问:
Can one go mad from the revelation in the real life
There are tropes commonly used in cosmic horror works that boil down to the following idea. A human mind when faced with something utterly incomprehensible may break into insanity and never get back to sanity.

For sure, this is just works of fiction and most likely they have exaggerated something that may actually happen in the reality. For example, if a person learns about some big dangers that may happen in the future, it may cause an extreme anxiety in them, which can cause them to be unable to live a normal live or behave in normal ways. Yet, that may very well depend on the persons' predisposition, and some other person learning about the very same fact may react in much less caring way.

Hence, my question is the following. Do our minds indeed have a common mechanism that will cause most of humans lose sanity when faced with some information way hard for it to comprehend?

To be more precise, by insanity I do not mean any particular mental illness, but rather a set of behaviors that do not allow a person to sustain themselves, be a part of the society and overall reduce their chances of survival.

Ideally, examples would comprise

a revelation: a new piece of information that becomes available to a person

a reaction: once relevation sinks in (matter of less than a day) a person goes insane with no chance of recovery

I guess a proper search would start with the effects that an immediate (psychological only) stress may have on a human mind, but I was not able to find anything as drastic.


问:
Statistical analyses for framing effect study
I am running study to determine if females are more influenced by the framing effect. I designed a survey with three overall questions, each with a "positive frame" and a "negative frame". Each participant would be randomly chosen to answer either the positive or negative frame, and each frame would have a 1-6 Likert scale where participants would rate whether or not they would choose one of two options presented in the questions' scenarios (i.e. rate 1 for definitely choosing drug A and rate 6 for definitely choosing drug B). I already compared the means of the positive frame and negative frame for each gender using a two-sample t-test (see table below), and I was wondering how I would go about analyzing whether or not females are more influenced by the framing effect.

I have a few questions:

Using this scale, can I assume that the scale is linear - i.e. is the change from 5 to 6 the same as from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 3?

Can I use t-tests and means to report and interpret the results of the experiment?

In comparing the male and female differences in the two frames (i.e comparing the statistical significance between 0.592 and 0.724), should I consider a difference in the absolute level (i.e. F-M, so 0.724-0.592 = 0.132) or a difference in magnitude (F/M = 0.724/0.592 = 1.223)? How would I run statistical tests to determine significance for either approach?

The original question - how I would go about analyzing whether or not females are more influenced by the framing effect?

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0


问:
What is selfhatred?
It is impossible to hate oneself. Psychologs take feelings that man can have only towards others, but not towards himself, and put it everywhere as something "creative".</p>

Title: What is selfhatred?


问:
What does the brain release in anticipation of a rewards besides dopamine?
Dopamine is released in anticipation of a reward.  Does the brain release other neurotransmitters besides dopamine in anticipation of a reward?

I'm wondering if the mere thought of a reward will trigger the release of small amounts of other neurotransmitters like endorphins.  It would help explain how dopamine would work.


问:
How real is Jungian Cognitive Functions?
In the scientific community, MBTI is looked upon as nothing more than pseudoscience. However, what about Jungian functions? I believe there are some truth to it, but what do you guys think?</p>


问:
Are there any studies on how different kinds of pornography effect someone?
It is well-established that use of pornography can cause sexual dysfunctions.

Are there any studies that have evaluated the impact of pornography on an individual depending on the type of pornography used? Some examples of different types of pornography include erotica, adult audio, adult comics (Hentai), digital porn (3d figures or animation), adult games, adult videos etc.

(I am particularly interested to know whether they all have the same kind of impact or some are more detrimental to sexual and mental health than the other forms.)


问:
Could bi-tasking be productive in humans?
Introduction:

Based on an article on brain laterization, it's said that a lateralized brain can do two tasks simultaneously.

Lateralized chicks could pick food out of the pebbles with one eye and one half of the brain while using the other eye and other half of their brain to monitor the skies for predators. Not only could non-lateralized chicks not complete the two tasks simultaneously, but their performance of the single task deteriorated. This suggests that the evolutionary advantage of lateralization comes from the capacity to perform separate parallel tasks in each hemisphere of the brain.

Question:

While multitasking is counterproductive, do we have research or examples showing that bi-tasking may be actually improving productivity?

Extra details:
If you have answers, it'd be great to add details on topics such as:

does bi-tasking work in some types of people better than others?;

what are the most productive cases of bi-tasking and what are ones which bring only marginal benefits;

does your example of bi-tasking impede other abilities when practicing it and does it have any long-term effects (either good or bad)?


问:
How do people choose at random?
This question is inspired by one asked at MathOverflow.  (These questions at Cognitive Sciences and at Cross Validated might also be relevant.)

Are there any studies on what choices humans commonly make when asked
  to think of a choice "at random"?

For example, this website claims that when people are asked to think of a card (in a standard 52-card deck), they often select the nine of diamonds, the ace of spades, the queen of hearts, or the six of clubs.  Or when a person is asked to think of a number between 1 and 1,000, they will often select 333.

Title: How do people choose at random?


问:
Why do we seem to have an internal drive to use different expressions(mostly when writing)?
How come we have so many words/phrases that share the same meaning?

I suppose the most obvious answer to this would be that through communication between people with accent/language A and B, new words/phrases were added from A to B and vice versa.

I find however that when we are writing longer texts, we are ensuring that we are not using the same word/expression too often and—if we do—replace them with something else that has the same meaning. In other words: It seems to me like we have an internal drive to use different expressions.

I was wondering if there was any (maybe evolutionary) explanation for this, as it kind of adds a lot of overhead to communication:

Time: unnecessary learning of new words whose meaning we're already capable of expressing with other words

Resources: necessity of a slightly bigger neuronal structure to accommodate those words/expressions

Complexity: more words need to be distinguished, which makes the understanding of the spoken word harder

How does this compare to animals? Do we know whether they also have several ways of expressing the same thing?

ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 3.0


问:
What are the most well-understood vocal animal languages?
There are many examples of animal language that involve vocal pattens or "grammar".
For example, there is the the Bee dance, bird songs, whale songs, dogs.
Bird vocalization includes both bird calls and bird songs. There are Parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds.

What are the most well-understood vocal animal languages?


问:
Is the eye direction language dependent on the direction of writing?
I've read from various sources about the eye direction language. What is of my special interest now, is:

looking right means thinking (about future, new ideas etc.)

looking left means remembering (looking into past)

When I've thought about it, I've noticed the possible explanation in our writing.

We write from left to right, so:

the future is on the right, looking right means looking into future

the past is on the left, looking left means looking into past

Is the eye language dependent on the writing system? Are there any researches about the differences between western culture, and, say, Arabic, where people write from right to left?


问:
Test-retest reliability of Iowa gambling task performance and Expectancy Valence Model parameters
I've just been learning about the Expectancy Valence Model of the Iowa Gambling Task (see Busemeyer & Stout, 2002; Yechiam et al 2005). The model includes three parameters: motivation, learning-rate, and response sensitivity. The parameters aim to assess component processes when performing the task. Alternatively, an overall performance measure can be obtained such as wins minus losses.

The hope of model fitting in these cases is to better understand the causes of particular performance deficits. Such deficits might then be used to identify general decision making deficits in the individual.

More broadly, I am interested in the general psychometric properties of parameters obtained from mathematical models of task performance. I'm also interested in the interface between cognitive modelling, measuring individual differences, and imbuing model parameters with psychological import. Thus, with a normal psychological test we would be interested in reliability (e.g., test-retest reliability over various time frames) and correlates with related measures.

Thus, my main question:

What is the test-retest reliability of IOWA gambling task performance and parameters of the Expectancy Valence Model?

I'd also be interested in learning about how such reliability estimates vary with properties of the task. For example, increasing the number of trials presumably increases reliability.

References

Busemeyer, J.R., & Stout, J.C. (2002). A contribution of cognitive decision models to clinical assessment: Decomposing performance
on the Bechara gambling task. Psychological Assessment, 14, 253– 262.

Yechiam, E., Busemeyer, J. R., Stout, J. C., & Bechara, A. (2005). Using cognitive models to map relations between neuropsychological disorders and human decision-making deficits. Psychological Science, 16(12), 973-978. PDF


问:
In what order do people notice another person's attributes (race, age, gender, etc.)
I seem to recall reading some research years ago about what people notice in the first second or so of seeing someone else, and in what order they notice those things.  It's something like gender, race, age...

Can anyone help me out with a link or reference or at least a well defended guess?


问:
How much information does the somatosensory system produce?
Are there any approximations of how many bits of information human somatosensory system produces? Especially mechano-receptors as measured in average number of bits per area of skin per second?

I've only been able to find this information for spiders

I can't find anything on this topic, please share your knowledge about similar topic, like the above article.


问:
Are "diagnostic" senses/feelings for brain study possible?
Modern science has quite an array of methods trying to localize and analyze brain activity, trying to get down to individual neurons firing: EEG, fMRI, CT, etc. This requires very expensive machines to record data, lots of processing power, trained technicians, etc. At the same time each one of us has a brain which we are trying to study with these methods. I'm interested in knowing is if there has been experiments in which people have developed new "diagnostic" senses or feelings about their own brain activity and these senses correlate with modern scientific equipment. In other words: "when a person feels x, a machine would pick y signal off the patients brain, which can be reproduced across attempts".

