问:
What route through the body do eye-movement and blinking artifact signals take to interfere with EEG measurements?
In electroencephalography, one of the antagonists for the clean acquisition of brain biopotentials via an EEG setup are the signals produced when the patient blinks or moves their eyes. Do the interfering signals move from the eyes to the measurement electrodes on the scalp simply via the skin along the face, or is there a different path that is taken?</p>


问:
Parasympathetic dominance in a state of alertness and elevated resistance?
According to various sources

The parasympathetic nervous system remains dominant in the resistance stage of the general adaptation syndrome

The body resists and compensates as the parasympathetic nervous system attempts to return many physiological functions to normal levels while body focuses resources against the stressor and remains on alert.

Source: https://mhcc.pressbooks.pub/hpe295/chapter/general-adaptation-syndrome/

The resistance stage is governed by a part of the ANS called the parasympathetic.

The parasympathetic branch of the ANS tries to return the body to normal by reducing the amount of cortisol produced. The heart rate and blood pressure begin to return to normal.

Source: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320172

But other sources state that digestion is inhibited in the resistance stage

Source:https://courses.ecampus.oregonstate.edu/hhs231/seven/studyguide.htm

My question is, why is the parasympathetic nervous system dominant in the resistance stage of the GAS model when there is a state of alertness and a sustained release of cortisol?

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0


问:
Could we create a psychopath?
I am new here, so I apologize if this question violates any of the rules of this community. A question that has kept bugging me for few months is whether, we could alter the brain chemistry of a totally normal person to make him a psychopath/sociopath. The ethics of such a procedure is of course debatable just like whether we should extend life. But keeping aside the ethical considerations, is there any ongoing research on this topic? For instance, I have come across Kevin Dutton (British psychologist) and the fact that Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation can induce temporary psychopathic traits in an individual. I am not sure as to the validity of this. Is there any other such research going on and what is the status?</p>

Title: Could we create a psychopath?


问:
Is there a term for the assumption that successful people are qualified to succeed in other fields. E.g., a businessman qualified to be US president
Is there a term for the belief that if somebody is exceptionally good at one difficult thing, e.g. attorney, physician, physicist, that they can be expected to be brilliant at any difficult thing?  It seems to be a misconception expressed across the span of intellectual ability but I also think of it as a sort of an inversion the processes of the Dunning-Kruger effect.</p>


问:
Is there any neurological research on schema theory?
I noticed schema theory is frequently mentioned in educational psychology and sociocultural topics but didn't find neurological research related to it. I wonder if there are some shared mechanisms between prototype and schema. Currently, I'm looking for low-level evidence about how people recognize representations or patterns and want to know if there are any neurological studies about schema (or if is there any term in neurology that conveys a similar meaning, like grandma cell).
Thanks!</p>


问:
Is appraisal theory of emotion beaten by the theory of constructed emotion?
I'm learning narrative comprehension and trying to integrate emotional theories with models for narrative comprehension. Appraisal theory looks like a good fit, but most of the recent studies about emotion are focusing on the theory of constructed emotion. I don't see there's any conflict between these two theories and wonder if the appraisal theory is still popular or valid.
Thanks!</p>


问:
Error "File too small" When using spm_slice_vol, Fieldtrip MATLAB
When I was trying to convert a CT scan file's coordinate system into an approximation of the ACPC coordinate system on Fieldtrip MATLAB, there was error prompting that:
Error using spm_slice_vol, File too small.

By the way, the .nii file of the CT scan seems to be incomplete in the anterior part of the brain.

Does anyone know how to solve this? Thank you so much in advance.


问:
Reference tools to measure propensity to cooperate and to forgive?
QUESTION:

Where can I find reference tools (e.g. questionnaires) to measure the psychological propensity to adopt some behaviors, such as cooperation, cheating and forgiveness?

BACKGROUND:

The 2017 "explorable explanation" https://ncase.me/trust/ is a 30mn online activity inspired by the 1984 book "The evolution of cooperation" (260 pages) by Robert M Axelrod. It is running on desktop web browser about some principles of game theory such as zero sum game and positive sum game, and some general principles of collaboration, trust and forgiveness.  Is is unclear how much such activity changes the subjects' opinions about such basic topics.

OBJECTIVE:

I am wondering whether the web application measurably impacts people's propensity to collaborate and forgive errors from others, and I would like to refactor the web application so that to request the subjects to fill a questionnaire before and after (and, eventually, at the middle), in order to measure how their "values" or self-perceived propensity to collaborate, to cheat, to forgive people who seemingly cheated, and how many times. I could make up my own questionnaire, and I could measure such propensity by having the subjects simply play the game where they can cooperate or cheat, but I assume that cooperation and cheating is something which has been already studied already in Psychology. A simple online search with the terms "measure cooperation propensity" did not yield anything that I could use, so I thought I might be able to get useful pointers on stackexchange.

MORE GENERALLY

I wonder if there is a central repository for standard evaluation forms and which study used it, to help standardize and compare results: that would be useful in order to design, implement and evaluate other explorable explanations about other topics... Any pointer welcome!


问:
Experiment where people feeling lack of control in their life are more likely to see patterns in random cloud of dots
QUESTION:

Have there been some scientific experiments showing that people feeling a lack of control in their life are more likely to see patterns in random clouds of dots, and where can I find a report about it?

BACKGROUND:

I noted (I think while reading the book "Brain Rules for Work" from John Medina) that such a setting could easily be replicated and automatized in a web application, either to replicate the original experiment or to measure the "sense of lack of control in one's life" in other experiments.

Problem is, I can't find back the reference which prompted me to note this down, and searching (in the electronic version of the book for "pattern" or "dots", and) on the internet did not yield any useful reference.

Did I dream it up, or misunderstand my own notes?


问:
Is there a specific name for a delusional belief that you're your own duplicate?
I was watching a film where something like this was the twist ending and it got me thinking, "If somebody believes that they're an impostor of themself is there a name for that and if there is then what is it?"

The name of Impostor Syndrome makes it sound like a perfect fit, but it's not. Impostor syndrome is where one doubts their own skills and fears being discovered as a fraud, not where one actually believes themself to be a duplicate replacement of the real person. I tried looking it up, but with how unreliable search engines are these days, I didn't get any results that matched what I was looking for. The first few pages of results were the Capgras Delusion, which is "the belief that a close relative or spouse has been replaced by an identical-looking impostor." There was also the Fregoli Delusion, which is "the belief that people the sufferer meets are actually the same person." and Subjective Doubles, which is the belief that the person has a doppelganger out there with a life of their own.

Is there a name for a delusion where a person believes that they themself are a duplicate/doppelganger/clone/etc. that's replaced the real version, like the Capgras Delusion except regarding oneself rather than a relative?


问:
Recomendations for an intelligence test
Is there any culture-fair intelligence test, that is not of public knowledge (that is, the answers can be easily viewed online, or has been used extensively to the point it lacks validity), that doesn't require verbal knowledge or specific education, has a very good reliability, measures G, and is appropriate to evaluate a sample of very intelligent adults (mean in the 95 percentile, so it needs to have a very high ceiling). Is sensitive enough to detect cognitive deficits that in other tests might pass unnoticed (for example, attention problems, prospective memory problems), and has a timed component?

It doesn't have to be free.

Title: Recomendations for an intelligence test


问:
2-month contract in a remote area with night shifts; any clinical studies I should be interested in if I'd like to cope?
I've recently taken a 2-month contract in a remote part of the country where I'll be doing night shifts for all of it. I've done night shift work in the past without much issue, but I've never been isolated for long periods of time, and I feel like this is a very real possibility since there's probably next to no nightlife where I'll be going. I don't know how much human contact I'll have, but very likely it will be minimal and mostly job related, but trying to make friends is obviously the first thing I'll try doing.

In the mean time, I've come to realize that this will probably be a straining or a difficult experience if I don't prepare accordingly, and I thought that maybe the best thing to do is to read up on psychology literature of similar situations. My main worry is that is it likely I'll have very little contact with people most weeks.

Since I don't really know where to look for advice on this sort of situation, and no one I know has been through something similar, I thought that the best place to start would be looking up clinical studies of people undergoing similar situations, of extended isolation. Would anyone have suggestions or advice? I am otherwise a healthy 26 year old male, exercise daily for a minimum of 45 minutes, and have regular interactions with friends where I live currently, etc.


问:
Can I divide into groups? for a questionnaire and Factor analysis
My question is: If there are many targets to be evaluated, is it acceptable for the impression evaluation of the questionnaire to be done by another person? Can I divide into groups?

I'm thinking of doing a factor analysis on impressions of images. For example, I have used adjective pairs such as the SD method for 10 images, asked 30 people to answer 20 items for each image, and conducted a factor analysis.

However, next time, I want to increase the number of images, for example, 50 images. For 50 images, it will take a lot of time and it is heavy for a subject to answer. Therefore, I'm thinking of dividing it into groups. For example,
10 images are evaluated by 20 people (group A).
Another 10 images are evaluated by 20 people (group B).
Another 10 images are evaluated by 20 people (group C).
....I think there is a way to divide and answer. But is this a right way?

When the number of images is small, one person can answer with adjective pairs for all images, and perform factor analysis on the answers. However, one person does not answer for all images when I divide into groups, so I am worried about whether the analysis will be correct.


