Under what conditions does 60hz video produce visual artifacts? There are some important thresholds of frame rate in video playback that effect whether or not animation appears fluid. This wikipedia page about Visible Frame Rate suggests that a framerate of 60 hertz doesn't quite provide enough information fast enough to be seen as fluid in some cases:

  However, fast moving objects may require higher frame rates to avoid judder (non-smooth, linear motion) artifacts

When exactly does a higher framerate become necessary? What studies have shown what kinds of motion cause this "judder"?

The Wikipedia article no longer makes reference to the phenomenon that you quote (to my inspection), so I'm not entirely sure if that assertion was edited out as an inaccuracy on someone's part.  I did find some information on visual perception and high frequency flicker that might point to some of the significance of the 60 Hz refresh rate of a monitor.

At first I thought the effect you were describing might have something to do with critical flicker fusion frequency.  This is the rate under which the blinking of a light is no longer perceived as continuous.  For humans this varies from about 37 to 46 Hz (when measured as frequency of stimulus offset and remeasured over the course of the year) and from 43 down to 36 Hz (when measured as a frequency of stimulus onset and remeasured over the course of the year), so if a light blinks at a rate higher than that, it will look like it is continuously on to the average human.**  However, since 60Hz is just shy of being a harmonic for the human critical flicker fusion, this seems like there wouldn't be some type of aliasing effect, as there is no 30 Hz component.

What I did find seems to be a plausible reason for some sort of visual entrainment with a 60Hz stimulus, but even the authors of the study (Williams et al 2004) rationalized

  [If this were the case] perception should be compromised noticeably when looking at television or computer displays that have 60 Hz (or 50 Hz) frame refresh rates. However, every day more than a billion people watch TV with no obvious distortion in their perception of the color, form, and motion of pictures on the video screen. Thus phase locking in the middle of the gamma [brain waves] band [40 - 100 Hz] that is irrelevant to the visual scene does not disrupt scene organization or corrupts it so subtly that people do not notice.

That being said, that group performed a very careful study on both humans and non-human primates and found that between 32% and 82% (the percentage increased based on increasing contrast of the stimulus) of "cells" (single-units) studied in primate V1 over all animals were entrained to a 60 Hz refresh rate of the CRT screen.  The human Visual Evoked Potentials (using a non-invasive EEG) were all found to be significantly entrained to the 60Hz CRT refresh rate, and were also seen to increase with stimulus contrast.  For higher refresh rates of 72 Hz and 100 Hz, the degree of entrainment decreased significantly.  So, in both sets of subjects, the 60 Hz flicker induced significant 60 Hz activity in the brain.  Activity in the gamma band is normally associated with binding non-local cell assemblies for the purpose of cortical synchronization.

In contrast, though, Bauer et al (2012) found that flickering two "flanker" targets pulsing in phase at 60 Hz while surrounding a central primary target with low contrast did not enhance the ability to see the central target compared to a scenario with two flanker targets firing at 60 Hz out of phase with each other.  Building on other work that has been done, they hypothesized that synchrony of neurons in the gamma band (40-100 Hz) would directly help in "mediating contextual interactions among local stimulus attributes".  For this study, 60 Hz was chosen as the "typical frequency for human visual cortex gamma oscillations"  The thought was that the pulsing 60 Hz stimuli would entrain the gamma band oscillations in visual cortex to prime the system for stimulus discrimination.  A setup with "in phase" flicker of the flankers with the central target was not found to help in the discrimination of orientation of the primary stimulus either.

So, overall, the 60 Hz seems most likely to have gamma band entrainment effects, but as a caveat, these effects don't seem to significantly hamper our ability to perceive motion on the screen.

**As an aside, I also found a study about the flicker fusion frequency in chickens (which, for some reason, have become a testbed for visual perception tasks).  According to an earlier study cited in Railton et al (2010), hens have a critical flicker fusion from 69 Hz to 105 Hz, which is in the typical refresh rate range for CRTs, so the authors of the study found that using thin-film transistor screens was more effective in stimulus discrimination tasks.  So, presumably the 60 Hz CRTs would cause a choppy motion from the perspective of the chicken, but I'm not sure this would account for any judder either.

References

Bauer, M., Akam, T., Joseph, S., Freeman, E., Driver, J. (2012) Does visual flicker phase at gamma frequency modulate neural signal propagation and stimulus selection?  Journal of Vision 12(4):1-10. [DOI]  [Free PDF]
Luczak, A., Sobolewski, A. (2005)  Longitudinal changes in critical flicker fusion frequency: an indicator of human workload.  Ergonomics 48(15):1770-1792.  [DOI]
Railton, R.C.R., Foster, T.M., Temple, W. (2010).  Transfer of stimulus control from a TFT to CRT screen.  Behavioural Processes 85:111-115. [DOI]
Williams, P.E., Mechler, F., Gordon, J., Shapley, R., Hawken, M.J. (2004).  Entrainment to video displays in primary visual cortex of macaque and humans.  Journal of Neuroscience 24(38):8278-8288.  [DOI]   [Free PDF]


Does neuroticism go hand in hand with introversion? I'm reading this paper on relations between affect and personality.

It seems the personality domain has been characterized in terms of two dimensions: neuroticism and extraversion.

How does introversion fit into this? There is a clear association between extraversion and measures of positive affect; there is a clear association between neuroticism and measures of negative affect.

Does neuroticism therefore go hand in hand with introversion?

Does neuroticism therefore go hand in hand with introversion?

No, these are different dimensions of personality. One can be therefore be introverted and neurotic, or extroverted and neurotic [1].

With that said, there appears to be a relationship between introversion and neuroticism - a positive correlation of .3 [2]. Rather than one causing the other, it may be because both have a common cause [3].

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1961.tb02931.x/abstract
[2]http://www.tc.umn.edu/~cdeyoung/Pubs/DeYoung_2007_BFAS_JPSP.pdf
[3]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19263467


Why do we need to break down long sentences to understand them? Why do we need to break down long sentences that won't immediately scan? Is it an attention thing? Working memory, executive function?

For example:

  Studies show that if there are many stimuli present (especially if they are task-related)...".

is a straightforward sentence. The only ambiguous term is "they". Does it mean "studies" or "stimuli"? In this case it is, obviously, stimuli, but the issue seems to be that i need to read the "they" slower, and am not primed to. What part of cognition is being tested?

First off, the difficulty in the specific example given in the question is more a matter of proper writing habits than anything else. The use of parentheses is often discouraged because it disrupts sentence structure and therefore interferes with the flow of information. Secondly, the use of referring words (pronouns) to earlier parts of the sentence are generally encouraged, barred that the pronoun is unambiguous. In the example the pronoun is ambiguous, as both 'stimuli' and 'studies' can be 'task-related'. The cited sentence is therefore a prime example of how not to write a decent English sentence and could be a textbook example for Scientific-English writing courses.

In terms of cognition, it is indeed related to working memory, as you need to remember the words in the earlier part of the sentence. Of course attention (vigilance) is needed to extract the information in the sentence. Executive function therefore is involved, as it includes all aforementioned processes.


How can motivation be increased by improving brain chemistry with nutrition and activities? I'm reading some material about motivation and brain chemistry.
One of the interesting articles is "7 Ways to Increase Motivation by Improving your Brain Chemistry". I'm interested in a more scientific treatment of the topic. Thus,

How can motivation be increased by improving brain chemistry with nutrition or various activities (sport, exercise, relationships etc.)?
What scientific articles exist on this topic?

It would be great if there was some article targeting this exact topic with references.

The best thing you can do is avoid nutritional deficiencies and exercise.  In general, it's the same as for the rest of the body.  Many people have subtle nutritional deficiencies that they may never know about their whole life just based on eating habits.  As Chuck Sherrington said, neurotransmitter-based treatments are subject to homeostatic compensation, but if you have a deficiency, it may be more complicated.

Nutrition

Particularly, the same things that increase pulmonary/circulatory health are going to increase brain health[1,2].  A large contribution to health in the developing fetal brain comes from the mother's diet.  There are lots of diseases associated with maternal nutrtional defecits[3,4].

Exercise

Running and other physical activities increases neurogenesis [5,6].  But does it do it "intelligently"?  I don't know.  More neurons isn't automatically more motivation or intelligence.  But it is a stress-relief technique, and too much stress can certainly kill motivation.

Behavior

You didn't ask, but behavioral practice is probably another strong factor.  For example, breaking jobs into smaller tasks: getting the first small task done can give a motivational boost towards getting the second done (and so on).  They've actually found a correlation between paying smaller loans off first (even though not mathematically more efficient in terms of costs) is more likely to lead to loans being paid off all the way because of the human element[9]


Is photographic memory possible? Photographic memory is a fairly well known phenomena, but is it theoretically possible?

In Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind claims it is a myth:

  "...we often hear about people with 'photographic memories' that enable them to quickly memorize all the fine details of a complicated picture or a page of text in a few seconds. So far as I can tell, all of these tales are unfounded myths, and only professional magicians or charlatans can produce such demonstrations."

There have been a few claims of photographic memory, but only one person was ever reported to have passed tests supporting that claim: a woman named Elizabeth, who later married Charles Stromeyer, the man who had performed the studies within which Elizabeth demonstrated these purported skills.

Given the relationship between the researcher and the subject, and lack of reproduced test results, even that one example is rather suspect.

Are there any evidence to support that perfect long-term visual storage and retrieval of memories are theoretically possible?  By what mechanism would this likely work?

I personally have had the experience that you can train your ability to hold a mental image of what you see.