Here are a couple examples of "new senses" that I can think of:

finger magnets, which let a person feel magnetic fields after a few months of implantation

vibrating ankle bracelets that help a person learn to feel true north

Alternatively, maybe there was a group of notable test subjects who were really good at understanding/expressing their feelings. Did these feelings for test subjects translate into predictable scientific instrument readings?


问:
Why does speaking disrupt rhythm?
I've noticed that while playing rhythm games--games where I must press buttons precisely in step with a musical accompaniment--I can either play or I can talk. If start talking, I'll almost immediately lose the beat, or I'll talk between the gaps in the beat in a very odd but unintentional manner; it's like I simply can't focus on both at the same time.

I (and many others, judging from Twitch.tv) can still input precise button processes at exact times while talking, so it's not my sense of timing that's off. And it's not that my talking covers the music; I can turn the music up while talking and still falter, and I can mute the music after I get going and keep up the beat. It seems to be specifically my rhythmic timing that's off when I speak.

What would cause speech to interrupt one's sense of rhythm like this when it doesn't interrupt other types of precise timing? I was unfortunately quite unable to find anything about this while searching, just a bunch of articles on impaired speech.

Title: Why does speaking disrupt rhythm?


问:
What are the common nutritional deficiencies in western countries related to reduced mental performance?
What are the common nutritional deficiencies in western countries related to reduced mental performance ? I've heard about omega 3, folid acid, and vitamin D deficiencies, the last two are now reduced due to food suplementation in some countries.</p>


问:
What is the relationship between practice and performance of telephone call centre workers?
I am interested in modelling the relationship between practice and performance both in laboratory tasks and field settings. I was interested in what existing research has examined how the performance of telephone call centre operators changes over time. I imagine call centre management systems would provide a very rich set of performance data on individual employees.

Thus, what do empirical studies have to say about the following:

What is the relationship between practice and call centre performance?

To what extent have studies been effective in controlling for task factors (e.g., whether it is a quiet or a busy shift; variation in task difficulty assigned to particular workers, etc) when modelling individual employee performance?

To what extent does performance change reflect constant improvement as a result of learning versus fluctuations due to changing motivation, effort, etc.?


问:
Does higher Electronic use relate to lower memory
lots of us use electronics as memory devices--making notes, reminders, etc. </p>

<p>Does more use of electronics relate to lower retention? In other words, does not using your memory make it worse? </p>


问:
Predicting the Duration of Future Events
I am interested in the question of how people use/integrate previous experiences with instances of tasks or events to make predictions about the duration of future instances of tasks/events.

To illustrate:
I am a regular user of Google Calendar, and I use its drag-and-stretch time-interval interface. In doing so, I constantly seem to be making judgments such as "Event A has properties [a1,...,aN], ####.... it will probably last about two hours".
My question, then, is: what is happening during the "####" stage of this process?

**EDIT: To avoid confusion, I would like to make clear that I am interested in cases where an agent is facing an "instance" of a "type" of event (if you imagine that the agent has a set of "memory traces" related to instances of the event, then I am referring to a case in which there is a reasonably high amount of variance/uncertainty in duration across previous instances), that agent has certain knowledge/evidence, and the agent must make a guess and/or a decision based upon a guess.
I've used the calendar planning example as an illustration. However, I am asking this question more broadly, as it relates to time scales ranging from very small to very large.

This question can be addressed at many levels of analysis (in Marr's sense). I am familiar with research related to this question, such as Griffiths and Tenenbaum's "Optimal Predictions in Everyday Cognition", Warren Meck's "Neuropharmacology of Timing and Time Perception", and empirical work on human planning behaviors/suboptimalities.

Can you recommend any further readings on this topic? I am particularly interested in research that treats this problem as an inductive reasoning task and investigates the question through the use of computational models.

UPDATE: I have just begun finding some very relevant articles, such as these:

1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15716368 (link to abstract)

2) http://www.shadlen.org/pmwiki/uploads/Science/JazayeriNat%20Neurosci2010.pdf

Griffiths, T. L., & Tenenbaum, J. B. (2006). Optimal predictions in everyday cognition. Psychological Science, 17(9), 767-773. PDF

Meck, W. H. (1996). Neuropharmacology of timing and time perception. Cognitive Brain Research, 3(3), 227-242. PDF


问:
When did neurotransmitters derived from monoamines first appear in evolutionary history?

When did neurotransmitters derived from monoamines first appear in evolutionary history?

What are main the points in evolution for monoamines based on the neurotransmitter system ?

Edition

I'm interested in this area because, there is far less monoamines neurotransmitters  based neurones than based on amino acid neurotransmitters. So it seems that monoamines based system is fine tuning work of the whole system while, amino acid neurotransmitters based neurons are the work hourse.


问:
Short term time perception affect long term time perception?
It is known that attending to time (i.e. looking at duration) expands subjective time. So if I want to do something for 20 minutes and look at my watch, this would increase my subjective time perception. Let's say that I have a timer that goes off every 10 minutes. I predict that a day would seem much longer.

Would doing this for 1 week make the week seem longer?

More generally, is it possible for short term time perception to affect long term time perception?

I know that time perception really is both a prospective and retrospective judgement. Time may feel like its passing slowly. But looking back on it, it may seem to have passed quickly. It seems that many mental disorders are fundamentally disorders in time perception.


问:
Does the subjective experience of artificial light brightness vary for people, if so, by how much?
I'm thinking about human perception and particularly the experience of how bright artificial light is. I'm talking about dusk, when the sun has set and only street lamps and light reflecting off clouds provides light. What affects the perception of brightness of ambient artificial light at night?

Let's provide a concrete example: same appartment, same lights outside, but looking outside on one day it looks dark, while on the other day it is much clearer and brighter. What can account for such a difference?

Is there some part of the brain or some mechanism that is responsible for perceiving how "bright" such light is? I know of visual purple that gets produced after prolonged exposure to darkness, and is effective for seeing in the starlight/moonlight.  But it appears to me that visual purple is too easily destroyed and may not get produced under streetlight conditions.


问:
What Quantified Self reserach tools are there for measuring performance while playing videogames?
I've recently became aware that there's a whole field of quantified self - using various methodology to collect data about human performance in an attempt to "quantify" how the human body/brain works. I'm sure a lot of the methodology uses is not rigorous or scientific, but I'm interested nonetheless.

Are there any third party tools/mods/apps that monitor performance of people playing video games? I'm looking at cameras that track people's eye motion, programs that run in background (like rescue time), potentially consumer-grade EEG data or mods that keep logs of games played.

Here are some examples:
In some strategy games, like starcraft, the concept of "Actions per minute" - APM is important, and the user is expected to manage dozens of different unit interactions and commands. It would be interesting to see a plot of APM vs game time vs time of the day.

In some "shooter" video games, especially multiplayer, the concept of "kill to death ratio" is important - how many times a person has killed before being killed. I would expect that there's some kind of a correlation between cognitive performance and ability to stay alive while accomplishing objectives. It would be interesting to see how this is related to the time of day or the person's vital signs.

If there already have been studies done on the subject, I"m interested in who holds/has the data on


问:
How to identify participants answering online questionnaires who have not paid attention?
I often analyse data that involves participants completing a selection of psychological tests online. A concern with online testing is that some participants may not complete the task conscientiously. For example, they may response options at random or just click the same response option repeatedly.

In general, I like to get response times per item, as I find that they are useful in diagnosing people who are deliberately skipping through the test. However, there are cases where that is not possible.

To make discussion concrete, think about where you have responses to 10 psychological scales. Each scale has 20 items. Some items may be reverse coded.

What is a good way to identify participants who were not concentrating or not completing the items conscientiously?

How do you ensure that you don't filter out participants with unusual patterns of responses?


问:
Obey any command given suddenly, as in the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine
There is behaviour I'm looking for information about, below are two examples of this behaviour, although the 2nd example is from fiction.

The first example is featured on the TV show QI, "Jumping Frenchmen of Maine" refers to various symptoms, one is that those affected "obey any command given suddenly", there is also the suggestion that unexpectedness and a firm authoritative voice are factors too, it seems to be to do with the startle reflex although information on the startle reflex in related conditions (that arn't that related) such as Tourette don't seem to provide much information.

The other example is from the book Ella Enchanted where Lucinda gave Ella the gift of obedience, which turns out to be a curse because Ella must now obey any order given to her. She does not have to obey when people say 'I wish' or 'Will you', this is relievent as they are not instructions, they are requests.

Is there more information avalible specifically about this symptom, in either the Jumping Frenchmen of Maine or other disorders?

Others have related thease behaviours to submission, although information about submissive behaviour shows it being to do with seeking out degrading situations or wanting others to make you do things or wanting others to make you want to do things, or even lacking motivation to make decisions for yourself, none of which are relevant.

Somone with the condition I've covered above would probably, for example, try and avoid most people because it would be so dangerous. Imagine if having been told to do something you then had to do it immediately, by that point it would be "what you are doing", even if not what you want to do, any harmless comment could cause you harm or cause you to think differently.

Perhaps there is something psychologically significant about instructions, especially by authority figures, have you ever been told to do something and then almost started moving to do it before thinking about what was said, I suspect everyone is more susceptible during daydreams or hypnotic states, if caught during the right moment in mental processing.

For some, being instructed to do something has the opposite effect, inducing an instinctive reaction of resistance, even if the instruction is then obeyed, but this still shows a strong psychological reaction. This could be to do with how following instructions and being good at listening to instructions is often established and enforced frequently at a young age.

