Does sensory deprivation affect cognitive abilities? I am wondering if the loss of vision or hearing early in life (say, before the age of 14 years) affects cognitive abilities later in life? I would imagine that as a group, early-blind or early-deaf people may tend to receive less education than the average healthy individual with normal sight and hearing skills? Given that most IQ tests rely on education-related subjects, would it be fair to conclude that sensory-deprived people, on average, may have lesser IQ, not because of their cognitive abilities per se, but because they tend to receive less education?

This is a really neat question.

A strong predictor of cognitive ability is one's environmental enrichment, or the stimulation of the brain in its physical and social surroundings. Those with sensory deprivation often have less success with social situations and self-esteem, as well as (presumably) less sensory input coming in. The implication is that lack of sensory stimulation during neurodevelopment can impair cognitive development.

This is linked to education in the sense that the educational environment typically provides a cognitively stimulating environment for children to grow in. In that sense, the quality of the educational environment -- and its associated opportunities for engagement in higher-level cognitive activities -- is another factor that predicts cognitive development. [1]

Interestingly enough, studies have shown that environmental enrichment can correct and rehabilitate the effects of sensory deprivation. One study [2] showed that physical exercise and an enriched environment actually helped to offset the effects of "dark-rearing" in rats.

Independently of environmental enrichment, the relationship between education and cognitive ability is not well-known. There are studies that suggest that cognitive ability early in life can predict one's success in school, and there is a strong correlation(r~.6-.8) between early childhood IQ and the level of education that the child will end up pursuing. And education certainly contributes to crystallized intelligence, which is the product of education and culture. Both fluid and crystallized intelligence are correlated with each other, thus factoring into one's general intelligence. Regardless, it is fairly well established that cognitive ability predicts success in school, but it is not clear how level of education affects overall cognitive ability.

But perhaps moreso than education is the weight of individual differences in the face of sensory deprivation. For example, certain personality traits are moderately correlated with cognitive ability. Self-efficacy, which is the general feeling that one can succeed in any circumstance, is correlated at around .22. On the Big 5, Openness to Experience is correlated at around .20. But it is important to note that these traits surely predict one's response and ability to cope and adapt to a traumatic event such as total deprivation of the senses (blindness, deafness, etc.) in early development. After all, it is clear that sensory deprivation can be a traumatic life event for individuals, particularly those who are seeing-impaired. To quote from the abstract of this study:

  Blindness and sight restoration have been reported to induce both temporary and longer term psychopathology, usually followed by psychosocial readjustment. However, in some cases, readjustment may not occur and suicide may result...When compared with a hearing-impaired control group, impaired sight alone can acutely affect otherwise psychologically healthy individuals.

Given that certain traits that are linked to readjustment are also linked to intelligence, it may be the case that sensory deprivation has a higher impact of long-term cognitive ability in those who have a reduced capacity to begin with, relative to those with higher intelligence and natural ability.

So my informed conclusion would be that yes, sensory deprivation may affect cognitive abilities -- from an educational standpoint, a social standpoint, and a reduction in early stimulation (particularly during the critical period). The overall detrimental impact on these abilities may be relative to the existing intelligence of the person (or the even the existence of traits that are linked to intelligence).

Sources used:

[1] Wilson R, Barnes L, Bennett D (August 2003). "Assessment of lifetime participation in cognitively stimulating activities". J Clin Exp Neuropsychol 25 (5): 634–42.

[2] Argandoña, Enrike G, Harkaitz Bengoetxea, and José V Lafuente. “Physical Exercise Is Required for Environmental Enrichment to Offset the Quantitative Effects of Dark-Rearing on the S-100β Astrocytic Density in the Rat Visual Cortex.” Journal of Anatomy 215.2 (2009): 132–140. PMC. Web. 25 Aug. 2015.


What did Carl Jung mean by "subjectivization of consciousness"? I am reading "Psychological Types" by Carl Jung and I came across this sentence:

  But it is a characteristic peculiarity of the introvert, which is as much in keeping with his own inclination as with the general bias, to confuse his ego with the self, and to exalt it as the subject of the psychic process, thus bringing about the aforementioned subjectivization of consciousness which alienates him from the object.

At this sentence, what I didn't understand is what is "subjectivization of consciousness" and how does it cause alienation from object?

I would be glad if someone can explain.

Reviewing Jung’s nature of objects the object for which the introvert becomes alienated is the item, topic, or nature that is causing a subjective reaction. This in keeping with the struggle of maintaining a proper distinction between the self and ego creates a confusion toward which is “steering the ship” so to speak. That is to say which is the

  perceived subject of the psychic process

This subjective experience of consciousness causes a withdrawal from the “object” in question.

I like to think of this withdrawal as a form of cognitive dissonance  as the inconsistency between what is expected to be felt or perceived as the correct feeling versus what the actual feeling toward the object is, causes mental discomfort changing the perceived attitude towards the object. This is a loose association but allows some abstraction towards the question at hand.


Why are we generating wrong ideas in the first place? In CBT they tell you to challenge automatic thoughts.
So say someone doesn't say hello to you, then you think he doesn't like me.
CBT says to challenge this and maybe you realize that he didn't see you actually.

I have a more philosophical question in such sense.
CBT assumes that at some point we are generating wrong ideas (automatic thoughts) and later we are able to correct them ourselves.
My question is, if we are able to correct them, why are we generating the wrong ideas in the first place? What is the mechanism that allows this to happen? Which mind processes are in play here? Concious/unconcious?

I suspect we adopt irrational positions when we have an implicit choice available and our frame of mind, owing to biological factors such as stress hormone levels, favors rapid choices over thoughtful reflection on the circumstances we face. Dual process theory provides a decent framework for thinking about this.

There is a remarkable body of literature examining paranoid ideation and social anxiety produced by D. Freeman which examines something along these lines experimentally. Attributional styles seem to be learned, then reinforced by exposure to stressful situations. Sort of a "feedback loop" of distorted cognition.


What constitutes an emotional disorder? Watson, et al. (2008) states that a superclass of mood and anxiety disorders should be given a nonspecific label, such as ‘emotional disorders’.
They stated that this superclass

can be decomposed into three subclasses: the distress disorders (major depression, dysthymic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder), the fear disorders (panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, specific phobia), and the bipolar disorders (bipolar I, bipolar II, cyclothymia).

There have been different remits put forward in Neurophysiology, Psychology and Psychopathology journals to define what constitutes an emotional disorder.
Goldberg, et al. (2009) says they include:

generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), unipolar depression, panic disorder, phobic disorders, obsessional states, dysthymic disorders, post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and somatoform disorders. We have also included neurasthaenia, as this diagnosis is commonly made in many parts of the world, and is in the ICD‐10. We have preferred the term ‘emotional’ because we include somatoform disorders in the group.

yet, Baek (2014) says:

Typical emotional disorders are anxiety disorder, depression, and bipolar disorder

Sung, et al. (2016) pointed out that

The term ‘emotional disorders’ is not a clearly defined medical term, but is commonly used to refer to psychological disorders (e.g., generalized anxiety disorders and major depressive disorders) that appear to affect the emotions. ‘Emotional disorders’ in this study refers to the symptoms of anxiety and depression

Where there are moves to improve the diagnostic procedures for mental disorders through systems such as HiTOP (Stony Brook Medicine, 2017; Kotov, et al., 2017) — see also my answer to How does a person know if he should seek treatment for depression since feeling moody is unavoidable? — has there been any attempt since 2016 to put together definitive criteria to determine what constitutes an emotional disorder?
References
Baek, S. B. (2014). Psychiatric rehabilitation of emotional disorders. Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation, 10, 205–208. 10.12965/jer.140143
Goldberg, D. P., Krueger, R. F., Andrews, G., & Hobbs, M. J. (2009). Emotional disorders: Cluster 4 of the proposed meta-structure for DSM-V and ICD-11. Psychological Medicine, 39, 2043–2059. 10.1017/S0033291709990298
Kotov, R. et al., 2017. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(4), pp. 454-477. doi: 10.1037/abn0000258
Stony Brook Medicine (2017). The Hierarchical Taxonomy Of Psychopathology (HiTOP). [Online]
Available at: https://medicine.stonybrookmedicine.edu/HITOP/publications
Sung, C. W., Chen, K. Y., Chiang, Y. H., Chiu, W. T., Ou, J. C., Lee, H. C., ... Wang, J. Y. (2016). Heart rate variability and serum level of insulin-like growth factor-1 are correlated with symptoms of emotional disorders in patients suffering a mild traumatic brain injury. Clinical Neurophysiology, 127, 1629–1638. 10.1016/j.clinph.2015.08.006
Watson, D., O'Hara, M. W., & Stuart, S. (2008). Hierarchical structures of affect and psychopathology and their implications for the classification of emotional disorders. Depression and Anxiety, 25(4), 282–288. 10.1002/da.20496

Bullis, at al. (2019) tackled this very question this month, and outlined criteria to determine what an emotional disorder is:

The disorder is characterised by the experience of frequent and intense negative emotions;
There is an aversive reaction to the emotional experience itself that is driven by the individual's diminished sense of control and negative appraisal of the emotion; and
The individual engages in efforts to dampen, escape, or avoid the emotional experience, either preemptively or in reaction to the onset of a negative emotional state.

