Why some people do not perform well with ambiguity and uncertainty? I've recently read an article about Generation Z, early 20 year olds born after 1995 in the workforce (similar to this one). The article suggests that unlike previous generation, where ambigious goals may inspire 30 somethings to do their best work, the 20 year olds from generation Z prefer to have things broken down into a very clear chunks. An example may be in order:

Compare the sales figures report
Versus: We need a sales report for investor meeting by Friday morning, get sales figures from Angela, have Bill help with graphics and verify figures with Jeff. If you are late, we will penalize you.

The article continues to state that if faced with the first scenario, a 20 something would get frustrated and will start seeking another job, while more detailed information would help them rise up to the task.

Why some people are uncomfortable and unproductive when faced with ambiguous or uncertain goals/challenges?

I'm not 100% sure if this is what you were intending to ask, because your initial opening was about generation Z (which is at the large cultural level) while on the other hand your question written in bold seemed to be geared towards the individual. I have tried incorporating both parts into this answer.

In essence I could not tell between which of the two concepts in psychology you were interested in: Uncertainty Avoidance or Proactive Personality (the lack of which is what you describe).

There is an intersection between the two concepts. You may start here in case  you want to look deeper into the latter.

Background to Answer

  Of particular interest in this study is the macro dimension of
  uncertainty avoidance measured at an individual level. Cultures high
  on uncertainty avoidance are risk adverse. Individuals in these
  cultures prefer stability in their lives and careers. They want their
  environment to be predictable. To foster compliance among their
  members, cultures high in uncertainty avoidance structure behavior
  through such mechanisms as laws, religion or customs. Vague situations
  are avoided in high uncertainty avoidance cultures, and group norms
  and rules reduce ambiguity. Individuals tend to attach themselves to
  the dominant cultural group and comply with its expectations
  (Hofstede, 1980).

  However, there has been a suggestion in organizational research that rather than the more passive attachment
  to the dominant group, some cultures actively try to reduce
  uncertainty by controlling their future environment. For example,
  Schneider and DeMeyer (1991) suggested that managers in high
  uncertainty avoidance cultures are likely to engage in proactive
  behaviors in an attempt to adapt to a dynamic environment. Geletkanycz
  (1997) also found that executives who are high on uncertainty
  avoidance in their cultural background seek strategic solutions that
  respond to dynamic environments. That is, they engage in adaptation as a way of
  reduce risk. Because of this alternative way of adapting to
  uncertainty, Geletkanycz (1997) called for further research to examine
  the issue that not all individuals react to risk by adhering to the
  norm but rather adjust to position themselves in a safer position in
  the future.

  Research has also identified that individuals high on uncertainty
  avoidance make choices for uncertain outcomes that involve gains
  (Ladbury & Hinz, 2009). For example, individuals can be induced to
  volunteer for treatment in a randomly assigned process if they are
  offered monetary compensation for showing up (Harrison, Lau &
  Rutstrom, 2009). An individual’s income can also have an influence on
  uncertainty avoidance and outcomes. For example, Yang-Ming (2008)
  found that as income increases, individuals high on uncertainty
  avoidance were more willing to take risks.

Relation between Uncertainty Avoidance and Productivity (Individual Level)

  In her research with business executives, Geletkanycz (1997)
  hypothesized that top managers whose background cultures were high on
  uncertainty avoidance would be uncomfortable with uncertainty. Because
  of their need for structure, she predicted that they would be
  resistant to change. They would avoid taking action to alter their
  situation. However, what she found in her research was that managers
  whose background cultures were high in uncertainty avoidance reduced
  their feeling of uncertainty by adapting to the environment. She
  surmised that in the dramatic changes related to technology and
  globalization, it was safer and less risky for these executives to
  adjust to the changing environment rather that inflexibly hanging on
  to what is known.

Relation between Uncertainty Avoidance and Productivity (Macro Level)

  The cultural value of uncertainty avoidance influenced whether Irish
  firms were successful as compared to German firms (Rauch, Frese, &
  Sonnentag, 2000). Ireland scores low on uncertainty avoidance in
  contrast to Germany which is high on the value. It was found that
  successful small business owners in Ireland did not plan. Rather,
  customers in that culture valued flexibility and quick solutions to
  problems. In contrast, German business owners were more successful
  when they did plan. It was proposed by these researchers that in such
  high uncertainty avoidance cultures, it was expected that individuals
  engage in careful planning to reduce risk by attempting to control
  future events. However, the results were more consistent with the
  interpretation made by Schneider and DeMeyer (1991) in that they found
  that planning is culturally appropriate, and this detailed planning
  resulted in a successful relationship with customers who also valued
  planning (Rauch, Frese, & Sonnentag, 2000).

Primary Source:

The Two Faces of Uncertainty Avoidance: Attachment and Adaptation
David S. Baker and Kerry D. Carson University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Citations within Source

Culture’s consequences: International differences in work-related values.
Hofstede, G. (1980). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Interpreting and responding to strategic issues: The impact of national culture.  Schneider, S. C., & DeMeyer, A. (1991). Strategic Management Journal, 12(4), 307-320.

Uncertainty avoidance influences choices for potential gains but not losses.  Ladbury, J., & Hinsz, V. B. (2009). Current Psychology, 28(3), 187-193.

Corporate cash holdings, uncertainty avoidance, and the multinationality of firms.  Ramirez, A., & Tadesse, S. (2009).International Business Review, 18(4), 387-403.


Why does one's mind swing between different moods based on external circumstances? This is an objective question even though the example I have mentioned below is subjective.  Is this a universal phenomenon, or is it only something that I have perceived?

  Scenario1:

  Event: This person has either done a good job or asked a good question during meetings.

  His/Her Mind reading: He/She feels that everybody are impressed with the job done or  with the question.

  Reaction: He/She feels a sense of worth, feel good, also feel better because of sense of job security etc.

  Scenario2:

  Event: This person has fail to do a job or done it but not upto the expectation or didn't raised questions or actively participated in meetings.

  His/Her Mind reading: Afraid that his/her manager or others might feel that this person is not having the potential.

  Reaction: He/She feels lack of confidence, anxiety, depression because of job security, feeling miserable about herself/himself, fear that he/she may lose the job.

I want to know the root cause of this thought process and what clinical methods are used to resolve it.

Abnormal psychology is a tricky thing. You did not give us enough information to determine accurately which disorder you might be referring to. The reactions you describe sound rational: a pattern of responding with a positive emotion to positive experiences and negatively to negative experiences. Mental illness can be thought of as extremes of normal emotions for the sake of this discussion so what really matters is how frequent and proportionately the emotion was to the stimuli. It is normal to feel sad when you fail at a task and when more major events happen in life it is normal to absolutely grieve for a short time. At a point the response becomes abnormal (it interferes with normal life tasks or the correct response is is repressed) and can be treated by medication and therapy by a psychiatrist and/or psychologist.

The person you describe might be perfectly normal needing no treatment. They might have ADD with depressive features which is treated with dopamine receptors enhancers like Aderall. I think every working person on the planet would like ADD medication as they are a performance enhancing drug however the side effects make them unsuitable for all people. They might be bipolar which is treated with mood stabilizers like lithium and anti-psychotics like zyprexa. They might just be depressed which is treated by anti-axiety/depressive medication like celexa an SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor). Maybe even some kind of performance Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which is treated with anti-anxiety medications or anti-psychotics sometimes. Maybe their poor performance was caused by poor quality or quantity of sleep and a sedative like Ambien is used the treat the insomnia. I'm sure there are a whole host of other illnesses and treatments that might fit the profile you describe and it is impossible to know without more information and a doctor's diagnosis.

Talk therapy treatments are more diverse than drug treatments. With many different combinations helping various illnesses. Common treatments include Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), Psychodynamic, Individual or Group counseling. Each practitioner implements talk therapy differently following a general guideline.


What is the difference between drug withdrawal and sleep deprivation effects? Personal sleep-deprivation study:
Recently, I posed a question that I'm sure many people find tough already: "Do I really need to sleep?", and so I tested myself, I spent two days without sleeping.
The result was:

I just can't handle this  anymore, gonna sleep;
Eyes and hand trembling;
Random muscle contraction;
High blood pressure;
Headaches;
Head overheat;
Pain, pain everywhere;

Theorising: The symptoms of sleep deprivation seemed similar to symptoms of withdrawal associated with drug addiction. Thus, What if sleep is simply just another addiction? What if we are too used to sleeping since we were born, and in the reality we don't need to ?  What is the reason for sleeping?- If the main reason is the brain heating, wouldn't a brain cooler or some refreshment system do the job? It is known that sleeping state is different from simply lying down, still that does not prove that sleep isn't an addiction, am I right?

Questions

Is sleep truly necessary?
Are the effects of sleep deprivation analagous to withdrawal symptoms following drug addiction?
Can we learn to function without sleep? (i.e., after the withdrawal symptoms disappear)

This reminds me of something one of my psychology professors said to me: "the body needs rest, but the brain needs sleep" (it's a common enough saying, but that's where I heard it). And this is pretty well borne out by extensive research in a variety of fields.

First, is sleep a habit or addiction that can be kicked? Well, people have managed this, actually. And the results are quite clear: severely reduced performance, PTSD, hallucinations, psychosis, and eventually catatonic states. The military and old psychiatric studies do a thorough job of cataloguing the more severe end of the spectrum wit real world examples.

In common parlance, lack of sleep can be attained, and it universally drives people stupid right up until it drives them insane. This is the result not just of sleep-deprivation torture techniques, but with pharmaceuticals that interfere with the drive or ability to fall asleep. There are naturally occurring illnesses that make people unable to sleep, and these all end the same way: if a person does not sleep they lose their ability to function first effectively, then rationally, and finally one cannot function at all.