To recap, those affected:

Must obey commands but not if they are in some respect questions or suggestions.

More so if given suddenly, unexpectedly, in a firm voice and authoritively.

Furthermore:

Apparently to do with the startle reflex.

Not, at least standard, Tourette.

Not, at least standard, Submission.

Apart from where told what to think one would not want to obey.

Please help me tag this question correctly.


问:
What kinds of long - term cognition/motivation tracking tools are there?
I'm aware that there are dozens of personal "activity trackers"/ pedometers like fitbit that are aimed for mass consumer and can log activity over extended periods of time. Are there equivalent devices or programs that automatically keep track of the users cognitive performance or motivation over extended periods of time?


问:
How can schemas be applied to website design?
If a "schema is a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information. Schemas can be useful because they allow us to take shortcuts in interpreting the vast amount of information that is available in our environment." then how can we best apply this to user experience design for websites?

Specifically I'm after the answer to the following question, but that's not to say that my question about how schemes can be applied to website design in general is still not pertinent.

Which of the following statements regarding schema is true?

When two neurons have activated the connections between them are momentarily interrupted

Approximately 10 million neurons in the human brain are used to store information

Some nodes and links are so strong that they can be retrieved as a unit

Memories that are reconstructed incorrectly are called schema


问:
Can abstract object representations be associated with a wider range of sounds in comparison to everyday object representations?
I'm looking for some peer reviewed evidence that abstract visuals can be associated with a wide range of sounds when compared to more recognisable visual representations pertaining to everyday objects.

For an abstract object we are unlikely to have formed any strong correlating bonds between the two modalities and therefore can't relate the sound it makes to our everyday experience.

In comparison, an object that we are very familiar with is not ideally suited to more abstract sounds as it doesn't match our expectations and therefore seems out of place.


问:
What biological processes occur when you love someone romantically?
How can romantic love be described by scientists?</p>


问:
Are people less bothered by problems they create for themselves?
I notice that I am more annoyed by problems when I am not the one that created them.  Two examples would be

Cleaning up someone else's mess is much more annoying than cleaning up my own

When spelling autocorrect "fixes" a word that I typed in correctly fixing it annoys me much more than fixing words that I misspelled.

My second example alludes to the fact that this is a very important phenomenon to consider when automating a process.  A user could be much more annoyed by fixing a mistake caused by the automation than they would have been doing the whole thing themselves.

I have been unable to find a name for this phenomenon or any research relating to it.  Is it true in general? Is there a name for it that would point me towards some research?


问:
What neurological processes occur with 'revulsion'?
As the title asks, what neurological processes occur when we feel revulsion?

By revulsion, I mean the involuntary and voluntary physical and psychological responses far stronger than the aversion discussed in this question to things like, in my case, cockroaches.  I assure you, that I am not referring to 'fear' either, I mean a feeling of loathing towards something.


问:
Illusion of control hardwired in brain?
Are there any research materials which deal with: need for control, illusion of control and neuroscience.

It will be very interesting to see if those illusions and needs could be linked to mental disorders like hypochondria, narcissistic personality disorder, psychosis etc., in an S-O-R scientific paradigm.

Title: Illusion of control hardwired in brain?


问:
Is personality dominance a hypothetical construct or is it based in neurobiology?
There are several personality tests which have dominance as trait or type as result.
In addition to this question: How to measure dominance and submissiveness?

How are dominant types constructed in tests?

Does it consist of one factor or multiple factors?

Is there any neurobiology research as to what is dominance or what parts of brain is in charge of it?


问:
Reading recommendations for getting acquainted with cognitive behavioral therapy
I understand the basic idea of it, but I'd like to read something beyond the Wikipedia page about it. I'll be happy to read a book, or articles online, or watch a video lecture or a documentary.

Can you recommend great resources for learning about cognitive behavioral therapy?

(Now obviously, I could find truckloads of books and information about it myself, just by using Google or my local library; what I'm looking for are great resources. I'm looking for the best resources of information about CBT, not just okay resources.)


问:
Why are people afraid of things that they know are harmless or non-existent?
Why are people afraid of things that they know are harmless or non-existent? For example:
Why do horror films/stories leave people scared after they have finished?
Someone may see a harmless spider somewhere that isn't even on their property, and still be scared of it. What is the phenomenon behind this?</p>


问:
What is the cognitive basis for a sudden loss of confidence in social/professional interactions?
This question is similar to this earlier question, but from a very different viewpoint - what I am asking here is, what is the cognitive basis for a sudden loss of confidence?

For example, if a person has been confidently answering questions in a room of experts, a party or on an online forum (or a Q&A site like here), and encounters negative feedback for what ever reason (and what ever the motive), why is it that some will simply withdraw and become silent?

To put the experience in perspective (note: this is not a request for personal help), when I experience it, it is like the confidence goes out like a light, and only rarely does the 'light' come back on.


问:
Resource on how to effectively develop within-subjects vignette based study
Background: Where I used to work fellow researchers used to have a task known as the CV task. The task required participants to answer a number of questions about a set of CVs (e.g., is this a good job applicant, rate various features of the applicant). A set of CVs was generated based on a factorial design. Thus, features of the CV were manipulated such as gender (male vs female) and other characteristics of the applicant.

I'm currently supervising a student where the student is doing a vignette based study (nothing to do with CVs). I realised that I have a lot of implicit ideas about how to design a vignette-based study. However, it would be nice to be able to refer such students to a resource which outlines best practice in vignette design. Relevant issues might include

How many factors to manipulate and how many levels to include

How to write vignettes in terms of length, creating variability and authenticity

Whether to randomise other elements across the vignettes

How to pilot test vignettes

How to choose questions to accompany each vignette

and so on

Questions

What is a good resource on designing vignette based study?

Or alternatively what are a good set of suggestions for writing a vignette based study?


问:
What is the name of text analysis where emotional tone of words is analyzed?
I'm interested in knowing what can be learned about people by analyzing the emotional content of the words they use in casual speech or writing. I've heard it being referred to as " ... analysis".

What is the name of text analysis where the person's words are analyzed based on their emotional context?

For example, statements like "life sucks" would be interpreted as negative, while "it's very helpful and I recommend it" as positive.


问:
Why does a clock counting down generate more pressure than a clock counting up?
Why does it seem that people feel more pressure with a clock counting down as opposed to counting up? Is there a specific term for this? Maybe counting down signifies some sort of loss whereas counting up signifies some sort of gain?</p>


问:
Why do power laws describe learning and skill acquisition so well?
In humans, why do powers laws describe skill acquisition? In particular, $$RT = aP^{-b}+c$$ where $RT$ is reaction time and $P$ is amount of practice.

Does the power law generalise to learning in other mammals?

Does the power law apply to learning whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol?

Does the power laws apply to creative ideas or just to tangible skills?


问:
What is the proper terminology for "hoarding" type paradox (but not extreme)?
Feel free to edit my title -- I'm not exactly how to sum it up in one sentence, THUS my question here:

Is there a name or specific terminology related to the somewhat paradoxical situation in this example:

There is an almost-empty jar of imported candy in my kitchen. I have slowed (rather, ceased) consumption of this candy, because I fear I'll run out.

Obviously, logic says that not consuming and not being ABLE to consume are pretty much the same.

Is there a name for what's happening in my brain, concerning this candy, or is that behavior defined by some broader term?

I'm certain this has been researched, but I'm not sure how to find it.


问:
What is the effect of displayed online personal identifiers on online communication?
Online interaction provides an interesting avenue for experiment and experience.  People are able to hide or fabricate their personal details including age, sex, and appearance.
For the purposes of this question I am using the term "personal identifiers" as any indication of a person's age, sex, name, race, place of residence, etc*

As a user here, I have experimented with showing my real name, changing my user name; having a photo of myself as a kangaroo, and whether or not to display my age, provide my real age, or at one point used an age of 93 years. I have also played with whether or not to show my country (the kangaroo reveals I am at ease with this).

I am most active on Stack Overflow, which is a programming site, and my belief is that programming is a male dominated field. So when I address a user, with no personal identifiers, I find myself assuming that they are male. I have noticed that when people assume I am of the opposite sex (to what I am, not what they are!), I respond differently.

This has led me to think about the value of maintaining a certain anonymity and which aspects of one's identity are best revealed in various online settings.

Questions

What information is there about perceived personal identifiers and how this affects  people's online behaviour?

What information is there regarding a person's reaction when they know they are being treated as if they are a person with different identifiers?


问:
Can "7 deadly sins/virtues" be explained in terms of brain hormone level or receptor mutations?
I'm thinking about this question on biology.se: do hormones make men think of sex?

From the interview linked in the answer, I get two takeaways: a man who lost most testosterone for 4 months mentioned more humility, while a lgbt person on testosterone therapy reported more intense sexual thoughts or urges.

With this in mind, I'm thinking of the Christian concept of " deadly sins" and their opposite virtues. From a purely historic perceptive, I take recurring accounts of these phenomena in writing to say that these traits have existed for the last couple thousand years or more in the western world.

Is modern science any closer to explaining the phenomena like wrath, sloth, gluttony or humility in terms of neurotransmitter, hormone, receptor mutations or other genetic mutations?

Here's the kind of answer I'm looking for:

( from serotonin receptors )

Deceased suicidal and otherwise depressed patients have had more
  5-HT2A receptors than normal patients. These findings suggest that
  post-synaptic 5-HT2A overdensity is involved in the pathogenesis of
  depression.[4]


问:
Are end-stage Alzheimer's patients still conscious?
I asked the same question at Reddit here, but none of the responses were convincing.