问:
Looking for the name of a phenomenon
My old psych teacher talked to us about how after the first person ran a 4 minute mile, the subsequent year or so many others managed it too. And he said that when people know something to be possible, they're more likely to achieve it.
Im not even sure, if there's research to back it up but I was wondering a) if there's a name for it, I assumed "power of belief" maybe? b) If there's any scientific validity to it.</p>

Title: Looking for the name of a phenomenon


问:
How does cocaine act as a stimulant?
I have scoured the first couple pages of Google attempting to discover how, neurochemically speaking, cocaine acts as a stimulant on the body. In regards to the Google query, "how does cocaine affect the brain and body?" -- many of the immediate results simply discuss how cocaine attaches itself to the dopamine transporter, thus preventing the reabsorption of dopamine into the dopamine system, resulting in euphoria. That said, I don't think this explains the stimulant-like affects of cocaine.

For example, while caffeine also affects the brain dopaminergically --- increasing the receptivity and efficacy of dopamine, caffeine attributes its stimulant-like effects from being an adenosine antagonist, which promotes the efficacy of acetylcholine. Unfortunately, however, few stimulants act in this manner. Thus, how does cocaine stimulate the brain and body?

Title: How does cocaine act as a stimulant?


问:
Are Binaural Beats really effective?
Lately, I've become quite interested in the supposed benefits that binaural beats may provide, which are summarized quite well in this article:

https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-are-binaural-beats

Being the skeptic that I am, I tried to find any sort of evidence online so that I could be certain of its effectiveness, but the studies are quite old, and their results were inconclusive.

So my question is: Are there any recent studies that give conclusive results about the effectiveness of binaural beats?

Edit: Before someone points out, yes, i've seen this post: Is there scientific evidence on the benefits of binaural beats?

But this post above is quite old, with all comments being 7 to 8 years old. What i wish to have is recent conclusions (not inconclusions) about this topic.

Title: Are Binaural Beats really effective?


问:
What is the leading (most popular) account of intelligence amongst psychologists?
I'm aware that AI systems are typically considered to be 'systems which act logically', but this is just a workable definition. I'm looking for something akin to a theory of intelligence. Something which (at least attempts) to provide a clear explanation of what Intelligence is, and how it functions.

Note: I asked this question in Philosophy Exchange and it was suggested that I should ask it here instead.


问:
Looking for Tutorials/Resources to analyze cognitive experiments data
I'm analyzing a dataset which has Go/No Go, Wisconsin Card Sorting, Stroop task. I wanted to know if there is a tutorial that follows a "best-practice" way of analyzing data. Like for statistics (e.g., t-test, ANOVA) there are step-by-step tutorials that we can follow? Is there something similar for analyzing cognitive science data?</p>


问:
Literature reviews on nerve conduction velocity?
The Wikipedia article for nerve conduction velocity is frustrating because it lacks citations. What is a good survey or overview of the research on nerve conduction velocity?

I'm particularly interested in understanding the conduction velocity of neurons in a human brain. I know very little neuroscience, but it seems to me like the Wikipedia article primarily covers conduction velocities of neurons in other parts of the human nervous system.


问:
What are the most important personality traits in predicting career success?
What are the most important personality traits in predicting career success?

IQ has been found to be the most important factor in predicting career success (CNBC interview of John Antonakis):

″[IQ is] the single most important predictor of work success,” Antonakis, a professor of organizational behavior at Switzerland’s University of Lausanne who focuses on leadership and management research, tells CNBC Make It. “It’s a very robust and very reliable predictor.”

Apart from IQ, personality traits also predict, although to a lesser extent than IQ, career success.

Neuroticism has been, apparently, consistently found to predict negatively career success, together with other life dimensions (Lahey 2009):

It is important to note, however, that neuroticism is an important trait partly because it is inversely related to marital satisfaction (Gattis, Berns, Simpson, & Christensen, 2004), occupational success (Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006; Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007), and overall quality of life (Arrindell, Heesink, & Feij, 1999; Lynn & Steel, 2006; Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006).

Wilmot et al. (2019) state that Conscioutiousness is the most important in work performance:

Conscientiousness (C) is the most potent noncognitive predictor of occupational performance.

And the famous study of Judge et al. (1999) found that consciousness is the most important personality trait for career success:

The most general findings were that conscientiousness positively predicted intrinsic and extrinsic career success, neuroticism  negatively predicted extrinsic success, and general mental ability positively predicted extrinsic career success.

Question:

(1) Has this findings that Consciousness is the most important personality trait predictor of career success been confirmed?

(2) What about other personality traits, such as Extraversion and Agreeableness? Concerning Agreeableness, Judge et al. (2012) found that agreeableness is negatively correlated with income, but the CNBC article points that it "being friendly" is important for work success.

Terminology:

Career success: Career success was argued to be comprised of intrinsic success (job  satisfaction) and extrinsic success (income and occupational status) dimensions.

(Judge et al. 1999)

References:

Judge, T. A., Higgins, C. A., Thoresen, C. J., & Barrick, M. R. (1999). The big five personality traits, general mental ability, and career success across the life span. Personnel psychology, 52(3), 621-652.

Judge, T. A., Livingston, B. A., & Hurst, C. (2012). Do nice guys—and gals—really finish last? The joint effects of sex and agreeableness on income. Journal of personality and social psychology, 102(2), 390.

Lahey, B. B. (2009). Public health significance of neuroticism. American Psychologist, 64(4), 241.

Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2019). A century of research on conscientiousness at work. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(46), 23004-23010.


问:
What could explain that Extraversion, not Agreeableness, significantly predicts life satisfaction?
A meta-analysis (Steel et al. 2008) found that Extraversion, not Agreeableness, significantly predicts life satisfaction.

The results are synthesized in (Malvaso & Kang 2022):

Steel et al. (2008) conducted a meta-analysis of 249 studies and found that the Big Five explained 18% of total variances in life satisfaction. Neuroticism is the most related (β = −0.30) and the rest less related (Extraversion, β = 0.17; Conscientiousness, β = 0.07; Openness, β = −0.04; Agreeableness, β = 0.03).

Problem:

Nonetheless, Agreeableness or pro-social behavior is related to negative/positive feelings or well-being (Guo et al. 2018):

Past literature suggests that PSB is contributive to desirable interpersonal relationships and well-being (e.g., Layous, Nelson, Oberle, Schonertreichl, & Lyubomirsky, 2012).
(...)
However, previous literature suggests a negative link between neuroticism and prosociality.

Question:

So why Extraversion, not Agreeableness, significantly predicts life satisfaction?

References:

Guo, Q., Sun, P., & Li, L. (2018). Why neurotic individuals are less prosocial? A multiple mediation analysis regarding related mechanisms. Personality and Individual Differences, 128, 55-61.

Malvaso, A., & Kang, W. (2022). The relationship between areas of life satisfaction, personality, and overall life satisfaction: An integrated account. Frontiers in Psychology, 13.

Steel, P., Schmidt, J., & Shultz, J. (2008). Refining the relationship between personality and subjective well-being. Psychological bulletin, 134(1), 138.


问:
Can I measure reaction time on qualtrics if I use a free account?
I want to measure the reaction time of my participants to some questions i would ask them on qualtrics, but would i be able to access the feature of reviewing their reaction time if I am using the free account?</p>


问:
Which of IQ or personality traits best predict job performance?
IQ seems to be an important predictor of job performance (close to 0.6 correlation coefficient), see here.

It is said that: "Evidence from more than 100 y of research indicates that conscientiousness (C) is the most potent noncognitive construct for occupational performance." (Wilmot et al. 2019)

Comparing directly IQ and personality traits, which of IQ or personality traits best predict job performance?

References:

Wilmot, M. P., & Ones, D. S. (2019). A century of research on conscientiousness at work. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(46), 23004-23010.


问:
Possible explanation for patterns of dementia progression?
(I'm asking this question as a lay-person with respect to neurobiology, so apologies if it lacks rigour.)

Dementia progression is different for each individual, but it seems like there are some general patterns to progression. For example, the Alzheimer Society notes that memory and cognition problems seem to be common in early stages, while some sensory functions appear to be intact even in late stages (hearing and touch, for example). (https://alzheimer.ca/en/help-support/im-caring-person-living-dementia/what-expect-persons-dementia-progresses)

The NIH's National Institute of Aging notes that "At first, Alzheimer’s disease typically destroys neurons and their connections in parts of the brain involved in memory" (https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/what-happens-brain-alzheimers-disease). There is further mention that the disease often begins in the hippocampus, a key region for memory.

Parkinson's also frequently shows memory and cognition impairment in the early stages (https://doi.org/10.1002/mds.20974).

There seems to be a model in which the disease progresses along neural networks (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2011.12.040), but the paper doesn't seem to address point-of-origin.

First, is it true that there are general patterns to dementia progression? (Within or between different underlying ailments/causes.) Or can there be completely different patterns of progression - for example, losing brain stem function before forebrain functions? Or loss of sensory function before memory problems appear?

If there is a pattern, what are likely hypotheses/explanations for this? (I'm imagining something like "stronger neural connections lasting longer", though I realize that's very hand-wavy and may not be very scientific).


问:
Transplant patients experiencing changes in preferences to match their donors
Similar to Where exactly do Emotions and Feelings arise in the human body?, I have been hearing of a phenomenon where transplant patients have been experiencing changes in preferences to match their donors.  These changes have been known to include changes in food preference, and tastes in music.

Looking into it, I stumbled across Pearsall, et al. (2002) where they attempted to evaluate whether changes following heart transplant surgery parallel the history of the donors.

We conducted open-ended interviews with volunteer transplant recipients, recipient families or friends, and donor families or friends, in hospitals in various parts of the country. Patients included ten recipients who had received heart or heart–lung transplants. Main outcome measures were transcripts of audiotaped interviews quoted verbatim. Two to 5 parallels per case were observed between changes following surgery and the histories of the donors. Parallels included changes in food, music, art, sexual, recreational, and career preferences, as well as specific instances of perceptions of names and sensory experiences related to the donors.