In this way, sleep is like eating, and far harder to find an alternative. Some research I recall studied meditation and some methods to induce a sleep-like state that partially reduced the need for sleep - but it was a minor reduction that did not even hint at the possibility of elimination.

But why do we need to sleep? Well, not being a sleep scientist myself, I defer to a nice Harvard write-up that says, in short "we don't really know for sure." But there are plenty of theories supported by research, and one of the most recent (and perhaps critical) is the role in brain plasticity:

  One of the most recent and compelling explanations for why we sleep is
  based on findings that sleep is correlated to changes in the structure
  and organization of the brain. This phenomenon, known as brain
  plasticity, is not entirely understood, but its connection to sleep
  has several critical implications. It is becoming clear, for example,
  that sleep plays a critical role in brain development in infants and
  young children. Infants spend about 13 to 14 hours per day sleeping,
  and about half of that time is spent in REM sleep, the stage in which
  most dreams occur. A link between sleep and brain plasticity is
  becoming clear in adults as well. This is seen in the effect that
  sleep and sleep deprivation have on people's ability to learn and
  perform a variety of tasks.

As to why the symptoms you experienced seem similar to drug withdrawal, this is partly a coincidence; there are many illnesses and body states that produce the exact same symptoms - ask anyone who's experienced "abdominal pain". This is actually how medicine use to work up until the modern age, where illness and disease was categorized based on symptoms. It just 'feels' like a good system, but this is also why looking up any system online will indicate you might have cancer; a fever has dozens of common causes, twitches even more, and pain has countless more.

As an aside, this is also a major area of growth in the clinical psychology/psychiatry field, where someday in the future we may learn enough about mental illness to no longer define conditions according to systems but by underlying causes and treatments. But I digress...

There is also partial similarity due to underlying physiology/psychology. Pain, for instance, has an extremely strong mental component (some would argue that it is the largest component on day-to-day pain), but also sleep seems to have a role in bodily maintenance tasks like tissue/muscle repair as well. So if you aren't sleeping you are miserable, and that makes pain worse and seem to emanate from everywhere, and if your body is repairing muscles at a lower rate than normal then you are experiencing a genuine increase in communicated muscle/tissue pain to make things even worse.

Finally, I would note that sleep is an addiction - but so is breathing. Just because it is an addiction doesn't mean it's something you can - or at least should - try to defeat :)


Examples of Psychology in Finance I'm currently taking a course in Risk Management and we have been asked to give a presentation on Psychology and its effect on investment/market behavior. My group has created a solid presentation but we thought that it might be cool to perform a class activity that demonstrates some real life effects. We're considering offering people in the class a fair bet but analysing their decision, or something simple in a similar style. Does anyone know of any easy/cool demonstrations that might be worth looking into?

This is quite a broad question, and the feasibility of any answer will depend on the time and resources available for performing a demonstration, assuming the objective isn't just to present a summary of existing research. A relatively simple principle to demonstrate in a risk management context would be the framing effect, whereby the emphasis on gain or loss in a given decision can affect people's preferences.
To demonstrate this quickly and easily, you could pass out a shuffled deck of small cards to your audience, with one of two versions of a question printed on each card. The question can present a single dilemma from two perspectives: one that frames a decision in terms of how much the respondent stands to gain with one of two choices, and another that frames it in terms of the cost of each choice. If half of the audience gets one version of the question, and the other half gets the other version of the question, you may be able to demonstrate a difference in the choices people make based on which version they receive with a couple polling questions. Wikipedia cites Tversky and Kahneman's (1981) example of a dilemma framed from gain and loss perspectives:

[Text from Tversky and Kahneman, 1981:] Imagine that the U.S. is preparing for the outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternative programs to combat the disease have been proposed. Assume that the exact scientific estimate of the consequences are as follows:
$$\begin{array}{c|c|c}{\rm Framing}&{\rm Treatment A}&{\rm Treatment B}\\\hline{\rm Positive}&\text{"Saves 200 lives"}&\text{"A 33% chance of saving all 600 people,}\\&&\text{66% possibility of saving no one."}\\\hline{\rm Negative}&\text{"400 people will die"}&\text{"A 33% chance that no people will die,}\\&&\text{66% probability that all 600 will die."}\end{array}$$ [Table from Wikipedia]

Other examples are available, and the principle is general enough that you could probably expect it to work with your own variations on the theme. This particular version produced a 72% preference for Treatment A in the positively framed version, and a 22% preference for Treatment A in the negatively framed version. Tversky and Kahneman also describe several examples with risk framed in terms of financial gain and loss, but they might require a different setup for demonstration. An experimental effect of this size ought to stand a decent chance of appearing even in a fairly small audience.
Reference
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458. Retrieved from http://psych.hanover.edu/classes/cognition/papers/tversky81.pdf.


Has a hypersensitivity to depictions of embarrassing situations in media been described in the psychology literature? Has a hypersensitivity to depictions of embarrassing situations in media been described in the psychology literature?

How would I go about researching this?

If you have access to online databases via a university or public library, I would recommend searching for scholarly articles using keywords such as “embarrassment” and “media.”  Using my university’s library website I was able to search two major psychology databases, Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection and PsycARTICLES. First I searched using the term “embarrassment” by itself, which produced the largest and broadest set of hits. Then I tried combinations of “embarrasement” plus other keywords, including “media,” “art,” “film,” “television,” and “sensitivity.”

While I did not find any articles specifically pertaining to hypersensitive reactions to embarrassing situations in media, I did find some that seem tangentially related, and which may be of interest. The lack of results also points to a need for scholarship in this area, if you are looking for something to research!

My search yielded multiple articles about the feeling of embarrassment itself. One that seemed promising is "The Unwanted Exposure of the Self: A Phenomenological Study of Embarrassment” by Robbins and Parlavecchio. From the abstract:

  Through a synthesis of prior theory and empirical research, these authors propose a model of embarrassment in which embarrassment is understood to signify the core, essential theme of a self that has been exposed to unwanted attention. Through an empirical, phenomenological method of analysis of data from 6 undergraduate college students, the authors identify 8 themes of embarrassment and relate them through a structural description of the phenomenon. The findings support the unwanted exposure model of embarrassment. (Robbins and Parlavecchio 2006)

This article may offer a useful framework for understanding of how embarrassment is viewed in psychology.

Only one article I found made mention of embarrassment in media, and it was Tom Ballingall’s book review of Documentary's Awkward Turn: Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship by Jason Middleton. In this review, Ballingall writes that the book examines the evolution of “cringe comedy” and mockumentary, and the various dimensions of spectatorship the genre engenders.  He states:

  “When individuals sense and feel the rules of social life and/or documentary filmmaking breaking down (i.e., when awkwardness emerges), they are confronted with nothing less than the constructedness of documentary's criteria for truth and authenticity.” (2015)

Middleton's book may be a good place to start.

Sources:
Ballingall, Tim. "Documentary's Awkward Turn: Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship." Journal of Popular Culture 48, no. 1 (February 2015): 209-211. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed December 5, 2016)

Robbins, Brent Dean, and Holly Parlavecchio. 2006. "The Unwanted Exposure of the Self: A Phenomenological Study of Embarrassment." Humanistic Psychologist 34, no. 4: 321-345. Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed December 5, 2016)


Are there studies on the effect of nicotine patches on dream vividness and dream recall? Acetylcholine plays an important role during REM Sleep. I cite an answer to the question "Why do dreams lose clarity quickly over time after we awaken?":

  Activity in the PFC during sleep may be modulated by levels of acetylcholine, dopamine, and other neurotransmitters.

See references and links there. Nicotine also binds to ACh receptors.

Are there studies on the effect of nicotine patches worn while sleeping on dream vividness and dream recall?

Here's the only one that's easy to find in google scholar, but there might be more:

Page, F., Coleman, G., & Conduit, R. (2006). The effect of transdermal nicotine patches on sleep and dreams. Physiology & Behavior, 88(4), 425-432.


What research exists in the areas of formulating questions and "problem shaping"? After recalling Eric Steven Raymond and Rick Moen's How to Ask Questions The Smart Way and a discussion in a systems engineering course regarding the impact of the proper formulation of a problem in order to achieve the optimal solution(s), I began to look for research into methodologies that can be used to formulate a question prior to asking it.

In Raymond and Moen's post, they have a few short lines touching on what I'm referring to. They mention to prepare your question by thinking it through and to beware of asking questions based on false assumptions. However, I'm more interested in psychological research into how people go about these activities, preferably in some kind of methodology or framework that can be applied to assess how one is formulating questions or even how to go about forming a question that can then go through a methodology similar to Raymond and Moen's process.

Searching for information about asking questions has so far yielded things about creating surveys with effective questions and how questions can influence answers. Perhaps I'm not using the right terms or looking in the right fields.

I found the term "problem shaping" on Wikipedia. The article (which is a stub) describes the concept that I'm looking for. However, I checked into the related articles and they don't appear to describe anything that I'm looking for in more depth. The "see also" pages appear to focus on topics related to problem solving, not actually formulating and shaping the problem. It seems that in order to effectively solve the problem, you need an appropriately formulated problem statement, yet I can't find anything about the methodologies or processes to do so stated formally.

My specific questions:

Is there any research (of any level of scientific rigor) in the frameworks or processes of developing a good question or problem statement?
If so, what are some examples of work done and what information or products have been generated?
If not, what topics might be used to provide insights to gain a deeper understanding of the formulation of questions or problem statements?