I have been drawing from life as a hobby off and on for more than twenty years, and one of the exercises that help you with learning to draw in a realistic manner is to look at your subject for several seconds and then turn to your canvas and draw what you have seen without looking back at it. With time you become better at this until you can hold a rather detailed representation of what you saw in your mind. This image is limited to what you focussed on, obviously, so parts of the background or anything you found uninteresting will be blurred or missing, and the detail is not very fine, so I can't count matches. And it most certainly does not work for random dots.

But I draw only as a hobby, spend little time on it even at my most intense phases and have long stretches of time where I don't draw at all. I believe I could get very much better at this, and don't need autims to accomplish it.

Minsky (or you) will probably counter that I'm "using mnemonics and other, non-eidetic memory enhancing exercises", but looking at your example of "quickly memoriz[ing] ... a page of text in a few seconds", I see a problem that would make eidetic memory – in the sense of storing the raw data of what you see without processing it – pretty much impossible anyway:

Only the central 2° of your field of vision are focussed and sharp. If you look at a page of text without letting your eyes roam over it, you will have a thumbnail-sized area of sharp and readable text, and a whole page of blurred text. If you want to know how blurred, focus on the dot at the end of this sentence and try to read the lines below it. So obviously, if you want to store a whole page (or any detailed image), you'll have to let your eyes "scan" it. But what do you do, when you do that? You send a row of images to your brain, and your brain has to process them to build the whole page from that. That's processing, if you want to put a name to it. So, to say this clearly: It is impossible to view a whole page without processing it.

What this means is that everybody who looks at anything through their eyes has to process the information. And what happens during this processing? No-one knows, not even Marvin Minsky. Maybe it remains raw and unchanged apart from the assembly. But maybe – or rather, very likely – there's a whole lot of top-down processing going on, making sense of what is seen, relating it to other stored information, preparing it for easy storage. Perhaps there are individuals whose brains are exceptionally quick at this, and who have a larger than average storage capacity in their working memories. From the outside this would look a lot like eidetic memory.


Why it is so difficult to think critically about family members behaviour? It seems to me that some survival mechanisms working in us make the act of analyzing family members behaviour very difficult. We tend to perceive the family's behaviours as normal, even if there are not. In my experience, we must achieve a high level of detachment from the family to be able to think critically.

So my question is, what are our mechanisms that makes it so difficult to think objectively about family members' (aberrant) behaviours?

Short answer
Millions of years of evolution have resulted in increased empathy towards family members.

background
I may be taking a big leap here, but I think the roots of the family-related tolerance may be ingrained in our very genes.

In an interesting article by Tomasello (2018) he hypothesizes that collaboration was among the key features that resulted in the separation of the homo lineage from the apes, starting around 2 mln years ago. Homo heidelbergensis (400k years ago) is believed to have actively collaborated when foraging for food. This collaboration became compulsory, as individuals became dependent on one another to obtain their daily food. Tomasello hypothesizes that morality and empathy were born out of this interrelationship, which helped to sympathize and help their partners. The partners learned to cooperate in hunting (one would chase, the other spear the animal). A "we is greater than me" kind of morality was born.

Then, 200k years ago, modern homo was born, an era characterized by competition between small, closely knit groups for food and other resources This meant that members of such a group would have to collaborate and protect each other against invaders. Often (but not always) there would be kinship involved in these small groups ('tribes'). Tomasello continues that this collaboration eventually resulted in the development of culture, but that's outside the scope of this answer.

In all I think I would conclude that millions of years of evolution have resulted in increased empathy towards family members.

Reference
- Tomasello, Sci Am, September issue 2018


Do we negatively perceive people who wear glasses? Do we negatively perceive people who wear glasses? If so, why? Is it cultural stereotypes, a simple case of homophily, or is there more to it?

No, people wearing glasses are not generally perceived negatively. Glasses affect various dimensions of person perception differently. To name a few, a commonly reported effect you may want to read up on is the glasses stereotype: If you wear glasses, people will tend to think of you as smarter (e.g., Hellström & Tekle, 1994, Terry & Krantz, 1993), but less attractive compared to those not wearing glasses (Hasart & Hutchinson, 1993; Lundberg & Sheehan, 1994; Terry & Kroger, 1976). This effect has been found regardless of whether the judges wear glasses themselves, although, when they do, the effect on attractiveness appears to be less pronounced (Terry & Kroger, 1976).

It appears, this effect is also moderated by the type of glasses you wear:

  The results show that faces without glasses were seen more attractive and more likeable than faces with full-rim glasses. Faces with rimless glasses did not differ from faces without glasses in their attractiveness or likability rating. Regarding the ratings of successfulness, and intelligence, the results show that individuals wearing glasses (both rimless and full-rim) were rated as more successful and more intelligent than individuals not wearing glasses. Regarding trustworthiness, individuals with rimless glasses were rated as significantly more trustworthy than faces without glasses. Ratings of cooperativeness did not differ between the face versions.

(From this online summary of Leder, Forster & Gerger, 2011)

Hasart, J. K., & Hutchinson, K. L. (1993). The effects of eyeglasses on perceptions of interpersonal-attraction. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 8, 521-528.
Hellström, A., & Tekle, J. (1994). Person perception through facial photographs: Effects of glasses, hair, and beard on judgments of occupation and personal qualities. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 693-705. doi:10.1002/ejsp.2420240606
Leder, H., Forster, M., & Gerger, G. (2011). The glasses stereotype revisited: Effects of glasses on perception, recognition and impressions of faces. Swiss Journal of Psychology, 70, 211-222. doi:10.1024/1421-0185/a000059
Lundberg, J. K., & Sheehan, E. P. (1994). The effects of glasses and weight on perceptions of attractiveness and intelligence. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 9, 753-760.
Terry, R. L. and Krantz, J. H. (1993), Dimensions of Trait Attributions Associated with Eyeglasses, Men's Facial Hair, and Women's Hair Length. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 23: 1757–1769. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1993.tb01064.x
Terry, R. L., & Kroger, D. L. (1976) Effects of eye correctives on ratings of attractiveness. Perceptual and Motor Skills: Volume 42, Issue , pp. 562-562.
doi: 10.2466/pms.1976.42.2.562


Is it possible to distinguish recall and calculation? Say I ask subjects what $20 \cdot 20$ is.  Is there any way, besides introspection, to evaluate whether subjects recalled the answer or calculated the answer? In general, I would expect that the recalled answer would be presented faster, however some calculations can be done quickly and sometimes it can take a while to recall information.

A consensus within cognitive psychology is that there really is no such thing as "computation",  though that depends how you define it. It seems all arithmetic ( + - * / ) is simply fact retrieval from long-term memory. More complex problems simply rely on the fact that we can break them down into simpler problems. For instance, when you learn to solve 364+192, you're really doing a set of simpler retrieval operations, e.g.:

Add 4+2 (6)
Add 9+6 (15)
Add 3+1+1 (carrying the one-- 5)

The only true "computation" aside from fact-retrieval is counting, which we resort to when we don't have a fact required... e.g., If I forget 4x6, then I'll add 4+4+4+4+4+4

There's still the question of whether someone memorizes 20x20=400, or whether they break this down into smaller components (2x2=4, add two 0s). It would be hard to tell what strategy someone is using here, but reaction time may give a clue. Retrieval time is going to be influenced by the number of steps in the problem, and the strength of the memory for each retrieval.  John Anderson has used his ACT-R (http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/) model explicitly to model reaction time in arithmetic which can give you quantitative predictions. Still, I think in most cases it will be difficult to distinguish between such a small difference in reaction time.

Re: cognitive arithmetic as mental fact-retrieval, see Ashcraft, 1992. Or, this quote from Ashcraft, 1995:

  As I have suggested elsewhere (Ashcraft, 1992), a broad consensus has
  developed across models for issues of basic memory representation and
  processing. Current theories (e.g., Ashcraft 1992; Campbell &
  Oliphant, 1992; Sigel & Jenkins, 1989) propose that the simple
  whole-number facts (i.e. single-digit operands 0 + / x 0 through 9 +
  /x 9 are stored in an associative or network representation in
  long-term memory,with the strength of the network connections among
  operands and answers reflecting the degree of learning and mastery,
  and probably the degree to which the representations can be accessed
  via automatic processing. […] Processing strategies other than
  retrieval are prominent only in Siegler's model […]

M.H. Ashcraft (1992). Cognitive arithmetic: A review of data and theory. Cognition, 44, 75-106.

M.H. Ashcraft (1995). cognitive psychology and simple arithmetic: a review of summary and new directions. mathematical cognition.


When and how did the concept of psychological trauma begin to be extended and expanded to include more mundane and less severe experiences? I'm in my first semester studying mental health counseling at a master's level and I have heard several of my professors make comments to the effect that over the past 20-30 years they have seen the definition of trauma shift dramatically to include things of lesser and lesser severity. I was wondering where this trend started and whether there were any particular researchers or organizations that spearheaded this movement of thought within the field? Is it the result of any particular philosophical, political, or social movements that have affected the field as a whole? or have there been any landmark works that have pushed the field of trauma research in this direction?
I've already read The Trauma Spectrum by Robert Scaer, but it seems like things were already headed in the direction of expanding the definition of trauma already.

