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Is there evidence that brain and mind are separate?
I've heard countless discussions about whether or not the mind is separate from the brain, but they have all been philosophical.
I am looking for peer-reviewed studies that suggest the mind is not just a by-product of the brain, as I feel this is quite an extraordinary claim.
Are there any such studies?

Evidence is not proof, just grounds for a belief. In this context, consciousness and an understanding of the meaning of words are not matter, in the sense that they can be proved, physically. The word ¨I¨ includes a ¨feeling¨, beyond its body parts, that isn´t tangible and, as such, opens a range of possible questions, all beyond material proof.

Try using your mind to lift your arm.  You'll see your mind exerts causal influence over the physical world. It seems a flippant example, but without the prior assumption that the mind is the brain, this counts as evidence the mind is not the brain.

Another approach to this issue is to consider whether this kind of reductionism ("mind is just a by-product of the brain") is useful. Strictly speaking, architecture is "just a by-product of physics and materials science", but there are phenomena that are usefully described at the level of architecture and would not be well-captured by the atomic and molecular properties that underlie them. The same holds for the mind and brain: we can study the neural correlates of psychological phenomena and these studies are sure to help us understand those phenomena, but they are not logically equivalent. This view has been articulated by many people, here is one (peer-reviewed) example: Miller, G.A. & Keller, J. (2000). Psychology and Neuroscience: Making Peace. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9(6), 212-215. You don't need to be a dualist to hold this view, just to understand that phenomena can have different levels of analysis.

this is a great answer. Sometimes people take reductionism too far and too seriously.

There's non-reductive physicalism and reductive physicalism.  There's no need for non reductive dualism, really,  the whole point of non reductive physicalism is that emergence can explain consciousness without there being new physics.  Dualism with non reduction doesn't really make sense, since reductionism is a physicalist property.

@Dan Just reading this over again. I suppose a similar metaphor to oppose yours would be the following. You can study how a computer appears to operate by giving it input from its various devices and seeing what it does, and if you would like to know how to operate a computer that's great. The only problem is the user would argue that he indeed knows how a computer works, while someone who has taken apart the machine would scoff at such a statement. By taking apart the machine, the person can observe its inner workings as well as deduce how an outside influence could manipulate the machine.

Keep in mind that the person peering inside the machine can provide very little guidance about webpage design or statistical analysis or many other functions that matter to the user. From that perspective, he has no idea how the computer works. David Marr (1982, Vision) is typically credited with articulating this functional independence between the "computational" (what it does), "algorithmic" (how it does it), and "implementational" (hardware) levels of analysis.

@Dan Very valid point. So, assuming my metaphor was adequate, if you were asked what you thought about the mind-brain relationship, somewhere in your comments would be included a statement like, "while all cognition is produced by neural firings, the mind is considered separate from the physical brain because the brain's highest processes and functions cannot be adequately described by said neural firings?"

More or less. I probably wouldn't describe the mind as "separate" from the physical brain. I'd say that the term "mind" refers to a set of physical mechanisms, processes, etc. that are better described and studied at the level of organism behavior than the level of neural firing.

@Dan Thank you for your patience. I can see now how this question might have seemed a little silly.

@DanM. from a computer programming perspective reductionism is extremely useful.  For example, this is the bread and butter of computer hackers.  Because they can reduce computer operations down to assembly language and physical memory, or in some cases even hardware circuits, they are able to circumvent and manipulate the higher level "reality" of computer abstractions.  If physical reductionism is true for the mind, then scientists will eventually gain complete control over the mind.  On the other hand, if reductionism is false, then the mind will always be free.

@yters Yes, understanding the hardware implementation can be useful for certain kinds of goals. But we can understand many cognitive processes in behavioral/computational terms. Similarly, lots of very good computer programming can proceed with very little knowledge of the hardware implementation -- pretty much any 3GL or 4GL programming language allows you to do this. And being a master user of Word, Photoshop, etc. requires no knowledge of hardware implementation. It really just depends on your goals, so it's not reducible to whether reductionism is "true" or "false".

