretical basis. The implicit assumption behind the diagnosis is that the therapist is infallible and that only the world view of the therapist is correct. If the perceptions of the patient differ from those of the therapist, it may not be because of intellectual malfunctions but because the patient has different experiences.

My question
For convenience, I'll name the person who is making diagnosis Cueball, and the person who is being diagnosed Megan. Here is Cueball and Megan:

I agree with the idea that Cueball may even have assumption that he is correct (thus having a distorted perception about Megan), but I don't think this criticism paints a full picture. I think the main issue with cognitive distortion is that Megan lacks self-skepticism. That is, she doesn't assume that she can be wrong. Any person can (or will) assume that they are correct, but they can still assume that they can be wrong at the same time. And more importantly, the behavior of a person assuming they can be wrong is totally different from the behavior of a person who doesn't have that assumption.
So if Cueball doesn't see that behavior in Megan, can he conclude that she has cognitive distortion and still be correct? Is the signs of cognitive distortion so detectable that one can use gut instinct to conclude and still be correct?

Related: Does following logic necessarily require one to conclude that they are objective and have no bias?

The use of assumptions in clinical settings seems to play into the errors you mention. Cueball is just as prone to distortions as Megan.

According to Dawes, Faust, & Meehl (1989), a professional in the field has to rely on one of two choices when making a decision on a client, either their own clinical judgment which is based on experience and knowledge or actuarial judgment which essentially rests on the statistical method, establishing a link between empirical data and the event in question. The clinical judgment does not seem to be accurate, for the most part. Clinicians fair better when using methods that are backed by actuarial methods, rather than relying on their own "hunches" or "gut feelings".

It would probably be a better idea for Cueball to at least try to jot down some explicit instances of distortions and compare them to some baseline to ensure it is something out of the ordinary, at least for what he might know about Megan.
Though he would be correct, at least in this instance, but it wasn't necessarily due to experience, but chance.
 Which is one of the big issues pointed to in the article by Dawes and his colleagues, they essentially find that the criticisms towards the therapist being an all-knowing being are valid and point out that they often forget to consider other variables that might be contributing to the situation, so with the occasional correct guess, they may begin to rely on their gut or worldview which distorts their decisions, overall.

To combat these errors Lambert and Shimokawa (2011), highly recommended that client feedback is collected because it helps in understanding the client's subjective point of view and can aid in aligning the therapist's views to better meet the needs of their client, leading to stronger outcomes. The practice of feedback helps build a factor in therapy success, which is the therapeutic alliance (the relationship between client and therapist). Flexibility also helps as well.

This notion of client feedback is another layer on top of the common factors pointed out by Rosenzweig (2002) that seem to contribute most to positive client outcomes, more so than the theoretical method used. These factors include the qualities of the therapist and how they interact with the client and their specific qualities.

Essentially, it is the nonspecific elements, like therapist and client qualities in interaction, that create the foundation for a better client outcome.

Dawes, R. M., Faust, D., & Meehl, P. E. (1989). Clinical versus actuarial judgment. Science, 243(4899), 1668-1674.

Lambert, M. J., & Shimokawa, K. (2011). Collecting client feedback. Psychotherapy, 48(1), 72–79.

Rosenzweig, S. (2002). Some implicit common factors in diverse methods of psychotherapy. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 12(1), 5–9. doi:10.1037/1053-0479.12.1.5


When is it defendable to use manifest instead of latent variables in psychological research? In psychology, most of the concepts, theories, ideas etc. of interest refer to latent variables, where a latent variable is one that can't be observed directly. Instead, one has to find a manifest variable, which can be observed directly and which can be used as an indicator for the latent variable. Unless there is a perfect indicator (which usually there is not), the measurement of the latent variable contains an error. To estimate the error, latent variable modelling techniques like CFA or Item Response Theory (among others) have been developed.

Latent Variable Theory

Now, it is generally agreed upon that variables like age and gender are manifest. But what is it that makes the difference between a latent and a manifest variable? Borsboom (2008) explicates this difference. In his latent variable theory, the distinction depends on the certainty, with which an inference can be made from the observed data to the variable in question. In this sense, a variable like gender is manifest, because one can infer with certainty if a subject is male or female from his or her answer on a questionnaire. Note that this is possible, even though one has not actually observed the gender of that subject. Borsboom's account of latent variable theory also implies that the status of a variable as latent vs. manifest can change over time, if for example more information becomes accessible. But as long as a variable has proven to be manifest, it remains latent.

It seems to me, then, that pretty much every researcher in psychology should use latent variable modelling techniques, since most of the time it is not at all possible to infer something with certainty. However, this is clearly not the case. There are numerous published articles that use manifest variables and analyze the relationships between them without accounting for measurement error, thereby implicitly making the latent variable in question a manifest variable. (If anyone wants citations for this claim, I will happily provide them.)

Question: Under what circumstances is it defendable to use manifest instead of latent variables in psychological research, even if it is clear that the variables can only be measured with error?

Borsboom, D. (2008). Latent variable theory. Measurement: Interdisciplinary Research & Perspective, 6(1-2), 25-53. PDF

Experimental psychologists seem quite happy working with single item ad hoc self-report scales, physiological measures, etc. with very little psychometrical assessment so even before talking about a full-fledged latent variable modeling approach, confirmatory factor analysis and the like you might want to wonder why they appear relatively unconcerned with measurement issues in general and why there is still such a big gap between experimental psychology and psychometrics.

Some potential explanations (some of them are not very convincing justifications for not doing latent variable modeling but still explain why people are content using manifest variables):

Experimentalist can create (relatively) strong effects. If you are doing an experiment in which you try to induce disgust by showing pictures of disgusting things to people and your pictures do not seem to produce a measurable effect, you could try to improve your measurement but you can also just use even more disgusting pictures or add a few additional trials in your experiment. On the other hand, when you are creating a personality test for recruitment purposes, you can't just wish candidates would be more different from each other to make your task easier or be happy with estimating the average of all candidates, you really need to assign a score to each candidate with a level of precision that allows you to discriminate between them.
They rely on the nature of the manipulation and its effects on the response and not mainly on the correlation between different scales to interpret their results.
They are often interested in group differences. (Inter-individual differences often dwarf any item-related error so why even care about that? Just add a few participants!)
They still structure their experiments as a test of some ‘nil’ hypothesis (is there an effect or not?)
They are not very interested in effect sizes as such, a consequence of the previous point (if they do compute some effect size measure, it's mostly with an eye for statistical power).

In short, if any statistically significant difference is regarded as an interesting result (i.e. your manipulation had an effect), you don't need to be too concerned about the reliability or meaning of the response.

Interestingly, you seem to be approaching the question from one camp, assuming that latent variable modeling is clearly useful and people need to actively defend themselves for not doing the obvious right thing. You might also turn the question around and ask “Is latent variable modeling all that useful? What does it buy us?” In the context I just highlighted, it might not be so easy to articulate a convincing answer.

And of course, in practice, many people just care about methodology to the smallest extent possible to go about their business, be published and do the things they regard as really interesting. Consequently, many researchers don't hear much about latent variable modeling after they finished their master and they don't even care about it one way or the other because it's just not the way things are done in their disciplines.