They suggested that cellular memory, possibly systemic memory, is a plausible explanation for these parallels; and it seems one of the authors of this paper wrote a book about the prior research (Pearsall, 1999), which I haven't read yet.

Has there been a consensus developed on this in the last 20 years since this paper?

References

Pearsall, P. (1999). The heart's code: Tapping the wisdom and power of our heart energy. Harmony.

Pearsall, P., Schwartz, G. E. & Russek, L. G. (2002). Changes in heart transplant recipients that parallel the personalities of their donors. Journal of Near-Death Studies 20, 191–206. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1013009425905


问:
Is there such a thing as "emotional impedance"?
More specifically, what I would call emotional reactance. What this is would be the emotional equivalent of electrical reactance(which is the opposition to changes in voltage and current flow). So a person who experiences something that upsets them will be able to modulate those unpleasant emotions such that they decay rapidly with time(getting over it). As if there is some type of negative feedback at work in their brain circuitry.


问:
What is the status of Cognitive Load Theory?
I'm relatively new to cognitive psychology. I read Anderson's Cognitive Psychology and its implications and found it extraordinary, but then again, I'm only a beginner.

I noticed that Anderson does not mention Sweller & Paas's Cognitive Load Theory, and the term cognitive load is not even in Anderson's index.

As I'm working in Natural Language Processing, I'm particularly interested in the Cognitive Psychology of Language, so I looked into Evans & Green's Cognitive Linguistics (858 pages!), the term "cognitive load" is totally absent from the book. Same thing for Warren's Introducing Psycholinguistics.

Can somebody with a more global overview of cognitive psychology and/or linguistics tell me why the Cognitive Load Theory is totally absent from these works? Is it considered as pseudo-science? Or as an exotic theory that the mainstream of the scientific community avoids? Or maybe it is known only to educators, and if this is the case, why so? Is it an abandoned theory or is it still active?


问:
What are the best questionnaires to measure stress before and after use of VR application?
I am making a VR application for my master thesis where people enter a virtual "rage room". I want to check if enhancing VR with the use of haptic feedback, gloves in this case, helps to reduce stress. I am looking for one or more questionnaires to measure stress before and after the test to evaluate the use of the application. What are the best questionnaires to use? The test subjects will be between 16 and 60 years old.</p>


问:
How do you export the summed score of a category on Qualtrics?
I'm doing some psych research for a class with a qualtrics survey. As a part of this survey, I have a quantitative performance task for which correct answers receive a score of "1" and incorrect answers receive a score of "0". When I export my data, I get each individual's response to each individual question, but there's no indication of their score. I have properly set up scoring in the Scoring Options tab (I assigned correct answers to each question in the task), but it seems like these scores didn't do anything. How can I get a summed score for each individual? Thanks so much!</p>


问:
"Blindness" caused by being in a homogeneous and structureless space
Is it true that if you stay in a homogeneous featureless space for a long time (for example, in fog, cloud, darkness), then you can temporarily stop seeing or start seeing a black background?</p>


问:
Does mindfulness involve negative feedback loops in the brain?
Mindfulness is defined as a type of meditation in which you focus on being intensely aware of what you're sensing and feeling in the moment, without interpretation or judgment. Is the neurological mechanism behind this understood? If it is, is there any evidence of negative feedback loops(particularly in the limbic system).


问:
Is There Any Evidence that People Prefer Just Intonation
In music, it's common to hear the refrain that people like harmonics (notes played at frequencies that are rational multiples of one another) the most out of different combinations of notes (at least when the denominators of those rational numbers are low), which goes back to Pythagoras, and led to the development of just intonation, in which an instrument is designed to have its notes at these rational multiples of frequencies. This is because they produce less of a clashy sound, as waves of different frequencies add to and cancel each other out.

It is true that they produce a less clashy sound, however, I don't generally prefer that sound, and most instruments produce a varied enough sound that the difference is hard to hear anyway. All human scales which haven't been deliberately invented by neo-classical composers to be different, have notes organised nicely with frequency multiples right next to the powers of $2^\frac{1}{12}$ (if Pythagoras is to be believed, and they are not actually at these values) or, in the case of microtonal music found in a few cultures, $2^\frac{1}{24}$. Pythagoras was working before the concept of fractional exponents, or even irrational numbers themselves, so it's not surprising he didn't consider them to be the basis of music.

The (somewhat) low-denominator approximations of these notes by Pythagoras don't follow any nice pattern like the powers of $2^\frac{1}{12}$. The common scales and modes don't seem to favour low-denominator approximations among these numbers at all. The "favourite" relative frequencies of third and fifth don't have particularly simple denominators. People point out that ($10$ out of $12$) of the powers of $2^\frac{1}{12}$ within an octave are weirdly close (with a hundredth) of nice rational numbers (with denominators below $15$ inclusive). But there are $72$ spaced-out numbers with denominators below $15$, between $1$ and $2$ (excluding $2$ itself), so this doesn't necessarily seem that impressive, intuitively. And what of the nice rationals left out by the notes we like? Just intonation tuning makes anything in a non-standard key sound atrocious, and to my ear, listening to a piece of baroque music as it would originally have been played, it sounds atrocious in general. People say that it may sound bad because we're used to modern, equal temperament tuning.

But people from the time of just intonation would have been just as used to just intonation. So, as far as I can see, the hypothesis that we like just intonation is fabulously convoluted compared to liking a super nice set of numbers taken log $2$, and there doesn't appear to be any evidence for it. Is it just psuedoscience? A reliable test would have to be blind and on non-musicians who haven't gotten on the bandwagon.


问:
How do psychopaths manage to fake and regulate emotions effectively?

Context

It is well established in the literature on emotions and emotion regulation (Barańczuk, 2019) that effective methods to regulate emotions are antecedent-focused, that is, they are the emotion regulation strategies that can be acted before the full-blown emotion is underway (e.g. re-appraisal, attention focus).

On the other hand, response-focused emotion regulation, that is, emotion regulation strategies that are acted when the full-blown emotion is already underway and are acted upon the emotion (e.g. suppression of the thoughts and emotions associated with the situation; suppression of the expression of the emotion; avoidance) is detrimental and ineffective.

Moreover, antecedent-focus emotion regulation has been found effective in decision making performance, and information-oriented job performance (traders), or communication-oriented job performance (front-line service workers) (Fenton‐O'Creevy et al. 2011).

The process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2014), reproduced from (Peña-Sarrionandia et al. 2015)

Problem:

On the other hand, psychopaths tend to use deception a lot, which consists in faking emotion (in terms of emotion regulation, it would be situated into the response-focused strategies).
This faking of emotions by psychopaths is clearly explained by the psychopathy expert Robert Hare, in this interview.

Robert Hare explains that psychopathic personalities basically don't have emotions, and when they appear to have some, they are just in fact faking them.

The research on neurocitism (negative emotions) and psychopathy, as well on the psychopathy construct itself, is difficult.

Ross et al. (2004) found that the primary psychopathy (the one Hare may be talking about in the interview), which is defined as "an inclination to lie, lack of remorse,
callousness, and manipulativeness", is not associated with neuroticism.

Secondary psychopathy, defined as an inclination to "impulsivity, intolerance of frustration, quick-temperedness, and lack of long-term goals", was positively associated to neuroticism.

Question:

According to today's understanding of psychopathy: how could psychopaths manage their emotions (which lead them to successfully deceipt other people) while the same strategy they use to deceipt (intervening on the emotion expression) is found to be ineffective and detrimental to emotion regulation?

References:

Barańczuk, U. (2019). The five factor model of personality and emotion regulation: A meta-analysis. Personality and Individual Differences, 139, 217-227.

Fenton‐O'Creevy, M., Soane, E., Nicholson, N., & Willman, P. (2011). Thinking, feeling and deciding: The influence of emotions on the decision making and performance of traders. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(8), 1044-1061.

Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: an integrative review. Rev. Gen. Psychol. 2, 271–299. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271

Gross, J. J. (2014). “Emotion regulation: conceptual and empirical foundations,” in Handbook of Emotion Regulation, ed J. J. Gross (New York, NY: Guilford Press), 3–20.

Peña-Sarrionandia, A., Mikolajczak, M., & Gross, J. J. (2015). Integrating emotion regulation and emotional intelligence traditions: a meta-analysis. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 160.

Ross, S. R., Lutz, C. J., & Bailley, S. E. (2004). Psychopathy and the five factor model in a noninstitutionalized sample: A domain and facet level analysis. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 26, 213-223.


问:
Can a person have a imaginary friend as some kind of hallucination or pychosis?
If a person were to experience some kind of mental trauma, could their brain unconsciously create a friend that only they could hear, see and physically feel, to help them cope?</p>


问:
Mesolimbic pathway
I am trying to gain a better understanding of the etymology of terms used in neuroscience as that helps me remember things. In this case I am trying to understand the phrase "mesolimbic pathway".

My understanding is the mesolimbic dopamine pathway includes projections from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) in the brainstem to the nucleus accumbens in the ventral striatum.

Questions:

Is it called the mesolimbic pathway as it projects from the mesencephalon (i.e. midbrain) to the limbic region of the brain?

Is the nucleus accumbans usually considered part of the limbic system?

Is the projection from the VTA to the nucleus accumbans considered part of the "mesolimbic pathway" as the outer region of the nucleus accumbens forms part of the amygdala, hence part of the limbic system?

Thank you for any assistance.

Title: Mesolimbic pathway


问:
How do photos activate our memory?
Today I got a compilation of old photos automatically recommended to me by google photos. It was about a school trip that happend a few years ago. When I see the photo, I felt I could vividly remember the day, time and everything that happend around the time the photo was taken.