So here's the thing: to the extent of what we know about consciousness, are end-stage Alzheimer's patients still conscious? I will use Christof Koch's attempt to define consciousness, as explained below.

What is the character of the NCC? Most popular has been the belief
  that consciousness arises as an emergent property of a very large
  collection of interacting neurons (for instance, Libet 1993). In this
  view, it would be foolish to locate consciousness at the level of
  individual neurons. An alternative hypothesis is that there are
  special sets of ``consciousness" neurons distributed throughout cortex
  and associated systems. Such neurons represent the ultimate neuronal
  correlate of consciousness, in the sense that the relevant activity of
  an appropriate subset of them is both necessary and sufficient to give
  rise to an appropriate conscious experience or percept (Crick and Koch
  1998). Generating the appropriate activity in these neurons, for
  instance by suitable electrical stimulation during open skull surgery,
  would give rise to the specific percept.

So do end-stage Alzheimer's patients lose these types of "neurons"?


问:
What is the neurological mechanism behind the feelings associated with loneliness?
Loneliness can be debilitating, and the feelings associated with it can be overwhelming, including feeling 'cold inside', sad, hopeless and even helpless.

Many things can 'cause' loneliness', both real and perceived, but what I am interested in is not the causes, but the neurological mechanisms that cause the feelings associated with loneliness.


问:
Current directions in emulation theory
Over the decades there have been several theories from various aspects of cognitive science that have appealed to a link between perception and action as a way of understanding information processing in the brain. The example that I'm most familiar with is Liberman and Mattingly's Motor Theory of Speech Perception (Liberman & Mattingly, 1985), which, starting almost 50 years ago, made the following claims — reviewed in Galantucci, et al. (2011):

"speech is special" -- there are specialized pathways in auditory cortex for processing speech

perceiving speech is perceiving the speech gestures of the talker, not necessarily the acoustic patterns of the speech waveform

the motor system is recruited for processing speech

Although more recent work in neuroscience has discredited many of these claims, particularly the first one, there do seem to be several recent results (e.g., Wilson, et al. 2006; Fadiga, et al. 2002; Pulvermueller, et al., 2006; D'Ausilio et al. 2009) that establish a very interesting link between speech perception and motor cortex activity.

At a higher level, this sort of theory fits into the general "emulation" framework proposed by Grush (2006), and also agrees well with insights from the mirror-neurons branch of neuroscience research.

My question is, now that all of this "newer" research is five to ten years old, have there been even more recent results -- especially from non-speech areas of cognitive science -- that might help form a unified theory of action and perception ? How might we go about building up such a unified theory based on what's currently known ? What further studies or models do we need to evaluate emulation as a fundamental building block of cognition ?

References

D'Ausilio, A., et al. (2009). The Motor Somatotopy of Speech Perception. Current Biology 19(5): pp. 381—385
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2009.01.017

Fadiga, L., et al. (2002). Speech listening specifically modulates the excitability of tongue muscles: a TMS study. European Journal of Neuroscience 15(2): pp. 399—402
PMID: 11849307

Galantucci, B., et al. (2011). The motor theory of speech perception reviewed. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 13(3): pp. 361–377
PMCID: PMC2746041

Grush, R. (2006). The emulation theory of representation: motor control, imagery, and perception Behavioral & Brain Sciences 27(3): pp. 377—96
PMID: 15736871

Liberman, A., & Mattingly, D. (1985). The motor theory of speech perception revised. Cognition 21(1): pp. 1—36
DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(85)90021-6

Pulvermueller, F., et al. (2006). Motor cortex maps articulatory features of speech sounds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 103(20): pp. 7865—7870
PMCID: PMC1472536 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0509989103

Wilson, S. M., et al. (2004). Listening to speech activates motor areas involved in speech production. Nature Neuroscience 7(7): pp. 701—702
PMID: 15184903 DOI: 10.1038/nn1263

Title: Current directions in emulation theory


问:
Are there modern cognitive techniques for dealing with searching for information online?
"Google it" is a common response to questions nowadays, and it indicates that people are more and more reliant on the internet for all kinds of information. Frequently this information is not memorized, but is retrieved on demand.  My question is about how people retrieve this information efficiently.

For example, knowing a precise keyword, or a model number of a gadget, it is relatively easy to find relevant information or a manual online, but now one has to remember a large number of rarely used keywords or model numbers.

"How to connect second monitor in Windows Vista"
"RJW-500 connect exhaust hose"

but a person new to computers may word the query differently and get a list of irrelevant results

My question is: are there modern techniques, tips and tricks or mnemonics on how to deal with searching through a lot of information and finding the stuff that you need online?


问:
How can people better express subjective conscious experience with words?
I'm interested in how the human mind works, and over the years have experienced and took notice of a number of peculiar states of consciousness, thought patterns, dreams, etc.

While a lot of these states of mind are replicable, I do not know the correct English terminology for them, which makes it difficult to describe or explore them.

For example, if a person does not know the term deja-vu, two people can give very different accounts of "experienced something that just happened again" and use completely different words, while if they speak of common deja-vu experiences, everything is much clearer.

It is even harder with more complex concepts, like spontaneous, intuitive and non-verbal comprehension of a concept, for which the word noesis fits. Without knowing that word, it's really hard to convey or compare experiences.

Is there a way to learn to better express what's going on in one's head in such a way that the experience can be compared with another persons?

Maybe there's a comprehensive list of words that describe subjective states of mind, developed to help people better express themselves?


问:
Are there any Cognitive Model for image interpretation
I want to know the names of some cognitive models which has been used in past for image interpretation.</p>


问:
Which political system stimulates individuals the most to strive for the greater good?
In September 2013 Germany will elect their new parliament, the Bundestag. On this occasion, the German Psychological Association (BDP) dedicated the current issue of their member's magazine report psychologie (7/8, 2013) to the question of political apathy. Unfortunately all articles aimed at how to motivate eligible voters to actively participate in politics.

The one question that ensues from the fact of political apathy was painfully missing:

All past and present political systems seem to suffer from avarice and power abuse on the part of the governing, and resignation and stupid egoism on the part of the governed. Greed and unselfishness are of course personality traits that a political system cannot change. But social circumstances promote or inhibit the activation of personality traits. Therefore, the most important question is:

 Is there psychological research into which (aspects of a) political system would increase an active concern for the greater good?


问:
Steady State Topography and Advertising/Preference: Weaknesses? Criticism?
Steady-state topography is a derivation of EEG/ERPs using an evoked potential to an ongoing oscillating stimuli called the steady state visually evoked potential (SSVEP). Variations in the phase difference between the SSVEP and the stimulus are interpreted to measure "summed changes in synaptic transmission time", where a latency reduction indexes an increase in synaptic excitation and a latency increase indicates a reduction in synaptic excitation (Silberstein & Nield, 2008).  This kind of change at lateral prefrontal sites, particularly left lateral prefrontal sites, has been interpreted to show increased long-term memory activation to specific stimuli (Smith & Gevins, 2004).  Some studies have also shown that this increased LTM activation is a predictor of future buying behavior (Silberstein & Nield, 2008).

What are the criticisms of this method?  Weaknesses?  Other possible interpretations?

References:

Silberstein, R., & Nield, G. (2008) Brain activity correlates of consumer brand choice
  shift associated with television advertising. International Journal of Advertising, 27(3), pp. 359–380.

Smith, M.E. & Gevins, A. (2004) Attention and brain activity while watching
  television: components of viewer engagement. Media Psychology, 6(3), pp. 285–305.


问:
What are the neurobiological mechanisms behind clumsiness
Some people are inherently clumsy (including your's truly).  Everything from frequently stubbing their toes to, as in my case 2 days ago, falling down a single step and managing to crack a rib and strain my back when I landing over the letterbox, are quite bizarre.

The question is, what are the neurobiological mechanisms behind clumsiness?  I would imagine that it is somehow connected to coordination (of which I have almost none) and perhaps depth perception - but I would like refereed articles to clarify the reasons.


问:
Is there a correlation between people who frequently laugh at their own jokes and narcissism?
It is not uncommon for people to  laugh at their own jokes. One comedian discusses how he uses this as a benchmark for whether or not a joke is going to be funny for the audience.

Psychology Today interviews John Hodgman

Your delivery is famously dry. Do you ever crack yourself up? I find
  it to be comedically unethical to laugh at your own jokes on stage.
  ...//...

But the reverse is true when writing. I generally only like a joke of
  my own if I make myself laugh when I write it. If my brain can fool
  myself into a surprised chuckle, even when I am the one who wrote the
  joke, my guess is that it can also fool you.

Is there a correlation between  people who frequently laugh at their own jokes and narcissistic features?


问:
Are unconscious thoughts captured by free association?
Does free association writing or talking captures  unconscious thoughts? Or maybe they don't because you are conscious during the process?</p>


问:
Why is it that logical thinking is bad for emotional connection?
I notice that after studying mathematics or logic for a long time, I can't speak to people in a fluid manner. Language becomes very functional. What brain areas are involved in this transition? Why?</p>


问:
What are the neurological differences between varying types of love?
It stands to reason that the biochemical cascade involved when a person experiences love, gives a feeling of well-being and drive.