The paper also expands on each of the criteria and pointed out in the summary that

these criteria would only be considered an emotional disorder if the associated distress and functional impairment were chronic and significant. [emphasis mine]

The term chronic is well defined within the fields of medicine and mental health, but the question now arises as to how significant is significant in order to say that the criteria can be considered?
References
Bullis, J. R., Boettcher, H., Sauer‐Zavala, S., & Barlow, D. H. (2019). What is an emotional disorder? A transdiagnostic mechanistic definition with implications for assessment, treatment, and prevention. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, e12278. doi: 10.1111/cpsp.12278


How come we see a line when there isn't one in this picture? I got this picture I generated myself and I don't understand how come we can see two diagonal lines when, I think, there is no actual lines.

Zooming in:

Center: Just another 2px wide square…

After thinking about it, I think it might come from the fact that, if you zoom really closely, it is only a succession of square, each time 2px smaller and of a different color.

Although there is no actual line directly built, we can see the corners of each square clearly and, together, our brain understand this as two diagonal lines. … I might just have answered my own question but I would appreciate your opinion/confirmation on this.

Related: My question on meta-SE about where to ask this question.

I can't zoom in on the picture, but what I see is bleeding from one color into the next along the diagonals (most evident in the green to blue and purple to red transitions). Are you saying that they are not there when you zoom in? I would think that because there is a gradient in the color transition, the gradient has to be emphasized in an angled meeting, more pronounced the sharper the angle (e.g.if it were a triangle, the angle would be 120° as opposed to 90°). It's not an optical illusion.

In short, you see two transecting lines on the diagonal because they are strongly suggested. The mind sees this accurately and reads the suggestion.

It is kind of like asking, why, in the following picture, do I read all the dotted lines as lines, where only two of them are actually solid lines?

Or, if you will, why do I see curves here?

Because the color differences in the offset squares are really there, suggesting a familiar curve, though in this question, it would be fair to ask Why do the curves appear smooth? In fact, the curves are not smooth.

If you do want to see interesting optical phenomenons,

stare at the center of your image for 30 seconds, then scroll down to the blank area next to my diagrams. You will see squares of reciprocal colors not in your original (like a bright yellow.) Also interesting is that as the image fades, blinking will "refresh" it.
after staring directly at the center for a minute or two, switch the focus very slightly to one side then back; you'll be pleasantly surprised by bursts of vibrant color parallel to each other each time you change.

Edited to add: This may be an optical illusion, but if it is, I'm unsure of what type it is. Looking at the zoomed image, clearly the impression is that there is some bleeding, but that's not the reality. Sorry I can't help more on this one. But it does get much more intriguing!


What kind of memory it is? I was reading about various memory techniques : mnemonics, memory space, peg system, space repetition etc . They are used when I have to memorize something by myself for longer duration.

There are many other memories which are in my mind but I dint memorize them by myself. They are automatically stored. Like : my travel experience, some childhood activity etc . Some of them are faded some are still very clear. I can visualize them clearly.

But there are some memories, I cant visualize them. But I still remember. For example : if I try to visualize or write position of 'G' key on laptop keyboard, I can't. But still when I type, my fingers know its exact position. Similarly, if someone asks me to write my national anthem, I can't. But I can sing it without any mistake. Why does it happen so. Can't I remember everything in this way instead of any other memory technique? The advantage of this is quick recall.

The travel experience etc, are episodic memories. The duration of these memories mostly depend on emotion and novelty.

The typing and singing, are procedural memories. They are formed with practice. Repetition and consistency are the two most important factors for this type of memory. We do not have any conscious access to procedural memory, we simply perform what we know.

The PIN memory can be explained with cued recall. The image of the post office is associated with the PIN, so whenever you imagine the post office the PIN number is also activated.


Can we change our personalities? In psychology, a difference is made between personality attributes as a state or as a trait. For example, a usually outgoing and sociable person might find himself uncommonly shy in the presence of a woman he finds attractive. He is not shy "by nature", but only in this situation – his momentary shyness is a state. Another person, on the other hand, might be generally timid around even close friends and family members – his shyness is a trait.

Can this person, who is always and basically shy, decide to change himself and not only learn to overcome his fear, but really and truly become extroverted from the ground up?

Shyness is just an example here, I'm not interested in therapies for shyness, but in basic deliberate personality changes that take place within a reasonable period of time (a few years, not half a lifetime).

This is my opinion, based on what I know about how the brain works. As all process within the brain are physiological processes. It must be acknowledged, that what we know now about the brain, will, most likely, seem simplistic, to future generations; as more research is done. Will provide some quotes from the links I've provided, as I have time.

I don't wish to get bogged down in a debate about what “personality” is, traits, state etc. For the sake of this argument, let's assume personality is the most "natural" way of being of a person. Those innate impulses that arise from the "subconscious" parts of the brain, and these can either be allowed to flow (depending on social context and impulses) or require vigorous conscious action by the frontal lobe, to inhibit action upon such impulses. This latter comment regarding inhibiting these does not pertain to the actual “personality”, but to the efforts required to make conscious change and is a measure of the difficulty in bringing about fundamental personality change.

So for the purpose of this argument, I am viewing personality as the subconscious impulses that arise from the brain.

Which then brings us to the question. What is causing these impulses? To make it short, Long Term Potentiation) LTP of various neural pathways within the brain.  There is no guarantee that a connection between two neurons will fire. It is the priming of the synaptic cleft , the membrane endings and contents of both neurons that increases the likelihood that the a connection will form between two neurons. When a pathway is formed, that is “permanent” (as close to permanent as something can be in the brain), it means that pathway of the brain has been Long Term Potentiated. So the neurons fire to form that thought/action/feeling, effortlessly and reliably.

Which brings us to the next question. How is the brain Long Term Potentiated? To make it short (again), for “ordinary” activities; like learning the piano, or not to interrupt people when they are talking; reiteration of experience. The more dull the consequences of each iteration, the more iterations required.  Which works, conversely, as in the case of trauma, where there is a cascade of chemicals throughout the body that assists in the LTP of the neural paths being used during the experience.

This then brings us to the next question. How does change one's personality or one “undo” or “reduce” LTP of parts of the brain, we’d like to change and bring about “LTP” of pathways in the brain we find desirable. Now this is the key to answering the OP’s question, Can personalities change within a period of a few years (as opposed to decades).

As already mentioned in one answer, well-practiced psychotherapy (whatever you’d like to call it) relies on the concept of undoing LTP and LTP different pathways. Also, as mentioned in another answer, trauma creates a rapid change in LTP of pathways in the brain.

Now, I say this, using the logic of my above points; From my observation of human beings, my own efforts in life to change my personality and study of neuroscience and interest in psychology and psychiatry. I can honestly say, I have come to the conclusion, that it is most difficult and unlikely that any significant change can be made to someone’s personality, without the use of severe methods. One can practice overcoming (in this case), the action of behaving as a shy person, but the experience of social anxiety will remain and lag. It will eventually change. As the brain is plastic and we can mold it through repetition. However it, usually, would take longer than a few years for the internal changes to follow. This is something that can be achieved over half a life time, but the outward change of behavior, does not equal an inward change of personality; it can be a reflection of a person’s willingness to bring about change (and is most certainly a step in the right direction in achieving change). Look at many disciplines, martial arts, many spiritual vocations, it takes many years for the person to evolve. Which is a change in personality. And in these cases this is people living a full-time existence to transform their personalities. So the poor, every day, folk, with all of life’s pressures bearing down upon them, it makes it even harder to consciously override our natural impulses.

I should add, that it's the gamut of human experience that shapes who we are, combined with the natural chemistry. I have not covered this as in depth as would be to give this discussion full due.

As this site is a minefield of potential controversy and arguments over semantics. For the purposes of this answer I am using “words” that I am defining for the use of this passage here, and the debatable semantics of their use is outside of the scope of the OP’s question. So please comment on the merits and principle of my answer, that addresses the question and not points off topic.

BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (1997) 20, 597–655
Long-term potentiation: What’s
learning got to do with it?
Tracey J. Shors
Louis D. Matzel
http://hargreaves.swong.webfactional.com/bbs97.pdf


Does mental rigidity cause psychological problems? Is there a correlation between mental disorders and mental rigidity?

I suspect that when people have very strong beliefs and it happens that this beliefs are dysfunctional they can incur into mental disorders.
To further clarify the question it can be also reformulated in another way.
Is it possible to state that most of people change their beliefs to become adaptive to the requirements of society while stubborn people don't?

Is that correct?

I've read that a tendency to "jump to conclusions" has an impact on certain psychological afflictions, such as having delusions.  As you may know, the definition of a delusion is as follows (this is just from Google dictionary):

  an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

I am assuming that that sort of uncritical thinking is at least part of what you meant by "mental rigidity."


Descriptions of human behavior should be extensible and reducible. Why? In Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson explains Timothy Leary's theory of personality types, the "interpersonal grid", the diagrammatic representation of which consists of a circle divided by the two dimensions of friendly/hostile and strong/weak, into four quadrants (friendly strength, hostile strength, friendly weakness, and hostile weakness), with each quadrant containing sixteen subquadrants. Wilson begins by explaining that each person is born with a genetic predisposition for one of these four personality types, and after explaining them briefly reminds his readers:

  Remember again that all these categories are for convenience and
  that nature has not employed the sharp boundaries that we use in our
  models of nature. Thus, with Leary's 1957 schemata, we can further
  sub-divide our 4 types into 16 types with 4 degrees of each, for a
  total of 64 sub-types.