I would imagine that, if one were to randomly ask me to remember a day and say how it was, it'd be really difficult, but giving a slight bit of conrete input like this, improves my ability to recall quite a bit. How is this possible?

Title: How do photos activate our memory?


问:
General lack of cognitive empathy disorder
Has there ever been a documented case or classification of a disorder where a person is unable to comprehend the fact that others do not know the same things they do, or that individuals do not know the same things as each other? From my basic knowledge this sort of understanding usually develops along with self-recognition in childhood, and I am wondering whether there are any people who grow to adulthood without ever achieving this developmental milestone.

For example, the hypothetical person drinks some water and places the cup in a random place that cannot be seen, someone then enters and is asked to bring the cup and the person is then confused about why the newly introduced person does not know where the cup is or what cup is even being referred to.


问:
ABC Model of Behaviour: What is an antecedent?
In the context of the three-term contigency what is meant by an antecedent and are there two types of antecendent - stimulus delta and stimulus discriminative? Why is it called the three-term contingency?

I would like to know if the below is correct. I am getting particularly confused about the distinction between an antecendent, a prompt, and a discriminative/delta stimulus.

My current understanding is that an antecedent is a setting event, action or object - it essentially just sets the occasion for a behaviour to occur.

Source: https://www.csus.edu/indiv/b/brocks/courses/eds%20245/handouts/week%205/classicalvopperant.pdf

The 2 types of antecedents are stimulus delta and stimulus discriminative.

A stimulus delta is a stimulus that signals unavailability of reinforcement, stimulus discriminative signals the availability of reinforcement.

Source: https://hopeeducationservices.com/what-is-the-difference-between-a-discriminating-stimulus-sd-and-stimulus-delta-s%CE%B4/


问:
Sylvius 4 like software
Good afternoon, I was hoping if someone could suggest a software akin to Sylvius that is free to use. An open source program. Any and all suggestions are welcome.</p>

Title: Sylvius 4 like software


问:
Cranial nerve ganglion, or Cranial nerve nucleus?
I have a question that I hope some of you may be able to clarify for me.

I have been taught that dorsal root ganglia are analogous to cranial nerve ganglia except that dorsal root ganglion is located in the spinal cord vs. cranial nerve ganglion is located in the skull and is associated with a cranial nerve instead of spinal nerve. Now, what I am confused about and need clarification for is that if the terminology dictate that ganglia are outside the CNS, that is inside the PNS, and nuclei are inside the CNS and not in the PNS, why do we call cranial nerve ganglia ganglia instead of nuclei? Are these two used interchangeably, or am I missing something here?

Are cranial nerve ganglia and cranial nerve nuclei different?


问:
How do I increase my processing speed?
I have an IQ of around 90 (with 88 of that as reasoning IQ and 92 as performance IQ). I’m extremely worried about getting a job and doing well. Are there any exercises, medication, lifestyle changes and the like that can get me to increase my processing speed in the context of workplace performance? I personally was thinking of a combination between exercise, the Dual-N-Back program, stimulants, and a ketogenic diet.</p>

Title: How do I increase my processing speed?


问:
What are the effects of an overexposure to solitary confinement?
Solitary confinement has been shown to be bad for mental health.

I was wondering if really long solitary confinement, like this one are different to normal solitary confinement. In terms of effects and the proportion of them, not just scale.

Minor and/or Related Questions

On a similar note, but not directly relevant to the question:

Is solitary confinement mostly caused by sensory deprecation or specifically social deprivation?

Is solitary confinement like (other?) mental trauma, or its own unique affliction?


问:
How does religion and pseudoscience manage to convince people to do irrational things when plain scientific evidence fail?
EDIT:
Had to edit my question for it to be re-opened. At this stage I do not care if it is re-opened but here is the edit: Stack exchange requires you to put your own research to your question or what you have found so far, which is fair. As such I put all the reasoning I have found on the topic of religion and people who choose to believe it. Yet apparently this is too much for stack exchange, made my question too long and since I hadn't had time to edit it since till now, the question was closed. And you wonder why people find SE to be toxic. It's the only QA website where people can ask/discuss actual evidence/study based answers unlike other websites that hosts self serving questions or just plain wrong answers yet you do this. Thanks.

My original question stands below:

I have a question behind the psychology of people believing in religion, what about, despite the total lack of evidence, makes it so convincing and what compels people to do things preached in said religion.

I saw this news article today about people in the Philipines re-enacting the cruxifixion (warning: there is blood). I have seen news of similar events in past years too. The short question is, how is it that religion manages to convince people to do such irrational things and rationality is completely abandoned? Why do people rather believe pseudoscience than evidence?

Below are my observations, research and detailed question.

The Philipines is an Asian country yet catholic missionaries from Europe had more influence on them than their geographically neighbouring countries. Almost everywhere missionaries go, it seems the people they preach to are converted. So the question is, why do people, no matter the country/region, believe missionaries and the christian gospel so easily, especially when there is no evidence whatsoever, of what is being proselytized? No other religion has had the same effect on the same level in terms of numbers of people converted. What is it about religion/Christianity that makes it so convincing, enough to convert entire nations while simple science and plain evidence is ignored? And whatever the magic formula is, how can we harness it to convince people to do better deeds in real life such as get their vaccines, wear their masks, stop believing in pseudoscience or just do something of benefit for the wider community? Or is it simply that all the people who believe it are just too gullible and impressionable, and the majority of people are too gullible and impressionable and outnumber rational people? (I read an article, do not remember the source now, that said how scientific literacy does not make you a better survivor in a battle of survival of the fittest so based on this, it is logical to say that perhaps it seems there are relatively more converts than skeptics.

Another example of a similar phenomenon is where people would rather believe in pseudoscience than evidence, and not because of being scientifically illiterate.

To answer this question I looked to scams. Scams are highly successful when the premise is remotely possible (it has a shred of tangible truth to it) AND it is something that isn't so common to be debunked right away AND there is evidence of success, even if the evidence is staged. As an example, the Ponzi scheme was a successful scam because international stamps were real, trading them for the gap in the price is also possible and it was not a common thing yet, and there was evidence of returns: some people did get money from their investments, even though the money was really the money that other investors put in (robbing Peter to pay Paul type) who then spread the word through word of mouth. IE word of success propagates the news. Yet gospel proselytising and pseudoscience shares none of these elements: there is no hard evidence of anything the bible says (unlike the returns some investors in the Ponzi scheme got), it is not based on any known and established facts (such as the international postage stamps) and unlike the Ponzi scheme, science directly refute many claims the bible makes. No one who converted to Christianity suddenly got healed from their incurable diseases which would then like the Ponzi scheme, prompt them to spread the news. Similarly, no one who attended natural healing resorts were cured of their terminal cancer to be able to spread the news of that either. Yet those that missionaries preach to readily accept it and people continue to go to healing resorts.

In the news article, it is said that people even use "broken glass to ensure that the ritual was sufficiently bloody." and the church condemns this and says they can show devotion by donating blood instead. Religion aside: practically and rationally speaking, this is completely true and reasonable and rational: if blood is going to be shed on purpose and willingly, it might as well be put to good use ie by donating it. Yet for some reason people chose the ritual instead which undoubtedly at the end, will require medical attention (which draws resources away from those who really need it due to an accident of now fault of their own), they no doubt know this and will actively seek out medical help afterwards so obviously have some rationality left.

The closest I have come to some answer is an article I have previously read, I cannot find it now, that talked about how religion may have evolved. In it, it said, imagine an early hunter gatherer human living on the African plains (their words, not mine) who sees the tall grass move. The grass may have moved because there is a deadly snake or some other predator amongst the grass or it could be just harmless wind. The one that survives to reproduce (survival of the fittest) is the one that runs away without finding out what really caused the grass to move, in case it really was a predator. From there religion could have evolved when humans gave meaning to otherwise meaningless things so people just come to accept a wind god caused the grass to move and there no need to find out what really caused it to move (no need to see evidence). That is all fine but in the modern world, people still refuse to believe evidence after being shown that there was no snake or predator and was just the wind. For some reason the made up belief is more convincing than fact.

Another train of logic for some religions I looked into is, suffering in this life will see you rewarded greatly in the next, so it's building up a reward for yourself. This makes sense logically if you believe in the premise of a next life so sufficiently answers my question for those religions, even if you have to first accept in the idea of a "next life" despite a lack of evidence. Christianity does not preach this though, so there is no reason for people to do irrational things like harm themselves. Christianity talks of life after death, but since no one has lived a life after death and returned to tell them how good that after-death life is, there is no evidence of that either. This seems like an empty gamble where there isn't even evidence of a prize, unlike a large jackpot lottery where people know there will be a prize and getting a ticket will put you in the running for it, no matter how small the chance.

A third reasoning I looked into is that bad news spreads faster than good news, and that as the saying by Mark Twain goes, "a lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is still getting its boots on". This only answered the speed at which it is spread, not why it spreads so easily. In fact, rumours often don't even have evidence (re: my point about the Ponzi scheme having evidence). What is it about a lie or rumour that makes it spread so quickly and why doesn't fact spread as quickly and easily?

Finally, there is also the idea of Pascal's wager - that is, in the lack of evidence, it is better to believe and do and find out the prize/promise/god never existed than to not believe or do and finding out the promise/god/prophecy is true. This explains why some people choose to believe half heartedly ("I pray and go to church just in case") but does not explain the irrational actions covered in the article (and many other ones throughout history).


问:
Is it possible to completely describe a real object in terms of brain activity?
I've read that the way perception works in the brain, stimuli from the external world is converted into signals that travel through the brain until they reach regions of the brain that can "decode" them. Feel free to correct me if that statement seems naïve; I am not well-read in this area.