One can't be certain what that kind of allusion refers to, but there has been a level of controversy stemming from the changes to the trauma criterion in DSM-IV (it was changed again in DSM-5). The change in DSM-IV--which does correspond with the time frame you mention--was seriously lambasted in some corners, e.g.:

Criterion A1, certifies three groups of people as potentially eligible for the diagnosis of PTSD: direct recipients of serious threat or harm, such as rape victims or combat veterans; those experiencing vicarious exposure to the trauma experienced by others, such as bystanders at a drive-by shooting; and those experiencing ‘informational exposure’. This third group is new in DSM-IV. It consists of people who are ‘confronted with’ information about threats to others, such as horrified television viewers of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Marshall et al., 2007). Although the authors of the original PTSD diagnosis surely would not have envisioned these viewers as trauma victims (McNally & Breslau, 2008), our current DSM concept of trauma certifies them as trauma survivors just as much as it does those who escaped the World Trade Center before its collapse. In fact, one survey indicated that about 4 per cent of American adults living far from the scenes of the terrorist attacks developed apparent PTSD (Schlenger et al., 2002), presumably while watching coverage of the attacks from the comfort of their living rooms. These people developed what Young (2007) wryly calls ‘posttraumatic stress disorder of the virtual kind’ (p.21).
Because of this bracket creep in the definition of trauma (McNally, 2003a), most people today qualify as trauma survivors. For example, in one epidemiological survey, 89.6 per cent of adults in southeastern Michigan were trauma survivors by DSM-IV criteria (Breslau & Kessler, 2001). [...]

On the other hand, there are studies which point to a limited practical impact of that textual change between DSM-III and IV, in terms of actual PTSD diagnoses:

We used data from the 2009 PTSD diagnostic subsample (N=3,013) of the Nurses Health Study II. We asked respondents about exposure to stressful events qualifying under 1) DSM-III, 2) DSM-IV, or 3) not qualifying under DSM Criterion A1. Respondents selected the event they considered worst and reported subsequent PTSD symptoms. Among participants who met all other DSM-IV PTSD criteria, we compared distress, symptom severity, duration, impairment, receipt of professional help, and nine physical, behavioral, and psychiatric sequelae (e.g. physical functioning, unemployment, depression) by precipitating event group. Various assessment tools were used to determine fulfillment of PTSD Criteria B through F and to assess these 14 outcomes.
Participants with PTSD from DSM-III events reported on average 1 more symptom (DSM-III mean=11.8 symptoms, DSM-IV=10.7, non-DSM=10.9) and more often reported symptoms lasted one year or longer compared to participants with PTSD from other groups. However, sequelae of PTSD did not vary systematically with precipitating event type.

In other words, the expanded definition could have possibly been abused, but in practice that didn't happen much.


What exactly are the X and the Y axis of a brainwave? I can't seem to wrap my head around how a bunch of organic transistors (neurons) could possibly produce a wave? What exactly is a brain wave? If you graph a brain wave what exactly would your X and Y axis represent? For example a sound wave is graphed with X axis being time and Y axis being pressure. If someone told me to recreate a brain wave and for this purpose gave me a bunch of neurons with complete and exact control of which neuron fires when how would I possibly create said wave?

In the general case of EEG, the x-axis is time, and the y-axis is the voltage potential measured by an electrode placed on the scalp.

When others talk about "brain waves" they typically refer to oscillations visible in EEG electrode signals that have more power in a certain frequency range. For example, "Alpha brain waves" usually refer to EEG signals with maximum power in the range of 7-13 Hz. "Gamma waves" have frequencies >30 Hz.

The dominant theory of the origin of the waves is that they are the result of large populations of individual neurons firing action potentials in a synchronized fashion.

So, if you had the ability to make, say, a 1,000 neurons near the surface of the scalp fire at the same time, a scalp electrode placed above those neurons should register a significant voltage potential deviation around the time of the trigger.


Is working memory equivalent to fluid intelligence? Some report indicates that working memory capacity is equal to the g factor, so I'm wondering what is actual point of view on this among psychologists.

Colom, R., Abad, F. J., Rebollo, I., & Shih, P. C. (2005). Memory span and general intelligence: A latent variable approach. Intelligence, 33, 623–642.

I would not go as far as saying that working memory (WM) is equal to g factor (gf). WM only accounts for 38% of variation in gf performance whether is no time pressure, this is not insignificant but it important to consider that holding information is important for any gf task. It has perviously been considered that the complexity of information required in different gf tasks would depend on WM capacity. For those that do not know: working memory (WM) is basically the capacity of information an individual can temporally hold at any one time. Anyhow the notion that complexity takes up more working memory and therefore is predictive of gf performance, in other words holding information in WM is thought to help us analyse and break it down to solve problems such as posed in gf tasks. This notion is does not appear to be supported, with research finding that the correlation between gf and WM being relatively consistent across task complexities.

So what is the function of this relationship? A 2011 fMRI study by Burgess et al strongly suggests that the relationship between WM and gf is to do with interference control, in their words..."Our findings suggest that the relationship between WM span and gF can be linked, at least in part, to a common dependence on mechanisms of interference control that reflect activation in a core set of brain regions centered on the lateral PFC and parietal cortex...these regions [are] fairly specific and selective in their predictive utility for explaining common variance in gF and WM span...We theorize that the exact brain regions and processes related to gF and WM span will likely depend upon the nature of processing required during the task, and the temporal dynamics of those task demands." Simply, the primary function of the relationship WM capacity and gf appears to be to focus on task. Interestingly from the area of hedonics we know that WM is predictive of how likely an individual is to respond their environment and motivational prompts such as food or alcohol. These motivational cues can be considered interference from long term goals such as avoiding eating or maintaining sobriety.


Does self-actualisation happen during the journey or after achieve the goal Let say one is talented in music, and wants to become a great musician. Does self-actualisation refer to mental state during the journey of pursuing goal, or the mental state after achieve the goal. Originally I thought it's the latter. Recently I read about the concept of arrival fallacy, which casts doubt over my understanding.
Self-actualisation in Maslow Theory (wiki):

the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for him [the
individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially. This
tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what
one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

Arrival fallacy (article link):

“Arrival fallacy is this illusion that once we make it, once we attain
our goal or reach our destination, we will reach lasting happiness,”
said Tal Ben-Shahar, the Harvard-trained positive psychology expert
who is credited with coining the term.

Short answer
According to Maslow, you reach self-actualisation when you reach the goal.  Not juring your journey.  The arrival fallacy refers to the fact that if you reach that goal, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will stay there.
Take away any of the levels below self-actualisation, and you will not reach the top goal. If once you reach there, one of the lower levels goes for some reason, you will lose the position of having been self-actualised.
Maslow himself said:

Though, in principle, self-actualization is easy, in practice it rarely happens (by my criteria, certainly in less than 1% of the adult population.  For this, there are many, many reasons at various levels of discourse, including all of the determinants of psychopathology that we not know. (Maslow, 2013)

Full answer
My answer to Is self-actualization really a need? gives a clue.
We need to determine what self-actualisation actually is.  Maslow described it (emphasis mine) as follows: (Maslow, 1943)

This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein (1939), is being used in this paper in a much more specific and limited fashion. It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions. It is not necessarily a creative urge although in people who have any capacities for creation it will take this form.
The clear emergence of these needs rests upon prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs. We shall call people who are satisfied in these needs, basically satisfied people, and it is from these that we may expect the fullest (and healthiest) creativeness (Kardiner, 1941). Since, in our society, basically satisfied people are the exception, we do not know much about self-actualization, either experimentally or clinically. It remains a challenging problem for research.

Maslow's hierarchy is visually put together as follows:

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons Under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
In the triangle's levels, Physiological, Safety, Love and Belonging, Esteem, and Self Actualization which are on the left are the goals at each level. The items inside each level are your needs for each goal. If, for example, you don’t have all your needs for the physiological goal level, you cannot have safety, even if you have all the prerequisite needs in the safety level.
To attain the sixth level or stage: self-actualisation, is the goal of Maslow's Theory, not a need.  Take away any of the levels below self-actualisation, and you will not reach the top goal. And as stated by Maslow (1943) — see above — and in the TLDR summary of @NickStauner's answer to Does evidence support Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?,

One sequence can't fit all (it didn't claim to), but it makes sense in general, and so do the exceptions, and so do other motive models.

Maslow himself said:

Though, in principle, self-actualization is easy, in practice it rarely happens (by my criteria, certainly in less than 1% of the adult population.  For this, there are many, many reasons at various levels of discourse, including all of the determinants of psychopathology that we not know. (Maslow, 2013)

also, the fact that "most of us function most of the time on a level lower than that of self-actualization" he called it the psychopathology of normality. (Loevinger, 1976)
References
Goldstein, K. (1939). The organism: A holistic approach to biology derived from pathological data in man. Salt Lake City, UT: American Book Publishing.DOI: 10.1037/10021-000
Loevinger, J. (1976) Ego Development: Conceptions and Theories (Jossey-Bass Behavioral Science Series). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50 (4), 370–96.DOI: [10.1037/h0054346][14]FREE via http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm.
Maslow, A. H. (2013). Toward a psychology of being. Simon and Schuster [eBook].


Can't we teach other intelligent animals "complex" languages? I assume I'm not the first person to think about this, but I find this idea very useful, and if it works it would really be a major breakthrough (IMO, more important than getting to space).

Animals already have their own "kind-of-language", but it is based more on feelings, moods, and whatever the sounds/body-language naturally inspire, and not on abstract thought.
Given that there are primates capable of using sign language, I am left to believe that the barriers preventing animals from learning to speak are not simply their smaller brains, but their inability to pronounce the letters of most human languages and the lack of incentive or a good teacher (human parents are the equivalent language-teacher for the human-baby)

The scenario I though of would be the following (I used chimps as an example, but you can replace it with other animals if you wish):
A group of world-class language-scientists develop a language with words and letters that can be easily pronounced by chimps. The language could even be constructed to be a very "beginner" language, to ease the learning process, as long as it keeps its properties of being able to express various thoughts and ideas.
    A few people then spend a some years to learn and practice this language until they can speak it more or less fluently, and adopt a baby chimp (or more) to raise, like a human baby.

There are, of course, a lot of details left to discuss. The "parent" should probably form a close bond with the chimp, so that it trusts them and pays attention to them. Luck is also a factor, as maybe only some current chimps would be able to pass this experiment.