There are no known domain-general ways of formulating good questions and problems—what constitutes a good question or problem formulation depends on the field or domain. A good psychology question is different from a good literary question, which in turn is different from a good business question.
Because there are no known domain-independent ways of formulating good questions and problems, but I believe this is a valuable question, I will focus my answer on the limited literature covering the formulation of good behavioral and social science questions. In general, while formulating good questions is specific to the domain or related set of domains of interest, research on ideation or idea generation is covered by the field of creativity research (but this does not cover good questions).
Research heuristics and hypothesis generation
Theory
Many scientific methodology courses focus almost entirely on study design and hypothesis testing appropriate for the field, while neglecting the critical aspects of hypothesis generation and research heuristics. Research is somewhat scarce, but some frameworks have been proposed, of which I am most familiar with McGuire's 49 research heuristics (McGuire, 1997). These heuristics are grouped into five categories, which I will try to briefly summarize.

Sensitivity to provocative natural occurrences: Systematically paying attention, making systematic observations, looking for anomalies (unexpected, nonobvious relations) and attempting to explain these.
Simple conceptual analysis: Thought and experiments conceptual analysis such as counterexamples, imagining counterfactuals, reversing causal direction and so forth on a defined set of phenomena.
Complex conceptual analysis: Deductive reasoning and generalization, convergent-divergent ideation processes and metatheorical techniques.
Reinterpretations of past research: Expert knowledge, reevaluating the scope of evidence accounted for and meta-analysis or review.
Collecting new or reanalyzing old data: Quantitative and qualitative analysis of new evidence, or novel analysis of existing evidence.

McGuire's theoretical framework is not the only one. Lubart and Getz (1998), for example, proposed three different research heuristics within the domain of psychology based on a historical analysis of psychological research. They named these the trilogy-of-mind heuristic ("the mind comprises cognition, conation and affection"), the emotions-as-moods ("complex human emotion reduces to simple moods") heuristic, and the analysis-of-variance ("the map is the territory") heuristic. Both frameworks are ultimately based on analysis of heuristics researchers have used, rather than directly investigating these heuristics' efficacy, however.
Others have questioned whether the search for such heuristics is a good idea in the first place. For example, a critique of research heuristics in a related field leveled by Anderson, De Dreu and Nijstad (2004) is the dilemma that research heuristics may "routizine" research. This is a possible problem, and they also report evidence for "a heavy focus on replication–extension, cross-sectional designs, and a single level of analysis in innovation research." However, it is not clear that this routinization caused by research heuristics.
Evidence
Unfortunately, the neglect of hypothesis generation in scientific training is reflected in the empirical literature, if not the theoretical literature. There are no or very limited empirical research programmes or frameworks directly investigating the relative or absolute efficacy of different research heuristics or approaches, even in terms of relatively obtainable measures like impact factor or publication rate. Therefore, although I subjectively find them helpful, we ultimately cannot say with confidence whether or which of any of McGuire's (or others') heuristics are effective for formulating good questions and problems or not.
References

Anderson, N., De Dreu, C. K. W. and Nijstad, B. A. (2004), The routinization of innovation research: a constructively critical review of the state-of-the-science. J. Organiz. Behav., 25: 147–173. doi: 10.1002/job.236
Lubart, T. I. and Getz, I. (1998), The Influence of Heuristics on Psychological Science: A Case Study of Research on Creativity. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 28: 435–457. doi: 10.1111/1468-5914.00083
McGuire, W. J. (1997). Creative hypothesis generating in psychology: Some useful heuristics. Annual review of psychology, 48(1), 1-30.


Is there a scientific term for when you fall asleep because you can't handle something? I'm wondering if there is a scientific term that describes when you fall asleep or pass out after some traumatic event?

This effect happens when people witness something gruesome (a friend being killed, for instance), have some major upheaval in their life, or experience some other trauma (eg. a bad breakup, losing a job, etc.). When the mind can't cope it simply shuts off and they fall asleep or pass out. A decent example I just though of can be seen in the first Matrix movie (not the first place I would have thought of to look for an example) when Neo finds out about the matrix and promptly vomits and passes out for a few hours.

The closest term I'm aware of is a dissociative fugue or fugue state, though I'm unsure if that's related (possibly it's simply a more extreme version of the effect I tried to describe above).

I'm not completely sure, but you may be referring to Syncope, a medical term which describes events such as fainting or passing out which occurs upon low blood flow to the brain. As a result it can occur when under shock or trauma or a post-effect of stress.

Obviously, one would expect the opposite to happen in half the events, such as after vomiting, however when you said

  have some major upheaval in their life, or experience some other trauma (e.g., a bad breakup, losing a job, etc.). When the mind can't cope it simply shuts off and they fall asleep or pass out.

I realised you may be relating to someone feeling a depressed, in which case lowering of blood pressure is possible and thus he or she could suffer from syncope.

In all honesty it is simply a technical term for fainting, and is more commonly used for people who suffer a disorder which will cause them to faint often.


Why don't people listen to smart people? Generally speaking, I feel like there are two things everyone can agree on when it comes to intellectuals:

They don't know everything.
They know more than me (at least about a particular topic).

It's #2 that's tripping me up. The words of a Know-It-All are usually very poorly received (at least in Western culture). We don't consider intelligence as a meaningful criteria for political office, we bully them in schools, and even tell them to their faces that they're wrong about scientific/mathematical concepts that we admit to not understanding! When a problem arises in our lives, they are the last people we want to hear from. We instead run to the counsel of our family, friends, and other people who many times know even less about the problem than we do!

But why? Everything we have as a species is owed to our brains. If they really do know more than us, it would be in our best interest to revere them, no?

Have there been any studies done that would explain why people generally don't listen to smart people?

David Dunning and Justin Kruger have observed that, related to skill competency, individuals which are incompetent in a certain skill can exhibit a cognitive bias, called the Dunning-Kruger effect, which leads them to:

fail to recognize their own lack of skill
fail to recognize genuine skill in others
fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy
recognize and acknowledge their own lack of skill, but only after they are exposed to training for that skill

While the study focuses exclusively on why people can or cannot measure their strenghts and weaknesses correctly, there was an interesting subsequent study where the authors were lead by the fascination that certain incompetent poor performers fail to ever improve. They have concluded that such individuals have an apparent lack of self-insight, which leads to exhibit incorrect logic and defensive mechanisms which fixate their views even against continuous feedback and encouragement to improve.

This certainly remains a complex phenomena which we could, from experience,  observe in different forms. Based on the suggestions from the last study, it seems that this becomes an issue with individuals that have not conceived intelligence as being malleable. Apparently, they may not have been instilled to value intelligence and encouraged to approach learning and the refinement of it's processes for the betterment of one's own intelligence as an endeavor which is to be considered as rewarding.

Effectively, being that they consider intelligence as something that is fixated, failing to generate excitement when they engage others that attempt to challenge and broaden it seems to lead to the difficulties at hand, such as: I do not understand you and I am certain I never will, so I choose to continuously ignore you because I do not want to feel this discomfort that arises from knowing that I am invariably incompetent, which you and I both know is not a good thing.


What delay between two audio sources is seen as "noticeable" to most people? I'm completing a project that involves synchronising two audio sources over a network, and I need to find some figures that represent what kind delay would be seen as "noticeable".

I've tried searching but haven't found much; all I can find is papers on localisation.

Is anyone aware of any studies or papers that look into this area? Thanks!

It greatly depends on what you mean as 'noticeable' - what/why do you want to synchronise, and how it reaches the ears from physical speakers.

Keep in mind that a sound source being 30cm/1 feet further from the ear is about the same effect as a millisecond of delay (speed of sound ~340m/s) - thus, synchronising on the order of microseconds is generally unneccessary unless you somehow have and need sub-millimeter localisation accuracy. That being said, small delays can cause phase cancellation issues which would be noticeable, but would depend on exact placement of sound sources.

However, if we're talking about the limits of the mind - there are two well known phenomena; first is the limit where mind perceives sound as simultaneous with visual stimulus (despite them really being slightly offset), and the second is where mind perceives two close-but-separate sound spikes as a single event (with the loudest masking the weaker). I can't find the exact limits now, but both of them should be somewhere between 1 millisecond and 5 milliseconds if I recall correctly.


Does Transcranial Direct-Current Stimulation (tDCS) enhance cognitive function? From the book "The future is faster than you think" by Peter Diamandis, Steven Kotler:

“Consider the nine-dot problem, a classic test of creative problem-solving. Connect nine dots with four lines in ten minutes without lifting your pencil from the paper. Under normal circumstances, fewer than 5 percent of the population can pull this off. In a study run at the University of Sydney in Australia, none of their test subjects did. But then the researchers took a second group of subjects, and used transcranial direct stimulation to artificially mimic many of the changes produced during flow. What happened? Forty percent solved the problem—a record result.”

What is the current scientific consensus on this question?

This appears to be the study mentioned:
Brain stimulation enables the solution of an inherently difficult problem
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304394012003618

An APA reference to the study was requested.
Here is one such reference:
Using transcranial direct current stimulation to enhance creative cognition: Interactions between task, polarity, and stimulation site.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-24133-001

There is no consensus on this question. This technique is relatively new, and has not been widely used so far. I know of one paper (below) that used this technique alongside intra-cortical recordings and do report convincing effects on LFPs (the overall activity of a local area) and behavior of non-human primates, but not on individual neurons. So this technique does have the potential to modulate brain activity on behaving humans.