  In the next section, to simplify what may be growing too complex, we
  will reduce everything again just to the interactions of the first two
  cirtuits.

  Any system for decribing human behavior should be flexible enough to be extended indefinitely, and should also still contain meaning when
  reduced back to its fundamentals. (p. 81, bold emphasis added)

Leary's system fulfills these criteria because the grid, which categorizes personalities, can be extended by subdividing cells or simplified by merging cells. But to me, the criteria make no sense, since I think that every description could be extended or reduced.

Is there an example of a description of human behavior that does not fulfill the criteria of extensibility and reducability?

I would say that in the present context Wilson does not use his ad-hoc criteria to differentiate two types of models of human personality – those that fulfill his criteria, and those that don't –, but that this is a pseudo-argument, legitimizing his momentary disregard of the model's complexity and allowing him to focus on only the four basic dimensions in his argumentation.

I call the criteria "ad-hoc", because he appears to make them up on the spot and not motivate them in any way. In my opinion, the whole book is filled with this kind of normative setting of dogmata.


Measuring postsynaptic potential vs action potential at axon hillock? I have been reading literature regarding Neuronal potential measurement. Conventionally, researchers use electrode-based method to measure action potential. However, as it's of high invasiveness and low throughput several optical methods such as Genetically encoded voltage indicators (GEVIs) and chemical methods such as Voltage-sensitive dyes (VSDs) are emerging. One fundamental question I came across was GEVIs indeed can be targeted to the site of interest however, there only a few chemical methods targeting specific cell type have been developed. One such recent literature is this one: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.0c00861.
I am wondering, are neuroscience researchers really interested in measuring neuronal potential at individual synapses (which is gradient) or only at the axon hillock (as it's the one which finally matters?). I mean does measuring gradient potential at a defined area is of any interest or is it just another piece of research making no use for neuroscience researchers? (I don't know whether it's useful to synapse plasticity research and all)

Measuring voltage at a synapse gives you a measure of the input to a cell.
Measuring voltage at the axon hillock (for a typical neuron, practically the soma can substitute as well) gives you a measure of the output of a cell: how near it is to threshold and/or if it has reached threshold and produced a spike.
Measuring voltage at intermediate sites in the dendritic tree can be a measure of spatial integration, which can be quite complex.
All of these measuring sites can be of interest, though there is a lot of variance in how difficult each will be.


How to best prepare the mind for a problem identification brainstorm? I am a manager of a team of software engineers. We often use brainstorming sessions to generate solutions to problems. We use typical cognitive games, e.g. word association, to "warm-up" and facilitate the ideations sessions. These sessions are fruitful.

Tomorrow we are having a brainstorming session to identify problems, not solutions. It would seem that we should prepare our minds with a different technique. Personally, I find that I am best at noticing problems when I am in a negative mindset. Does that hold true against existing research? If so, what would be a good way of getting in to that type of mindset? I would assume causing some kind of mental anguish would facilitate negative thinking. However I don't want to upset my team or do any lasting damage.

Some random ideas that have come to mind include:
- Taking a minute to talk about historical atrocities
- Having food at the session, but not letting anyone eat

If I go down this road, what would be a good decompression method to get people back in to a positive mindset at the end?

I'm wondering if your approach to "identify[ing] problems, not solutions," will include so-called reverse or negative brainstorming, in which participants are directed to consider "what can be done to break something instead of focusing solely on narrow-minded fixes,"1 to be "highly critical, rather than highly creative."2 If this is the case, the group could "warm up" by applying this technique to some other area: their own lives, their favourite sports teams, public policy issues, etc.

1 Stephen C. Harper. How to Solve Problems with Reverse Brainstorming, posted on his TalentSpace Blog, December 14, 2011.

2 Harper. Extraordinary Entrepreneurship: The Professional's Guide to Starting an Exceptional Enterprise (Google eBook), 2005, p.78.


What branch of psychology deals with the Framing Effect? What branch of psychology deals with the framing effect (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981)? Any notable related literature?
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice. Science, 211(4481), 453-458. Retrieved September 5, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1685855

Gestalt psychology (Interpretrations of problems) and cognitive psychology (Problem solving). If you are fairly new to these topics, Robert Stenberg's "Cognitive Psychology" is pretty simple and explains a lot of the basics of this complicated issue.
It should be noted that Tversky and Kahneman are specialist in cognitive psychology itself, and have more works on this subject; but I still recommend Stenberg's work to appreciate a lot more of these books if you are starting to learn in psychology and the likes.
Hope it helps.


How to adjust SSE or RMSE for the number of free parameters in the model? How do I adjust SSE (sum of squared errors) or RMSE (root-mean-square errors) for the number of free parameters in the model?

Is there an "adjusted" RMSD metric similar to the adjusted r-squared metric?

To my knowledge, there is no adjusted RMSD.

RMSD, unlike $R^2$, isn't typically used to compare models across the literature. $R^2$ represents the proportion of variance explained by the model, a construct which translates well across different experimental designs. Adjusted $R^2$ distorts this by accounting for the number of parameters in your model, but is a better estimate of the proportion of variance in the population explained by your model.

RMSD is in whatever units you happen to be using. It should be interpreted against some benchmark for what you think a good model should be, or whatever has been deemed an "acceptable error rate". It's not clear to me that adjusting for the number of parameters in RMSD would provide a number that is inherently meaningful, but I'm not sure if this is true.

If you would like to select among several model candidates, you may want to compute AIC (Akaike Information Criterion) or BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion), both of which are attempts to maximize the likelihood of your model while minimizing the number of parameters. Both metrics are commonly used in cognitive modeling, and I think this may be what you are looking for.

While I think this question is on-topic here, you will likely get better answers on stats.stackexchange.com (as Jeromy points out) because your question is not really specific to cognitive modeling.


What kind of political views are sociopaths more likely to espouse? I know of the pretty controversial links between personality and political orientation, in general terms, e.g.

  Although most research examining whether openness and conscientiousness influence political ideology has appeared only within the last decade, support for the expected openness-liberalism and conscientiousness-conservatism links already is voluminous.

I'm curious if studies have looked at the finer correlations of abnormal psychology and political orientation. Do the extremes of personality lead people to more extreme political orientation of some sort? For instance, does sociopathy predispose to extreme left- or right-wing movements?

One 2017 paper does try to correlate the dark tetrad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism) to extremist political views:

Previous research on personality and political attitudes has been conducted in countries where political parties from the center dominate the political system. In the present research (N = 675), we focus on the relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism, respectively, in the course of a presidential election where the two candidates represent either left-wing or right-wing political policies [Austrian presidential election of 2016]. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism were associated with right-wing political orientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. Moreover, the relationships between personality and right-wing political orientation and extremism, respectively, were relatively independent from each other.

Going the other way around, a 2019 review of research on the psychological profiling of extremists doesn't quite tie them with any particular personality (disorder) but it does generally correlate them with psychological distress:

Empirical findings support a relationship between psychological distress and extreme political ideologies. Compared with moderates, political extremists—on both the left and right of the spectrum—report stronger anxiety about their economic future (van Prooijen, Krouwel, Boiten, & Eendebak, 2015). Furthermore, extremists are more suspicious than moderates about governmental institutions, suggesting distressed expectations of these institutions (Inglehart, 1987). Experimental findings are consistent with these insights. For instance, people psychologically compensate for feelings of uncertainty and fear through strong ideological convictions (McGregor, Prentice, & Nash, 2013), and inducing a loss of significance increases extreme beliefs on both the left and right (Webber et al., 2018).
The link between psychological distress and political extremism is inconsistent with the assumption of the rigidity-of-the-right model that psychological distress stimulates conservative ideologies only. We note, however, that psychological distress stimulates a preference for leaders who, in addition to being radical, are also group-oriented (Hogg, Meehan, & Farquharson, 2010). Feelings of distress therefore make political currents that are not only extreme but also nationalistic particularly appealing. Indeed, the majority of studies indicating a right-wing shift under conditions of uncertainty were conducted in Western countries where the political currents that combine radicalism with nationalism happen to be right wing (e.g., the United States, several European Union, or EU, member states; Jost, 2017). Would distress exert similar effects in countries where the political currents that combine radicalism with nationalism are mostly located on the left, such as Venezuela (i.e., Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro), Ecuador (i.e., Evo Morales), or Nicaragua (i.e., Daniel Ortega; e.g., Müller, 2016)?

The review paper goes to discuss "cognitive simplicity" (by this they mean a black-and-white perception of the social world), overconfidence, and intolerance as other established (if somewhat obvious) psychological traits of extremists.
I guess a tentative conclusion from this might be that personality abnormalities (beyond those discrete traits) don't feature high on the psychological profile of extremists (i.e. there might a few psychopaths among the extremists, but most extremists might be just "suffering" from those four discrete traits). Or perhaps more research is needed.


What does "oddly related" mean in a mental status exam? Mental Status Exams done by psychiatrists often include a description of the "relatedness" of a patient. Sometimes, patients are described as "oddly related." What is "relatedness" and what qualifies as "oddly related"?
A google search for "oddly related psychiatry" shows a similar question on reddit and allnurses without a proper answer unfortunately.