In summary, my question is: Are there currently any species likely to be able to learn a language specifically made for them? And if yes, is there nobody researching this? I want to talk with my cat!

I am interested in your thoughts about this, and in any useful information you might have regarding this subject.

Many researchers into animal language have presented results of studies as evidence of linguistic abilities in animals. Many of their conclusions have been disputed (Jannedy, Poletto, & Weldon, 1994; Wallman, 1992).
It is now generally accepted that apes can learn to sign and are able to communicate with humans.
The Smithsonian Institution talked about apes communicating and the following are YouTube videos of a gorilla communicating through sign language
A Conversation With Koko
Koko signing with Robin Williams (with translation in subtitles)
References
Jannedy, S., Poletto, R., & Weldon, T. L. (Eds.). (1994). Language files: materials for an introduction to language & linguistics. Ohio State University Press.
Wallman, J. (1992). Aping Language. Cambridge University Press.


Which personality traits relate to prosocial values? Which personality traits are strong in people with values such as:

kindness
humility
sympathy
empathy
abnegation
church-professed values

solidarity
love for others
forgiving the other
defending the weak
putting the interest of other people at the same level of our interest
Trying to maximize your own profit is not the primary value, helping the other is the first value.

being good
mercy
charity

Check out Schwartz (1992) on universal values. His Figure 2 places wealth within the power value space, but near achievement, and opposite from benevolence and universalism. Benevolence, universalism, and to some extent tradition would probably subsume the values you've mentioned in the OP, whereas power and achievement would probably more than cover "trying to maximize your own profit" as a value.

I also developed my own measure of values (Stauner, Boudreaux, & Ozer, 2010) to manage the ceiling effect I've found in using the Schwartz Values Survey. I've found a similar opposition between valuation of "Helping people" and "Being or becoming financially secure". This corroborates your intuition about the strong difference between these values. I have data from the same surveys on the Big Five traits, but I haven't analyzed these relationships yet, so it's a little too early for me to weigh in on trait relationships myself. If I ever get around to publishing these analyses of my data, I'll try to remember to edit in a summary here.

In the meantime, check out Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, and Knafo (2002) and Vecchione, Alessandri, Barbaranelli, and Caprara (2009). Roccas and colleagues found that benevolence mostly relates to agreeableness, universalism to openness, and traditionalism to agreeableness and a few facets of other traits. Conversely, power relates negatively to agreeableness and openness, basically. Achievement relates to certain facets of extraversion, conscientiousness, and (negatively:) agreeableness. It's somewhat more complex than this, so I hope you can access the article through a library and take a closer look yourself. Vecchione and colleagues' article is even harder to sum up without sacrificing its nuances, but to put it very bluntly, their results seem roughly comparable, though the method is different.

References
- Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S. H., & Knafo, A. (2002). The Big Five personality factors and personal values. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28(6), 789–801.
- Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25(1), 1–65. Retrieved from Google Books.
- Stauner, N., Boudreaux, M. J., & Ozer, D. J. (2010). Factor structure of the Values Q-Set. Poster presented at the 118th convention of the American Psychological Association, San Diego, CA. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/NickStauner/apa-2010-poster-draft-1.
- Vecchione, M., Alessandri, G., Barbaranelli, C., & Caprara, G. V. (2009). Personality determinants of political participation: The contribution of traits and self-efficacy beliefs. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(4), 487–492.


Any studies as to whether internet groups create even more groups, ideologues and "separation" than pre-internet? Any studies as to whether internet groups create even more groups, ideologues and "separation" than pre-internet?

Since I've speculated that in the internet age we may be seeing even more "groups opposed to each other", "groups based on exclusivity" etc. But I wonder if it's just my perception or whether there's some science to back it up.

The literature you are looking for is regarding group polarisation in the Internet era (with "polarisation" being the main research keyword here).

There are supporters of your idea as well, most notably  Eli Pariser (2011) and Cass Sunstein (2001, 2009, 2017) and studies that show polarisation on the Internet. That being said:

  However, when comparisons are made between offline and online sources, studies find similar levels of segregation. Figure 1, taken from Gentzkow and Shapiro (2011), shows that segregation across website visits is smaller than segregation across national newspapers, but larger than segregation across local newspapers. Halberstam and Knight (2016) examine political networks on Twitter and find similar levels of segregation in the Twitter political networks as in offline political networks. Furthermore, while suggestive, segregation across information sources on the internet is neither necessary nor sufficient for the internet to increase polarisation.

(Source: "The internet, social media, and political polarisation" - Levi Boxell, 2017

So you are on the right track, your question was thought of before and the keyword "polarisation" might lead your research about it in more depth than this quick answer.


How should multiple Mechanical Turk research subjects from the same IP address be handled? I saw this question on Twitter from Jay Van Bavel (@jayvanbavel), and thought it was a good fit for the site.

  Does anyone find that multiple subjects from the same IP address in
  their #MTurk data? How do you deal with this issue? Citations welcome.

Thus, to rephrase:

What does it mean when you get two or more Mechanical Turk participants in a study with the same IP address?
What is a general strategy for dealing with such cases?
Are there are any references discussing the issue?

I'll address just the first of your three sub-questions, the others have been answered by Chuck Sherrington.

What does it mean when you get two or more Mechanical Turk participants in a study with the same IP address?

IP addresses are rarely "fixed" to an individual computer. Each provider has a range of IP addresses available and assigns them to computers as they connect to the network. Every time you boot your computer, every time you connect to a WLAN network, you'll probably have a different IP address. Try it with a tool such as http://whatismyipaddress.com

So of course the IP address you had yesterday will be assigned to someone else tomorrow. It only means that both computers were connected through the same provider. No other conclusions can be drawn from the IP address!

(Only the combination of IP address and connection time is unique to your computer. Your provider stores your connection data for a legally specified period, and during this time the police will be able to identify your computer if they know the time of the connection, but this data is not publicly available.)

Usually IP addresses remain stable through a session, but you cannot even rely on that. DSL connections are often reset once every 24 hours, so if you are online at night, you might experience a loss of your network connection, and after that you'll very likely have a different IP. Mobile connections are separated much more often, and your IP address will change as often. So, if you save a user's IP address at the beginning of a survey and again at the end, both might differ! This will be especially true for users surfing through anonymisation tools such as a TOR network which are programmed to switch IP addresses regularly.

You cannot reliably identify a single computer through an IP address. Use cookies for that or rely on user specified data.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address#IP_address_assignment


Social loafing vs. Free riding In different papers I see these terms with very close definitions. Are they different things? If yes, how one can differentiate them?

You are correct in that these terms are very close in definition, but terminology is not just about identifying a concept. Terminology is also about identifying the perspective from which you will look at the concept and the community to which you, as the researcher, belong. Here, free-riding and social loafing have very different histories.

Social loafing comes from the social psychology literature and is most closely associated with the methods and typical explanations of that field. Thus, you will typically encounter social loafing around discussions of motivation, diffusion of responsibility, and feeling of effort as dispensable.

Free-riding comes from the economics and game theory literature and is most closely associated with the models and methods of those fields. Thus, you will typically encounter free-riding around discussions of cost-benefit analysis, rational choice, and (the paradox of) cooperation.

The only difference in concept (that I know of) comes from the economics focus on rationality. Social psychologists would classify as social loafing situations where the 'slacking' of an individual hurts not only the group, but their own performance as well (they would have individually -- not just as a group -- gotten a higher payoff if they didn't slack). On the other hand, economists, would not consider this as a case of (rational) free-riding, since they reserve that word for social dilemmas where cooperating costs you more than the marginal increase you get from the benefit to the group, but where everybody free-riding is even worse.

Of course, the terms cross-fertilize, especially in the direction of free-riding entering the discussions of social loafing. In the social psychology literature, you will see free-riding used as an explanation of social loafing in cases where the experimenters believe that the choice to loaf is based on a (rational) cost/benefit analysis instead of some of the other factors I discussed.


Do highly creative people dream more and/or differently than ordinary people? Everybody dreams, and I'm trying to understand if there is a cause and effect relationship between ability to dream and recall dreams and creativity as an adult.

I would define the kind of creativity I'm talking about as creating art, designing products, inventing and making original stuff. These people are at the upper end of a bell curve of creativity or are outside the curve completely (extraordinary creative genius). This is in contrast to ordinary people who would be somewhere towards the middle of the creativity bell curve.

The kind of dreaming I'm talking about is long, clear or multi episode dreams lasting over 5 minutes as opposed to fragments and vague impressions of activity. Let's say 2+ dreams per night.

Do highly creative people dream more and recall more than average or analytical people?
Does active interest in dreams as a child or teenager(like keeping a dream journal) influences creativity as an adult?

I found some evidence to support that dreams and creativity are related, particularly in visual fields, like graphic design:

  Barrett also interviewed modern artists and scientists about their use
  of their dreams, documenting dramatic anecdotes including Nobel Prizes
  and MacArthur 'genius grants' whose ideas originated in dreams.[6] Her
  research concludes that while anything—math, musical composition,
  business dilemmas—may get solved during dreaming, the two areas dreams
  are especially likely to help are 1) anything where vivid
  visualization contributes to the solution, whether in artistic design
  or invention of 3-D technological devices and 2) any problem where the
  solution lies in thinking outside the box—i.e. where the person is
  stuck because the conventional wisdom on how to approach the problem
  is wrong.

Another example from an overview of the modern theory of dream content:

  Second, dreams cannot be the guardians of sleep if there are people who can sleep even though they do not dream, and we now have reason to believe there are such people, including young children (Foulkes, 1999), leucotomized schizophrenics (Jus et al., 1973), neurology patients suffering from parietal lobe injuries (Solms, 1997), and perhaps normal adults with weak visuospatial skills (Butler & Watson, 1985).