For the paper you cite specifically, I do not know whether it is true or not. But solving the 9-dots problem is a hard and unspecified problem that presumably involves the participation of millions of neurons all over the brain. That you could improve performance so much by applying such a simplistic pattern of stimulation is more than highly dubious (in my opinion even laughable). It may be true, but if you asked me to bet I would feel very comfortable betting a large sum of money that such a result would not be replicated in a rigorous, large-scale, double-blind study.

As for consensus, you'll find multiple meta-analyses and reviews (example below) arguing that tDCS has no effect whatsoever on behavior. It doesn't mean there aren't studies reporting real effects in the mix, but the vast majority of studies I have seen so far were very dubious.

Krause, M. R., Zanos, T. P., Csorba, B. A., Pilly, P. K., Choe, J., Phillips, M. E., ... & Pack, C. C. (2017). Transcranial direct current stimulation facilitates associative learning and alters functional connectivity in the primate brain. Current Biology, 27(20), 3086-3096.

Horvath, J. C., Forte, J. D., & Carter, O. (2015). Quantitative review finds no evidence of cognitive effects in healthy populations from single-session transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Brain stimulation, 8(3), 535-550.


How does a person who wears prism glasses through which the world is perceived upside-down experience the transition back to normal? If someone wears prism glasses that turn the visual field upside down (see this video), this person will eventually adapt and see the world in its normal orientation again. Now my question is, how does the person wearing these glasses perceive the transition from upside-down back to normal after the prism glasses are taken off?

Short answer
Based on the papers I've found I conclude that visual perceptions are not grossly altered after wearing prism glasses for extended periods. Instead, adaptation to prism glasses is mainly brought about by the adjustment of motor behavior to compensate for the shifted visual input.

Background
In a review on the topic of adaptation effects in response to wearing prism glasses, Harris concludes that it is the 'position sense' that adapts, and not the visual system (Harris, 1965). In the more recent literature the adaptation to the shifts, or reversals in vision brought about by prism glasses is indeed ascribed to the adaptation of the proprioceptive system, i.e., subjects adapt their motor behavior to compensate for the visual field shift (e.g., Richter et al. (2002), Hatada & Rosetti (2006)), or through shifts in their egocentric reference frame although subtle, short-lasting after-effects do seem to occur in the visual domain too (Hatada et al., 2006).
Note that the experiments described above, human subjects were used and due to practical and ethical reasons, subjects did not wear the prism glasses longer than a few hours up to 1 week at max.

In animal studies, much longer prism-wearing times have been applied. In a study where monkeys wore left-right shifting prism goggles for 90 days, the ipsilateral visual cortex was found to be activated (Sugita et al., 1996). Normally, only the contralateral cortex is activated by ipsilateral stimuli.  Hence, here in these experiments a definite neurophysiological correlate of visual adaptation was found. In four human subjects that wore similar goggles for about 36 days it was subsequently shown that also their ipsilateral cortices were activated, but only after 1 to 2 weeks (Miyauchi et al., 2004). However, the authors of this study don't report the after-effects, but they do conclude that:

  [The] changes observed [in] adaptation to left–right reversing may be associated with the process of [...] strategic perceptual-motor control. One of the most crucial actions for a subject with left–right reversed vision is controlling the hands [...]. For example, when the subjects wearing left–right reversing goggles pick up an object located in the left visual field, they have to use their right hand which is normally located in the right visual field and whose visual information is normally projected to left V1 (ipsilateral to the visual field in which the object appears). To perform such actions, the subjects [...] must change their strategic (top-down) perceptual-motor control. It is well-known that top-down visual imagery alone can activate primary visual cortex with a topographical representation [...]. In addition, there are several pieces of evidence which suggest that tactile and proprioceptive perception involve visual imagery and activate visual cortices [...]

Hence, even when neural adaptation occurs in the visual cortex, it is mainly motor, tactile and proprioceptive adaptations playing a role in adjusting to visual shifts and not so much gross changes in the visual field of view.

References
- Harris, Psychological Review (1965); 72(6): 419-44
- Hatada et al., Exp Brain Res (2006); 173(3): 415–24
- Hatada et al., Exp Brain Res (2006); 174(1): 189–98
- Hatada & Rosetti, Exp Brain Res (2006); 169(3): 417–26
- Miyauchi et al., J Physiol - Paris (2004); 98: 207–19
- Richter et al., Exp Brain Res (2002); 144(4): 445–57
- Sugita et al., Nature (1996); 380: 523–6


Can stress or training influence the perception of time? I have had this experience that I fell with my bike on an icy street. During the fall, time seemed to slow down and I had an apparent age-long time window to stretch my hand and safely catch my fall.

A less anecdotal example is the following. Among jugglers I think it is a common phenomenon that once you get the hang of a trick, that at that point one comes to realize 'how much time one actually has to catch a ball and throw it back into the air'. (I looked for references, but it at least applies to me, and I remember to have read it in juggling instruction material as well. I can try to find more evidence of this perceived time when needed).

Both examples show that the perceived lengthening of time appear to allow the body to make more coordinated movements within a given amount of physical time.

Now my question is, assuming physical time is constant (barred Einstein's relativity of time when travelling at great speeds):

  Is it true that perceived time can change under the influence of stress or due to training?

Part of the difficulty in studying time perception is that memory is known to be biased by numerous factors including arousal and salience.  So while people commonly report time slowing down during specific events, it is difficult to differentiate the effects of retroactive memory bias in encoding and recall from actual increased resolution in the perception of time and accelerated physical abilities or mental processes.  For example, adrenaline is known to affect both physical response and memory consolidation.

One hint regarding the plasticity of the brain's actual perception of time comes from the temporal binding effect (nice review here).  A variety of experiments show that the brain automatically recalibrates simultaneity amongst different neural processes through learning: That is, the brain processes different stimuli at different rates, but it learns to calibrate those processes so as to create the illusion that they occur at the same time:

  At least over a short time frame, our temporal perception of events is
  far from veridical, and multiple timelines are capable of dynamic
  recalibration.

In other words, there is no single perception of time, time is perceived at different rates by different parts of the brain, and then retroactively synchronized.

A more direct attempt to differentiate memory from perception was done by Stetson et al (2007).  In this experiment, subjects were dropped 150 feet with no ropes or parachute - into a safety net.  During the free-fall, they were asked to read numbers flashed on a wrist-watch.  The numbers were flashed at different rates to test whether perception resolution was actually enhanced during the fall.  Despite estimating their fall to take much longer than control subjects not performing this task (corroborating the effect of salience on memory), there was no evidence of increased time resolution:

  Our findings suggest that time-slowing is a function of recollection,
  not perception: a richer encoding of memory may cause a salient event
  to appear, retrospectively, as though it lasted longer.

However, this conclusion has been criticized by other authors as the failure to produce an effect on time perception may be due to the experiment not being frightening enough, for only testing visual perception, and that free-fall may actually distract from the reading task.  Evidence from life-threatening events such as accidents and the performance of skilled individuals in extreme sports for example, suggests that increased time resolution, physical performance, and cognitive abilities during extremely stressful events may be possible:

  This evidence supports the suggestion by Arstila (2012) that humans
  possess a specialized hormonal or neurophysiological mechanism for
  high-speed cognition; and that this is activated inadvertently by real
  fear of imminent violent death in accidents, emergencies, and certain
  extreme sports; and may on some occasions be activated intentionally
  by individuals who have trained themselves to do so.

Edit (re updated question):

The latter paper - Buckley (2014) - summarizes research on the performance of experienced / trained / skilled individuals.  Accelerated performance (physical and mental) is found in accidents in extreme sports, such as climbers in accidental falls; and in the performance of many physical activities:

  Less skilled participants perceive only confusion, and are likely to
  freeze, panic, or act in ways which increase danger (Buckley, 2012).
  It is also experience and training which allow skilled exponents of
  many physical arts to achieve feats which appear impossibly fast and
  precise. There are many examples in ball and boardsports, gymnastics,
  acrobatics, dance, martial arts, archery, shooting, swordsmanship, and
  in aircraft, car and motorbike racing and stunt driving.


Are intelligence scores correlated with detection of second stimulus in an Attentional Blink test? Definitions

Attentional Blink: An attentional blink is a phenomenon where when presented with rapid visual stimuli if you are asked to track two particular stimuli you will fail to notice the second if it is preceded shortly after the first (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992).

Intelligence: A quantifiable score, or set of scores, aimed at measuring human cognitive capacities (such as the Raven's Progressive Matrices test, Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, etc.).

Question:

The results of Attentional Blink Tests have led some to see attention as a commodity that can be allocated, by will or nature, but needs time to be restored before additional attentional resources can be spent on subsequent activities (Raymond, Shapiro, & Arnell, 1992).  It has been noted  that emotion plays a role in recognition of the second target – particularly, if there is an emotional investment or relevance in the second target it is more likely to be detected (Schwabe, 2010). This illustrates that emotion can mediate attention.  My question is whether intelligence could also mediate attention.

Does intelligence increase a person’s attentional abilities?
Does, or would, an intelligence score positively correlate with the detection of the second stimulus in an Attentional Blink Test?

References

Raymond, J. E., Shapiro, K. L., & Arnell, K. M. (1992). Temporary suppression of visual processing in an RSVP task: An attentional blink? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 18(3), 849-860. doi:10.1037/0096-1523.18.3.849

Schwabe L, Wolf OT (April 2010). "Emotional modulation of the attentional blink: Is there an effect of stress?". Emotion 10(2): 283–288.

CHCH mentions in the comments that Attentional Blink has been shown to correlate with operation span, a component of working memory. (Colzato et al., 2007)

It has also been demonstrated that working memory correlates highly with general intelligence. (Colom et al., 2004)

So yes, performance on an attentional blink task correlates with intelligence scores.