Chris' answer is very thorough and describes the theory of relatedness. However, in practice when psychiatrists use the term 'related' on the behavior section of the mental status exam, they are referring to the way a patient is relating to the physician or other provider in that conversation.
In this framework, a 'normally related' person would be having a conversation the way one would expect given cultural context. An 'oddly related' person would not. The term is extremely broad however and so needs specifics for clarification. For example, a person identified as oddly-related might be alternating between being engaged and totally disengaged from a conversation without obvious pattern. However any number of other 'oddities' in their engagement with the physician could also be classified this way.
It is a relatively small component of the behavior section of mental status exam and will ideally be clarified where necessary.


Are there rule of thumb regarding sample size when neuroscientific measurements are used? According to this paper, 10-25 subjects are enough for an fMRI study.
However, regarding EEG, it only mentioned in this paper that some "authors concluded that the relatively small sample sizes (average 20 subjects) in these studies are likely responsible for the inconsistent result". This paper did not give a recommendation of sample size.

Are there a rule of thumb regarding how many subjects should be used for neuroscientific measurements in general? Are there papers regarding this?

Note that I am not currently designing an experiment, but writing a literature review regarding application of neuroscience. So I don't think I can conduct a power analysis as an answerer suggested.

The minimum sample size required to plausibly reject the null hypothesis depends not on the area of study (e.g. neuroscience), but on your study design and the statistical tests you perform.

What you need to do is a power analysis. Questions regarding power analysis have been asked on Cross Validated. You may want to read up on power analysis in your favourite statistics textbook and, if you have questions, ask them there.


In "The Great Hack", what are the data points used in psychological profiling? I just saw the documentary "The Great Hack" (2019) about Cambridge Analytica. In it, they were talking about “data points” to profile people to better target them and persuade them into voting a certain way. I think they needed around 5000-6000 data points to achieve the claimed outcome.

Could anyone give an example of what a “data point” is in this case?

The 'data points' were collected by Cambridge Analytica through an app developed by Dr Aleksandr Kogan. The app was a personality quiz called This is Your Digital Life and was run on Facebook. It collected all kinds of data, including 'likes', birthdays and locations. So it was those kind of data points where Cambridge Analytica was bragging about. It claimed that it had up to 5000 data points on every US voter.


Benefits of social eating outside of family units The benefits of eating dinners with your family are documented in "Correlations between family meals and psychosocial well-being among adolescents" by Eisenberg et al. However, is there evidence that this applies also applies to other family-like communities? For example, are the benefits to coworkers or friends cohabiting eating together on a regular basis?

The term I was looking for was "commensal meals". Indeed, the benefits of commensality are seen in:

Firefighters, wherein commensality correlated with measures of effectiveness [1].
The general population of Thailand, wherein commensality correlated with happiness [2]. However, from quickly reading the paper, it's unclear whether this applies as strongly for families as it does for unmarried people.
Seniors in Japan, wherein commensality is associated with "subjective health, food diversity and food intake frequency" [3].

However, I didn't find anything relating specifically to room-mates, which seems like a relevant demographic?

[1] "Eating Together at the Firehouse: How Workplace Commensality Relates to the Performance of Firefighters" by Kniffin et al.

[2] "Health, Happiness and Eating Together: What Can a Large Thai Cohort Study Tell Us?" by Yiengprugsawan et al.

[3] "Eating together is associated with food behaviors and demographic factors of older Japanese people who live alone" by Ishikawa et al.


Have the core CBT "Thinking Errors" been found to NOT be effective in evidence-based clinical practice? This is his chart of the ten "thinking errors." It's taken from The Feeling Good Handbook.

  Table 3–1. Definitions of Cognitive Distortions

  ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black-and-white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see
  yourself as a total failure.

  OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

  MENTAL FILTER: You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality becomes darkened,
  like the drop of ink that colors the entire beaker of water.

  DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they “don’t count” for some reason or other. In this way you
  can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday
  experiences.

  JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your
  conclusion.

  a. Mind reading. You arbitrarily conclude that someone is
  reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.

  b. The Fortune Teller Error. You anticipate that things will
  turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an
  already-established fact.

  MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s
  achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear
  tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s
  imperfections). This is also called the “binocular trick.”

  EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: “I feel it, therefore
  it must be true.”

  SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could
  be expected to do anything. “Musts” and “oughts” are also offenders.
  The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements
  toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

  LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a
  negative label to yourself: “I’m a loser.” When someone else’s
  behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him:
  “He’s a goddam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with
  language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

  PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as me cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Has using these errors as a therapeutic tool been found to be effective in clinical psychotherapy?

I think you should change the question a little bit to "What should be done to the Thinking Errors?" or "Just identifying and evaluating Thinking Errors might not be effective?". Yes, they may not be effective. Please be careful that all mental problems need to be treated by professional therapist and a very important part of their expertise involves the diagnosis. There are many anxiety or depressive disorders that they manifest similar "Thinking Errors" kind of thinking, but they have different underlying causes and should be treated differently. It's not to say that strategies like those described in The Feeling Good Handbook don't work, rather they work when things are simple. If you feel that things are more complicated you should surely seek some professional advice.

To illustrate this point to you by an example I would like to mention Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (or OCD). In OCD, there are some problems in cognitive system that makes the person being constantly paralyzed by lots of Intrusive Thoughts. The content of these thoughts may be similar to "Thinking Errors" or could be corrected by similar strategies, but focusing on them and trying to correct them make them stronger, more sailient, and more frequent. People with this disorder then feel that they are compulsively correcting their erroneous thoughts, but it seems they can never get rid of them. For this disorder, another treatment strategy has been offered called Exposure and Response Prevention (EX/RP). In this kind of treatment people are encouraged to face their intrusive thoughts, but don't respond to them.To try to accept their presence and at the same time not to let them to make them do anything, or not do anything. There is abundant evidence that EX/RP is effective for OCD.

And there are also other disorders with their idiosyncrasy. I'm not sure what kind of problem you're describing, but if you want to use self-help method (with all it's pro and cons) you could take a look at diagnostic features of OCD.


Why do we say, "Oh!" when we are surprised? I have noticed that I and many of my peers tend to say "Oh!" whenever we are surprised or think of an answer to a question. This "Oh!" is not only prevalent in English, but also in Korean and German.

Edit: Sorry for not clarifying. I was wondering why we say, "Oh!" instead of perhaps, "Pft!" or "Tsch!" or any other type of sound.

This is a hard question because there are probably many different (but not equally valid) answers.

From my perspective (Barrett & Russell, 2015), there are a couple of things to think about.

How often do you actually say "Oh!" when you are surprised? Your memory of these instances is likely unreliable, as you're depending on semantic memory about cultural beliefs, and not on episodic memory of your actual behavior (Robinson & Clore, 2002).  Indeed, we might expect a lot of variability across different contexts (see next bulletpoint).
How much variability is there within/between individuals and cultures?  If we've learned anything from relating emotions to variables like physiology, behavior, and facial expressions, we know that there is no one-to-one correspondence (e.g., fear and running away, anger and increased heart rate, etc.).  Instead the relations between discrete emotions and these response systems change across individuals, contexts, and cultures.
Does surprise produce an "Oh!" or does an "Oh!" indicate surprise?  On the one hand, you can think of an emotion as a reaction to some stimulus, producing loosely coordinated responses (e.g., "Oh!").  On the other hand, you can think of emotions as interpretations or categorizations of what's going internally and externally.  In this sense, you infer from your "Oh!" that you are surprised.  This means that "surprise" is a category that you deploy for all the instances in which you say "Oh!"  This is sort of like how "bird" is a category for all instances in which the object being described is animate and has wings.

So in a tautological way, you say "Oh!" when you are surprised because you categorize all instances of "Oh!" as surprise.  Either way, your question has not been studied empirically (to my knowledge), so it's hard to give an answer based on actual data, and different theories will make different hypotheses.


What projective tests are available for a child and family assessment? I’m thinking about introducing to my practice some new tests for family relationship evaluation. There are not so many projective tests in this matter. I'm particularly interested in Family Relation Test: Children’s Version (FRTC), however, I couldn’t found any information about a real experience of this test usage by specialists, only its general description on the website of a publisher. What are the strengths and the weaknesses of FRTC?

In general, what projective tests for a child and family assessment are there on the market today, except of classic drawing tests or TAT?

Many projective tests explore family relationships, however it is frankly difficult to find projective tests exclusively focused on family relationships, can be proved:

The Family Drawing Test (the most utilized).
CAT (version of TAT for children) very, but very used.
Test by Patte Noire of Louis Corman.
FTT Riding theory test of Carina Coulacoglou.
Test of Luisa Düss.
TRO of Phillipson (officially focused on a person's ability to establish satisfying relationships with others, emotions in relationships)


Evidence of 'virtually limitless' long-term memory In his paper, 'What do People believe about Memory?', Professor Svein Magnussen of University of Oslo claims:

  ... memory science is not aware of any limitation on the amount of information the brain is able to store and retrieve. Most classical papers on the memory for large amounts of information suggest that human long-term memory is virtually limitless.

Please can you provide evidence that well-supports this claim?