Note: one can never prove a negative.  It's hard to say "there's no evidence" as an absolute truth.  That being said:
No.  All evidence is suggestive of monism.  Drugs and brain lesions are physical actions that influence cognitive outcome by physically affecting the brain in ways predicted by pharmacists and neuropsychology.  It could also be noted that physical activity (exercise) increases neurogenesis.
When you find an argument that recedes to only being valid in philosophy, it is probably becoming closer to pseudoscience than science.  You can never prove something like solipsism is false, but it isn't a very productive belief if you're asking for evidence.  Solipsism (as an example) would invalidate the evidence, so there's no point in asking for evidence if that's your perspective.
However, if you accept empiricism (which is all that science can rely on) then you have to accept some degree of scientific realism, and the scientific evidence is that brain causes mind.

Thanks for the answer. I will say, though, that saying "there is no evidence" is always perfectly valid if humans have not yet come across the answer. Where you would fall into trouble with trying to prove a negative is if you said something was definitively "impossible".

For sure absolutely no studies though?

You're question, qualified with "for sure absolutely" makes me think that you still don't understand the difficulty of proving a negative.
Even with your previous qualifier, "humans have not come across the answer" is hard to prove.  I'm just one person, I can't speak for all humans.  I can't say "for sure absolutely no studies" and no one human can.  There's lots of studies out there.  All you will ever have is a lack of evidence or a lack of people reporting there's no such studies.
Though I can't even see how you'd even devise a test to prove mind and brain are separate.

I do appreciate the answer, but the obliqueness is completely unnecessary and slightly obnoxious as it was a straight forward question. Peer reviewed studies are all recorded and would be archived. I am wondering if anyone has heard of anything worth investigating

I also do not know of any such studies. Slightly obnoxious or not, @Xurtio did so for good reason, I think. I know a lot about certain psychological constructs, but even on areas I consider myself expert, I could never claim to come close to knowing the entire literature. Studies published in other languages are not always translated. Old studies are not necessarily published online (although many are). And all of that does not even get into the issue that multiple keywords may be used for the same general idea.

@degausser I don't think you have an understanding of how vast the scientific literature is, scientists already spend most of their days reading, and still have no chance to cover anything but a fraction of their very specialized sub-sub-sub-field. The wikipedia article already goes to decent lengths to answer your question.

@Xurtio I want to upvote this answer, but I can't because of your nonchalant dismissal of philosophy as pseudoscience. There is a huge difference between pseudoscience (which tries to make scientifically testable and usually false in the most silly ways claims, and ground itself in science) and well practiced philosophy which tries to provide a completely different type or argument and is usually painfully clear about when it is making scientifically testable claims, ad when it makes non-testable one. Further, you can't "prove" anything in science... this isn't math.

I did not dismiss philosophy as pseudoscience.  Philosophy is part of science (in fact empiricism is the philosophical stance of most scientists).  I also talked about scientific realism, another philosophical stance of scientists.  By "prove" I just mean gather evidence that is suggestive of, not the mathematical definition of poof.

What these studies show is only that the brain has influence over the contents of the mind. However, if that influence is total or not is still, empirically, an open question. Only in the light of a presupposed philosophical hypothesis (such as that mind equals brain) could such empirical results be counted as being in favour of the hypothesis, in a form of probabilistic manner.

@KeeganKeplinger there is also a multitude of evidence the mind affects the brain and the rest of the body.  Trivially, our day to day choices determine the actions of our body.  So, on the contrary, the preponderance of empirical evidence says the mind is not a product of the brain.

I can't imagine what kind of evidence there ever will be but I believe they are seperate. Of course the brain reacts to our mind because it is connected to our body, I feel as if they are seperate but when we feel sad the brain will release certain chemicals so our body feels it too. I'm not sure if this makes sense, it is hard to explain (but it makes sense to me).
The fact that I can often tell when my partner or mother are thinking about me (for example more often then not, when they 'randomly' pop into my mind and I check my phone to see if they have replied, I can see they are 'typing...' or I immediately receive a  message or a call). This is to me could be proof that the world isn't just what we physically see but that everything is connected on a different level.
This isn't a very scientific answer but I just wanted to share my view

You may want to consider this meta-question: Striking a balance between citations and common sense in answers.