  Colom, R., Rebollo, I., Palacios, A., Juan-Espinosa, M., & Kyllonen,
  P. C. (2004). Working memory is (almost) perfectly predicted by< i>
  g. Intelligence, 32(3), 277-296. PDF

  Colzato, L. S., Spapé, M. M., Pannebakker, M. M., & Hommel, B. (2007).
  Working memory and the attentional blink: Blink size is predicted by
  individual differences in operation span. Psychonomic Bulletin &
  Review, 14(6), 1051-1057. PDF


Cosyne vs CNS conferences for Computational Neuroscience? While Googling, I noticed there are 2 conferences for computational neuroscience: Cosyne and CNS.

My questions are:
1) What are these conferences' differences in terms of material & impact/size?
2) Are there any other major computational neuroscience conferences I missed?

Thanks!

I have participated in NIPS, CNS, and COSYNE at least a couple times each. In fact, I have participated in all 3 last year.

COSYNE is the smallest conference, but it's growing fast. It's a great conference because it has a good balance between experimentalists and theorists. It takes an extended abstract (2 pages). It emphasizes the systems aspect of the brain.

CNS has more physicist/mathematicians (COSYNE and NIPS also have a high number of them, but CNS has the most), and has a feeling of "European" science. The themes are more theory oriented. I heard that it is usually bigger when it's held in Europe (it alternates).

NIPS started half machine learning, half neuroscience a long time ago, but it has been overrun by ML people. But, in recent years, I see more and more computational neuroscience coming back to NIPS. It has a strict double blind reviewing with high rejection rate around 25% for an 8 page full paper (+1 page reference).

Each conference has its own niche, so the impact would depend on your area within computational neuroscience. NIPS is the only one with a full paper, so it tends to be cited more. However, a lot of networking happens in COSYNE and CNS among neuroscientists, so it would definitely have more impact to experimentalists.

Feel free to ask me more questions.


Difference between SSVEP and P300 I have read about steady state visually evoked potentials (SSVEP) and P300 as different subjects. But it seems that they are related to each other.
Is P300 a kind of SSVEP?

@Ana is basically correct (possibly baring the fact that the P3 is famous for being latency variant, not stable at 300msec), and I really don't want to contradict her or steal her checkmark, but since it's recent and interesting, I would like to point to some recent research by O'Connell and colleagues looking at correlations and similarities between the two measures, as the primary EEG indexes of attention and evidence accumulation. Incidentally, it also shows the differences in topography, polarity and size for the two, as well as the slight dissociation in time course. (Note also that the P3 is a distinct, monophasic peak - it has an amplitude; the SSVEP is a periodic pattern, strictly speaking, it rather has power.)

In the following picture, the close correspondence between the SSVEP and the P3 is demonstrated; see the figure caption below.

  (a) Target contrast reduction time course. (b) Grand-average reaction time (RT) distribution (19 subjects). Single trials were sorted by reaction time and divided into three equal-sized bins. (c) Neural signals undergoing gradual changes on the timescale of the physical contrast change, aligned to stimulus onset (left) and response (right). Vertical dashed lines denote mean reaction time. Markers running along the bottom of each plot indicate time points at which a linear regression of signal amplitude onto reaction time reached significance (P < 0.05). (d) The cumulative sum of SSVEP divergence from baseline provided a better fit for the dynamics of the LHB and CPP signals than the raw SSVEP amplitude. To facilitate visualization of the comparison, we baseline-subtracted and inverted SSVEP amplitude. LHB was transformed for each participant so that it reflected the percentage decrease from baseline, then inverted. (e) Single-trial surface plots showing the temporal relationship between each neural signal (normalized relative to each individual's baseline average) and target detection latency (curved black line). Single-trial SSVEP, LHB and CPP signals were pooled across participants, sorted by reaction time and smoothed over bins of 50 trials with a Gaussian-weighted moving average using the EEGLAB toolbox38. The latency of action execution was closely tied to that of the two decision signals, but was less closely related to the sensory evidence signal. (f) Signal scalp topographies, all with pretarget baseline subtracted. Color bars in e and f represent amplitudes.


What is the meaning of Trump's 'thumb-and-index-pinch' when he speaks? When Donald Trump speaks in front of a crowd, he often puts his hand at shoulder level, usually far from it, and lets his palm face the crowd and pinches his thumb and index together while either closing the other fingers or keeping them all straight.

What does that gesture mean?

Short answer
The 'OK pinch' (Fig. 1) expresses precision and control. It stresses particular phrases and shows commitment to his words.

Background
In an interview with Psychology professor Geoffrey Beattie, communication specialist Alan Stevens addressed this point on Euro News:

source: Euro News

  ...This is probably Trump’s most well-recognized gesture – the OK
  pinch between the thumb and forefinger. [It] helps him show precision
  and control.

  These batonic [Not representing anything specific] movements are stressing those bits of the message that he sees as important [...]. In some sense it’s showing commitment to what he’s saying[,] but what he’s also doing is adding an extra layer of subconscious meaning.”

Fig. 1. Hand gestures. The second shows the thumb and forefinger touch. source: Fred Hatt


People with dead nerves cell, can they feel pain/emotions? Exactly what the title said, can they feel love/sad/hurt/disgust/fear/etc, emotions, after their neurons are dead? Also are there specific nerves for each emotion that transmits emotion? So let's say I lose some of my neurons not all, I will still feel all emotions right? I wont feel emotions until they're all gone, correct?

In the limit, if all your cells are dead, well, you won't feel anything. For the rest, it is both a question of quantity and their relations in a network of cells. One individual cell, in a large array of neurons, has very little influence on the overall behavior of the network. So remove one, you won't notice anything. Remove an important proportion of the cells, and emotions (or anything that is being processed by these cells) will degrade. Some have proposed that degradation of "performance" is "graceful", although this is not a proven fact. Past a critical number of destruction, plausibly, the system will just make erratic behavior (or here, non-sense emotions, whatever it might look like).

Some have also argued that non-nervous cells play a role in some of our cognition. So just destroying neurons may not be the whole story.


Why are most psychological studies not controlling for IQ and personality scores of their respondents? Consider for exemple the stereotype threat, of which a recent meta-analysis can be found here. People try to assess how can a stereotype might explain a difference between two groups.
However, they almost never control for IQ or Big Five which seems to me to be latent variables with much more explanatory power.
My questions are :

Why don't they ever control for these two important factors ?
Does it mean that the conclusion of these studies are flawed in some way ?

A quick look at your reference focussed on a meta-analysis of an intervention. Evaluating interventions is mostly about estimating the mean effect of an intervention. So, even if personality or intelligence influences the outcome, this is not directly relevant to evaluating whether on average the intervention has an effect.
In other contexts, controlling for personality and intelligence maybe quite relevant. In general, controlling for personality or intelligence is more relevant (a) where the predictors are conceptually or empirically related to personality or intelligence, and (b) where personality or intelligence is a strong predictor of the outcome of interest.
There are a whole range of psychological constructs that overlap substantially with either personality or intelligence. And in those cases, you do have a body of literature that examines the degree of overlap with personality or intelligence. And there's also literature that examines the incremental prediction of the variable of interest relative to personality.
For example:

Grit: Is it different from conscientiousness?
Assessment centers: Do they incrementally predict over and above intelligence?
Type D personality: Is it more than a composite of neurotcism and extraversion
Trait emotional intelligence: Is it just a weighted composite of the Big 5
Ability emotional intelligence: does it predict workplace outcomes over and above intelligence?

Researchers are always confronted with issues of which variables to measures. It is often not practical to measure everything. In particular, intelligence takes quite a bit of time to measure well. So you often get research that doesn't control for these factors. And then later on, other studies come along and fill the gap. There is also a bit of a process "construct proliferation" in psychology. A researcher comes up with a new pet construct. And other researchers point out later on how it's not that different to personality or how it doesn't incrementally predict. A lot of heated debates arise over these things.
Researchers also differ in theoretical orientation and practical concerns. For instance, in industrial/organisational psychology, intelligence and Big 5 personality assessment are very well embedded. So, incremental prediction over and above these factors  is a common question for a researchers to ask. In other fields, they may be less grounded in personality or intelligence frameworks.


Is it physically possible to laugh while being angry? I have heard that it is impossible to both laugh and be angry. I tried and wasn't able to do it, even with simulated laughter and anger.

Is it possible to laugh and be angry?

As with all questions about emotion, the answer depends on how you define "emotion." Long post ahead… :P

Anger as basic

On the one hand, we have basic emotion theories, most famously advanced by Ekman, Tomkins, and Friesen and rooted in the work of Darwin. Basically, these theories suggest that emotions correspond to circumscribed regions of the brain (e.g., the amygdala for fear) and respectively involve specific and consistent patterns of facial, behavioral, physiological, neural, and experiential responses.

According to this view, anger is a basic, universal emotion that is constituted by a specific set of facial movements, with which laughter would be incompatible.  So this theory would not predict that you could laugh while angry.

Anger as constructed

The most recent theories of emotion are called "constructionist"--although their ideas date back to William James (late 19th century).  Constructionist theories have been most famously advanced by Lisa Feldman Barrett and James Russell.  This view deeply challenges the basic-theory assumptions that emotions are discrete, universal, and modular.

Instead, according to one constructionist account (Conceptual Act Theory), emotions emerge when we make meaning out of our situated affective experiences (to put it very simply).  In this sense, emotions are just concepts that can be applied to a heterogeneous population of experiences/contexts that share some statistical regularity (e.g., instances of fear often share the presence of threat/danger).