Studies in neuroscience have involved chemicals that are present in the brain and might be involved when people experience love. These chemicals include: nerve growth factor, testosterone, estrogen, dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin. Adequate brain levels of testosterone seem important for both human male and female sexual behavior. Dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin are more commonly found during the attraction phase of a relationship. Oxytocin and vasopressin seemed to be more closely linked to long term bonding and relationships characterized by strong attachments.

and

Romantic and maternal love are highly rewarding
  experiences. Both are linked to the perpetuation of the species
  and therefore have a closely linked biological function of crucial
  evolutionary importance. 1

There's a lot of research about romantic love and parent/child love. Apparently there are correlations, between the neurological patterns observed with romantic and maternal love.

I am wondering, do we know what the neurobiological differences are between romantic, maternal/paternal, platonic love and the  love of non-human entities for example a pet?

1. The neurobiology of love
S. Zeki*
University College, Department of Anatomy, Gower Street, London WCIE 6BT, United Kingdom


问:
Derived knowledge from periodicity of harmonic motion?
This question is the third in a series, after:

   1. Improved Typing as a result of slight movement

   2. Neural Processes of Inducing Flow

Background:

Pseudo-random, 'swaying', motion appears to help induce a flow state, in that it 'captures' the movements of an activity and entrains them to an underlying rhythm of activity.  Time between activity-related movements is reduced, and error-recovery time is also reduced.  (again, this is from first-hand observation, not published results).

The following is the relevant explanatory section of the 2nd question's answer:

Seen from this perspective, cyclical movements are the norm for almost any animal,    whereas short-duration, "single-use" movements like typing or playing the piano are rather unusual. It could be the case that if the motor cortex (or even the basic movements encoded in the spinal cord) is inherently tuned to modeling cyclic movements, then adding some continuous motion could help the motor cortex capture the intended typing or playing movements as part of the larger, continuous movement.

The last question I have is if the frequency of the periodic movements, which in general follow a 'figure-8' track, could be related to the frequency of other cycles in the body?  For example, could the frequency of motion reflect the active frequency of the brain, e.g. EEG waves?  Or could it reflect a different neural/physiological cycle or state?

Naturally this is a tricky question: on one hand, the activity itself serves to entrain the neural system to a certain periodicity.  On the other hand, if the rhythmic movement activity is allowed to 'float' in frequency organically, does its characteristics reflect anything about the initial state of the neural system?

Final question(s):

Does the frequency of movement give clues to other periodic cycles, such as EEG waves?

Does said movement give any other insight into the brain/body state?


问:
What is the neurobiological basis of Spearman general factor of intelligence?
I found a brief intro to the genetic factor of human intelligence: "Biology of human intelligence" by J A Böök (1976).

Also it is known that gyrus hipocampii is basis of STM which have role in general factor.
What I can't find is how the biology of the brain is connected to IQ measurement.

What is neurobiology, physiology and anatomy basis of human intelligence in general?

Edit: is there any revue article which summarizes neurobiology, physiology and anatomy basis of human intelligence in general?

The book "Behavior Genetics Principles: Perspectives in Development, Personality, and Psychopathology", edited by Lisabeth F Dilalla (American Psychological Association, 2004), explains the genetic basis of personality. I am looking for a similar book or article which summarizes the physiological and anatomical basis of intelligence.


问:
Does a baby go for the most hard-to-get out of two presented objects?
I'm searching for some reliable source for the following experiment:

A baby is placed in front of two identical fruits, one of which is covered by a transparent box. I think I've read that babies statistically prefer the boxed fruit and try to reach it first, after which they investigate the more easily accessible one.


问:
Diagram of the peripheral nervous system of different animals?
Can anyone recommend a good resource (free or paid) for finding detailed images of the nervous systems of various animals?

In particular I am looking for images of the peripheral nervous system of cephalopods such as Octopi or Squids. Ideally I'd prefer images made via some form of medical imaging with radioactive dye, but I will settle for medical illustrations if that's all I can find.


问:
Does winning the Fields medal decrease subsequent research achievement?
I just stumbled on this summary in Slate of a study by Borjas and Doran (2012, FULL TEXT PDF).

To quote the summary:

According to a new study by Harvard's George Borjas and Notre Dame's
  Kirk Doran of recipients of the Fields Medal, the most prestigious
  prize in mathematics, winning big actually kills productivity.

Mathematicians who win it publish far less in the years afterwards
  than similarly brilliant "contenders"—highly cited mathematicians who
  won other prestigious awards before the age of 40 (the cutoff for the
  Fields), but not the prize itself. The prize is awarded every four
  years to two, three, or four mathematicians. It goes to show that
  major awards and recognition can have unintended consequences

I have not yet read the paper. But my first thought would be that a lot would depend on how you define contenders. I also imagine that the criterion of interest is research achievement, and that number of papers is an imperfect index of this.

Questions

Does winning the Fields medal actually decrease the research productivity of winners below what it would have been had they not won the medal?

How strong is the evidence presented by Borjas and Doran (2012)? What, if any, limitations does the study have?

References

Borjas, G. J., & Doran, K. B. (2012). The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians*. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127(3), 1143-1203. PDF


问:
Why do I type "it's" when I know it should be "its"
I know the difference between "its" and "it's". When I read it, even in my own writing, I can see incorrect usages almost instantly. However, when I type, I often type "it's" when I should write "its." The opposite problem is rare ("its" when it should be "it's"). I don't even notice that I've written it incorrectly unless I proof-read my writing.

So, why do I do this?

I've looked at these questions and answers:

Why do you sometimes write down one word while actually intending to write another?

What type of learning mechanism produces a consistent typo?

But neither really seem to address this case. The first accepted answer refers to speech errors and centers around sounds and phonemes. Since there isn't anything phonetically different between "it's" and "its" I can't see how I have stumbled into this problem:

When mentally planning the next word in a sentence, we must choose the
  appropriate lemma. By selecting the units in a neural network that
  correspond to a certain lemma, it spreads activation to the
  corresponding morphemes, which in turn spreads activation to its
  corresponding phonemes. When the activation of a phoneme unit exceeds
  a certain threshold, it is selected for utterance (e.g., spreads
  activation to the motor units that allow us to speak).

The second answer refers specifically to mechanical typing errors arising from looking at text (which I am not doing) and striking the wrong key. These errors don't seem to cover my situation:

Salthouse mentions the taxonomy of typing errors proposed by Wells    (1916) of "substitutions, intrusions, ommissions, and  transpositions", and also cites empirical estimates of prevalence of

  different types of errors.

"Many substitution errors involve adjacent keys."

"Most transposition errors are cross-hand rather than within-hand"

My problem is adding unnecessary punctuation and not a mechanical error or phonetic/psycholinguistic error. Am I wrong?


问:
Why do people remember things when they stop trying to remember?
I posted this question on SE English:

Antonym for ameliorate

I had been trying to recall a word and it's recollection kept evading me.

I remembered the word as soon as I posted the question; which was when I gave up trying to recall it.

What is the scientific term and process by where a person cannot recall something and then remembers it when they stop trying?


问:
Differences between the way men and women interpret body language
There are many socially accepted ideas about the differences between men and women, I am wondering how much of this is misconception or based in reality.

I was reading this question: How important is eye contact for attraction between a man and woman? and found some interesting discussion in the comments.

I quote from this answer:

females are very good at picking up subtleties like that - however, they are very bad at explaining them usually.

I quote from one of the comments:

"Females . . . are very bad at explaining them usually"? That seems like an unnecessarily dangerous statement--humans in general are quite bad at pinpointing reasons for social behavior

I found this article:

Gender Affects Body Language Reading

Arseny A. Sokolov, et al doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00016

The findings show that gender affects accuracy rather than speed of body language reading. This effect, however, is modulated by emotional content of actions: males surpass in recognition accuracy of happy actions, whereas females tend to excel in recognition of hostile angry knocking. Advantage of women in recognition accuracy of neutral actions suggests that females are better tuned to the lack of emotional content in body actions. The study provides novel insights into understanding of gender effects in body language reading, and helps to shed light on gender vulnerability to neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental impairments in visual social cognition.

However, this is only one study, and it raises the interesting point that women may be better at interpreting "lack of emotional content".

Has current research reached a consensus on the  differences between the way men and women interpret body language?

If so; What are the proposed reasons for these differences?


问:
What kind of feed-back scheme is there for a back-propagation feed-forward ANN for self-learning of touching a coordinate with robot arm?
I'm a beginner in this topic and are learning how to build an artificial neural network and different types of training associated with them.

Right now, I'm trying to figure out self learning. For example, there is a robot arm consisting of two joints and three parts. The objective is the distance from target (I need the arm to touch the target), neural network inputs are the coordinates of the target, the output is the joint angles of the arm. But, the error is the distance of hand to target.

Since I'm using an error-back-propagation feed-forward neural network, its error is only the output and desired output, but I need it to find the desired output (target joint angle) itself and take the error from distance, not joint angle. How can this be done?

More clearly, what kind of feed-back scheme is there for a back-propagation feed-forward ANN for self-learning of touching a coordinate with robot arm?


问:
Are preattentive processes necessarily unconscious processes?
Are preattentive processes necessarily unconscious processes?

If no, why not, and could you please provide an example of a preattentive process of which we are conscious?

If yes, why?

To the extent that I have a specific context in mind, I'm thinking of Neisser's postulation of a preattentive stage of visual processing.