"Evidence " means physical evidence, I guess. The paradox is this - are there non-physical phenomena for which there is physical evidence?
Is there evidence for Out-of-body experiences? If you never had one, you would say no. However, try to guess the answer before jumping here :-)
Can we do a thought experiment? Nuclear war, Solar flares, green house effect, whatever. Humanity has gone blind. Lost the sense of sight.
Thus shapes, colours, forms, changes of state of these properties etc cannot be perceived. They do not see clouds, the blue sky, the far-away stars, birds flying silently in the sky, distant blue seas, lush green forests and so on. Undoubtedly a greatly diminished life, compared to people like us.
Now, if one or two of them acquire eyes somehow, a whole new world opens up. They start experiencing and describing things that seem incredible to other people. They may be considered to have too much imagination, or even mad. They may eventually be persecuted or thrown out of the human community.
The history of science itself has plenty of these happenings. Until radio waves were discovered, Science did not know of its existence, though radio waves have existed for all time. This example extends to x-rays, gamma radiation and many other phenomena discovered at some point in time.
If due to some future catastrophes, suddenly the faculty of colour is lost, then Science will gradually start to deny the existence of colour. If people with long memories, or memories of their ancestors’ tales, talk about these things, they will be considered superstitious.
Update: (@Josh) - Another thought experiment. A 2-dimensional being cannot fathom that things are happening in a 3-dimensional world. Any physical phenmenon will appear to arise from other physical phenomena in 2 dimensions. Similarly, things coming from a 4th dimension will appear to be happening in the 3-dimensional world that appears to our senses.
The fourth dimension theories of Hinton and Ouspensky have a thorough treatment of the subject.

"The paradox is this - are there non-physical phenomena for which there is physical evidence?"
It's been a while since I've read in depth about Dualism, but I thought it was generally accepted that this is precisely the scenario that can't happen. If there is physical evidence of something, then it must be a physical phenomenon.

@Josh it is not a tautology.  For example, it is conceivable we can physically detect something that could not be produced by physical laws.  Since we cannot ad hoc say physical reality is the physical law + this unexplainable phenomena, we'd have to say we've physically detected something non-physical.


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Do persons with autism have a bigger genetic predisposition to psychosis/schizophrenia?
Do people with autism or Asperger's syndrome have a higher genetic predisposition to psychosis or schizophrenia than that of healthy people?

Following the ICD-10 criteria (http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en) patients cannot be diagnosed with schizophrenia and autism at the same time.

Okay, but AFAIK psychosis may well go along with Autism, right?

Generally speaking, yes; it's relatively more common for psychosis to be comorbid with or present after diagnosed Autism.
For a good overview of this topic read Autism and Schizophrenia (Yael Dvir, MD and Jean A. Frazier, MD).

COS (Child Onset Schizophrenia)—the onset of psychosis before age 13 years—is considered a rare and severe form of schizophrenia. Systematic studies of COS show high rates of the disorder being either preceded by or comorbid with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD).7

Note however that the similar (but not identical) features between COS and Autism:

Although the disorders are distinct, they have shared clinical features. Social withdrawal, communication impairment, and poor eye contact seen in ASD are similar to the negative symptoms seen in youths with schizophrenia.11 When higher-functioning individuals with autism are stressed, they become highly anxious and at times may appear thought-disordered and paranoid, particularly when they are asked to shift set (such as being asked to change a topic of conversation or to stop an activity that they are engaged in and begin a new activity).12 A subset of children (28%) in the ongoing NIMH study of COS have been reported to have comorbid COS and ASD.7

There's also likely a bit of sample bias going on; children presenting severe symptoms of either Autism or COS are logically much more likely to be seen by medical professionals than neurotypical children or those who may have Autism but present less significant external symptoms. So take the specific percentages with a grain of salt, but the two certainly seem to be related.