So, one instance of anger need not look like another (e.g., many different facial expressions, CNS/PNS patterns, etc.), but in general I'll know what you mean when you say you're angry. Not to mention, your concept of anger may even be different than mine.  This means that you might conceptualize some instances as "anger" that I would not. So you would experience anger in situations that I would not.  One such situation might be where you're laughing. If you thought laughter signaled anger, then you might infer from your laughter that you are angry.

So this theory would predict that it is definitely possible to laugh when angry.  Although, the more precise prediction would be: it is possible to be angry when you laugh.

Conclusion

I realize these theories are slightly confusing/complex (especially the second one)! I've read at least 600 pages about constructionism, and I still have to remind myself what it says exactly (it gets much more abstract).

I'll be frank and say that I completely reject the "Anger as basic" account.  Basic emotion theories are hanging on by a thread at this point, in my opinion--there's a huge and still growing body of evidence against them.  So my inclination is with the latter prediction: you can certainly be angry when you laugh.


How to transform data to a frequency spectrum? Recently, I studied a paper called "What Does Your Chair Know About Your Stress Level?

It can be download at the link below.

  http://www.barnrich.ch/wiki/data/media/pub/2010_what_does_your_chair_know_about_your_stress_level.pdf

at page 210, Fig.5 (picture 5) mentioned that

  Spectra of the norm of the CoP vector during the experiment (stages 3–7) for the same subject used in Fig. 4.

How did they do to transform Fig.4 to Fig.5? And what do x-axis and y-axis mean in Fig.5?

Fig4

Fig5

In the cited paper their methodology is explained in the Materials and Methods section on  p.209, where it says:

  Fig. 4 shows the norm of the CoP during the experiment [...] which are represented by spikes in the norm of the CoP [...] In order to characterize the movement properties of the CoP, we have computed the corresponding spectra over the experiment stages [...]. Fig. 5 shows the spectra of the norm of the CoP [...].

Spectra, or more appropriately called frequency spectra or spectrograms, are typically generated by Fast Fourier Transformation (FFT). FFT essentially decomposes a signal into a collection of sine waves. The x-axis of a spectrogram (like Fig. 5 in the article) represents the frequency of each sine wave, the y-axis the magnitude (amplitude or more aptly the 'power') of each sine wave in the frequency spectrum.


What cognitive properties change as the income vary? Yesterday I made a guess: That perhaps there is a lock in some income classes - that there may be a trend that could get them stuck in there. But it's only a guess, I have no proof for such afirmation.

So are there cognitive differences for people on different income classes (such as rich and poor) that somehow get them stuck in there?

I'm not sure if this question is really on-topic here, but I guess this site could be a first trial. There's also something that I'd like to point out: My native languange is not english, and I've experienced sensitivity when dealing with such matters with inapropriate words: If my words were inapropriate, I didn't mean to be mean, I just don't have a good vocabulary. I also really don't know how to tag this question - If you know better tags, please edit.

Sociology is the study of how we organize ourselves into groups. Common areas of specification in sociology are social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, and deviance.

Your question specifically is about social mobility which is the movement of peoples between lower, middle and upper classes. It is commonly thought that education allows from vertical social mobility though an achieved status but that isn't accurate. A more advanced educational system than what is currently employed by the university system is necessary to advance socially.

Now about the specific cognitive difference:

   In school, learning tends to be separate from relationships. In the situated learning of poverty,
  learning occurs in the context of relationships.
  In school, learning is abstract (represented on paper or computer), verbal (words are relied
  upon almost exclusively), and proactive (students must plan). In the situated learning
  environment of poverty, learning is based on sensory data, it relies on nonverbal data as much
  as verbal, and it is reactive. The two worlds are diametrically opposed.
  In poverty, survival is a crucial skill. In formalized schooling, achievement is the crucial
  attribute. Survival means the ability to live in the “tyranny of the moment.” It also means one
  doesn’t develop a future story.
  School success is highly dependent on a student having an external support system. Often we
  find that students from poverty are the support system for the family and have very little
  support for themselves.
  The intergenerational transfer of knowledge is a huge factor in school success. In a study in
  Australia that followed more than 8,500 children for 14 years, researchers found they could
  predict with reasonable accuracy the verbal reasoning scores of 14‐year‐olds based on the
  maternal grandfather’s occupation (Najman et al., 2004). In other words, the greater the
  language with young children, the greater their potential (see also No. 7 below).
  The development of the pre‐frontal cortex, which is the executive function of the brain
  (impulse control, working memory, planning), generally is not developed by the environment
  of generational poverty. In a study released in 2008 using EEG (electroencephalogram) scans
  with poor and middle‐class children, researchers found that the prefrontal cortex of the brain in
  poor children was undeveloped and resembled the brains of adults who have had strokes
  (Kishiyama, Boyce, Jimenez, Perry, & Knight, in press). The researchers went on to say that the
  prefrontal cortex can be developed through intervention.
  Poverty tends to be heavily dependent upon casual register, whereas school is heavily
  dependent upon formal register. Hart and Risley (1995) found in their research that the average
  4‐year‐old in a professional household has heard 45 million words, while a 4‐year‐old in a
  welfare household has heard 13 million words. In fact, they found that a 4‐year‐old in a
  professional household has more vocabulary than an adult in a welfare household (Hart &
  Risley).
  In any situated learning environment, there is a set of “hidden rules” that individuals tend to
  follow. Those “hidden rules” are usually not articulated, but they are equated with intelligence.Poverty has a differentset of “hidden rules” frommiddle class and a differentsetfromwealth.
  One set is not better than another; the sets of hidden rules are simply different and help you
  survive in a given environment.

-How the Environment of Poverty (Having Fewer Resources) Impacts Cognition and Learning

Stress is thought to be the mechanism by which the brain of poor children is degraded.

  A massive literature documents the inverse association between poverty or low socioeconomic status and health, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying this robust relation. We examined longitudinal relations between duration of poverty exposure since birth, cumulative risk exposure, and physiological stress in two hundred seven 13-year-olds. Chronic stress was assessed by basal blood pressure and overnight cortisol levels; stress regulation was assessed by cardiovascular reactivity to a standard acute stressor and recovery after exposure to this stressor. Cumulative risk exposure was measured by multiple physical (e.g., substandard housing) and social (e.g., family turmoil) risk factors. The greater the number of years spent living in poverty, the more elevated was overnight cortisol and the more dysregulated was the cardiovascular response (i.e., muted reactivity). Cardiovascular recovery was not affected by duration of poverty exposure. Unlike the duration of poverty exposure, concurrent poverty (i.e., during adolescence) did not affect these physiological stress outcomes. The effects of childhood poverty on stress dysregulation are largely explained by cumulative risk exposure accompanying childhood poverty.

-Childhood poverty and health: cumulative risk exposure and stress dysregulation.


Why do children tend to choose the last option in a two-alternative forced choice task? If I ask my toddler if she wants bananas or apples, she will consistently choose apples. The same goes for colors, other related objects, or even seemingly unrelated items - She always chooses last.

Why is she biased to choose the last option? Is this bias specific to children, or is it a common phenomenon in adults too?

Is it related to Modality effect?

In general, and not specifically related to children, choosing out of a set of options often depends on people’s memory. In an ideal world, people’s options would be presented simultaneously, but in reality, options are often presented serially over time. Both the delay of time as well as interference from other cognitively demanding tasks are likely to increase uncertainty in one’s evaluations of more distant options compared to more recent options, and therefore increases the amount of regression to an overall category mean. In other words, imperfect recall introduces uncertainty in earlier options and judgments of the earlier presented options regresses as memory decays over time. Relatively desirable options will therefore tend to seem less desirable with time, and relatively undesirable options will tend to seem less undesirable with time.

People therefore tend to select the first option in a set when choosing between generally undesirable options, and will tend to select the last when choosing between generally desirable options (Li & Apley, 2009).

In terms of kids I can add that their working memory span is relatively short, in the order of 10 seconds for a 1-year old (Garon et al., 2008), probably adding to the imperfect recall hypothesis stated above. Further, the executive functioning of kids is limited; most kids between 3 and 6 years are able to recall 4 digits or less in a digit span test (Espy & Bull, 2005), further complicating a seemingly simple task for small children, namely recalling the options, let alone choosing a preferred option between them.

References
- Espy & Bull, Developmental Neuropsychology (2005); 28(2): 669–88
- Garon et al., Psychological Bulletin (2008); 134(1): 31–60
- Li & Apley, J Behav Dec Making (2009); 22: 378–89


Consciousness - on/off switch or spectrum? When we read the theories of consciousness, they usually state that a thing either has consciousness or does not have consciousness. Is there a reason why consciousness cannot be thought to be a spectrum? For example, I have more consciousness than a computer. (Implying that a computer has consciousness, just that it has less than I do.) Rather than I have consciousness, a computer does not.

On/off is indeed not the commonest view of consciousness. In Hindu philosophical circles, consciousness is thought of as continuous across living systems.  Humans have 'budding'consciousness, (plus free will), animals 'shuttered' and plants 'covered'consciousness, and these are points along a continuum.  (Reference example:  Hinduism and Science, by T D Singh; a paper in “Science and Religion: Global Perspectives”, June 4-8, 2005, in Philadelphia, PA, USA, a program of the Metanexus Institute).


What is the frequency range of electrotactile stimulation? I have been trying to find out what the (human) electrotactile frequency range is. Since this is a much more experimental method (and more unpleasant) than the traditional vibrotactile method, the research is more limited.