I have tried to put your question in the context of modern memory research, but without involving specific models (which would make your question far too broad to answer). Hopefully, this will clarify what purpose the construct of long-term memory serves in modern memory theory, and what exactly is meant by it being "unlimited," without giving a chapter-length answer.
What is long-term memory to memory researchers?
Operationally speaking, long-term memory is memory that fails to exhibit the primary effects that characterize, and which we use to define and study, shorter term and working memory, especially capacity limitations and interference. In a sentence, long term memory is memory that has survived the forgetting process for sufficiently long that the expected chance of forgetting asymptotically approaches zero under a particular model. From the article in the question, some very useful context precedes the given quote:

Closely linked with the idea of memory exercising, is the question of
whether long-term memory has a limited storage capacity or is limitless.
This question is illustrated by the textbook anecdote of the professor of
ornithology who stopped learning the names of his students because each
time he learned the name of a student he forgot the name of a bird.

The bolded quote lies at the heart of what memory researchers mean when they say that there are no known limits on long-term memory. Within the context of current storage-based memory models, we may say that long-term memory is limited if and only if cross-domain interference is known to occur at arbitrarily long time scales (i.e., if new memories can "push out" old memories.)
Memory interference
The existence of cross-domain interference is an oft held anecdotal belief, but there is no empirical evidence to support the idea of any such limit on memories that have 'survived' the consolidation process for sufficiently long. It is particularly helpful to understand the effect known as proactive interference here:

Proactive interference (PI)
Suppose I present you with a list of food items (apple, steak, ham), then test your recall. Then, I present you with another list of food items (orange, carrot, chicken soup) and test your recall again. Your performance will be worse than on the first list, because the first list is proactively interfering with your recall of the second list.
Now, if I present yet another food item list, I can increase the PI effect
until your retention approaches zero. If I instead present you with a
list of car parts, your performance goes back to 'normal'. This is
known as release from proactive interference.

The existence of release from proactive interference effects implies that no or very little cross-domain interference occurs at all, even over relatively short scales, and therefore that no long-term cross-domain interference occurs. Based on this alone, it is fair to say that modern memory science is not aware of any limitation on the amount of information the brain is able to store and retrieve.
Concluding remarks
I hope my answer has been informative regarding how memory researchers define memory, and what they mean when they say that long-term memory is "unlimited." As I think your question is getting at, long-term memory is certainly not a well defined construct. It isn't something we can observe directly or even indirectly, but tends to be used as a definitional convenience, at least within a research context.
Long-term memory is simply memory that no longer exhibits the characteristic effects that memory researchers operationally define memory by in the first place; a decidedly negative construct. It isn't wrong to say that long-term memory is unlimited, but it isn't particularly useful knowledge unto itself, either.
Note also that, although the distinction between short- and long-term has remained extremely popular since its introduction in the 60's, it is not universally accepted. Erikssonian long-term working memory theory, process memory theory and ecological psychology are all examples of models or schools of thought that either reject or are entirely incommensurate with the idea of a short vs. long-term distinction, or even that memories are "stored."


What's the prevalence of interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive behavior in the treatment of depression? Is there any link, e-book, whitepaper that you can provide me to help me determine the prevalence of IPT and CBT amongst kids 7 - 12 years and adolescents 12 - 17 years who suffer from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). This is for a clinical trial campaign we are doing due diligence for. I need to know if we can target enough number of participants to start a study.

The mental health foundation (MHF) UK do some good work here, collecting data about prevalence of mental health problems and engagement with therapy. I have linked to a 2015 report which summarises a plethora of research on the depression, including MDD. You can follow the references to find information about the prevalence of MDD and engagement in therapy. For example, the paper references a 2006 meta-analysis of the prevalence of depression between 1965-1996 (USA statistics)..."overall prevalence estimates were: under 13, 2.8% (standard error (SE) .5%); 13–18 5.6% (SE .3%); 13–18 girls: 5.9% (SE .3%); 13–18 boys: 4.6% (SE .3%)" (Costello et al., 2006). A UK government report basically puts this prevalence at similar levels to the US. Going back to the USA, a 2014 report puts the incidence of depressive episode experiences at 11% of the US adolescent population. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore!

Therapy engagement and age is a bit more difficult to obtain, especially for interpersonal therapy in younger age groups. In the UK 38% of all therapy in primary healthcare (basically non-hospitalised patients) was CBT in 2013/14. In the annual NHS report for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies 2014/15(IAPT) puts this at 34% (1.2 million) by contrast interpersonal therapy was only around was just over 1% (40,000) of appointments. Under 18s age groups are not given, but it is reasonable to assume given the kind of therapy available for adults in the UK the rates would be similar for children, particularly because CBT training is more readily therapy. If your in the US it may be important to consider that therapy engagement maybe lower in younger age groups.

TANGENT
Worryingly and personally the most horrible statistic I have read all week is that depression in children is a risk factor to mortality comparable to smoking. However meta analysis have reported that CBT is 51-87% effective in treating depression. A Canadian report puts psychotherapy (CBT and IPT included) as .66 (cohen's D) more effective than no treatment at all in children with depression. The report does not compare success rates of either therapeutic technique. However a study has been planned to compare therapeutic treatments in children and adolescence, it has not been published yet. Rates of recovery in adults (which is often lower than children) may be an indicator, with IAPT reporting 58.4% recovery with CBT and 53.9% with IPT (remember the small sample size for IPT in IAPT). Within anxiety research cognitive therapy is found to be far more effective than IPT. One study appears to suggest that CBT is also more affective with depression than IPT, although a slightly older study found no significant difference, which looking at the IAPT data would seem to be more likely.

I hope that is helpful, I would also recommend looking at the USA based Nation Institute of Mental Health website, they have a lot of information and links to research.


What criteria decides whether a technique is CBT? Wikipedia describes Cognitive behavioral therapy by saying

CBT focuses on the development of personal coping strategies that target solving current problems and changing unhelpful patterns in cognitions (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, and attitudes), behaviors, and emotional regulation."

On the other hand, even before coinage of the term CBT various therapists where using some techniques that could influence personal coping strategies.
That leaves the question about whether those therapists were also doing CBT without them knowing or whether CBT is defined in a way that only certain techniques count as CBT.
How is the term defined?

What is CBT?

As I stated in my answer to a previous question on CBT,

  The basic concept of CBT

  Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) was developed by Aaron Temkin Beck, and as mentioned before, CBT is a combination of behaviourism and behaviour therapy, and cognitive theories and their application in therapeutic settings (Reeves, 2013).  CBT helps to change how you think, hence the word Cognitive, and what you do, hence the word Behaviour.

  A difficult life situation, relationship or practical problem can lead to:

  Altered thinking
  Altered emotions and feelings
  Altered behaviour
  Altered physical feelings or symptoms

  Things can happen the other way too.  Any of the above alterations can lead to a difficult life situation, relationship or practical problem (Royal College of Psychiatrists, n.d.).

  CBT works by trying to get the client to think about a situation in a more helpful way in order to move forward using more helpful behaviours.

Therefore, if the therapist is looking to help a client to use more helpful behaviours by getting them to think about their situation in a more helpful way, then the therapist is using a form of CBT.

References

Reeves, A., 2013. An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice. London: SAGE Publications Ltd..

Royal College of Psychiatrists, n.d. 5 Areas Assessment. [Online]
Available at: https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/treatmentswellbeing/cbt/5areas.aspx
[Accessed 5 May 2017].


What term describes the discrepancy in reported intention to vote and actual voting behaviour? I am interested in prediction markets, where traders have a monetary incentive to bet on who they think would win in an election. I think that the financial incentive in prediction markets makes them a better predictor of future election outcomes than polls.

I think that when people are asked how they would vote on the presidency if tomorrow were the election day, they tend to give you an answer which they would like to see happen rather than how they would actually vote.  This discrepancy reduces the predictive value of polls.  Alternatively, I think that if the incentives are set correctly the same people tell you more of the truth instead of their wishful thinking. I would call this phenomena "polls bias".

Questions:

What is a scientific term for this problem?
Where can I read further about the phenomena?

There are many reasons why stated intention can differ from behaviour (e.g., see Theory of Planned Behaviour). Social desirability is one possibility. However, there are many other factors. A person may not know who they are going to vote for or may not have decided. Factors may arise between the point in time when asked and when voting occurs that change the person's voting plan.

Furthermore, there are many potential limitations to polls that can lead their estimates of population voting intention to be inaccurate, and even biased. There is basic sampling error that arises whenever you estimate a population property from a finite sample. There are also a wide range of issues related to getting a sample representative of the voting population (see sampling bias).

Furthermore, polls form part of the information available in betting markets. Thus, in betting markets, people are able to use an ensemble of information including multiple polls, various historical trends regarding how polls change over time, various adjustment to poll predictions that might remove perceived biases and so on.


What are the effects of social rejection on the brain? What are the effects of social rejection on the brain?

If the external circumstance can not change, how can the impact on the brain be reduced?

What is the average sensitivity to social rejection and are some not effect by it?

Any points in the right direction are helpful.

So far I have found only 1 study (Eisenberger et al., 2003) summarized as follows (but unable to make any conclusions):

  A ball is passed to a group of students except for one student, who
  does not know what the experiment is. When the ball is not passed to
  the "excluded" student, the brain of that excluded lights up in the
  same place as in physical pain.

References

Eisenberger, N. I., Lieberman, M. D., & Williams, K. D. (2003). Does rejection hurt? An fMRI study of social exclusion. Science, 302(5643), 290-292.