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Kelly Criterion Observed to Be Adhered by Psychopaths?
As this study shows, psychopaths are much more willing to take advantage of expected gains despite recent losses as opposed to normal people who frequently stop after a series of losses.
Has there been any follow up to this to observe whether psychopaths also take the Kelly Criterion into account?  The participation rate was still only 84% for the psychopath group.  I didn't see any data that shows whether those that stopped participating were ones whose amount of money in immediate control declined to nothing or near-nothing.  If those who lost stopped at some point relative to the amount of money in their immediate control instead of a bad run regardless of money in immediate control, it might indicate that psychopaths are acting more rational than normal because they quit when the Kelly Criterion is being violated, that they quit positive expected values when their "risk of ruin" is greater than ~0%.
Do psychopaths care about the so-called "risk of ruin"?
Kelly Criterion
The math behind the Kelly Criterion was actually originally developed by John L. Kelly, Jr. to maximize data transfer rates relative to risk of data loss due to noisy (error prone) lines.  Taking into account those two factors, the amount of data to transfer, the possible loss, and the possible success, choices of which lines to use at which times and amounts of data relative to noise can be quantitatively made to more or less maximize the total expected data transfer rate with an almost certain chance of no loss over time.
Later, Edward O. Thorpe, the first to prove that blackjack can be beat by counting cards, discovered that the Kelly Criterion can be employed to maximize returns from card counting with an almost certain chance of no loss over time (now called the "risk of ruin") when "bankroll" (total amount available for gambling), risk of a single or series of gambles, cost of the single/series of gambles, and payoff of the single/series of gambles are all taken into account.
A formula was also derived to give a risk of total loss, "risk of ruin", from a collection of potential investment choices.  When the Kelly Criterion can be strictly adhered to, the risk of ruin is always ~0%.

I do not know about psychopaths adhering to the Kelly criterion or not. Technically, for a perfectly informed agent seeking to take advantage reccuringly from an objectified winning yet risky position, the Kelly criterion sets the maximum bet amount over which betting would be irrational. In the sense that betting more than the Kelly criterion would deplete your finances by exposing yourself to too much risk.
Imagine that you know that a tossed coin ends up 49% of the time on heads and 51% of the time on tails. For 1 buck you bet, you earn 0 or 2 bucks depending on the outcome of the coin toss.
Betting on heads is irrational. So you bet on tails. The question is "what proportion of your total assets" are you willing to bet? If you bet 0% of your assets, you never earn anything. If you bet 100% of your assets, you've got 49% chances of being broke the next round and having nothing left to bet again, which is kind of stupid since you've got a rational structural advantage on the bookmaker.
The question therefore becomes "what fraction of my assets should I bet to maximise the gain with respect to the risk"? The answer depends on your so called "utility function". In the case where each buck gained increases your utility linearly, (i.e. you're as eager to gain a buck whether you're broke or a bilionaire, to put it simply... a buck is a buck no matter what), the Kelly criterion applies:
You bet the the fraction that maximises the probabilistic expectation of the logarithm of the ratio of assets after the bet to assets before the bet. If I recall things well off the top of my head.
Betting less than Kelly is not greedy enough. Betting more than Kelly is self-destructive. That's the theory.
In the financial stock broking business, the Kelly criterion has been used in the past... almost. They divided the Kelly criterion by 2 to be on the safe side. The reason is simple: no matter how rational Kelly is, draw up a chart of the typical fluctuation of your assets using the Kelly criterion under perfect circumstances (even correcting for your utility function). Take a close look at it. Then you'll realise that you'll be in for such a bumpy ride for your assets that russian mountains on cocaine will feel like zen meditation. Technically, betting using Kelly is exactly being on the verge of self-destructiveness...
No one, ever ever ever ever would "reasonably" bet their assets using Kelly. Unless you have the self-denegation of a number theorist on ketamine. Not joking.
Not even a psychopath.
The closer you can get to the question would be: (1) are psychopaths inherently rational machines (2) are psychopaths greedy to the extreme that a buck is a buck whether they're broke or a billionaire, and (3) are they able to endure the cognitive dissonance by reconciling (1) and (2) assertively and agressively without fear of any sort.
I doubt this to be the case. They may well score higher than neurotypics, but it's quite a stretch to imagine a psychopath would spontaneously follow Kelly criterion when the greediest stock brokers would not dare to. According to your study, they may well score higher on points (2) and (3).
In this study, Kelly does not apply and does not determine a stop loss criterion. It simply shows psychopaths are either less emotional or have a more linear utility function than neurotypics. A fearful neurotypic may stop playing if he has had repeated bad luck. A rational and fearful neurotypic would have laid out beforehand his stop losses depending on which turn he's in and would have played all turns up to the point where he would have stopped playing definitely: he knows there's no point in postponing his luck. And he must be rather fearful to decide to stop playing, meaning that his utility function must be very concave near ruin to trigger a stop loss and very insensitive to wealth if he decides to trigger a stop loss early in the game. In a nutshell, rationality in the game is defined by playing all turns in the game up to a point where you stop playing. If the player plays, then stops, then resumes playing, he's irrational. But the more he plays, the less he's anxious. From what I've read of the article, psychopaths are not more rational, they are less fearful. Kelly has little to do here.
Another question you may ask is whether or not neurotypics and psychopaths end up behaving the same way as cohorts the longer they play at the betting game. How desensitised to the irrationality of the human conditioning to the game do neurotypics and psychopaths become the more they're exposed to it, and at what pace. To me that's perhaps the real question.
Moreover ruin theory such as developped in actuarial science is NOT Kelly criterion. It's standard stochastic calculus with ruin constraints. Kelly criterion is the poor man's naive implementation of stochastic calculus. Very much the same way that mysticism is the poor man's naive first attempt at science.
By the way, Kelly strategy cannot go to ruin, not because it's Kelly, but because it's a self-funded strategy, which in itself is a broad class of strategies, that includes very very stupid ones.
I hope that clarifies the scope of the question.