问:
When falling asleep does one always start with NREM1?
After my admittedly short research I could not find information which states that if a person is disturbed while their sleeping, let's say in NREM3 phase of their sleep cycle, and wakes up and then falls asleep shortly after then they start their cycle from scratch again.

It's a widely accepted, and experienced, that being disturbed doesn't make it a good night sleep, but is it because of this 'not picking up where you stopped'?

Could you point me to some data about this?


问:
What is the relationship between computer game performance and measures of ability?

Possible Duplicate:

  Any work being done on Perception, Action, and/or Cognition in Video games?

What is the relationship between computer game performance and measures of ability?


问:
How do family conflicts and childhood experiences influence passive-aggressive behaviours in the workplace?
Possibly related but not a duplicate - "How does the personality of a successful leader influence the development of his children?"

Workplace behaviours and personality traits, e.g. passive-aggressive behaviours, can be highly influenced by family conflicts and childhood experiences. Blanch and Aluja (2009) distinguish between work interfering with family (WIF) and family interfering with work (FIW):

Work–family conﬂict (WFC) has become an important dimension in the
  study of individual differences at work. This concept has been deﬁned
  as a form of inter-role conﬂict in which the role pressures from work
  and family are mutually incompatible, identifying at least three types
  of WFC: time, strain and behaviour based conﬂict (Greenhaus & Beutell,
  1985). Two main directions are generally considered in WFC research:
  work interfering with family (WIF), and family interfering with work
  (FIW) (Frone, Russell, & Cooper, 1992).

Conflicts in the family environment may contribute to passive-aggressive behaviours in the workplace. Rejection at home can influence personality traits of the individual (Rohner, 1980):

The rejected child is especially likely to become hostile, aggressive,
  or passive-aggressive if  rejection takes the form of parental
  hostility.

Organisations cannot function optimally if its employees exhibit passive-aggressive behaviours that are a result of past or current family conflicts. These behaviours can have an impact on culture as well (Forbes, 2013). Passive-aggressive behaviours are becoming common in the workplace and I'm interested to know what are the antecedents of passive-aggressive behaviours in the workplace that arise from family conflicts and past childhood experiences.

Questions

What are the antecedents for passive-aggressive behaviours in the workplace that are influenced by past or current family conflicts and early childhood experiences? And are there any supporting studies describing this link?

References

Blanch, A. & Aluja, A. (2009). Work, family and personality: A study of work–family conﬂict. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 520-524

Rohner, R.P. & Rohner, E.C. (1980). Antecedents and consequences of parental rejection: A theory of emotional abuse. Child Abuse and Neglect, 4, 189-198

Forbes. (2013). "Passive-Aggressive Behavior Will Destroy a Company's Culture", http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyanderson/2013/03/06/passive-aggressive-behavior-will-destroy-a-companys-culture/


问:
Muscle tone and default heart rate - psychological conclusions?
I know that muscle tension and heart rate goes up as we get stressed, but what if in normal conditions some have a lower heart rate and muscle tension while others higher?

Does this say something about brain configuration? Temperament maybe? Do sanguine people have lower such stats than say choleric people? I have seen that similar people have same stats, in this case high stats people are always static characters (they don't change easily), have strong personalities, and are workaholics... etc.

I am pretty sure there's a study on this, I was wondering if anyone has any idea as to where to find it.


问:
What creates the experience of "erasure" in visual perception?
When I was reading about object substitution masking, the author mentioned that sometimes we experience "erasure" of masked object. I sometimes have this kind of experience myself. It looks like the object was there but then became erased by the mask. How this effect is called properly and what creates such experience? I'll be grateful for the links to relevant papers.</p>


问:
How to enhance brain functioning through neurological stimulation?
Many emotional and behavioral dysfunctions, such as bad decision-making (http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/brain/awg177), appear to be symptoms of impaired brain functioning. Conversely, stimulating brain function may alleviate these dysfunctions. For example, electric stimulation of the vagus nerve decreases depression (source).

How can brain function be improved through neuroelectrical, neurochemical and/or neurosurgical stimulation?

I am interested in general answers as well as in answers specifically addressing

the ventromedial prefrontal cortex,

the amygdala, and

the insular cortex,

which, according to the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, might make up the mechanism behind emotional intelligence.


问:
predisposition towards organising information in hierarchical outlines?
I like very much organising information in hierarchical outlines through PIM software (also names tree outliners/ treepads/ etc). I wouldn't feel comfortable if I do not have information organised this way. I have always wondered how come MS Word does not have this functionality or at least a third-party add-on. Yet, my personal observation is that the majority of people feel completely ok without any such tool.

It seems to me that people would rather use tags or they'd just pile up information without any special description and prefer a search function instead of browsing throughout their own structures. Whenever I have showed someone the glorious capabilities and beauty of a hierarchical PIM, I have never met an expected "WOW effect" but sheer disinterest. :)

Is there any research on specific inclinations people have towards organising information?

Related question: https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/40334/why-is-tree-representation-of-data-becoming-unpopular


问:
What evolutionary process(es) are thought to have enabled humans to experience dreams?
As some theories suggest, most, if not all, biological features in organisms exist due to environmental factors that trigger the organism's eventual adaptation to these factors for survival purposes.

This characteristic of organisms can be tested and retested to be true, so assuming this is the case, why did humans (and disputedly other organisms), develop the process of experiencing dreams?

Not to be confused with conscious imaginations - potentializing events/experiences - what evolutionary purpose does dreaming of unrealistic events/experiences serve?

Also, consider nightmares and their anxiety producing feelings which the organism would most likely avoid if the event/experience were real.


问:
How to analyse accuracy, hits and false alarms in e-prime?
It's the first time for me to do analyses with e-prime, and I have to analyse some data from an experiment. The data are, at the moment, in e-prime. I'd like to have the accuracy, the hits, and the false alarms for every subject.
When I am in the anaylse window:

Accuracy: I drop the subjects into the rows, and the Target ACC into the Data window. But do I take the ACC mean or the ACC count?

Hits: Isn't it the same as accuracy? And, if not, what is the difference?

False Alarms: do I just count them? How can I make it then comparable over different tasks (some tasks have more trials than the others).


问:
How does motivation relate to performance and to fun and to recognition?
Many studies indicate that for tasks that require cognitive skills and creative thinking, monetary reward does not work to improve performance. Rather, we should give people purpose, autonomy and mastery to make them part of something bigger and give them the freedom to do what they think is important to solve the problem.

But while that might get people to perform better at a certain task, how does this relate to motivation? Are purpose, autonomy and mastery more intrinsic-oriented and could motivation be more long-term (extrinsic) oriented in terms of profit (in the broadest sense, including all costs and benefits)?

Any thoughts or even scientific insights on this?


问:
Do expert computer gamers have unusual physiological or mental characteristics?

Possible Duplicate:

  Any work being done on Perception, Action, and/or Cognition in Video games?

Are there any research studies that show this?

See a thread on Quora for some initial discussion, but few research articles so far.

For decades, a different game, chess, has held the exalted position of
  “the drosophila of cognitive science”—the model organism that
  scientists could poke and prod to learn what makes experts better than
  the rest of us. StarCraft 2, however, might be emerging as the rhesus
  macaque: its added complexity may confound researchers initially, but
  the answers could ultimately be more telling.   “I can’t think of a
  cognitive process that’s not involved in StarCraft,” says Mark Blair,
  a cognitive scientist at Simon Fraser University. “It’s working
  memory. It’s decision making. It involves very precise motor skills.
  Everything is important and everything needs to work together.”

Blair, the Simon Fraser University scientist running the SkillCraft
  project, asked gamers at all ability levels to submit their replay
  files. He and his colleagues collected more than 4500 files, of which
  at least 3500 turned out to usable. “What we’ve got is a satellite
  view of expertise that no one was able to get before,” he says. “We
  have hundreds of players at the basic levels, then hundreds more at
  level slightly better, and so on, in 8 different categories of
  players.” By comparing the techniques and attributes of low-level
  players with other gamers up the chain of ability, they can start to
  discern how skills develop—and perhaps, over the long run, identify
  the most efficient training regimen.

Both Blair and Lewis see parallels between the game and emergency
  management systems. In a high-stress crisis situation, the people in
  charge of coordinating a response may find themselves facing competing
  demands. Alarms might be alerting them to a fire burning in one part
  of town, a riot breaking out a few streets over, and the contamination
  of drinking water elsewhere. The mental task of keeping cool and
  distributing attention among equally urgent activities might closely
  resemble the core challenge of Starcraft 2. “For emergencies, you
  don’t get to train eight hours a day. You get two emergencies in your
  life but you better be good because lives are at stake,” Blair says.
  “Training in something like Starcraft could be really useful.”


问:
"Please enter alphanumeric characters" or "Please enter letters and numbers"?
In form entries, what is most commonly understood?

"Please enter alphanumeric characters" or "Please enter letters and numbers"


问:
Does cognitive & behavioral schools have any analysis for "sympathy" & "compassion"?
The Cambridge Dictionaries define the word compassion as:

a strong feeling of sympathy and sadness for the suffering or bad luck of others and a wish to help them

A sample might be when you see a homeless kid, suffering the cold of the winter, and you would like to help him have a warm home for at least one night. This desire is very powerful in some people, such that they become altruists (preferring benefits of others over their personal benefits) and very weak in some other people (egoists who prefer their benefits over benefit of other people).