Another example comes from Nancy Andersen's book "the Creative Brain", in which she suggests that highly creative people, like Issac Newton, Albert Einstein, Virgina Wolf, etc may be capable of thinking in a very different ways from ordinary people. She suggests this may be due to increased or different communication between their centers of the brain responsible for combining information and sensory input. It appears to me that dreaming is very related to this kind of information assimilation.

Another example from Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreaming. Spatial construction is required for "traditional" creative venues, like painting, sculpture and architecture.

  For example, the complete loss of dreaming in adults due to injuries
  to either inferior parietal lobe, when placed alongside the finding
  that increased dream reporting in young children correlates with
  visuospatial skills, suggests that the ability to dream in children
  depends in part upon the development of the neural network for spatial
  construction centered in the parietal lobes.

There are some studies that seem to support your suggestion e.g.:

Dream reports and creative tendencies in students of the arts, sciences, and engineering (paywalled, so I'm quoting the abstract):

  105 students of arts, sciences, and engineering were asked to report a dream and to take a test which measures independence of judgment and relates to creativity. 4 predictions were stated: (a) (confirmed)—the proportion of dream recallers would be greatest among art students and least among engineering students; (b) (partially confirmed)—dream imaginativeness would be greatest among art students and least among engineering students; [...]

Creativity and Dream Recall (same as above):

  The literature on creativity and dream recall often found significant positive correlations between measures of creativity and dream recall frequency (DRF). The present study investigated the relation between creative interests and DRF in detail. The findings confirmed the results reported in the literature, according to which persons with visual and verbal creative skills recalled more dreams. It is suggested that the visual memory may serve as a mediator variable in the relation between creativity and DRF.

Yet dream recall is a complex topic. As you noted in your comment, it might be different for a single person from night to night. It also seems to be inlfuenced by a lot of factors. Schredl et al. name some of them in Factors of home dream recall: a structural equation model:

Personality measures
Creativity/fantasy
Visual memory
Sleep behavior
Stress measures

Yet there are still a lot of factors more to be included, like demographic factors, attitude towards dreams, medication and so on (Schredl has written a lot about dream recall, if you want to dig deeper).

So I'd summarize creativity might increase dream recall but it's only a small part of a bigger picture.


Guidelines for self-help group for people who go through divorce/breakup I'm working on organising a self-help group for people who go through a divorce or a difficult break-up, and I'm wondering if there's a list of dos and don'ts with regards to things one should avoid saying, and things that might help people to recover faster.

The rough thing I have in mind is:

Everything is confidential and stays in the group
Listen actively and don't interrupt
No jugement
Immediately redirect severe cases to licensed professionals and social workers

But that doesn't answer the question of how one can help people to recover faster. "Everything's going to be alright" won't work, and "there-there" with a tap on the shoulder too.

Of course I'm going to contact my local therapists and ask them the same question, but you never know what's going to work out in the end. Maybe someone here has a good idea or/and can nudge me into the right direction.

Aaron Beck is an psychiatrist and psychotherapist.
He is considered the founder of classical approaches to cognitive psychotherapy.

One technique that he suggests is the cognitive technique that generally consists of some steps. N.B. These steps may change depending on the problem, depending on the therapist and depending on the patient-therapist alliance.

According to Beck, negative thoughts result from two separate minds:

The first feels uneasy thinking to flaws of the couple, to all goals not reached, to interpersonal difficulties...
The second cannot ignore these thoughts, because the risk is to loose useful informations that would help to identify the issues that need to be addressed.

You should help the couple to pay attention to those negative thoughts that have to be taken into consideration, neglecting those that you do not think to be useful.

I wish to have been helpful...In conclusion, i suggest Aaron Beck "Love is never enough" (1990)

REFERENCES

Aaron Beck L'amore non basta. Come risolvere i problemi del rapporto di coppia con la terapia cognitiva, Roma: Astrolabio, 1990

@Chris' Edit for English version of book

English version is
Beck, A. 1989. Love Is Never Enough: How Couples Can Overcome Misunderstandings, Resolve Conflicts, and Solve Relationship Problems Through Cognitive Therapy. New York:Harper & Row


How to measure and quantify concentration or focus? How can we measure and quantify concentration or focus? For example, if I were to say:

  "If you do Activity X while using Y, you will be more concentrated
  than if you were using Z"

How can I quantify that? And what tests should I do to actually prove that statement? Examples are appreciated.

Background
I am trying to build some different technology products and I want them to help the user stay more focused than they would using a competitor product of the same kind. The only research I've done so far was to build some interfaces and ask the user how they feel.

Short answer
Attention can be quantified with a sustained attention to response task.

Background
I think with focus or concentration you mean sustained attention to a certain task. A sustained attention to response task (SART) (Silverstein & Palumbo, 1998) could be helpful to you (here is a free PsychoPy script). SART seems to be a reliable measure for attention (Smilek et al., 2010).

Basically SART consists of a set of stimuli (e.g., simple shapes) and the subject is asked to repeatedly give a response (e.g. a button press) when a certain event occurs (e.g. a shape changes color). Reductions in correct rates, increased lapse rates, and/or decreased reaction times all may signal reduced attention to the task.

Admittedly I am not too familiar with these tests, but I do have a lot of experience with people loosing attention during tedious psychophysical tasks :) I hope the links and references provided here may be of further help.

References
- Silverstein & Palumbo, Computers in Human Behavior (1998); 14(3): 463-75
- Smilek et al., Neuropsychologia (2010); 48(9): 2564-70


System 1 and 2 thinking and unconcious Research says there is system 1 and 2 thinking.

My question is how is system and and 2 thinking related to unconcious mind?
Can we say for example system 1 thinking is unconcious mind?

Peter Carruthers  argues (2014) that system 1 doesn't quite overlap with unconscious thinking:

  I shall argue that there is, indeed, a real, scientifically valid, distinction between a set of
  intuitive, unconsciously operating reasoning systems, on the one hand, and a reflective system
  whose operations are partly conscious, on the other. But I shall argue that this division fails to
  line up with many of the other properties generally associated with Systems 1 and 2. In
  particular, some intuitive systems can be slow, some can be controlled, and some can approach
  the highest normative standards; so the moniker «quick and dirty» is certainly inappropriate
  when applied to intuitive reasoning as such.

And Jonathan Evans (2014), a dual-process theorist but also strong critic of UTT, writes:

  It is true
  that the distinction between conscious and nonconscious processing
  has been emphasised by some social psychologists (e.g.,
  Wilson 2002), but it is emphatically not the foundation for contemporary
  dual-process theories of reasoning and decision
  making. As a dual-process theorist, I have argued, in common
  with others, that the conscious/unconscious decision cannot be
  the basis for the dual-process distinction because it is too vague
  and fails to define the key central properties of dual processing
  (Evans & Stanovich 2013). I should also point out that in spite
  of defending the validity of much of the research that N&S criticise
  here, I have in common with them critiqued unconscious
  thinking theory and other strong assertions of the powers of intuition
  (see Evans 2010, Ch. 4). This is because dual-process theory
  confines powers of reflective reasoning – and with it the ability to
  deal with novel and difficult problems – to Type 2 processing.
  The case for dual process is in fact based not on the conscious/
  unconscious distinction but on the claim that there are two forms
  of cognitive processing which have distinctive properties and
  which reflect the operation of distinct cognitive and neural
  systems. Most of these properties are merely typical correlates,
  and few are defining features (Evans & Stanovich 2013). I agree
  with Stanovich that Type 2 processing is distinguished both by
  its cognitive resources (central working memory, correlation
  with measures of cognitive capacity) and by its ability to engage
  in cognitive decoupling and hypothetical thinking. The apparent
  link of dual-process theory with consciousness comes only from
  the fact that some of the items attended in working memory are
  available to verbal report. But using broader definitions of consciousness,
  I have argued in detail that both Type 1 and Type 2
  thinking have aspects that are conscious as well as unconscious
  (Evans 2010, Ch. 7).
  In conclusion, not only do I reject the authors’ presumption of
  conscious decision making, which I believe to be shakily founded
  on folk psychology, but I also contest their implication that the
  conscious/unconscious distinction is the basis for contemporary
  theories of dual processing in higher cognition.


Where do our memories get stored and how are they retrieved again? There is a common knowledge that several brain areas are involved in memory processes and each area is involved in a different aspect of memory.

But where do our memories get stored and how are they retrieved again?

This is a good question.

The question of "where" is not answered yet by mainstream science. One problem is the huge amount of data we get only through our eyes each day, approximately about one terrabyte if this data is compressed by modern algorithms. A lifetime of 100 years would be almost impossible to store "inside our brain".

There are some alternative theories which could explain how the brain stores data. Maybe our brain works like a antenna, similar to a computer which has a access to a vast data pool from the internet. You could ask the question where is the movie inside the television or where is the internet inside the computer? Certainly a computer has a harddrive, a local data storage unit and a cpu, but it is very limited in processing everyday data for a lifetime. It would be very restricted if it would not access to outer data pools.

Carl Gustav Jung has wrote about the theory of a collective subconsciousness and he was in contact with Wolfgang Pauli, a quantum physics pioneer. I would not wonder if we one day discover that our memory is nonlocal.


How to reliably measure working memory capacity? The capacity of human working memory is subject to individual differences. The number of items or chunks a person can retain in their memory may, have profound effects on a variety of other cognitive processes, such as problem solving.