I followed your info and found 2 research papers:

Why Rejection Hurts?
(In case you want to skim through more papers, visit Papers from Social And Affective Neuroscience Laboratory. Naomi Eisenberger is the director of this Lab.)
Belongingness as a Core Personality Trait: How Social Exclusion Influences Social Functioning and Personality Expression

To help you access this paper promptly, I shared a pdf version here.

I read through the paper 1 and skimmed paper 2 in order to extract conclusions that are relevant to your question:

    "If the external circumstance can not change,
     how can the impact on the brain be reduced?"

  From Why Rejection Hurts

  factors that increase or decrease one kind of pain should affect the other kind of pain in a similar manner.
  participants reported significantly less pain when holding their partner’s hand than when they held a stranger’s hand
  “If all this is true, does that mean that painkillers could reduce the pain of social rejection?” ... -- in fact the answer is yes.

  From Belongingness as a Core ...

  Acetaminophen(the active ingredient in Tylenol) Reduces Daily Hurt Feelings
  Tylenol Reduces Neural Activity Associated With Social Pain
  Acetaminophen Reduces Nonconscious Coping Responses
  Mindfulness interventions reduce the sting of rejection, thereby decreasing self-control impairments and aggressive outbursts.

About the second question, I only digged a little bit.

    "What is the average sensitivity to social rejection
    and are some not effect by it?"

  From a book named "Are You Ethical" by Steve Soto

  The following text does not directly answer the question, you could view it as a heuristic: When someone is less sensitive, she/he will be less affected by social rejection.

  "On the other hand, others take rejection as an indication that others don’t realize that what they have to offer is beneficial, it only amplifies the faith they have in themselves, and they persevere that much harder. It is never taken personally, or as an affront. This is “a low level of rejection sensitivity”. -- Karen Horney


Can drugs cause a psychosis, or only unlock it? There have been many reports, that recreational drug use can cause psychosis. Some cannabis users report experiencing psychosis (sometimes permanent) immediately after use. Some methamphetamine users also report psychosis symptoms, like hearing voices, which are also sometimes permanent.

A lot of people, who like to defend cannabis (or even methamphetamine) like to argue that cannabis is unable to cause psychosis, it can only trigger or unlock it.

Presumably, there already was something wrong with this person and cannabis only unlocked the problem, but it was going to be unlocked eventually by something anyway.

Is there any difference between "unlocking" and "causing" a psychosis?

Is it true, that you can have a "sleeping psychosis", which is just waiting for a disturbance to present itself?

Is it simply a case of genetic predisposition, which people wrongly equate with having "sleeping psychosis"?

I am aware about the controversy regarding schizophrenia and cannabis, I am mainly talking about psychosis.

Can drugs cause a psychosis or only unlock it

Drugs can cause acute psychosis, but are not associated with a precipitation of a chronic psychotic state. Animal studies have shown that various drugs (including LSD, ketamine and amphetamine) can induce acute psychosis in genetically non-disposed animals (Ham et al., 2017). However, in general, drugs do not induce a state of chronic psychosis associated with for example schizophrenia. Chronic amphetamine use by non-psychotic individuals sometimes do develop a paranoid state resembling a psychosis, but it usually dissipates upon withdrawal from the drug. Former amphetamine addicts do remain hypersensitive to the psychotomimetic effects of AMPH, even after years of abstinence. There are also anecdotal reports that ‘physical or psychological stress’ can precipitate a psychotic episode in a portion of former addicts. This suggests that chronic amphetamine use produces a long-lasting change in some neural system(s) involved in the psychotomimetic effects of AMPH (Robinson & Becker, 1986).

  Is there any difference between "unlocking" and "causing" a psychosis?

I would say that in genetically predisposed people (Owet et al., 2007) you could call it unlocking, but I think that everyone has a certain chance of getting it. Some people need more extreme environmental factors (low genetic disposition) and others with a high predisposition are at higher risk of developing psychosis.

  Is it true, that you can have a "sleeping psychosis", which is just waiting for a disturbance to present itself?

As said, when people are genetically predisposed, environmental factors, such as childhood trauma (Morgan & Fisher) may relatively easily trigger a psychosis. You could call that a 'sleeping psychosis', but as with the term 'unlocking' you could just as well label it genetic predisposition I think. It's a matter of semantics I guess.

  Is it simply a case of genetic predisposition, which people wrongly equate with having "sleeping psychosis"?

So yes, I think so. I don't, however, would call it 'wrongly'. It's more popular scientific language to call it sleeping or latent. But at the same time it also charges it with something 'inevitable' or a 'looming (sleeping) creature in the dark'. That's why I would definitely prefer to call it genetic predisposition, but in certain environments that term may also cause fear ('oh no, it's embedded in my genes!).

References
- Ham et al., Exp Neurobiol (2017); 26(1): 11–24
- Morgan & Fisher, Schizophrenia Bulletin (2007); 33(1): 3-10
- Owen et al., Schizophrenia Bulletin (2007); 33(4): 905–11
- Robinson & Becker, Brain Res Rev (1986); 11(2): 157-98


How can I prime aversion to conflict? I'm looking for a way to prime subjects in an experiment to dislike exposure to conflict (arguments, anger between people, incivility, etc.).  Does anyone know of a good method for this?

Meier et al (2006). FULL TEXT has some discussion of aggression primes.

Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., & Wilkowski, B. M. (2006). Turning the Other Cheek Agreeableness and the Regulation of Aggression-Related Primes. Psychological Science, 17(2), 136-142. FULL TEXT


Why is PES biologically plausible? The NEF puts great emphasis on biological plausibility. However, I'm not clear on why the Prescribed Error Sensitivity (PES) learning rule, used in many NEF-based models, is considered to be biologically plausible. I've heard that:

It doesn't rely on any globally shared information between neurons
It empirically replicated various aspects of STDP

But I'm not sure how it does these things or why that's important. Specifically, what would an alternative to PES have to demonstrate to show  they had improved biological plausibility?

For a learning rule to be biologically plausible, it has to only depend on knowledge/information local to the neuron (no global information about the neuron population) and has to match experimental neuroscience data.

Only Neuron-Local Information

As discussed in "Simultaneous unsupervised and supervised learning of cognitive functions in biologically plausible spiking neural networks" by Bekolay et al., the effect of the PES learning rule on the decoders $\Delta \mathbf{d}_i$ is formulated as:

$$\Delta \mathbf{d}_i=\kappa \mathbf{E}a_i$$

$\mathbf{E}$ is the error vector is mapped onto individual neurons which also represent vectors of the same dimension. Biologically, the error vector is theorized to be dopamine levels.
$a_i$ is each neuron activity level, which in the NEF is defined as a combination of the neuron's encoder and it's activation function. See Principle 1 of the NEF for more detail.
$\mathbf{\kappa}$ is the error scaling factor

All of these variables only require information local to the neuron. From the paper:

  The key difference between this rule and backpropagation is that the
  global-to- local mapping is done by imposing the portion of the error
  vector space each neuron is sensitive to via its encoder. This limits
  flexibility, but removes the dependency on global information, making
  the rule biologically plausible.

Matching Neuroscience Experiments

To actually match experimental STDP spiking data, PES must be combined with the Bienenstock, Cooper, Munro (BCM) learning rule to enforce sparsity on the encoders. This creates the homeostatic PES rule (hPES).

This matches the following experiments from "Synaptic modification by
correlated activity: Hebb’s postulate revisited" by Bi and Poo.

Other Replications

In addition to these experiments, there are various papers that use the PES learning rule to replicate things such as a model of Fear Conditioning and a model N-Armed Bandit Task, however this evidence isn't necessarily unique to the PES learning rule.


Phenomenon causing people to change their opinion when they are asked to hypothetically defend an opposing viewpoint? I remember reading a case study on this years ago and I am trying to track it down.

The study involved asking people who held strong opinions on varied subjects to defend the opposite opinion in a hypothetical debate.  At the end of the debate the people had come to adopt the viewpoint they were defending, regardless of the hypothetical nature of the actual debate.

Does anyone know the name of this phenomenon, or better yet, have a link explaining it?

Fazio et al (1977) provide a review of some of the literature on attitude change that can be induced by getting participants to take on another perspecive. To quote the opening paragraph.

  If an individual freely chooses to perform a behavior which is
  discrepant from his attitude, he tends later to realign his attitude
  toward that behavior. For example, a subject who complies with an
  experimenter’s request to write an attitude-discrepant essay against
  the legalization of marijuana is typically found to favor such
  legalization to a lesser degree than previously. This now classic
  attitude change effect is readily explained by both Festinger’s theory
  of cognitive dissonance (1957) and Bem’s self-perception theory
  (1972). Dissonance theory, in general, concerns the relationship
  between various cognitions. The theory posits the existence of a
  drive-like motivation to maintain consistency among relevant
  cognitions. Self-perception theory, on the other hand, concerns the
  passive inference of attitudinal dispositions from behavior. According
  to Bem (1972), “Individuals come to ‘know’ their own attitudes,
  emotions, and other internal states partially by inferring them from
  observations of their own overt behavior and/or the circumstances in
  which this behavior occurs” (p. 2). Social psychologists vary in which
  theory they endorse.