My question is, if you are given a recording of brain activity, and you're told it is with regard to the perception of some object in reality, is it possible to completely determine what that object was with just the activity in the brain?


问:
Are the bad effects of fatigue stronger for highly neurotic people?
Fatigue causes many bad effects like irritability, poor concentration, reduced ability to pay attention to the situation at hand, low motivation.

Question: Are the interpersonal bad effects of fatigue (irritability, and reduced ability to pay attention to the situation at hand) stronger for highly neurotic people, given that one of the two components of neuroticism is volatility (which encompasses emotional lability, irritability or anger, and difficulty controlling emotional impulses, De Young et al. 2007)?

Nb: As a sidenote (given that one question must be asked at a time) I suppose that, similarly, the detrimental effects that a bad alimentation has on mood might be stronger in highly neurotic people compared to in more emotionally stable people.

References:

DeYoung, C. G., Quilty, L. C., & Peterson, J. B. (2007). Between facets and domains: 10 aspects of the Big Five. Journal of personality and social psychology, 93(5), 880. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.93.5.880 [PDF]


问:
Observational Learning - Where does encoding, storage and retrieval occur?
It has been taught to me that there are 5 stages (or requirements) that enable observational learning to occur. That is, attention, retention, reproduction, motivation and reinforcement.

My teachers lecture slides state that the retention stage is defined by

Being able to encode, store and retrieve a mental representation of the
information in LTM.

I want to confirm if this is actually correct. I have not be introduced to the concept of memory yet fully, however, after researching a bit I believe a more accurate way of saying what my teacher wrote would be.

Attention is the component of observational learning that allows for encoding (mental representation of what was observed in memory), and retention is best characterised by storage (retaining that newly encoded trace) and then reproduction would be you actually retrieving (recovering the encoded trace from retention stage and then using it in some behavioural activity)?

Source

Also, why is Observational learning called observational learning and not observational memory? (I feel like this may be a stupid question, I apologise in advance if it is).


问:
Factor Analysis yielded The Big Five Personality: Were other statistical methods ever applied?
It is known that Factor Analysis performed on personality survey data yielded what we know today as the Big Five. However, is Factor Analysis the only possible statistical method here? In particular, I am asking because FA assumes a linear relationship, which may not capture all relationships in the data.</p>


问:
Why an emotion is "often" accompanied by a bodily reaction?
Baumeister and Bushman (2007) have given this definition of emotion:

a subjective state, often accompanied by a bodily reaction (e.g., increased heart rate) and an evaluative response, to some event

But I thought that emotion (see the synthesis in SE psycho here) is normally understood as the interpretation of an affect, affect which is a bodily reaction; so that you cannot have an emotion without having a bodily reaction, and so it is not that an emotion is often accompanied by a bodily reaction, but is always accompanied by a bodily reaction.

The wikipedia of Appraisal theory also states my understanding:

According to Schachter and Singer (1962)[26] we can have arousal without emotion, but we cannot have an emotion without arousal.

This question is based on the consensus among Constructionists.

References:

Baumeister, R. F., & Bushman, B. J. (2007). Angry emotions and aggressive behaviors. In G. Steffgen & M. Gollwitzer (Eds.), Emotions and aggressive behavior (pp. 61–75). Ashland, OH: Hogrefe & Huber.


问:
How are related basic/constructionist theories of emotions and James-Lange-Theory/Cannon-Bard-Theory/... of emotions?
In this SE question about "What causes emotions?", there are two answers, one which discusses the distinction between basic emotion theorists (Ekman) and constructionists (Russell, Watson), and the other which discusses a set of theories of emotions which seem to have no relation with the theories of the first answer (James-Lange-Theory, Cannon-Bard-Theory, Schachter-Singer-Theory).

How are related basic/constructionist theories of emotions and James-Lange-Theory/Cannon-Bard-Theory/... of emotions?

And also the conceptors of the James-Lange-Theory, Cannon-Bard-Theory, Schachter-Singer-Theory seem to be born a long time ago, so I wonder if the theories are outdated.


问:
What is a typical response rate to a survey of academics?
Suppose I sent out a survey to all of the authors who published at major venues in my field, and N% of them responded.

For what N would this be considered a success?

For what N would the response bias be considered a critical flaw?

Under what criteria would it be reasonable to use this survey to support statements about the attitudes of researchers in this field?


问:
Tears help remove chemical imbalances caused by stress?
Crying is a natural response to grief and loss. I don't think anyone would deny that. Whether it is an important part of the grieving process is debatable according to some circles, though. Should you allow yourself to cry, or should you suck it up and move on?

Looking at the psychological and physiological effects of grief and loss, according to Worden (2008),

Stress causes chemical imbalances in the body, and some researchers believe that tears remove toxic substances and help re-establish homeostasis. They hypothesize that the chemical content of tears caused by emotional stress is different from that of tears as a function of eye irritation. Tests are being done to see what types of catecholamine (mood-altering chemicals produced by the brain) is present in tears of emotion (Frey, 1980).

This kind of research could have benefits within many areas of psychology, but annoyingly,

the citation references an article that predates the book by 28 years, and this part of this edition of the book has not been updated to reflect on the findings of this research; and,

the article cited is not available that I can find, although it is cited in 23 articles.

Searching for catecholamine in tears in Google Scholar doesn't seem to produce any relevant results from what I've seen. Many are about catecholamines related to neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinsons and Alzheimers.

I came across one article which researched dopamine levels in tears (Martin & Brennan, 1993). Certainly not the chemical I would think you would want to be looking for in grief related stress research and homeostasis. Although, plasma levels of dopamine were researched by O'Connor, et al. (2013) who found that norepinephrine and dopamine did not predict complicated grief.

What is known from this research? Has anything been found to support the hypothesis?

References

Frey, W. H. (1980). Not-so-idle-tears. Psychology Today, 13, 91-92

Martin, X. D., & Brennan, M. C. (1993). Dopamine and its metabolites in human tears. European journal of ophthalmology, 3(2), 83-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/112067219300300206

O'Connor, M. F., Shear, M. K., Fox, R., Skritskaya, N., Campbell, B., Ghesquiere, A., & Glickman, K. (2013). Catecholamine predictors of complicated grief treatment outcomes. International journal of psychophysiology, 88(3), 349-352. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.09.014

Worden, J. W. (2008). Grief counseling and grief therapy: A handbook for the mental health practitioner (Fourth Edition). Springer Publishing Company.


问:
AI vs Human brains
Note: I'm new to neuroscience and AI.
I've read few articles about AI and studied them further.
So I have a question:
Human neurons release NT. The amount of NT released changes the frequency the next neuron is stimulated.
AI uses sigmoid neurons. Sigmoid neurons are continuous, so AI can change weights to each neuron by calculating the direction of $- \nabla C$. AI learns that way, so continuity of neurons are important.

My question:

Can human neurons be interpreted as a combination of perceptron neurons and sigmoid neurons?
Human neurons have threshold values, which resembles perceptron neurons, and control the amount of nt, which resembles sigmoid neurons.

If neurons can be interpreted as a combination of those two neurons, what makes the human brain and AI so different? Why do experts predict that AI will outsmart humans when (currently) the human brain can compute faster than AI?

Title: AI vs Human brains


问:
Are social anxiety disorder and selective mutism classified as communication disorders?
I've been trying to figure this out for a long time, but I don't understand much about classification of disorders and I feel uncertain after looking at the definitions. Based on what I've read, I think these don't qualify as communication disorders, but are instead anxiety disorders.

I've looked at this: https://www.asha.org/policy/rp1993-00208/ and this https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/communication-disorders

If I look at the the second one, it first gives this:

Communication disorders affect a person’s ability to detect, receive, process, and comprehend the concepts or symbols necessary for communication. It can affect hearing, language, and speech. Causes include neurological damage due to a stroke.

But then it gives this definition:

Communication disorders are a group of conditions involving problems with receiving, processing, sending, and comprehending various forms of information and communication.

On the surface, selective mutism and social anxiety disorder would seem to meet the criteria for involving "sending" information, even if they don't meet the other conditions.

And it would seem to me that articulation disorders also do not meet every criteria either, but are included.

An articulation disorder is the atypical production of speech sounds characterized by substitutions, omissions, additions or distortions that may interfere with intelligibility.

If I look at the ASHA definition, I can almost understand that social anxiety disorder would be excluded.

A communication disorder is an impairment in the ability to receive, send, process, and comprehend concepts or verbal, nonverbal and graphic symbol systems. A communication disorder may be evident in the processes of hearing, language, and/or speech. A communication disorder may range in severity from mild to profound. It may be developmental or acquired. Individuals may demonstrate one or any combination of communication disorders. A communication disorder may result in a primary disability or it may be secondary to other disabilities.

I can sort of understand why it would be useful to separate anxiety disorders from these, but I'm not very knowledgeable in psychology, so I was hoping someone could verify what the answer is.


问:
Is the Big Five universal?
Talking about this study:

Schmitt, D. P., Allik, J., McCrae, R. R., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2007). The geographic distribution of Big Five personality traits: Patterns and profiles of human self-description across 56 nations. Journal of cross-cultural psychology, 38(2), 173-212.

This study acknowledges that cultural norms can affect how Big Five questionnaires are responded to, and therefore may affect the comparison of the Big Five data from one culture to another.

On the other hand, the authors of this study, as well as the other psychologists working with the Big Five, don't seem to consider that it constitutes an important caveat for the Big Five as a construct. I don't understand why. The Big Five is supposed to be generalizable from one individual to another, from one group to another, from one culture to another.