I have come across a couple of ways to measure working memory such as the delayed match-to-sample task, Dual N-back task or the Wechsler Memory Scale. For the latter I have been unable to find out whether it offers an estimate of the number of items which can be held in working memory. This, however, is precisely what I am interested in. I know that the capacity measured using verbal stimuli is affected by a variety of features of the material.

Therefore, I'm wondering what are the most commonly used methods to measure an healthy individual's working memory capacity. Also, is there a reliable measure that can be easily used in online research? I am also interested in measures suitable for laboratory research, though. Finally, are abstract visual material and digits more "pure" measures than verbal ones?

I am especially interested in standardized procedures with known reliability measuring working memory and giving an estimate of the number of chunks an individual can retain.

First of all, the existence of a working memory is a theory, not a proven fact. The working memory is a concept of the information processing theory that likens the human brain to a computer. Other theories don't necessarily have an equivalent for this concept.

Second, there are different theories regarding how the working memory is made up: one single store (e.g. Atkinson & Shiffrin) or several systems (e.g. Baddeley & Hitch). Depending on what you believe the working memory is, you might have to measure it (or its parts) in different ways.

Traditionally the capacity of the working memory is measured by asking subjects to remember a list of items and then counting how many they can repeat. This is a standard subtest in many intelligence tests, e.g. the WAIS. The average (!) capacity for remembering letters or numbers has been shown to be 7 +/- 2 . Different experiments find different numbers, but they all range between 3 and 9 (as far as I know). Regular tests stop at nine items, and it is very rare that someone can regularly hold more items in his short term memory after hearing them once only (telephone numbers are stored in long term memory after being learned).

Measuring the capacity for non-linguistic visual, non-verbal auditory, olfactory, tactile etc. stimuli is extremely difficult, because as yet scientists don't even begin to understand how these stimuli are percieved, processed and represented in the brain. The only comprehensible and meaningful measurements are made of the memory of linguistic items like letters or words or visual representations of objects (like a page with a number of drawn objects).


Can dendrite spines fire action potential toward the soma? I am confused about how the signal propagates from the dendrite spines toward the soma. I believe it is commonly taught that the signal diffuses "passively", i.e. electrostatically with no amplification during its path towards the soma.

But can an action potential be generated sometimes with opening of voltage-gated channels to help it propagate if the dendrite is very long for example?

Can we have zones along the dendrite with more or less voltage-gated channels so the signal would be a combination of both passive and active propagation?

This question shows a good amount of intuition.  It is true that the signal is generally thought to diffuse passively.  However, active propagation of dendritic signals is certainly an important property.  As opposed to the axon, where the action potential is generated by voltage-gated sodium (Na+) channels, in the dendrites, the voltage gated channels are calcium (Ca2+) channels (VGCC -- voltage gated calcium channels) or non-specific cation (Na+, K+, and Ca2+) channels such as the NMDA channel.  The voltage gated nature of these excitatory channels leads to a positive feedback effect similar to that of the action potential itself. However, the time course of these signals is much slower: on the order of 10s to 100s of milliseconds, as opposed to the 1ms time scale of the action potential.  These dendritic spikes or calcium spikes or plateau potentials can lead to firing of bursts of action potentials.

As a side point, action potentials generated in the soma can actually be propagated backwards (backpropagating action potentials) into the dendrite using the same voltage gated channels.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8107777

References
Schiller, J. et al. (2000) NMDA spikes in basal dendrites of cortical pyramidal neurons. Nature 404, 285–9

Major, G. et al. (2008) Spatiotemporally graded NMDA spike/plateau potentials in basal dendrites of neocortical pyramidal neurons. J. Neurophysiol. 99, 2584–601

Cai, X. et al. (2004) Unique roles of SK and Kv4.2 potassium channels in dendritic integration. Neuron 44, 351–64

Wei DS, Mei YA, Bagal A, Kao JP, Thompson SM, Tang CM (2001) Compartmentalized and binary behavior of terminal dendrites in hippocampal pyramidal neurons. Science 293:2272–2275.

I actually have written a paper myself on the potential usefulness of dendritic plateau potentials in working memory:
Sanders, H. et al. (2013) NMDA and GABAB (KIR) Conductances: The “Perfect Couple” for Bistability. J. Neurosci. 33, 424–429  http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/doi/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1854-12.2013


What is the difference between flow and cannabis induced high? I am doing research on flow. So far I found out that flow is a short-term positive peak experience, but not a persistent state of mind. I wonder, what is the difference between flow and cannabis induced high? (The ICD-10 code is F12.0 cannabinoid intoxication.)

Following your links I understand you are relating to:

  Flow: also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does and loses sense of space and time.

While the effects of cannabis intoxication include, but are not limited to:

general alteration of conscious perception;
euphoria;
feelings of well-being;
relaxation or stress reduction;
increased appreciation of the arts, including humor and music;
joviality;
metacognition and introspection;
enhanced recollection (episodic memory);
increased sensuality;
increased awareness of sensatio;
increased libido and creativity;
abstract or philosophical thinking;
disruption of linear memory;
paranoia or anxiety;
greater enjoyment of food taste and aroma;
enhanced enjoyment of music and comedy;
marked distortions in the perception of time and space (where experiencing a "rush" of ideas from the bank of long-term memory can create the subjective impression of long elapsed time, while in reality only a short time has passed).

At higher doses:

altered body image;
auditory and/or visual illusions;
pseudohallucinations;
ataxia;
rarely dissociative state (depersonalization and derealization);
acute psychosis;

So in all, based on a cursory wikipedia search, I would say there are more differences than similarities between the two states of mind.


Are normal external stimuli still processed by the brain during a hallucination? I was wondering if hallucinations could radically override real external stimuli. After all every sensory organ responds to external stimuli, but when a hallucination occurs, I suppose, the external stimulus and the false stimulus (hallucination) combine. Or do they?

For example: Let's say I'm looking at an apple and in the meantime I hallucinate an orange, theoretically the informations about the apple should still reach my brain together with the hallucination of the orange, therefore I should be able to see the apple and the orange at the same time.

Something analogous happens in the phenomenon of afterimage where the photochemical activity in the retina continues with less intensity even without the original stimulus. The new and the old stimuli combine.

Is that what happens during hallucinations too?

Q: Are normal external stimuli still processed by the brain during a hallucination?

A: Yes, normal stimuli are still processed during a hallucination, but some of them may be distorted or obliterated. This is evident clinically. For example,

When a schizophrenia patient has an auditory hallucination (such as voices talking to him/her) [Ref 1] while he/she is doing something in the public, the patient still hears sounds in the surroundings and what other people are talking normally.
When a migraine or epileptic patient has a visual aura (a kind of visual hallucination, which usually occurs as flashing lights [scintillation], zigzag patterns [fortification spectra], or blind spots [scotomas]) [Ref 2] or a drug addict has a visual hallucination (such as insects crawling on the floor, a pink elephant coming into the room, or a stranger coming to attack him/her) from psychedelic drugs, he/she still can see the visual image of the surrounding place.[Ref 3] But, the part of visual field that the visual aura/hallucination is occurring may be normal, distorted, or obliterated, as in the figures below.

Figure 1.Visual aura of migraine. [Ref 4]

Figure 2. This is what an aura is like to one migraine sufferer. [Ref 5]

Some patients with a tumor, abscess, cyst, or other lesions at the parietal somatosensory area have sensory seizure (a kind of somatic sensory or tactile hallucinations) and some schizophrenics have tactile hallucinations, which can occur as insects crawling on the skin, the skin over the head being stretched, the patient being cuddled or kissed, etc. [Ref 6]. These patients still have intact sensory perception while they have these tactile hallucinations because they can feel touch, pain, hot, cold, proprioception, etc. as usual while they're having the hallucinations. But, although these sensations are still normal in the unaffected areas, they may be altered, diminished, or absent in the affected areas.

So, normal stimuli are still processed by the brain during a hallucination, but they may not be processed normally, especially in the affected area, and the resulting perceptual experience is the experience of a mixture of normal perception and hallucination.

References:

Larøi F, Sommer IE, Blom JD, Fernyhough C, H. ffytche D, Hugdahl K, et al. The Characteristic Features of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Clinical and Nonclinical Groups: State-of-the-Art Overview and Future Directions Schizophrenia Bulletin. 2012 Jun; 38 (4): 724–733. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbs061
Schott GD. Exploring the visual hallucinations of migraine aura: the tacit contribution of illustration. Brain. 2007 Jun; 130(6):1690–1703.
Teeple RC, Caplan JP, Stern TA.Visual Hallucinations: Differential Diagnosis and Treatment Care Companion J Clin Psychiatry.2009; 1(1): 26–32.
Falardeau J. Visual aura of migraine. American Academy of Ophthalmology.
Bekkie’s Wonderland. Migraine and migraine art drawn by patients.
Wikipedia. Tactile hallucination


What are effective methods to overcome the initial psychological resistance towards an unpleasant task? Background
Some self-help books note the difficulty of starting a boring or cognitively-difficult task (relative to maintaining the 'momentum' once the task has been started). Sometimes they describe an analogy to physical systems whereby a certain amount of 'activation energy' needs to be provided in order for a process to start.
Examples
To generate this initial energy, some self-help authors have described simple techniques:

The moment you feel an instinct or a desire to act on a goal or a
commitment, use the Rule. When you feel yourself hesitate before doing
something that you know you should do, count 5-4-3-2-1-GO and move
towards action.

Robbins, Mel. The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage. Simon and Schuster, 2017.
See also: Is there any direct or indirect empirical support for the effectiveness of Mel Robbins' five second rule?

Shrink your desired hyperfocus period until you no longer feel
resistance to the ritual. Minimize the amount of time you’ll dedicate
to focusing on one task until you no longer feel mental resistance to
it. Even setting a mental deadline of five minutes will likely be
enough to get you started.