References

Fazio, R. H., Zanna, M. P., & Cooper, J. (1977). Dissonance and self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of application. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13(5), 464-479. PDF


Are there any models of the human visual field of view taking into account head, neck and eye movements and calculating likelihood of fixation? I would like to know if there are studies that (1) model the field of view taking into account all degrees of freedom of the head, neck and eyes and (2) if there is any probabilistic model assigned to the field that is independent from external stimuli, e.g. saliency.

An example to illustrate this, is the following:
A man is inside a black room (no saliency, no external stimuli) and he is walking or standing. Now, inside this room, take a point in space that is not on the man. What is the likelihood that the man gazes (equals to have the right head, eye and neck coordination) towards this point at a given moment t1?

Disclaimer: This answer is a bit self-serving because it only describes research work from the lab where I am a student. However, I think it's relevant for the question!

Coordination of eye, head, and hand

http://www.cis.rit.edu/research/vpl/publications/ExpBrainRes2001.pdf

Pelz, J., Hayhoe, M., & Loeber, R. (2001). The coordination of eye, head, and hand movements in a natural task. Experimental Brain Research, 139(3), 266-277.

This paper analyzes eye, head, and hand movements in subjects while they copy a block pattern. It doesn't incorporate any of the neck movements as such, though.

Predictive saccades in virtual reality

http://www.journalofvision.org/content/13/1/20.full

Diaz, G., Cooper, J., Rothkopf, C., & Hayhoe, M. (2013). Saccades to future ball location reveal memory-based prediction in a virtual-reality interception task. Journal of vision, 13(1), 20.

In this work, a virtual racquetball task is used to elicit predictive eye movements in freely-moving subjects while wearing a head-mounted virtual reality display (including an eye tracker). The VR display and racquet are tracked using a motion-capture tool. The results are mostly focused on eye-in-head but incorporate some neat methods for extracting gaze points using the virtual world, and for showing the data on a graph.


How can I incentivize users to perform creative tasks? Gamification is often used to incentivize people into performing small, repetitive tasks. For example, as a Stack Overflow user, I receive 2 reputation points for an accepted edit. I can earn badges by reviewing series of potentially problematic questions, etc. This seems to work fairly well since the user is given a reward for a easily achievable objective.

In contrast to this, what elements are required to incentivize users into performing creative tasks? Unlike with small 'assignments', a creative task bears the risk of not being solved satisfactory, therefore the user risks investing an effort without being rewarded.

Simply offering a higher reward introduces its own set of problems like having to deal with cheating, therefore my question:

How can I incentivize users to perform creative tasks (e.g., creating a new recipe)?

I think the methods you describe (i.e. those employed by Stack Exchange) work for creative tasks as well.

Asking good questions, and providing helpful answers can be considered creative. It's entirely possible that a user can put a lot of effort into an answer only for it to not solve the problem at all.

Whilst it can be disheartening when content isn't as good as you imagined, the feedback given (through upvotes and comments) allows you to improve upon what you've already produced, with the hope that it can be salvaged into something useful. This is essentially the benefit of gamification for sites like SE, by rewarding good content it encourages users themselves to improve and expand their knowledge - it's a learning experience.

So if a user is put off from submitting a recipe because they fear the community will react negatively to it, then maybe it was never very good to begin with.


Can the human brain be simulated by a computer? There is a Wikipedia page on brain simulation, but:
Question: Could there be (experimental) evidence that the (human) brain cannot be simulated by a computer?
Note that the Wikipedia page Mind uploading has a section called Practical issues, but Wikipedia says that this section needs expansion. It is followed by sections on philosophical, ethical, legal or political issues.
My purpose is not philosophical here. Roughly speaking, I just want to know whether there are research works (published in serious peer-review journals) showing that the human brain cannot be simulated by a classical computer.

Previous version of the post
Previous title: Can the human brain be reduced to a biological AI?
The question is in the title. Let me clarify what I mean by « biological AI » : it looks like an oxymoron if you understand biological as natural and artificial as non-natural, but let understand biological as organic and AI as what it actually does (and not as what it is made of). On the other hand, I am (obviously) not asking whether the human brain was designed...
AI is here understood in its current classical sense, and not in what it could be in the future with (for example) quantum computers, so that if one can shows (for example) that the (humain) brain involves some quantum processes which cannot be simulated classically, then the answer should be no. Note that the quantum processes were just used here as an example, the question does not reduce to the existence of such processes.

To my knowledge (I hold an advanced degree in the field), there is no widely-accepted research that documents that the brain cannot be simulated using a classical computer.
Our current understanding of the human brain is that the primary functional mechanisms consist of neurons that transmit data via chemical and electrical connections.
That said, we have no comprehensive, finite, and accurate definition of "consciousness", and therefore we cannot prove or disprove consciousness of a computer simulation.  For that matter, as much as we have tried, it is questionable if we can truly prove or disprove consciousness in human beings, although that is the topic of much debate.  It largely depends on how one defines the term "consciousness".
Outside of consciousness and several other more abstract and philosophical matters (such as feelings and emotions), we know of no limits to our cognitive simulations.


Button box for a reaction time study on OS X I am running a language production study, and I want to collect reaction times. I am considering getting a button box, because I understand that my laptop (macbook pro) keyboard is not precise enough for many reaction time studies. I am looking for recommendations for a relatively inexpensive button box.

First off, what button-box you use is going to be influenced by what software you're using to run the experiment, so ideally you should specify that.

The PST serial response box is probably the industry standard, and is what we have in my lab, although a lot of that is probably down to it coming from the makers of EPrime.  EPrime doesn't work on OSX though, and the PST box isn't cheap, so you might want to consider...
Neil Stewart has done some work on building your own accurate button boxes.  I haven't tried this myself, but if you are, or know someone who is, up to the technical challenge, this could be helpful.

Caveat: The paper describes how to do it on Linux.  It almost definitely wouldn't work on Windows, but OSX and Linux are pretty similar deep down.
Caveat #2: Do Macbooks have serial ports?

When I started writing this, I thought I knew of other, cheaper makers or SR boxes. Apparently I imagined that.

Edit:

Whatever you end up doing, make sure you also take a look at How can I create computer based psychology experiments using OS X?.


How can I fit a psychometric function such that the minimum is 50% (chance level)? I have data from the behavioral component of an fMRI study in which subjects are asked to perform a 2AFC discrimination task with targets at variable contrast.  That is, a target will be presented at one of several possible contrasts, and the subject must later identify which of two possible responses has the same orientation as the target stimulus.
Below is an example of data from one subject:

Note that I've attempted to fit a psychometric function, using the following procedure (in Python):
import numpy as np
import pylab
from scipy.optimize import curve_fit

def sigmoid(x, x0, k):
     y = 1 / (1 + np.exp(-k*(x-x0)))
     return y

xdata = np.array([0.0,   1.0,  3.0, 4.3, 7.0,   8.0,   8.5, 10.0, 12.0])
ydata = np.array([0.01, 0.02, 0.04, 0.11, 0.43,  0.7, 0.89, 0.95, 0.99])

popt, pcov = curve_fit(sigmoid, xdata, ydata)
print popt

x = np.linspace(-1, 15, 50)
y = sigmoid(x, *popt)

pylab.plot(xdata, ydata, 'o', label='data')
pylab.plot(x,y, label='fit')
pylab.ylim(0, 1.05)
pylab.legend(loc='best')
pylab.show()

Of particular note is the sigmoid formula I'm using:  1 / (1 + exp(-k * (x - x0))).
The problem with this approach is that the fit will pass through zero, wheras with 2AFC data, the minimum value is theoretically .5 -- the guessing rate.
How can I fit a sigmoid function such that the fit spans from .5 to 1.0?

Add 0.5 to the intercept and multiply the sigmoid by 0.5 since it now only spans a y-range half of before:

y = 0.5 + 0.5 / (1 + np.exp(-k*(x-x0)))

Generally, for any chance level:

chance = 0.5  # between 0 and 1
y = chance + (1-chance) / (1 + np.exp(-k*(x-x0)))


Do repeated measures designs in cognitive research permit causal inference? Can someone please explain this to me because it's driving me bonkers. In cognitive research when one group of participants are exposed to a number of crossed factors manipulated by the researcher, is it a quasi-experimental design or a true experiment?

All the sources I read always mention random assignment and random sampling when talking about true experiments. So do cognitive science experiments such as the repeated measures factorial design a lot of studies use have the right to claim that they establish causal links between the outcome and the manipulations?

If the researcher randomly samples individuals from the population of interest and randomly assigns them to different experimental treatments, then it is a true experiment. Quasi-experimental design occurs when there is no random assignment to treatments.

In general, true experiments can make claims about causality. Since all subjects in the experiment are randomly assigned to a particular treatment, any systematic differences between the groups after the experiment are likely to be due to the treatment.

However, this is all a game of probabilities. There's always a chance that any systematic difference between groups is from the random assignment. This is why inferential statistics are such an important aspect of evaluating the outcomes of experiments. We can estimate the probability of a particular difference between groups occurring due to random variation. If that probability is low (the typical convention is below 5%), then we can make a causal claim about the treatment.


What science or psychology is behind the Landmark Forum's coursework? The Landmark Forum is a self-help seminar focusing on helping individuals to make positive changes in their lives by chaing their point of view and using logic to break down emotions to change the way one feels.

According to Wikipedia, the Landmark Forum is based on est, the Erhard Seminars Training, which itself is based on the Socratic Method. However, is there any science or actual psychology behind the Landmark Forum?