E.g., for vibrotatctile I could find in Sonar and Paik (2016)

  The mechanoreceptors responsible for vibrotactile sensation are the rapidly adapting (RA) and Pacinian corpuscle (PC) receptors with perceptible frequencies ranging from 3 to 100 and 100 to 400 Hz, respectively (Choi and Kuchenbecker, 2013).

Actually that seems to contain a typo or misquote of the paper they cite, which puts the PC at 10-500 Hz:

Anyhow, for electrotactile I could only find what some researchers have used in some of their devices, e.g. Okpara et al., 2007:

  Based on our prior unpublished work, the four levels of frequency were set at 100, 35, 15 and 10 Hz.

That suggests a lower range perhaps of only 10-100 Hz. But is that the full range range that can be felt using electrotactile stimulation?

It's been suggested to me that it may be exactly the same as for vibrotactile, but a set of slides comparing various methods says about electrotactile:

  Stimulate receptors and nerve endings with electric charge passing through the skin

Since there's some suggestion it may bypass receptor (in part), perhaps the results can be different.

What is the frequency range of electrotactile stimulation?

Short answer
Stimulus frequency does not matter too much for electrical neural stimulation.

Background
The frequency of electrical stimulation does not need to be in the same ball park as the physiological stimulus impinging normally on a tactile skin receptor. This, because the normal route of stimulation is bypassed and the axons can be activated directly (Kajimoto et al., 1999). In contrast, physiological tactile stimulation typically involves the deformation of a specialized dendritic region of a mechanoreceptors (Fig. 1). The effectiveness of mechanoreception depends highly on the physical properties of the dendritic sensory region in terms of responsiveness to various stimuli, including frequency selectivity, as you nicely illustrate in your answer. For electrical stimuli, all the dendritic mechaoreceptive selectivities are simply bypassed and pretty much any electric stimulus will do.

To give an example: a single jolt of direct-current electricity from a 9 Volt battery evokes a clear tactile sensation on the tongue. The BrainPort device, which is a sensory substitution device that aims to provide visual function to blind patienbts, relies on electrical stimulation of the tongue to provide the user with tactile images of the field of view as recorded by a head-mounted camera. The BrainPort uses a pulse rate of 200 Hz, which clearly electrically stimulates the tongue (Danilov et al., 2007). Hence, whether you provide a single jolt, or a continuous pulse train of 200 Hz doesn't really matter for perception, at least as far as I know.

References
- Danilov et al, J Vestib Res (2007); 17(2-3): 119-30
- Kajimoto et al., ICAT 1999

Fig. 1. Skin receptors. source: Lumen.


How to interpret the meaning of "crossed arms"? If my conversational partner (in western europe) crosses his arms, while I am talking;

How can I determine if he is:

showing signs of rejection and/or detachment
or if he chose this position for another reason? (habit, reserved personality, low  self-consciousness or just hiding a stain on his shirt...)

Are there clues that can help me to interpret his posture correctly?

Crossing arms may not necessarily mean detachment or rejection. However, more often than not, that's the usual implication.  It can mean different things for different people and, furthermore, in different situations.

Some people cross arms to make themselves secure, perhaps when they are intellectually or physically overshadowed.  Or maybe when they are pushed a little on the emotional front or on areas out of their comfort zone. In short, it may be their way of putting their guard up.

Others may conceive it as a deep and professional expression of taking interest in the conversation, often marked by the seriousness and context of the conversation. However on a contrasting ground, disinterest in the conversation is also a stimulus to crossing arms.

Crossing arms is also used as a sign to display prowess and as a challenge, in case the superiority of an individual is questioned.

Funnily enough, hiding the stain on the shirt seems a reasonable explanation too..:D


how to correctly determine false alarm rate (in a specific experimental setup) i have a specific experimental setup (at least i think so :) It's a replication and i don't know how to correctly determine the false alarm rate for the visual fields since in the article i replicate the FA calculation procedure is not explicite shown. But my impression is that it kind of deviates from a simple 50% noise 50% signal+noise design. Moreover correct d'prime and bias measures depend on the calculated FA% scores. Maybe the design as such is not suitable for calculation of such SDT meassures? I read through the Nacmilian Creelman book (though not very carefully) and am not able to find a solution.

ok it's a lateralized lexical decision study testing the left hemisphere superiority in word recognition ( better word - non(pseudo)word discrimination in the Right vs Left visual field)

overall 256 trials
on every trial 2 letter strings are presented for 100 ms: one string to the left and one to the right of a fixation point. ( xxxxx + xxxxx )
on 128 trials a word is presented  randomly to the left and right accompanied by a pseudoword: 64 RVF word presentations (e.g. gilus + virus) and 64 LVF word presentations (e.g. virus + gilus)
on 128 trials pseudwords are presented to both sides-hemifields e.g.(mudo + mumi).

Subjects must press left button if word in LVF right button if word in RVF and spacebar if nonwords are in both hemifields.

Generally i would like to determine the d' or A' and bias measures for each hemifield, the correct calculation of FA% is crucial.

The Hit rate determination for LVF and RVF seems straight forward: correct left and right presses, each divided by 64, since there are 64 word presentations in each hemifield.

Question 1: when it comes to determining the false alarm rate for one hemifield which i would like to use for d' calculation: should i divide the measured FAs on one side by all possible FA occurences on that side i.e. 192 (128  bilateral nonword presentations + 64 nonwords in word-nonword trials)?

Question 2: because the script did not repeat timed out trials should they be  considered as misses?

thanks
Kuba

Check out chapter 3 of Macmillan and Creelman on rating scales. You have 3 ratings: left arrow (very confident it is on the left), space bar (not sure), right arrow (very confident it is on the right). You also have non-responses which may be equivalent to a space bar "not sure" or might be something else. I would probably want to know more about why they did not respond (and how often) before deciding what to do.

You also have 3 stimulus types (LVF-word, RVF-word, and double non-word) which makes things harder and I don't think is covered in M & C. That said, you can extend their examples to 3 stimuli pretty easily. The index of sensitivity d' is a measure of distance between two distributions. It sounds like you want to know the distance between the LVF-word and double non-word distributions relative to the distance between the RVF-word and double non-word distributions, but maybe you only care about the LVF-word and RVF-word comparison.


Text-to-brain literature? Herff et. al. demonstrate in "Brain-to-text: decoding spoken phrases from phone representations in the brain" a brain-to-text system to map intracranial electrocorticographic recordings to text.

I've been looking for literature attempting to go the other direction, text-to-brain, but have not had much luck finding anything on Springer, Google Scholar, and related services.

For someone in the know, what's the current state of the text-to-brain problem?

We don't have a well tested or accepted model of how specific items are encoded in the cortex, so text to brain is still far off. However, it is possible to send information to the brain.

Ramirez et al. 2013. Creating a False Memory in the Hippocampus

This study (in mice) involved creating a false sense of fear associated with a particular context. This implanted information is much higher level than just text, but it is still information.


How does our brain consider something to be funny? What makes something that we watch (a clown's antics, hidden camera pranks, etc.), hear (jokes), read (satire), or do (pranks) be perceived as funny?

Even babies find certain actions and sounds funny, and they will laugh.

Is there a common attribute in all of the above which triggers a canonical funny trigger? If so, what is it?

Psychological theories of humor are a growing area of research. I attended a seminar on it for a day as an undergraduate myself, but dropped it before giving the instructor a chance to demonstrate that there was much detailed knowledge out here. Also, this was several years ago, so I'm sure the field has progressed since then.

I doubt there is a single, common, canonical attribute that triggers the humor sense, but there are probably many, partially independent factors that each contribute to humorousness. I'm familiar with four in particular$^{[1]}$:

The "funny because it's true" factor may explain why cleverness and originality are important. Myself and many others find stimuli funnier when we haven't encountered them before, and especially when they violate expectations. Novelty is an important factor in the experience of pleasure in general (Lyubomirsky, 2013), and this clearly applies in humor to some extent, in that jokes often "get old" eventually. At first hearing, a joke may offer more opportunity for new insights (depending on whether one "gets it" right away; this also explains why one generally won't laugh until one does get the joke), though it may continue to remain funny as one continues to process new insights gained from reconsideration of the joke's implications. I often find jokes less funny when they express misconceptions or depend on an ignorant perspective that I don't share (e.g., the suggestion that some apparent contradiction is absurd doesn't amuse me as much if I know the reason for the apparent contradiction already).

This isn't to say that something needs to be true or representative of reality in general to be funny though. Absurdist humor in particular relies on the violation of expectations in ways that seem coherent at least (i.e., it probably won't be funny if it's just too confusing or bizarre to make any kind of sense), but in ways that may seem particularly absurd (and probably novel too) due to violations of the laws or probabilities of physical or social reality. This principle suggests one reason tastes may vary in the sense of humor: individuals vary in their tolerance for expectation violations, and in their abilities to make sense out of them. Openness to experience relates to cultural preferences (e.g., traditional vs. avant-garde), level of educational attainment, and (negatively to) need for closure, which suggests a particular hypothesis of individual differences that may be worth testing: openness may relate positively to appreciation of absurdist humor, and negatively to appreciation of "blue-collar" comedy (at least when the latter appeals more to simple, traditional, or uneducated sensibilities, which it doesn't always).
The nervous laughter factor may increase laughter as a sort of coping mechanism for social discomfort. This may partially explain the popularity of humor on taboo topics such as political incorrectness (e.g., Politically Incorrect), demographic (e.g., gender, age, and ethnic) stereotypes, general immorality (e.g., "dark humor"), sex, and "toilet humor". By nature of being taboos, experience with these topics and exposure to a variety of opinions on them are commonly limited, so this factor may depend partly on the novelty factor.