Bailey, Chris. Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More. Macmillan, 2018.
One could certainly enumerate an endless amount of techniques beyond these. For example, closing the eyes and visualizing oneself of performing the task, or one could pretend with a high degree of conviction that there is an infinitely large payoff for doing the task and an infinitely large penalty for not doing the task. However, it is not clear whether any of these methods would actually be effective.
Question
However, I have not found a single study that evaluated these, or similar, methods (i.e., interventions that increase the probability of people to initialize a psychologically unpleasant task).
What are effective methods to overcome the initial psychological resistance towards an unpleasant task?
Assumptions and differentiation from related questions
Kelly McGonigal distinguishes between I won't and I will willpower (see The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It (2012, ISBN 978-1583335086)). The former type of willpower (I won't) has been discussed in this Q&A forum previously:
Best meditation techniques to overcome Behavioral Addictions?
Beyond CBT and MBI, what are effective behavioral interventions for modern lifestyle addictions during their engagement?
However, the question here is more in line with the I will willpower type.

I don't know of evaluations of those types of techniques. To broaden your query slightly, there is strong evidence from social psychology that increasing helpful behaviors and decreasing unhelpful behaviors is more about context than willpower (e.g., see how Nisbett & Ross talk about the power of the situation for behavior: http://faculty.babson.edu/krollag/org_site/soc_psych/ross_pers_sit.html). So if a person were seeking to initiate difficult behaviors, I would first modify the context rather than use the tools mentioned. For example, if a person had trouble doing a work task and was using stackexchange as a distraction, they could disable their internet for a period.


Is it possible to create an inhibition against some activities? There is an unexplained psychological reason that causes one not to be able to do some random activities (for instance, not being able to eat several days because one's mouth just won't open to take in food or they can not go out to ride a bike because, as much as they want to, it's like their body refuses them to dress and step outside).

There are more examples how the problem occurs but I really want to know what is the psychological reason behind it (I know it isn't anxiety). The problem occurs at random times and against random activities that are a part of one's everyday life.

Also I'm intrested in whether or not an inihbition can be psychologically created by choice against some bad habits (for example it could be the saviour of the people who are trying to quit smoking if, however bad they want to smoke, their hands just won't take a cigarette).

There is an answer to the first part of your question here:  What causes behavioural inhibition?

I am answering this part of your question:
I'm interested in whether or not an inhibition can be psychologically created by choice against some bad habits (for example it could be the saviour of the people who are trying to quit smoking if, however bad they want to smoke, their hands just won't take a cigarette).

To induce inhibitory behaviour requires the use of negative reinforcement. To avoid punishment, or discomfort, an individual will learn to avoid a particular behaviour.

In the case of addiction (as mentioned in your example with cigarettes), the issue is:   Creating a negative reinforcement that causes greater   discomfort (referred to as negative affect in the article below) when using the drug, as opposed to the discomfort that results from abstinence.
The same can be drawn for behaviour payoffs. If a certain behaviour alleviates for example, anxiety, then the discomfort of the negative enforcement will need to be greater than the anxiety the individual is avoiding.
As one can imagine, it is not always easy to create a humane punishment that creates a discomfort greater than the what the individual seeks to avoid.

  This article offers a reformulation of the negative reinforcement
  model of drug addiction and proposes that the escape and avoidance of
  negative affect is the prepotent motive for addictive drug use. The
  authors posit that negative affect is the motivational core of the
  withdrawal syndrome and argue that, through repeated cycles of drug
  use and withdrawal, addicted organisms learn to detect interoceptive
  cues of negative affect preconsciously. Thus, the motivational basis
  of much drug use is opaque and tends not to reflect cognitive control.
  When either stressors or abstinence causes negative affect to grow and
  enter consciousness, increasing negative affect biases information
  processing in ways that promote renewed drug administration. After
  explicating their model, the authors address previous critiques of
  negative reinforcement models in light of their reformulation and
  review predictions generated by their model. (PsycINFO Database Record
  (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved) 1

 1 Addiction Motivation Reformulated: An Affective Processing Model of Negative Reinforcement.
Baker, Timothy B.; Piper, Megan E.; McCarthy, Danielle E.; Majeskie, Matthew R.; Fiore, Michael C.
Psychological Review, Vol 111(1), Jan 2004, 33-51. doi: 10.1037/0033-295X.111.1.33


What is the neurological basis for the association between Bipolar type 2 and autism spectrum disorder (ASD)? Bipolar disorder type 2 and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is regularly seen together. What is the neurological explanation for this?

Google Scholar identifies several learned articles that discuss the association/overlap between bipolar disorder type 2 and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including:

Khanzada, N. S., Butler, M. G., & Manzardo, A. M. (2017). GeneAnalytics pathway analysis and genetic overlap among autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 18(3), 527. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms18030527

Stahlberg, O., Soderstrom, H., Rastam, M., & Gillberg, C. (2004). Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other psychotic disorders in adults with childhood onset AD/HD and/or autism spectrum disorders. Journal of neural transmission, 111(7), 891-902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-004-0115-1

Gandal, M. J., Zhang, P., Hadjimichael, E., Walker, R. L., Chen, C., Liu, S., ... & Shieh, A. W. (2018). Transcriptome-wide isoform-level dysregulation in ASD, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Science, 362(6420). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat8127

Excerpts from the above include:

The conditions show similar neuropsychiatric behavioral disturbances, including impaired social interaction and communication.

Twenty-three genes were common to all three disorders.

Overlapping genes impacted dopamine and serotonin homeostasis and signal transduction pathways, impacting mood, behavior and physical activity level.

My non-expert interpretation of the above is that there are genetic processes at work that drive the similarities in behaviour associated with these conditions.


Evidence for this tapping therapy - EFT (Emotional freedom technique) I just heard or maybe I saw a clip on tv about this tapping technique. Something about tapping various points of the body for psychological treatment.

What is this EFT all about? Is there any solid evidence for EFT?

Discussed in this Skeptic thread too, sorry I didn't realise it was there - https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/231/what-is-eft-emotional-freedom-technique-and-does-it-work

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is part of the energy psychology movement which draws on various forms of alternative medicine to stimulate meridian points of the body (Gaudiano, 2000). At the moment it is considered pseudoscience because it has no effect beyond the placebo-effect in clinical psychology (Bakker, 2013).

This is an excerpt from a study by Waite & Holder (2003) that assessed the effectiveness of EFT for anxiety:

  These results do not support the idea that the purported benefits of EFT are uniquely dependent on the "tapping of meridians." Rather, these results suggest that the reported effectiveness of EFT is attributable to characteristics it shares with more traditional therapies.

And here is the abstract from another article by Bakker (2013) on energy psychology, the "field" EFT falls in:

  Proponents of energy psychology techniques, such as Thought Field Therapy and Emotional Freedom Techniques, have sought “empirically supported therapy” status despite an unsupported and implausible theoretical basis and claims in response of representing a “pseudoscientific” movement. Two major reviews of the supportive evidence which has accumulated over the past 30 years have been published recently. This current status report describes the history, theory, techniques, claims, and implications of the energy psychology movement, examines support for its theoretical base, its current outcome study support, and offers conclusions and recommendations as to its research and clinical prospects. It is concluded that there is scant support for the radical theories underlying energy psychology techniques, and that empirical support for their efficacy is methodologically weak, and has not been able to demonstrate an effect beyond nonspecific or placebo effects, or the incorporation of known‐effective elements. The only dismantling studies to date have been disconfirmatory. Further research is highly unlikely to be scientifically productive, and scientist practitioners are advised to continue to adhere to well‐established cognitive and behavioural principles.

So, overall there is little scientific evidence for the underlying assumptions of EFT, hope this answers your question!

References

Bakker, G. (2013). The current status of energy psychology: Extraordinary claims with less than ordinary evidence. Clinical Psychologist, 17(3), 91-99. doi:10.1111/cp.12020

Gaudiano B.A., Herbert JD (2000). "Can we really tap our problems away?". Skeptical Inquirer. 24 (4). Retrieved 2019-08-20.

Waite, L.W. & Holder, M.D. (2003). Assessment of the Emotional Freedom Technique: An alternative treatment for fear. The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 2(1), 20-26.


Intro to EEG - Electroencephalography Are there any introductory level text, researches or video for "How to learn EEG"?

Those material should include dictionary of terms, what waves mean, how to connect some activity in waves to brain activity... etc

There are lot of books which covered this subject, I am looking for something very basic and easy to comprehend.

Practical approach to electroencephalography by Mark H. Libenson.
ISBN: 978-0-7506-7478-2

This should address your issues:

dictionary of terms
what waves mean
how to connect some activity in waves to brain activity... etc

  Why consult encyclopedic references when you only need the essentials?
  Practical Approach to Electroencephalography, by Mark H. Libenson, MD,
  equips you with just the right amount of guidance you need for
  obtaining optimal EEG results! It presents a thorough but readable
  guide to EEGs, explaining what to do, what not to do, what to look
  for, and how to interpret the results. It also goes beyond the
  technical aspects of performing EEGs by providing case studies of the
  neurologic disorders and conditions in which EEGs are used, making
  this an excellent learning tool. Abundant EEG examples throughout help
  you to recognize normal and abnormal EEGs in all situations.

  Presents enough detail and answers to questions and problems
  encountered by the beginner and the non-expert. Uses abundant EEG
  examples to help you recognize normal and abnormal EEGs in all
  situations. Provides expert pearls from Dr. Libenson that guide you in
  best practices in EEG testing. Features a user-friendly writing style
  from a single author that makes learning easy. Examines the
  performance of EEGs—along with the disorders for which they’re
  performed—for a resource that considers the patient and not just the
  technical aspects of EEGs. Includes discussions of various disease
  entities, like epilepsy, in which EEGs are used, as well as other
  special issues, to equip you to handle more cases.