Is there any analysis for this attribute in cognitive sciences (or behaviorism)? By any analysis I mean are they being studied under the domain of cognitive sciences or not, and if so, what are the most known and accepted theories for them?


问:
What are the clues on how 'vivid' someone's sensory imagination is?
For example, I can imagine me eating barbecue with some details, like appearance,  smell, temperature, taste etc, and I end up experiencing all these qualities to a certain extent. But I guess each one of us feels it with a different intensity. Is there a way to verify that? Are different levels of sensory imagination associated with some personality traits?

I think this is a related question, but it does not talk about the intensity of it: What happens when a person "imagines" how food could taste like just from looking at it?


问:
Do single-feature objects tend to attract attention more rapidly than conjunction objects, or vice-versa?
For example, would a two-colour object attract attention more quickly than a one-colour object, or vice-versa?</p>


问:
Social proof vs herd behavior
Could you, please, explain the difference between social proof and herd behavior, if such exists.

For me, they are the same.

Title: Social proof vs herd behavior


问:
Optimal learning time per day
Is there any 'value' for optimal learning time per day? I'm thinking of something like attention span, but more general.</p>

Title: Optimal learning time per day


问:
Which study design to use: nested case-control or case-cohort?
I am following a cohort of patients over time from which I am planning to sub-sample a sub-group of patients to pilot a new intervention. The plan is to compare the effectiveness of the new intervention on improving specific outcomes for a sub-sample compared to those did not receive the intervention. the original study is an inception prospective cohort with several followup assessment time points (3 evaluations time points).

Which design is better to use?

Nested Case-Control (the intervention group [participants who have completed the intervention] will be compared to control group [those who didn't receive an intervention] and maybe a third group of normal people from the community) in this case the 2 (or 3) study groups will be matched on age and comorbidities.

Case-Cohort design (my understanding for this is that a sub-sample will be randomly selected at the baseline for an intervention and then compared to the rest of the cohort).
Both are new to me and not sure if any of these is a superior design over the other one and better to use, and what would be the factors to consider?


问:
Conceptual blending
Is there a mathematical formalization of conceptual blending? I know that feature structures in linguistics or frames in AI can be combined using unification which is a special (simple) case of conceptual blending. How can more complex blends be formalized? To stay in the domain of linguistics, complex predicates (e.g., I made her cry) are said to involve conceptual blending that can't be formalized as unification.</p>

Title: Conceptual blending


问:
What causes varying degrees of recall of text when speaking aloud versus mentally?
Background: When i try to recall some memorised passages from a book, I find that some memories are best recalled when i speak aloud and some when i speak inaudibly in my mind.

What causes varying degrees of recall of text when speaking aloud versus mentally?


问:
What traits does a man have, when he is apt to feeling threatened by strong women?
This isn't intended as a gender biased question, as both men and women can have strange hang ups when it comes to either sex.

I am curious about men who are threatened by strong women. By strong women, I mean intelligent, capable, financially independent, self assured and assertive.

By threatened I mean unduly intimidated, nervous or uneasy, which can result in a number of reactions.

What personality traits, background or pathology do men who are threatened by this type of woman, generally,  have in common?

Are there any studies on this?


问:
Are armed offenders ready to use their weapons?
Are there any statistics about what proportion of armed attackers are willing to hurt or kill as opposed  only using their weapons as a threat? E.g. There were cases when a self-confident victim without any countermeasure (other than verbal and meta communication) forced the attacker to flee.
Which is more probable? Any studies about the topic?</p>


问:
Theories of Hunter/Gatherers in the 21st Century
Are there any theories or schools of thought that assume most humans still act as if they are still hunters/gatherers?

Hunter/gatherer societies of today would still prefer to sit around and talk with their friends than to learn about sci., eng., or even social sci.

I went to a place in a remote part of the Sepik where I was the first traveller to reach as well as a similar area in the highlands. The children had never seen a white person.

People in both areas have ample leisure time and it seems to be center around sitting in a circle and socializing. They spend more time with friends in a day than most westerners spend in a week.

A guy asked me how could he get the things that I have. I told him, "Do this, do that, don't do that, blah, blah....even then I don't think you'll be able to achieve it but possibly your children. However, it will mean that you can't sit around the fire all day and do nothing." He replied, "Then I don't want it. I like time with my friends around the fire. I'll keep what we have."

From: The tribesman who Facebooked me. (comments section)

This does not sound too different than modern citizens. There is little interest outside of sports, idle chit chat, gossip, and celebrity news. Most people also want to be trained, rather than be educated. Conversations and social interaction are the only desired means of learning for most people. Learning a set of rules vs creativity/exploration.

It would explain why Alan Kay believes all scientists/engineers constitute less than 1% of the population.  The rest either want training or manual labour (ie the same mentality in surviving in the wilderness.)


问:
Is it possible to gain strength by imagining working out?
Is it possible to still gain muscle strength by performing exercises but without load? Is there some kind of memory mechanism that would allow this?</p>


问:
Book review for "Qualitative Mathematics for the Social Sciences"
Has anyone read/reviewed this book - Qualitative Mathematics for the Social Sciences? I have been trying to find a credible review on the reliability of the book.</p>


问:
Why do certain activities seem to co-occur with well learnt skills?
I have found that when I do certain activities, while engaged with them, I am inclined to do other activities, as well, which come naturally and do not seem to break productivity of the first ones, just on the contrary.

What do I mean - well, let me give these examples:

when people do any sort of repetitive manual (motor) activity e.g. driving a car, cooking, dish-washing, etc they feel naturally inclined to talk with someone else or listen to music and these two kind of activities seem not to interfere with each other, just on the contrary, talking seems to make the manual work easier;

when talking over the phone, many people naturally doodle on paper at the same time;

in my student years I have found that while solving math problems I was inclined to draw things on paper (more specific things unlike the "random" doodling while on the phone);

attending lectures couples quite well with daydreaming :)

etc.

My questions is, is there any scientific formulation and/ or research over this observation of mine?


问:
How are sexual cues known by the brain?
Sexual cues have been well established in evolutionary psychology as indicators of genetic compatibility/useful genes.

How does the human brain know that a cue is an indicator of a useful trait in order that a person perceives the trait as being an attractive one? What cognitive mechanisms are involved in the perception of sexual cues as being attractive?

Title: How are sexual cues known by the brain?


问:
Is it harder to perform a difficult act or avoid doing a compelling act?
Suppose what we have a set of choices $S$. Also suppose that $S$ consists of two "difficult" choices $X$ and $Y$ that rely on action and inaction respectively. So $S = \{X, Y \}$. Is it more difficult to perform $X$ or to not perform $Y$?

For example, let $X = \text{asking somebody out}$ and $Y = \text{eating fast food}$. Is it more difficult to perform $X$ or to not perform $Y$?


问:
Do laypeople think lifestyle changes are effective at preventing and treating disease?
I'm curious about how laypeople think about healthy lifestyle changes (like eating well, not smoking, exercising) that are scientifically known to help prevent and treat a number of diseases. People are notoriously bad about using such lifestyle changes for a variety of psychological reasons.

Could part of the problem be that they don't believe lifestyle changes are effective? Is there any literature on this? I did look around a bit myself, but did not find anything directly relevant.


问:
Things not physically moving very hard to concentrate upon - suggestions?
Hello dear cogsci users,

I am a (fledgling) programmer by profession, one who also squarely fits the description of an ADHD person.

The symptoms have been making it tremendously hard for me to advance my career. However, I refuse to be put on meds - I'm a firm believer in fixing neurobiological defects with the proper diet and exercise (and have already noticed that curbing my carbohydrate intake alleviates much of the problem).

Somewhat surprisingly, I discovered that if either me or the things I'm studying were in motion, learning most anything became a breeze.

Things I have come up with to combat my concentration issues:

1) To pass my math exams, I would hop on the bus and do my algebra/calculus there - the changing scenery made me both concentrate better on the task at hand, and provided natural 'hooks' to remember things such as formulas (as they were automatically paired up with the places I was passing through). I had used to fail classes because of math in secondary school, but got an A on the exam for which I was 'studying in motion'.

2) When reading eBooks or some such, setting the screen to slowly scroll downwards greatly improves my concentration (by about a half).

3) Keeping widgets such as the Windows desktop clock within my field of vision also helps.

4) I have been thinking about using a rhytmically shifting, dynamic background for the applications I use to learn (browser, eBook reader). The Ubuntu Linux 'it is raining' desktop effect also really helps me concentrate.

However, I need a powerful, overarching technique that I could use during studying, one that would also be easy to access anywhere.

Would you have any interesting suggestions? In exchange, I welcome you to use any and all of my observations for research.

BTW: I do not believe I am primarly kinesthetic (more like auditory first [knack for picking up foreign languages], kinesthetic second, visual third).


问:
What's the impact of studying learning theory in actual learning?
Are there any studies showing the impacts of learning about learning theory on someone's learning?
Moreover, at which point learning about learning first makes an impact on you learning a new subject? (eg: learning about learning+then studying the new subject becomes better than simple studying the subject, both time-wise and depth-of-understanding-wise).</p>


问:
What makes us look into camera lens when we're being filmed?
I haven't met a person who wouldn't at least glance at a camera's lens from time to time when they're aware it's capturing an image or a video of them.

Usually creatures transmit a lot of information through their eyes and face, so it's natural for us to look at someone's eyes, but when we know cameras don't work like that, why do we still keep looking at them?