The solution proposed by the authors was :

For the construction of truly universal and cross-culturally transportable personality instruments, however, it will be necessary to measure these biases and response styles to take them into account and improve the construction of culture-fair measuring instruments.

To my knowledge, this idea prompted to create a Japan-adapted Big Five for instance.

But a possible rebuttal would be: may not this solution be ad-hoc?

The Big Five was created based on the lexical hypothesis, which uses texts to find out terms describing human personality, and then using statistical computation to find how these terms cluster together.
Although I did not go over all the history of the Big Five creation, we could suppute that their creators being Western, they used western texts only to find these words, and the psychological clusters.

What if they had applied separately this method to each culture/language? Maybe we could have find completely different sets of personality dimensions from one geo-cultural areas to another.

Or what if they had mixed texts from a lot of different cultures? Maybe we could have find very different personality dimensions, or dimensions (neuroticism, extraversion) which description greatly differ from the one we have now in the current Big Five.

Title: Is the Big Five universal?


问:
Does Stack Exchange's extrinsic reward system decrease intrinsic interest in asking and answering questions?
I've read that extrinsic rewards can decrease intrinsic interest. If you want to kill someone's interest in activity X, an effective method would be to reward them for doing X (e.g. give them money, or recognition, etc.). This makes the person believe that they're doing X only for the reward. Then after a while, take away the rewards. The person will then have no interest in doing X.

Stack Exchange has a brilliant system based on reputation points, that motivates people to contribute high quality questions and answers. But is there a hidden cost?

Does Stack Exchange's extrinsic reward system decrease intrinsic interest in asking and answering  questions?

On a more personal level: I ask a lot of questions on Mathematics Stack Exchange, and enjoy getting upvotes. I wonder, if Stack Exchange suddenly disappeared, would I find myself less curious about mathematics?

(I hope my question doesn't come across as antagonistic towards Stack Exchange.)


问:
Which of the appraisal theory of emotions or the construction theory of emotions tends to be proved the most correct?
The accepted answer of this SE questions states that "The meta-analytic evidence seems to favor the [constructionist] view [over the basic emotion view], but there's still a buttload of work to be done on this end."

Hower, an important view in the research on emotion, the appraisal theory, was not discussed in the answer.

Which of the appraisal theory of emotions or the construction theory of emotions tends to be proved the most correct?

Research has proved that the emotion regulation technique of re-appraisal is very efficient. This highlights the accuracy of the appraisal theory.

Research has proved that observing and acknowledging one’s emotional or affective state is efficient for emotional regulation. This highlights the accuracy of the constructionist theory (because its points that it is the affective state per se, and its appraisal, which could have an influence on the experience of the emotion).

Thus, research on emotion regulation may point to a unification of appraisal and constructionist theories. But I don’t think both theories are supposed to be unified.


问:
How do you call the effect of intense disgust when faced with (something)?
Phobia is defined (Wikipedia, DSM-5) as

[the] persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation.

It seems that psychiatrists do not classify as phobia reactions of intense disgust or repulsion, without a fear component.

Such a reaction can be triggered by anything and many of these triggers do not inspire fear but rather the reactions I described above (source: reading several forums on phobias)

My question: how do you call the effect of intense, life-impacting disgust when faced with (something)?

Note: this is a complete rewrite of a previous question, hopefully more aligned with the rules of the community


问:
Is there a Mach band on a step edge or not?
Recently, I've been reading about the Mach band effect and there is a particular case which is confusing me a little bit, since people don't seem to agree on what actually should be perceived.

It is the scenario where you have a step-function luminance profile, i.e. an abrupt transition between two (distinct) regions of constant brightness, resulting in a sharp edge. In this paper, the author explicitly states that "there are no Mach bands at a step edge", however, here it is said that "just like the Mach
bands in vision, the undershoot and overshoot depend on the change in the
gradient of the stimulus distribution. The undershoot and overshoot
reach their maximum for a step function." Well, which way it is then?

Although I understand this argument here, I do actually see an (apparent) brightness decay/rise in these stripes, near the edges, which are essentially just a series of step-functions.


问:
Is psychological well-being positively influenced by physiological well-being (and vice versa)?
Is psychological well-being positively influenced by physiological well-being (and vice versa) ?

And conversely is psychological well-being positively impacted by physiological suffering (and vice versa)?

I have searched for medical or psychological research on the subject. Although the results of the studies I have found go in the sense of responding affirmatively to these questions (yes physiological well-being positively impacts psychological well-being, and physiological suffering negatively impacts psychological well-being), yet these studies tend to focus on health, that is, more extreme conditions such as chronic illness, based on vast cohort of patients*.

My question concerns more day-to-day conditions (high level of energy, feeling of good health; fatigue, mild stomach pain, mild headache), which I refer to as "physiological well-being/suffering" at the individual level, and the direct mechanic correlation between psychological and physiological and well-being.

I suppose that constructionist and appraisal theories of emotions would predict that it does, but I unfortunately did not find such research and results.

*By that I mean the kind of study which find a positive correlation between the consumption of green tea and good health based on questionnaires concerning people life habits, but with no investigation of the mechanical factors at play at the individual level, so that researchers don't know if there is really a direct impact of green tea consumption on good health.

Precisions:

To investigate this question, the experiment could go like this:

Recruit 200 volunteers on the Internet, give them an APP, and something like 5 times a day for 1 month ask them something like five questions concerning their psychological and physiological states at the particular moment the question pops up on the APP: "How does your stomach feel?", "Do you feel physically energetic and light?", "Do you feel anxious?", "Do you feel sad?". We could find associations between psychological and physiological well-being not explained by chance.

Other methods I can think of (with a laboratory and biological and psychological manipulations of the patients states) would be ethically and practically difficult to conduct.


问:
Emotional Intelligence and perceiving emotions
One of the components of Emotional Intelligence is to be able perceive emotions in oneself:

"Salovey and Mayer's conception of EI strives to define EI within the confines of the standard criteria for a new intelligence. (...) However, after pursuing further research, their definition of EI evolved into "the capacity to reason about emotions, and of emotions, to enhance thinking. It includes the abilities to accurately perceive emotions, to access and generate emotions so as to assist thought, to understand emotions and emotional knowledge, and to reflectively regulate emotions so as to promote emotional and intellectual growth."
(Wikipedia)

But to my understanding, theories of emotions know consider that an emotion involve the appraisal, so that you can not have an emotion without being aware of it.


问:
Effect of philosophy on mental health
Philosophy involves trying to understand the world around us, and our thoughts, and ideas in general rigorously. This would lead to a lot of thinking about our ideas and feelings. This feels similar to some forms of therapy where we actively think about what we are thinking or feeling.

Furthermore, it feels that a habit of philosophising would mean that we are more aware/ mindful of our own patterns of thinking, and are more likely to identify harmful or faulty reasoning, or say, apprehensions without reason etc. This also should help in reducing stress etc.

All the above are just mt common sense guesswork, which can of course be all wrong. I am aware that reading at least some parts of philosophy, for example Schopenhauer as many say, may actually lead to more negativity.

So what I want to know is: are there good quality empirical studies on whether philosophising or studying philosophy if not philosophising, has any effect on stress, anxiety or other mental health related issues?

Title: Effect of philosophy on mental health


问:
Roles of Brain Regions (neocortex and hippocampus) in Explicit (declarative) LTM
My question is what is the role of the hippocampus, neocortex and amygdala in the encoding, storage and retrieval of declarative (explicit) memory, specifically episodic and semantic

I am sort of confused as to what the role of the neocortex and hippocampus is in explicit long term memory. I have found some sources of information to show my thought process, what I have researched to find an answer.

The consolidation of memory into the neocortex is thought to involve a loss of time and place, contextual information, and a transition to more gist-based, fact-like semantic memory.

Figure 2(b) shows that hippocampus = remembering specifics (episodic) and neocortex=extracting generalities (transition into semantic)

Semantic memory is stored by the same systems as in episodic memory. These include hippocampal and temporal lobes to encode memories.

This has me thinking that the role of the hippocampus is to store episodic memory, and the role of the neocortex is to store semantic memory from the episodic memory recalled by hippocampus. However, I read up that hippocampus is responsible for storing both episodic and semantic memory which has me slightly confused as to what exactly the neocortex does?


问:
How do you model signal detection in an alternative non-forced-choice task?
This question is about signal detection theory for psychology research.

Our study used a memory task where participants were given four options: A, B, C, and "I don't know". I have multiple conditions and want to examine how memory differs between those conditions. How would you calculate sensitivity (d') and bias for such a task?

I've tried looking for some answers. There are many papers out there describing how to measure sensitivity (d') and bias within yes/no tasks and alternative forced-choice tasks. However, I can't find a paper on this type of alternative non-forced-choice task? Does anybody have some ideas and possibly have a reference on hand?

The only idea I have is just treating "I don't know" as a choice, like the others, and applying methods for 4-alternative forced-choice designs. However, this doesn't seem ideal.


问:
How do i explain Aspd
I suffer from ASPD and i want to try to explain to people what it is in a way they don’t feel scared of me. I also want more people to understand that we who have this disorder aren’t always scary. How do i do this in a way that is easy to understand.</p>

Title: How do i explain Aspd


问:
Do neurodivergent people experience orgasms and their aftermath differently, in a neurofysiological sense?
I'm curious as to whether any studies have been conducted on the neurofysiological processes in the brains of neurotypical versus neurodivergent (e.g. AD(H)D, Asperger's) people during and after they experience an orgasm.

In particular, I wonder if people with AD(H)D on average have a longer refractory period than neurotypical people, and if so, how these different times can be explained from a neurophysiological perspective.