Another review here

  Practical Approach to Electroencephalography differs from other EEG texts of its level in that it takes the time to explain itself, resulting in a far more readable albeit less portable text than other condensed introductory texts.

Book Preview

This link will provide you with access to review the book yourself, before purchasing.


What is the difference (in a recording) between speech and a sound? What makes the difference to the brain? How does the brain cognitively differentiate between speech and a sound within a recording?  I am asking this theoretical question for speech synthesis, i.e. Making a voice with just waves (no recordings). Is this even possible?

Speech is sound and the brain will recognise the sound as speech. As for the possibility of creating the sound of speech without recordings using sound waveforms I would say that is off topic here and would be a question for sound creators.

The subject of recognising speech from sounds is a big subject but to give a starting point here are a few pointers for further reading and research, depending on what area you want to look at more.

Neurological basis of Speech Perception

Heald & Nusbaum (2014) gives a brief outline of the neural processes involved.

  One view of speech perception is that acoustic signals are transformed into representations for pattern matching to determine linguistic structure. This process can be taken as a statistical pattern-matching problem, assuming realtively stable linguistic categories are characterized by neural representations related to auditory properties of speech that can be compared to speech input. This kind of pattern matching can be termed a passive process which implies rigidity of processing with few demands on cognitive processing. An alternative view is that speech recognition, even in early stages, is an active process in which speech analysis is attentionally guided. Note that this does not mean consciously guided but that information-contingent changes in early auditory encoding can occur as a function of context and experience. Active processing assumes that attention, plasticity, and listening goals are important in considering how listeners cope with adverse circumstances that impair hearing by masking noise in the environment or hearing loss. Although theories of speech perception have begun to incorporate some active processing, they seldom treat early speech encoding as plastic and attentionally guided. Recent research has suggested that speech perception is the product of both feedforward and feedback interactions between a number of brain regions that include descending projections perhaps as far downstream as the cochlea.

They also define active and passive processes

  The distinction between active and passive processes comes from control theory and reflects the degree to which a sequence of operations, in this case neural population responses, is contingent on processing outcomes (see Nusbaum and Schwab, 1986).

Figure 1A-C [Source: Heald & Nusbaum (2014)]

  A passive process is an open loop sequence of transformations that are fixed, such that there is an invariant mapping from input to output (MacKay, 1951, 1956). Figure 1A illustrates a passive process in which a pattern of inputs (e.g., basilar membrane responses) is transmitted directly over the eighth nerve to the next population of neurons (e.g., in the auditory brainstem) and upward to cortex. This is the fundamental assumption of a number of theories of auditory processing in which a fixed cascade of neural population responses are transmitted from one part of the brain to the other (e.g., Barlow, 1961).

  By contrast, active processes are variable in nature, as network processing is adjusted by an error-correcting mechanism or feedback loop. As such, outcomes may differ in different contexts. These feedback loops provide information to correct or modify processing in real time, rather than retrospectively. Nusbaum and Schwab (1986) describe two different ways an active, feedback-based system may be achieved. In one form, as illustrated in Figure 1B, expectations (derived from context) provide a hypothesis about a stimulus pattern that is being processed. In this case, sensory patterns (e.g., basilar membrane responses) are transmitted in much the same way as in a passive process (e.g., to the auditory brainstem). However, descending projections may modify the nature of neural population responses in various ways as a consequence of neural responses in cortical systems. For example, top-down effects of knowledge or expectations have been shown to alter low level processing in the auditory brainstem (e.g., Galbraith and Arroyo, 1993) or in the cochlea (e.g., Giard et al., 1994). Active systems may occur in another form, as illustrated in Figure 1C. In this case, there may be a strong bottom-up processing path as in a passive system, but feedback signals from higher cortical levels can change processing in real time at lower levels (e.g., brainstem). An example of this would be the kind of observation made by Spinelli and Pribram (1966) in showing that electrical stimulation of the inferotemporal cortex changed the receptive field structure for lateral geniculate neurons or Moran and Desimone’s (1985) demonstration that spatial attentional cueing changes effective receptive fields in striate and extrastriate cortex.

Linguistic Speech Perception

The following information was sourced from an article by John Kingston (Professor in the Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts) in 2013.

Links below are for Free PDF files - DOIs are provided in the references section in case of future breaks in links

  According to the motor theory of speech perception (Liberman, et al., 1967; Liberman & Mattingly, 1985; Liberman & Mattingly, 1989), listeners recognize speech sounds by emulating their articulation in their heads. The sound is recognized when the acoustic properties of the emulation match those of the speech sound heard...Now, this is embodied cognition in that the cognitive act of perceiving a speech sound consists of emulating the speaker’s articulatory behavior mentally, i.e. behaving in the mind as the speaker would in the world.

  ...

  According to the direct realist theory of speech perception (Fowler, 2006), no such emulation nor embodied cognition is necessary to perceive speech sounds because the speaker’s articulatory behavior in pronouncing them so structures the acoustic properties of the speech signal that the listener can identify the unique articulation that produced those properties. In other words, the acoustic properties are specific information about the articulations that produced them...This is extended cognition because no mental act is required to extract information from the speech signal’s acoustic properties. The information is instead present and patent within those properties and no analysis is required to turn those properties into information. All the cognitive work, other than simply being around to hear the sounds, is done outside the listener’s head.

Kingston says that there are empirical and theoretical challenges to both the motor theory’s and direct realism’s accounts of speech perception, stating that speech perception is neither emboedied or extended; however he did not elaborate on this.

Source

Kingston, J., (2013). Why speech perception is neither embodied nor extended cognition [Online] Available at http://blogs.umass.edu/jkingstn/2013/12/

References

Barlow, H. B. (1961). Possible principles underlying the transformations of sensory messages In: Sensory Communication, ed W. Rosenblith (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): pp 217–234. ISBN-13: 978-0262518420 DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262518420.003.0013

Fowler, C. A. (2006). Compensation for coarticulation reflects gesture perception, not spectral contrast, In: Perception & Psychophysics. 68(2): pp 161-177. DOI: 10.3758/BF03193666 PMID: 16773890

Galbraith, G. C., and Arroyo, C. (1993). Selective attention and brainstem frequency-following responses, In: Biological Psychology 37(1): pp 3–22. DOI: 10.1016/0301-0511(93)90024-3

Giard, M. H., Collet, L., Bouchet, P., and Pernier, J. (1994). Auditory selective attention in the human cochlea, In: Brain Research 633(1-2): pp 353–356. DOI: 10.1016/0006-8993(94)91561-x

Heald, S. L. M., and Nusbaum, H. C., (2014). Speech perception as an active cognitive process In: Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience Vol.8 DOI: 10.3389/fnsys.2014.00035 PMCID: PMC3956139 URL: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnsys.2014.00035

Liberman, A.M., Cooper, F.S., Shankweiler, D.P., & Studdert-Kennedy, M. (1967). Perception of the speech code, In: Psychological Review. 74(6): pp 431-461. DOI: 10.1037/h0020279 PMID: 4170865

Liberman, A.M., & Mattingly, I.G. (1985). The motor theory of speech percepton revised, In: Cognition. 21(1): pp 1-36. DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(85)90021-6 PMID: 4075760

Liberman, A.M., & Mattingly, I.G. (1989). A specialization for speech perception, In: Science 243(4890): pp 489-494. DOI: 10.1126/science.2643163 PMID: 2643163

MacKay, D. M. (1951). Mind-like Behaviour in artefacts, In: The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 3(12): pp 352-353 DOI: 10.1093/bjps/II.6.105

MacKay, D. M. (1956). The epistemological problem for automata, In: Automata Studies (AM34), eds C. E. Shannon and J. McCarthy (Princeton: Princeton University Press): pp 235-252ISBN-13: 978-0691079165 Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1bgzb3s.14

Moran, J., and Desimone, R. (1985). Selective attention gates visual processing in the extrastriate cortex, In: Science 229(4715): pp 782–784. DOI: 10.1126/science.4023713

Nusbaum, H. C., and Schwab, E. C. (1986). The role of attention and active processing in speech perception, In: Pattern Recognition by Humans and Machines: Speech Perception (Vol. 1), eds E. C. Schwab and H. C. Nusbaum (San Diego: Academic Press): pp 113–157.DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-631403-8.50009-6

Spinelli, D. N., and Pribram, K. H. (1966). Changes in visual recovery functions produced by temporal lobe stimulation in monkeys, In: Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology 20(1): pp 44–49. DOI: 10.1016/0013-4694(66)90139-8


What is the conceptual difference between causal inference and 'prediction' Unifying brain theories of cortical function often describe the brain as a prediction machine, based on a generative model (given X, what's the probability of Y). In this context, from Bayesian perspective, our brain attempts to infer hidden causes about what is perceived through sensory organs (I see a ball about to hit me (X), who threw it (Y)).
A similar thought is presented in predictive coding, where the brain would 'predict' what will happen in the future, or what happened in the past. ('I see a ball about to hit me (X), I predict it was thrown by Y')
Intuitively (and colloquially speaking), predictions and causes are orthogonal to me - but in this context they seem remarkably equivalent. Are they different, and if so, how?

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but after some more reading and thinking this is what I took away: both the term 'prediction' and 'cause' here refer to the maximum likelihood of a distribution ($Y$), meaning the probability of an event ($X$), given sensory data ($Y_{1}$) and the likelihood given prior data ($Y_{2}$) .
Even though maybe seemingly orthogonal to some (like me), the terms here would actually represent the same thing (i.e. no difference).
Please post a better answer if this is partially or completely incorrect =)