问:
Is unsweetened tea 'stronger' than sweetened tea
I feel that if I have unsweetened tea, it has a stronger hit. i.e. it is more stimulating than a similar cup of tea in which some sugar has been added. I can say the same about coffee.

Is it just me or is it something which is commonly perceived?

Is there a biochemical basis for this feeling or is it psychological due to the slight bitter taste?


问:
Is there a psychological basis for getting hiccups?
Is getting the hiccups sometimes related to our mental condition, i.e., stress level, etc?</p>


问:
Effect of mid-day sleep on mood and performance
Is there any clearly identifiable reason explaining why sleeping during the day (for longer than 30 minutes) could produce lowered mood, difficulty in concentrating, overall decreased cognitive performance etc., with symptoms persisting during the rest of the day? This might be somewhat related to sleep inertia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_inertia), but persistence of symptoms for many hours might prompt for a different explanation.</p>


问:
What does it mean to overthink?
When does thinking of the mind becomes overthinking? and How is it different from serious and critical thinking? What are the causes of it?</p>

Title: What does it mean to overthink?


问:
Identifying Overly Complex Tasks
It seems to me that societies frequently construct systems that may be too complicated for any individual to operate competently within.  For example, the tax system, the legal system, the medical coding system, etc.  I have intuitions about how one might detect if any given system is too complex.  For example, a lack of consensus in how to perform system specific tasks (e.g. filling out a tax return), a large error rate among system task performers, a failure of system participants to get better over time.   I am interested in reading research in this area, if any exists.  Can some one provide me with suggested readings?  </p>

Title: Identifying Overly Complex Tasks


问:
Where to recruit paid participants for online Inquisit experiments?
My team and I are trying to use Inquisit for a reaction-time based experiment looking at attentional bias. However, with the no download policy on Mturk and CrowdFlower, we don't know a good site to recruit and pay subjects to participate in an experiment that requires a plug-in.

What's a good way or site to solve this problem?


问:
Frequency in Human sexuality bisexual polyandry and polygamy and others?
I've been studying human sexuality and I have a question which I do not know the answer nor do I exactly know how to research. In the psychology of human sexuality specifically bisexuals what percentage are completely monogamous, polyandry, polygamy or (I don't know the word for having multiple partners of either sexes). Like mutual participation relationships like multiple bisexuals, combinations of bisexuals, heterosexuals and homosexuals. Generally and then specifically in the USA are these relationships typically stable and do they last lifetimes?</p>


问:
Why do we dream of unattainable wishes being satisfied in dreams?
We want many things that we might never achieve or attain in real life. Often we dream, that we have these things.

What is the psychological function of this type of dream? How does the satisfaction inside a dream relate to the dissatisfaction in reality?


问:
Are there explanations for the thesis that life seems to pass by faster when you're older?
The question is that of the title, but I came up with it with respect to a specific model so I'll state a more concrete variant of it as well:

There are theories like the one presented in Daniel Dennetts book Consciousness Explained, which say that the individual acts as agent in the world, the brain is running like a machine, and while the individual principally does what he does no matter what, the conscious experience is merely a part of the brain activity on which (though some process) it decides to put emphasis on.

Can this point of view explain the common idea that life passes on faster as we get older? In the way that as the agent encounters more and more daily routines, there are just fewer and fewer things which get experienced consciously and so people are actually "less there" when their live are "more boring".


问:
Is recall for an appropriately color coded string of symbols a good measure of level of synesthesia?
The Wiki page on Grapheme–color synesthesia says:

... one recent study has documented a case of synesthesia in which synesthetic associations could be traced back to colored refrigerator magnets.

Wiki points out that this might be an individual case, but let's assume that synesthesia
is something you can train. Let's further assume that everybody is more or (most of us) less a synesthesist.

Can the level of synesthesia be measured by the following test:

You are shown a sequence of colored characters, i.e. number and letters, or the characters shown are placed on a colored background.

After that you are asked to give the sequence.

Should there be a measurable statistical effect in remembering the sequences when they are colored in your specific color scheme?


问:
Do people with chromesthesia and tinnitus see the "ringing" caused by tinnitus?
Do people with chromesthesia and tinnitus see the "ringing" caused by tinnitus?</p>


问:
Do any supplements or psychoactive drugs for improving memory have solid long term research?
The non effects of vitamins has been in the new frequently recently. Do any supplements or psychoactive drugs for improving memory have solid long term research? </p>


问:
What is the maximum amount of synapses? What processes (if any) increase synapse amount?
How plastic is the brain? What is the maximum amount of synapses? What processes (if any) increase synapse amount? What are some of the advantages of having more or less synapses?</p>


问:
Are our brains just energy conserving systems?
Is the brain a purely energy conserving system that creates behaviours for conserving the energy distributed to the brain, based on the input of sensory information that our bodies take in? </p>


问:
Do our brains have difficulties detecting no?
In most business seminars, or in movie the secret, for example, it is said that if we want to be rich we need to believe we want to be rich.

We got to want peace, not anti war.
We got to be pro wealth, not anti poverty.

It is said that our subconscious mind can't process not.

So, anti war means want war. Anti poverty means pro poverty.

Is this true?

Which part of our brain subconciously guide us to the outcome we imagine? Is there such thing? Is it true that it cannot process no?


问:
Brainwave audio recordings and beta waves: how do they affect positivity?
I know a little bit about negative and positive energies of human bodies and how it all works.
Recently, on Facebook, I saw an ad promoting some sort of audio recording and that it has something to do with the beta waves.

They claimed,

Listen to the 15-minute demo once per day, every day, for at least the next seven days. You'll soon start noticing the subtle, positive differences, if you haven't already.

So I downloaded that audio clip (15 minutes long), expecting it to be something relaxing.

As it turned out, it was the sounds of waterfalls, leaves and trees for the whole 15 minutes.

Even though I like this 15 minute sound clip, I wonder how this could help in improving positivity if we listen to it regularly?

This is the whole text that I received as e-mail after signing up for the AD,

Some people report feeling much more relaxed. Others feel that time speeds up -- or slows down. Almost everyone reports that it's an enjoyable experience! And what about the sounds of rustling leaves and trickling waterfalls? We travelled to Derbyshire, in the heart of rural England, and spent a month capturing the natural sounds used in the BrainEv program. But what you might not realize is...There's actually much, much more going on in the background! You see, the sounds of the streams and trees are really just a rich "sound mask" for the powerful brainwave recordings that are playing in the background. Let me explain a little more...Your brain cells all talk to each other using tiny little electrical signals. With billions of these brain cells talking at once, that's a pretty significant amount of electrical activity -- and can be detected with an EEG machine. This electrical activity is what we call a brainwave. And the brainwave frequencies change, depending on what state you're in. When you're happy, when you're focused, when you're asleep -- your brainwaves all have very specific frequencies. And here's the exciting part. Using a science known as 'brainwave entrainment', we can now create special brainwave audio recordings, which play specific frequencies to the brain. The brain copies these frequencies, and effectively RECREATES the original brainwave pattern. That means we can recreate brainwave patterns that help you relax and release stress... that activate your intelligence... that improve your mood... that help you feel more focused during the day. Not only that, but by accessing these peak performance states on a daily basis (as with the BrainEv program), they'll start becoming second nature -- and available to you literally on-demand.


问:
Is being naked good for you?
What are the psychological effects and correlates of social nudism?

No opinions, only research, please.

Title: Is being naked good for you?


问:
What is a neurometric function?
Is the output of neurometric function the output of the pattern classifier i.e
is it calculated from processing the imaging data of brain as a prediction of what choice was made through psychometric function?

What confuses me is whether neurometric function is a neural response to pattern classifier response process or it is a process leading to conversion of visual stimuli to neural response.

Title: What is a neurometric function?


问:
Learning vocabulary: Is it better to learn the word through translations?
Suppose that you have a student that is bilingual. Take for example that the student speaks Chinese and English. Suppose that said student is very fluent in Chinese, but not so fluent in English. He/she can hold everyday conversations in English but he/she has a really hard time reading an English newspaper or magazine (i.e. Wall Street Journal and Times). Suppose that you are trying to teach English vocabulary to said student. Would you teach said student:

New English vocabulary using English words that he already knows, or

New English vocabulary by using translated Chinese?

Is there some research that is related to such scenario?


问:
Are "dumb product warning labels" an indicator of change of intelligence of general public?
I've recently heard a podcast by mr Flynn, the discover of the Flynn effect. According to him, populations worldwide are gaining about 3 points of IQ with each generation, but the kind of their intelligence is changing from more "down to earth" to more abstract. For example, he mentions how in 1920s, people in Siberia could not or would not answer the question like "What color are bears on the North Pole?", because they have never seen one and all the bears next to them were brown. Flynn suggests that their thinking was much more down to earth and practical.

I'm interested if "danger, coffee may be hot" and such warning labels a by-product of American legal system, or are indeed indicators of change in the quality of intelligence of the general population? Do "dumb warning labels" exist worldwide?


问:
Notable work in social or personality psychology regarding social networking?
Today most of the people spend a lot of time socializing. What people post on Facebook/Twitter or any other social platform directly or indirectly reflects a person's psyche. I've developed a habit of studying patterns/behaviours of people while on social networks. I would very much like to study it methodically.

Is there a notable work done in this regard? I'm looking for a book or blog or anything that explores the topic in depth.