I've searched for studies on this topic on Google Scholar (with key terms like "refractory period sex adhd" and "orgasm neurodivergent people"), but those queries didn't yield a lot of interesting results.


问:
Is there a complete overview and classification of all Probabilistic Neuronal Codes (PPC)?
I am trying to gather an explicit and complete overview of so-called Probabilistic Neuronal Codes (PPC). I have found various PPC models from literature, but have difficulties having them classified, and being certain that the collection is also physiological relevant (not only mathematical/hypothetical playground) and complete.

Friston 2009, Table 2, is already 14 years old and yet, my ultimate source, but the classification over there is not very comprehensive.

My question:

May you provide with more recent investigations, where all neurophysiological relevant PPCs were gathered, compared and classified in mathematical and physiological well explained and comprehensive way?

Whether you may have an own proposal for such a collection and classification?

Thank you in advance.


问:
When typing, accidentally writing a phonetically similar word instead of the intended one - is there a name for this? Any explanation?
Question:

Is there a scientific term for the following phenomenon, or, if not, what would be a possible explanation (e.g. certain brain structures not working as smoothly together, as required for the task)?
What would be some related publications, I could read to get a better understanding?
Note that I am not a neuroscientist, but a somewhat scientifically literate layman.

Phenomenon:

It often happens to me, that, when typing on a keyboard, I accidentally write a different but phonetically similar word instead of the one I intend to write, even when I am certain about the correct spelling. Examples: bear -> bare, here -> hear, heart -> hard

When proof-reading, I will usually catch those mistakes, but only if I consciously focus on spelling, rather than on improving my wording.
I usually have an "inner voice" when reading or typing, so I would assume, this happens because similar words are associated simultaneously when my inner voice reads the text and there is an error when translating this into the motor activity.
Note that I do type "semi-consciously" in the sense that the keys are pressed without conscious thought or letter-seeking, but that I have never learned typing systematically and use a rather unorthodox and chaotic four finger technique at a moderate speed of ~200cpm. I could not describe where most letters are on a standard keyboard, but will hit them without thought when typing actual sentences. However, I am able to type blindly only for a few words at once, before I have to slow down and check my fingers' positions.
I believe above details might be relevant, as that typing style might require a lot of cognitive capacity, allowing for misassociations to occur.


问:
Does growing up with digital technology make it easier to integrate with it?
I was watching a documentary called "Was geht noch ohne Internet" on the ARDmediathek, and in it, was discussed how it is difficult for old people to become internet literate. There were also exampls of how there are apparently pushbacks in other countries, for eg: Spain.

A comonly said thing in the documentary is that, for the young people the digital technologies are easier to use as they grew up with it, while it's difficult for old people because they didn't.

Does this common saying have a scientific basis, in sense that, it is more difficult for adult and older people to integrate with digital technology/learn usage of devices?


问:
how to understand and remember study material in the fastest way possible
Any science backed study methods to memorize and learn how to apply complex physics and mathematics formulas and loads of text and information and structures of compounds for chemistry?</p>


问:
Is psychopathy defined by the innate lack of certain capabilities or by a group of characterological traits?
Sorry for the title, I can't see how can I properly summarize my question in just 150 characters...

I used to understand psychopathy as the incapability to empathize, feel fear and make moral judgements because of innate, biological damage to the relevant parts of the brain. I cannot prove it now, but I believe this definition is widespread enough to be noteworthy. Is this definition correct?

Kevin Dutton, among others, seems to advance a quite different definition. In an interview for a Polish newspaper he said:

Gdy psycholog, na przykład ja, mówi o psychopatii, ma na myśli szczególny zestaw cech, wyróżniających jednostkę: odporność psychiczną, brak strachu, pewność siebie, opanowanie pod presją, koncentrację, charyzmę, urok, ale i brak litości, okrucieństwo. I oczywiście ten sztandarowy brak empatii, o którym tak często słyszymy.

I would translate this back into English as follows:

When psychologists like me speak about psychopathy they mean a peculiar set of distinctive traits: mental toughness, fearlesness, self-confidence, composure under pressure, concentration, charisma, charm, but also ruthlessness, cruelty. And of course this flagship lack of empathy we hear about so often.

These two definitions are quite different. Perhaps it'd be best to see the difference in this way:

Consider any successful Mafia lord, assassin, any other criminal. Or, moving away from what is typically considered evil, a spy. Or, even reaching what is usually considered righteous, a police officer who fights crime or a Medieval knight who is the epitome of all knightly virtues, who is the Hero to the Downtrodden, Vanquisher of Evil and Dispenser of Justice.

For all these occupations it seems dangerous to be incapable of feeling fear, as this may lead to unnecessary risky, reckless behavior that may soon become one's undoing. It also seems that at least some degree of empathy could be beneficial, as this could help one better understand those around oneself, aid charisma, enable one to manage one's subordinates better. Therefore, as per my first definition of psychopathy, it would even seem beneficial not to be a psychopath even if moral considerations are rejected.

However, for all these occupations it also seems vital to have a strong character, to be charismatic, to not panic under fear, to be able to inflict pain or death without hesitation, and to not be easily distracted. Therefore, under Dutton's definition, it would seem that every crime lord, spy, police officer or Medieval knight however chivalrous is either psychopathic or incompetent.

Another difference: I was usually told that psychopathy, as an innate, biological condition can never be acquired nor cured. However, as per Dutton's definition, it would seem that people can move up or down the scale of psychopathy during their lives depending on which qualities they chose to consciously develop.

Given that both definitions, despite their superficial similarities, seem to actually be radically different, may I ask which one is correct?


问:
Is the ability to inflict violence effectively strongly inversely correlated with ability to make moral judgements?
Correct me if I understand Kevin Dutton incorrectly. (I only base the below understanding on some media interviews and his website; I still have to read his books).

Let me attempt to summarize what he says:

Morality has been developed to help communities survive

Most people have moral inhibitions that prevent them from behaving immorally, at least until they fight their own empathy and force themselves to behave more ruthlessly in spite of these inhibitions

However, there are also people unbounded by such inhibitions, who instead are motivated purely by selfish pragmatism. When this trait is paired with mental toughness, fearlesness, self-confidence, composure under pressure, concentration, charisma, charm we say that the person is a psychopath.

Psychopaths are typically considered 'evil' and therefore stigmatized. This is improper since a portion of psychopaths is beneficial, even vital to the survival of the community. These people are best suited for the necessary jobs of soldiers, policemen, CEOs, surgeons, etc. Psychopathy should, therefore, be best understood as a set of skills that is extremely dangerous if misused, but also extremely beneficial if used to serve the whole society.

I may understand something incorrectly, but it seems to be that he offers such a dichotomy:

The presence of moral inhibitions, empathy, lack of ability to efficiently behave in a decisive, ruthless or even violent way vs.

Amoralism, being motivated purely by selfish pragmatism, lack of empathy, the ability to efficiently behave in a decisive, ruthless or violent way.

How can, therefore, ruthless people behave in a way beneficial to the society? If I understand Dutton correctly: precisely because of their selfish motivation, not in spite of it. If they are intelligent and self-controlled enough they may understand that if they start mugging others on the street they will just end up in jail; but they may also sign up to special forces and start fighting terrorists, protecting all more morally inclined citizens.

This is a chilling conclusion since it seems to entail that should the current political situation change then all police officers who now fight crime could, in a single day, become criminals themselves, preying on the innocent.

And this is where Duttons model (again, if I understand it correctly) seems counter-intuitive for me. It seems to preclude the class of people who act decisively, ruthlessly or even violently because of their idealistic, moral convictions, rather than because of their lack of such convictions. Such people may include:

The Medieval ideal of a knight, who fights evil to protect the poor, wronged and downtrodden;

The theocratic terrorist who kills all infidels because of their strong religious convictions;

The WWII soldier or partisan who fights the Nazis because he is appalled by their crimes;

The cliched Knight Templar who fights for some ideology he strongly believes in.
All the above tropes are so common it is counterintuitive for me to seemingly preclude them.

Were there any studies tackling this subject? Trying to establish if idealistic motivations for decisive, ruthless or violent behavior do indeed happen, or if decisive, ruthless or violent behavior is almost exclusively motivated by selfish and amoral motivations?

I suppose such studies might be tricky, because if the prevalence of idealistically motivated violence is indeed extremely low, then it might be useless to just ask people why they do what to do - their stated motivations will be just a facade for their actual motivations. For example, a police officer might answer they wish to enforce the law while in fact they hope to be able to bully others or maybe even kill someone if occasion happens without going to jail; or a terrorist may answer they serve Islam and do the will of Allah while in fact they traveled to ISIS because they wanted to go berserk and butcher others like there was no tomorrow and ISIS offered them the possibility to do so.

PS. Reason I'm asking this question: Sometimes I try to write stories as a hobby. And I have the idea for a story of a deeply empathic, compassionate person who is appalled by the perceived harm caused to others, as she cannot stand to watch others suffer unjustly. From this she finds surprising strength and charisma no one, not even herself, would consider her capable of; she takes arms and leads a rebellion in defense of her people. In the end she is not morally justified in her actions, but she firmly believes she is. Now I saw Dutton and I have doubts if this idea is not self-refuting? If traits such as 'charismatic', 'able to effectively take up arms and lead a rebellion' are not mutually exclusive with traits such as 'compassionate', 'empathic', 'idealistic', 'motivated by incapability to watch others suffer unjustly'?


问:
Looking for the name of the cognitive skills test that includes a memory test involving the names of cartoon aliens
I took a cca. 60-minute-long cognitive test about 10 years ago but I can't remember its name (haha...) But I can remember a part that was a memory test involving cartoon aliens and another part when I had to listen to and tell apart very slightly different-sounding gibberish words. I don't have contact anymore with the psychologist who administered the test and I couldn't identify the test based on my memories. My guess is that it could have been a subset of the Woodcock-Johnson but I'm not sure.