This isn't a direct answer to your question .

I got the sense that Landmark was in the same category as other so called 'power' therapies such as neurolinguistuc programming etc. The 7:30 report - a credible Australian current affairs program - did an story on Landmark last year.

References

http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3367386.htm

Devilly, Grant J. (2005) "Power Therapies and possible threats to the science of psychology and psychiatry", Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 39, No. 6, June 2005, pp. 437-445(9)


Where to find published results of positive psychology cancer treatment study mentioned in Martin Seligman's book? In Dr. Martin Seligman's book, "Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life", there was mention of a study involving teaching cancer patients to fight learned helplessness.

I believe this study commenced around 1990, but could not find any information on the study online.

I would like to know if now, more than 20 years later, if the group showed improvements in battling the cancer.

I'm not sure what study Seligman is referring to, but I can suggest that you look into Shelley Taylor's work on positive illusions. Her original 1983 work looked into the coping mechanisms of a group of cancer patients undergoing treatment, and followed them into their lives after recovering from their illness. She found that individuals who felt that they were better than their peers at dealing with the cancer, felt that they had some control over the cancer's course, and that their future was brighter than that of others, had a better chance of returning to or exceeding their original quality of life before the illness. These beliefs are called "positive illusions", and are outlined clearly in Taylor & Brown (1994).

Hope this helps!


How can I structure this question to check for availability bias? I'm preparing a survey right now and one of the questions I'm looking to answer is: How much does availability bias effect the decision making process for [given behaviour]?

My question is: What's the best way to structure a survey question, or set of questions to test for this heuristic?

My current thinking is that I shouldn't mention specific options a respondent may select, because doing so will prime the respondents.

i.e. I can't mention specific detergent brands and then ask "Which detergent brand are you most likely to buy this month?", as that data won't be valid.

But the possible options a respondent might give if the question is completely open are endless.

Does anybody have any experience in this type of survey and can lend some insight?

it seems that you can use randomization of options to decrease bias. That is, present every respondent with multiple choices but in completely random order.
Also, bias might be directly tested on two groups, say A&B.
Only difference will be the order of available answers.

This manual seems to be very helpful: Handbook of Survey Research, Ch.9 Question and Questionnaire Design

This is shorter insight: SurveyMonkey Blog: Question Order Matters


How do clinicians control for their own mental disorders? Has any research been done on how clinicians' (either internists or psychiatrists) known psychological conditions influence the diagnoses, misdiagnoses, and prognoses they make?

And, related to that, has there been any concerted conscious effort made to control for the above?

(I'm also curious how medical, non-psychological conditions affect the above, but that wouldn't strictly-speaking be on topic so I'm limiting this to psychological problems for now.)

the kind of studies I mean

What I'm envisaging is a study akin to the following, and am curious about what similar studies have found:

two pools of practicing clinicians are chosen (with random partitioning between the two),
everyone in pool A is screened for current psychological disorders by a subset (say, three) of multiple, randomly chosen individuals from pool B,
the professional (diagnostic) history of every clinician in pool A is reviewed, and
the experimenter looks for patterns of correlation between mental disorders in the clinicians themselves, and the disorders that those individuals tend to diagnose / misdiagnose (sensitivity v. specificity).

the kind of (statistically significant) results I'm curious about

So, for example, do clinicians who have (to choose two disorders randomly) NPD tend to diagnose depression more often than those without NPD? And, when they do diagnose depression, do they tend to have more favorable or less favorable prognoses for their patients? What are their recommendations? And how often do their recommendations work out well v. badly? What mental characteristics are adaptive v. maladaptive within this extremely specific context?

More to the point, does it "take one to know one", or does a lack of personal experience with something provide better objectivity?

And are some disorders (maladaptive within larger society) unambiguously good across-the-board in a clinical setting, are they all harmful, or should people with disorder X specialize in disorder Y, and avoid treating patients with disorder Z?

Obviously, pool A doesn't actually need to be psych clinicians. It could be applied to GPs, oncologists, surgeons, etc.

Clinical Supervision (see these articles on effectiveness) is standard practice and required in codes of practice for registered counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc. and those in training.

Note: This is separate and completely different to line-management but necessary for effective line-management

There is no one way to do clinical supervision, but there are a few principles…

clinical supervision allows a person to focus on particular aspects of their clinical practice in a way that they would not normally do
it is characterised by reflection on previous action and its implications for future action
a clinical supervisor will often challenge the supervisee to think outside of their current ways of working
the clinical supervisor will offer support and advice
the supervisee tends to learn alternative ways of working and specific skills
the clinical supervisor will be interested in the quality of the supervisees performance and wellbeing; and will offer constructive feedback

Assuming that all therapists follow the code of practice, all clinicians will be monitored for mental health conditions and other problems which would affect their ability to perform their work effectively.

Clinical supervisors have a duty of care, not only to the supervisee (the therapist), but also the supervisee's clients, and if the supervisor feels that abuse of power is occurring they must refer it to the governing bodies to remove their licence to practice.

If they feel there are any mental health issues preventing the supervisee from acting effectively, then the supervisor will refer the supervisee for therapy.  If necessary, they may also take further action to prevent the therapist from causing harm to their clients whilst undergoing therapy.


Experimental design with two groups, pre-post measurement, and where everyone is treated I am designing a study in which a large number of people are being treated. I cannot influence the treatment (e.g., a delayed treatment). I am able to make pre and post treatment measures on the subjects. The treatment has many effects on the subjects. I have a screener that I believe will identify subjects that will predict individuals that will improve on measure A.

The proposed experimental design is for two groups to be identified based on a screening test (the screening test can be administered pre or post treatment). Both groups will be subjected to the same treatment. Prior to and following treatment both groups will be tested on measures A and B. The hypothesis is that the treatment will effect the groups differently on measure A but not on measure B. Is there a term for this design? Is this a valid design?

I would call it a pre-post quasi-experiment, albeit where you are assessing the intervention in two different pre-existing groups.

In terms of assessing the effect of the intervention, there are more threats to causal inference, when you don't have a control group (i.e., one where you have pre and post measures but with no intervention or a control intervention). I.e., In addition to the effect of the treatment, there are many other explanations for any changes observed pre-post. For example, learning, maturation, fatigue, and so on. Background knowledge may be able to assist you in appraising which if any of these are likely to be significant.

You then have two observed groups. This aspect is more like an observational study. You are assessing the interaction between group and the treatment. Because group is an observational variable, you would want to take care in attributing causal explanations to any differences between groups in treatment effect to group membership. Nonetheless, often in this context, the interest is more about understanding how well a treatment generalises to different populations.

So in summary, It would be better if there was a control group. Ideally, you would have a fully crossed design. I.e., group (A and B) by control (treatment and control) where participants were randomly allocated to treatment or control. But if that's not possible, the data would still be interesting; you'd need to think carefully about carry-over effects.


aftereffects of auditory adaptation Adaptation is a very robust feature of sensory processing: when a stimulus is displayed for a prolonged period, or repeatedly, the neural response to it will diminish. This process creates a local change in cortical sensitivity, which is behaviorally evident through worse sensory discrimination of subsequent stimuli which are similar to the adaptor stimulus, but better discrimination of dissimilar ones.

In the visual domain, there is also the concept of an afterimage. If one looks at a green patch for a long time, then a white wall will appear red. If one looks at a curved line for a long time, a straight line will appear to curve the other way. The landscape next to a waterfall will look like its traveling upwards, etc.

Does anything similar exist in the auditory domain? Can adaptation lead to illusory percepts in audition? And if not, why do you think this would be?

I'm particularly interested in the neural level of explanation, and would be very happy to hear all speculations, however far out they are.

The most well known sensory after effect illusion in the auditory system is probably the Zwicker tone (Zwicker, 1964).

  If a white noise with a half‐octave‐band suppression placed anywhere from 300 to 7000 Hz is presented at an over‐all sound‐pressure level of about 60 dB for 1 min and then switched off, a decaying, poststimulatory sound similar to a pure tone is heard for about 10 sec. The pitch of the post‐stimulatory tone corresponds to a frequency within the suppressed band.

Norena and Eggermont (2003) argue that compared to non Zwicker tone stimuli, Zwicker tone stimuli give rise to an increased firing rate and an increase in the between neuron correlation of spike trains (I think) in the primary auditory cortex.


'Describe this object to me' - To work out what type of thought process you have. What is this test called? A friend learned heard about a test while on a Myers Briggs course and described it to me.  I thought it was interesting, but I can't find anything about it since I don't know what to search for.
The instructor says 'tell me about this [object]'
One type of person will say a few factual observations

It's a red book

Another type will give you a firehose of information

People learn things from it, it's old so its probably had a few people read it, they probably really loved the book, ...

Is there a well known test like this? Is there anything term I can google to learn more?
There is a discussion of it here too.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/731/what-lies-beneath/act-two-5

The test you seem to be talking about is often referred to by different names, but the name used by The Myers & Briggs Foundation[1] and most of the papers on the subject[2] is MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator).
PS:

I did my best to identify it according to your description, but leave a comment if I'm wrong.
It is important to add that this test is often regarded as pseudoscience and has several fundamental issues [3]

[1] https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/
[2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22Myers-Briggs+Type+INdicator%22&btnG=
[3] https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/give-and-take/201309/goodbye-mbti-the-fad-won-t-die