However, nervous laughter does not involve novelty necessarily. Self-perceptive processes may produce the impression that something is funny because one is laughing, even when one is laughing for other reasons. Various social reasons may disincline people to express anxiety or discomfort directly (e.g., if a friend or comedian is obviously trying to amuse you with something distasteful), and forced laughter is a common and sometimes habituated way of hiding negative emotions through an opposite expression (a reaction formation) of levity and enjoyment. This reasoning appeals to a somewhat circular theory of humor (i.e., our laughter defines humor as that which makes us laugh), but people use circular logic in many ways (e.g., early behaviorism has been criticized as circular). Therefore, to whatever extent humor is a social construct by definition, theories of humor need not be less valid to the extent that they are circular and simply descriptive of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that relate to laughter. Over time and repeated exposure, people may come to commonly regard a topic as humorous simply because it provokes laughter, even if that laughter is only a nervous reaction initially.

A particularly loose line of reasoning that could tie nervousness to laughter would apply this explanation to the laughter reaction to tickling, which is a particularly odd unconditioned response (that seems to occur in animals too). Again, just a bit of personal speculation based on evolutionary theory, FWIW: in mammals, ticklish areas are often vulnerable to physical injury, and therefore sensitive. These areas seem to generate an odd sort of nervous discomfort reaction and motivate defensive movements reflexively, maybe to naturally prioritize protection of these areas from injury. Natural selection may have engendered such a reflex to extended this reaction even to sleep or intimate contact with trusted others (which could cause injury during aggressive play, sex, or by betrayal). Experience of this defensive reflex in action during seemingly inappropriate circumstances may generate laughter through surprise (thus involving the novelty factor again) or through reaction formation to nervous discomfort, among other possible explanations. For support of this explanation, note that the laughter response to tickling can be suppressed intentionally when the experience of tactile discomfort remains.
Conformity may cause laughter and tickle the sense of humor in similar ways. Following the above reasoning somewhat, self-perceptive processes may kick in after one laughs to mimic others nearby. People conform to others' behavior for a wide variety of reasons, and in a wide variety of ways. This may explain why people sometimes enjoy stand-up comedy more when attending live performances than when watching them recorded from home, and why many television comedy shows use laugh tracks.

One explanation of laugh tracks would again involve novelty somewhat. Subtlety in humor is often an expression and consequence of cleverness and originality in the delivery of a message, as by implication rather than explicit expression (comedians often try to avoid "beating" their audiences "over the head" with their punchlines). Yet again, one must notice and (often, but not always) comprehend a stimulus to find it funny. Thus a laugh track serves to cue the audience to parse stimuli for humorous content, and may help compensate for individuals' varying abilities to detect subtle stimuli or their implications. Cuing appropriate responses to ambiguous stimuli and situations is a common function of conformity in general.

Conformity occurs even in the relative absence of ambiguity though (cf. the Asch conformity experiments). This suggests another explanation of laugh tracks: a pure conformity manipulation aimed at manipulating humor judgments through self-perception. This explanation may apply more broadly to the commonly experienced social phenomenon of "contagious" laughing fits in groups, which some special groups capitalize upon (e.g., Laughology, Laughercise). Yet again, laughter may result in response to the novelty and seeming absurdity of such events as well.
Furthermore, the social contagion of laughter and some instances of animal laughter suggest as an additional principle that laughter may arise as a simple behavioral manifestation of positive affect in general. Joy and exuberance may naturally result in laughter as an exaggerated form of grinning. In this sense, intensity of the stimulus becomes an important factor unto itself; consider how much harder one laughs at something especially hilarious. Next, consider the common emphasis on surprise as a comedic element, and the opposite effect of having to explain a joke. A sudden surprise may load all of the stimulus' information content into a briefer, more intense moment, thereby intensifying the emotional reaction. Conversely, spreading out that information over a long-winded explanation may spread out the emotional reaction so much that one no longer finds the joke funny for lack of emotional intensity, even though the same amount of information (and sometimes more) is ultimately conveyed.

Because positive affect is generally desirable, and laughter is generally enjoyable, people may force laughter somewhat simply to enjoy themselves more, and this need not occur consciously. This implicit motive may lower people's thresholds for laughter (and thus the perception of humorousness) in situations where positive affect is generated by other factors, and maybe also in situations where positive affect is lacking (e.g., in the midst of sadness, frustration, or anxiety). Consider as (somewhat circumstantial) evidence how popular media such as movies often mix comedy and tragedy to accentuate each.

Yet again, this effect may be partially mediated by the novelty factor if one is surprised at the depth of one's joy. The other social factors I've mentioned here might conceivably play mediating roles too. For instance, extreme joy might heighten emotional arousal past comfortable levels, leading to anxiety and nervous laughter; or one might force laughter to communicate a desire for levity or to manipulate one's social atmosphere through conformity-based mechanisms. This last point may apply especially to laughter as a direct coping mechanism for negative emotions: laughter may not only hide negative emotions, but may overwrite them somewhat with positive emotions.

$^{[1]}$ These theories don't necessarily apply to everyone (in light of the pervasiveness of individual differences in the ever-growing human population, one might argue they probably don't), but I'm unaware of exceptions. I'm not including any empirical research directly here, and would be happy to edit some in (or let others do so) if anyone else knows of some, but I'm short on time for reviewing literature right now. I'm answering mostly from personal experience and from memory of theories I've read here and there over the years, some of which may (or may not) have been based on empirical research.

Reference

Lyubomirsky, S. (2013). The myths of happiness: What should make you happy, but doesn't; What shouldn't make you happy, but does. The Penguin Press HC. Official website: http://themythsofhappiness.org/.


Is there a variance in acceptance of conspiracy theories by occupation? For some time I have been very interested in the intelligent design (ID)/creationism vs. evolution debate.  My parents are both medical professionals and consider themselves creationists.  I have many other family members who are also medical professionals and believe in creationism.  While reading webpages on the subject and other widely rejected ideas, my experience suggested that medical professionals were more likely to accept such ideas than people from other technical professions.  Is there any evidence to support this?

Are people from medical professions more likely than average to accept conspiracy theories?

I did find one article that appeared to address the issue, but I could not find a free copy of it anywhere.

I believe that a link to Google Scholar and an explanation of what it is should feature prominently on every page of this site. Many questions can be answered by a quick search there, and the rest will profit from the initial research that becomes easily possible with this tool. This explanation should include the fact that most academic institutions have access to many online journals, and that a trip to the next university library will make most of the articles readable for the general public through the computers in the library.

To answer your question: I have no knowledge of the subject matter, but a Google Scholar search yielded several articles on the topic of conspiracy theories, some of which deal with the phenomenon from an empirical perspective.

For example, one study found, that certain personal characteristics, such as fear of unemployment, correlated with belief in conspiracy theories, while occupational category did not correlate with belief in conspiracy theories.

If you did further into the Google Scholar search results, you might find further, possibliy contradictory, findings and opinions on the topic.

As to your observation that many medical professionals from your family believe in creationism, and the hypothesis you deduce from this observation that maybe medical professionals are more likely to accept such ideas, I would say that this is a classic case of not recognizing a confounding variable. All the medical professionals you know come from the same family. Since religious beliefs are mostly acquired through familial habits, it is most likely that it is your family, not medicine, that correlates with belief in creationism. What defines your family and could correlate with a similar belief in other people, you might be able to recognize if you take a step back an look at your family in relation to who else lives in your country: what is your family's social status, religious tradition, ethnicity, where do you live, how are your children educated etc. etc. From all the factor that you find, you could then build a working hypothesis and test it. Some factors have been tested in the linked article, others you might find discussed elsewhere.

Have fun!


What psychological factors account for code readability? Readability is often intuitively synthesized. If you see some piece of code, you just know whether it is readable or not. But what are actual psychological, scientific explanations for this?

There are readability metrics for written text, but do they apply to source code as well? For example: I believe the word superiority effect to be applicable to source code. What other effects can be found while programming, that make code readable?

I am not looking for educated opinions or examples as in here or here, but for neural correlates or a perspective from cognitive sciences.

Using the English language, given two sentences that say the same thing, what makes one more readable than the other? Usually terseness while retaining clarity and removing ambiguity.

The exact same things make code more readable. Remove everything that doesn't add anything, but don't remove things that do add information. And avoid ambiguity.

In code, we have the advantage that we can reuse similar pieces of text and replace specific values within them. If only we could do that with books, we could save a small rainforest.

On top of terseness, we have good use of punctuation and spacing. Ever tried to read a blog piece where there are no paragraphs whatsoever? That's what it's like reading code that isn't neatly spaced out.

The psychology of this is simple. Your brain receives all sorts of hints as to what it's reading. Try taking a long piece of text and printing it out (with a serif font) without paragraphs, then without periods and commas, or maybe switch punctuation marks (? => ., ! => :, etc), then in a sans-serif font.

You'll quickly see how much you rely on your brain's instincts when you're reading. Code is exactly the same. And herein lies a problem, because some things are certainly subjective. Or rather they are a matter of habit.

If you're used to seeing underscores preceding member variables, then you move to a company where they don't do that, your brain will still expect the same hints and it will be harder to read. But to change it would mess up everybody else in the team. It would be like moving to Spain and telling them to stop using the preceding inverse-question mark because it throws you off.

Design patterns are a similar thing. If everyone knows what a Builder Pattern does, then adding Builder to a class name gives everyone a lot of information. But if I have my own Bracksfort Pattern, that information only helps me, at least until other people start to ask me, or I document it and get the community to buy into it.