Can you recognize the test based on my rather incomplete description?


问:
What're the best ways to improve hand-eye coordination/motor skills especially aiming "games"?
Aiming in video games, is a prime example of a fine motor skill, & maybe hand-eye coordination "idk? I'm no neuroscientist", but the community of aim practice & improvement "for video games like cs-go for example" is full of pseudo scientific concepts, like muscle memory, with some people recommending sticking on a certain mouse sensitivity "edpi" & never changing it otherwise it'd ruin your "muscle memory", others say that the use of a sensitivity randomizer, or different sensitivities is better, as it forces your brain to focus more, or work harder, or that training the tracking aiming for example on a higher sens will make you more accurate when you play on your normal sens & so on, another thing is advising of training till exhausting or while exhausted claiming that the brain is best able to learn & retain motor skill when exhausted, o using repetition & so on , what does actual research that has been done in this area say about all of this, & what're the best ways to learn, refine & retain a motor skill such as video games aiming?</p>


问:
Is there term to refer to the desire for a coherent narrative to one's life?
Looking to see if there is a pre-existing term to describe this type of belief/hope.

By "coherent narrative" I mean a narrative that is alike that of a story, with an overall meaningful arc. This could also be phrased as the desire for one's life to be as fated and complete as that of a scripted character.

This is part of an attempt to write a piece linking media exposure to performative behaviours and to the feelings of purposelessness caused by the lack of such an organised narrative to life.

I have no formal education in psychology and so am just looking for any keywords to find resources to learn more about this phenomenon, and any information that can be shared here! :)


问:
Do humans see rates of change of colour
On a computer, we measure colour numerically, as three values, say red, green, blue. While our eyes include detectors for red, green and blue (although these aren't exactly the same as the light emitted by a computer), it is by no means obvious that we see numerical information. All I can report myself seeing is things that are more red than other things. This about order: whether something has more or less of some property. Numbers store more information than just order. One way to establish that human vision is more numerical in nature is to see if sensible things that can be defined using numbers can be detected using eyes. For example, a rate of change. To say something is getting more or less red is purely about order. But to say something is getting more red at a certain rate, is substantially more. Suppose we had a gradient from RGB (0,0,0) to RGB (255,0,0), that changed colour at a linear rate, but somewhere that rate changed. For example, the red value increased by 1 every pixel, then slowed to increasing by 1 every two pixels, all of a sudden. Would humans be able to reliably detect where the change in the rate of change occurred, just by visual inspection?

(Technical notes: maybe we don't have reason to suppose that the human brain uses the same number to represent the amount of red light as a computer. But, if the human brain uses a differentiable transformation of this (which is reasonable, monotonic transformations are differentiable almost everywhere), then a sudden change in rate should still be detectable. And humans see more than just order: if I see red next to black, I know there's a sudden change. So there's a notion of continuity in what I see. That's still not as much information as is stored in numbers.)

Title: Do humans see rates of change of colour


问:
chart of all combinations of the extremes of the big five traits
Is there a comprehensive exposition, account or chart that covers all the combinations of the extremes of the big five traits available on the internet, with brief descriptions of the characteristics of each combination? Something similar to a Myers-Briggs personality type chart.</p>


问:
Observations on the role of iteration time in creative work
I recall hearing about a concept related to one's ability to work creatively.  Essentially, the ability to do creative work was linked to the time between taking an action and seeing the result of that action.

As an engineer and software developer, this concept resonates strongly with me.  The ability to quickly iterate through an idea and explore ideas is enabled by fast idea-result loops and substantially hindered by slow idea-result loops.

Is there a name for this concept / theory?  Is there a common citation for this idea?

I would like to read a bit more and put this idea on firm footing -- such that I can reference it when giving talks on tool development for creative processes.


问:
The definition and measurement of Machiavellianism
APA provides the following definition:

a personality trait marked by a calculating attitude toward human relationships and a belief that ends justify means, however ruthless. A Machiavellian is one who views other people more or less as objects to be manipulated in pursuit of his or her goals, if necessary through deliberate deception.

This definition, while establishes that a Machiavellian person believes manipulation is an efficient method of achieving one's goals, tells nothing about an actual willingness to manipulate others. Similarly, a person can believe that having a sexual affair with the boss is an efficient way to get a raise or a promotion. Yet, I expect, the amount of people actually willing to do that is many times lower.

The first standard test created to measure Machiavellianism was MACH-IV. The questions there are depersonalized. For example:

Anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble.

While a personalized variant would be:

I don't completely trust anyone.

It's possible that the amount of people responding positively to the first statement would differ from the amount of people responding positively to the second statement. And these two questions therefore would measure different things.

The other issue is that some of the questions have little to do with proneness to manipulate people. Consider the following item:

People suffering from incurable diseases should have the choice of being put painlessly to death.

This question might be measuring negative empathy, because people who want to put themselves to death painlessly likely suffer. Meanwhile, manipulative people are considered to lack empathy. Which, although, also is questionable, because deferred empathy, for example, might help to keep people you have offended. After all, there is a reason that out of 71 original items this one has made it to the selected 20.

Because MACH-IV has problems, another scale, MPS, was created. Unlike in MACH-IV, in MPS most items are personalized. An average score in MPS was significantly lower than an average score in MACH-IV, which is consistent with my prediction.

However, this scale might have its own problems. It's not actually clear if people who are more likely to manipulate others have a significantly higher desire for power or control. The reasons for manipulation can be different, including conflict avoidance, for example, by making up excuses.

Scores of another scale to measure Machiavellianism, FFMI, are relatively weakly correlated with MACH-IV and MPS scores.

One of the facets of this scale is ambitiousness. It's unclear why it was chosen as a facet of Machiavellianism, as defined by APA. While it is true that people in high-ranking positions, such as CEOs, score higher in both MACH-IV, MPS and FFMI, it can't be yet concluded that ambition plays a significant role in it. There can be a lot of ambitious people unwilling to manipulate, but since they are unwilling to manipulate, they might have problems actually satisfying their ambitions.

At the same time, the amount of manipulative people likely is significantly greater than the amount of ambitious people. There likely are more people who overreport the amount of work they have done than there are people who flatter their boss.

A few other scales that measure Dark Triad traits as a whole exist. Research using it shows that Machiavellianism subscale scores are correlated with drug consumption. This might mean that pleasure seeking is a more important trait associated with willingness to manipulate than ambitiousness.

However, yet, since so many different measures, all significantly differing from each others, exist, which ones would be considered more accurate in measuring Machiavellianism, as defined by APA. Would a new scale be required to accurately measure Machiavellianism? How would one approach this? Would the research have to directly ask participants about their willingness and frequency of manipulation? Ask participants what they'd do in a particular situation?


问:
Can you use a test for clinical purposes if it is available in a public thesis?
The situation is as follows: say you find a Phd/ MSc thesis on a university's online library. In the Appendix part of the thesis, there is a copy of the psychometric tools used, for e.g the digit span test from the WAIS scale.
Would it be okay to take it from there and use it for clinical purposes? Or is it still protected from copyrights? Who could prosecute you?
Thank you very much in advance!</p>


问:
Comparing factor analyses from different surveys
I am trying to replicate a study that used factor analysis on a survey to identify latent constructs. So I administered a similar survey and also performed a factor analysis. How do I compare the results of these two analyses?  Or, can someone provide an example of how this is done in the literature? Thank you!</p>


问:
Effects of Methamphetamine
When I walk downtown in Seattle, I often see individuals who appear to be "high" on various substances, "crouched" down(bent over) and rocking back and forth. I asked about this since I was curious and "locals" told me it's usually Methamphetamines (Meth) that makes them do this.

This behavior seems to be common among them when they are under the influence. I'm genuinely curious to understand the reasons behind this specific behavior. What could be causing drug addicts to exhibit rocking and crouching movements while high? Are there any psychological or physiological factors that contribute to this behavior?

I would be grateful if someone could explain this in plain English. My psychology lingo ends with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, unfortunately.

Please note that my intention is solely to seek knowledge and understand the underlying causes, without passing judgment.

Title: Effects of Methamphetamine


问:
Hearing a Foreign Language vs Native Language
I was wondering if anyone knew the term for the following phenomenon.

When you watch a movie in a foreign language, the words spoken by the actors have no meaning and just seem like a series of sounds.

But, when you watch a movie in your native language, the words suddenly "feel" different.  It suddenly seems to come alive.

I was wondering if there was a name for this.  And, what is the cognitive mechanism that describes this?


问:
Does an extrovert have an advantage over an introvert on the WAIS-IV Arithmetic subtest?
I guess yes, because an extrovert gets more exposure to verbal conversation and then is more able to remember what the proctor said on the Arithmetic subtest. However, someone else said that this is not true and that attention control stays constant despite having more exposure to verbal conversations. Who is correct?

Would the arithmetic subtest score be deflated for someone who doesn't go out and speak to others as much as the average person?

The arithmetic subtest consists of spoken math word problems and the testee answers the proctor in 30 seconds with a repeat of the question if the testee asks. This is a WMI subtest on the WAIS IV.


问:
Why some people like be put on pedestal? Or they crave to be treated more better than others?
Some people near me crave more respect from me to them. The catch here is I never speak to them or spoke just for some instance of hi and bye. Still they want some kind of respect or better treatment from me.
How I know they say this to other people and they say it back to me.
Top genric sample designation of people who do this: Politician, Police, Doctor, lawyer</p>