Hi FDIA, thank you for the very extensive answer. I was wondering, however, do you have any references to back up some of your statements? For example about the comparison between Ruin en Kelly theory.

Ruin theory is mostly concerned about when does a strategy go to ruin in the face of probabilistic adverse events. Typical questions are: what insurance premiums will guarantee that the insurance will theoretically always face its liabilities. On the other hand, the Kelly criterion defines a fraction of your assets that you bet at each turn. So you've got remaining assets for the next bet which you'll fraction again using Kelly criterion. You may deplete your finances, but you're never technically broke.

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What is the scientific basis for long-term negative physiological effects of overstudying?
I am interested in long term negative physiological effects that some students experience following overstudying.

What is the scientific basis for overstudying?
Is over studying correlated with long term decreases of cognitive ability?

Welcome to the site. Unfortunately, this site does not permit self-help style questions. Thus, I've done my best to overhaul your question in order to ask something more general. It would be great if you could edit it further in order to frame it as a general scientific question.

Also related: What is the scientific basis for long-term negative physiological effects of overstudying? and
Is it possible to over burden yourself?

The research literature on stress in general and burnout in particular would be relevant. The stress literature is massive and there are studies that have a particular focus on students.
For example Jacobs and Dodd did a study on college student burnout:

Measures of social support (Multidimen- sional Scale of Perceived
  Social Support), personality (General Temperament Survey), and
  workload were related to psychological burnout (Maslach Burnout
  Inventory) among 149 college students ( M = 20.8 yrs.). High levels of
  burnout were predicted by negative temperament and subjective
  workload, but actual workload (academic and vocational) had little to
  do with burnout. Low levels of burnout were predicted by positive
  tempera- ment, participation in extracurricular activities, and social
  support, especially from friends.

They also cite some of the literature on stress in college  students:

there has been a substantial amount of research on
  stress among general college students. Stress has been shown to be
  correlated with college students’ health behaviors (Weidner, Kohl-
  mann, Dotzauer, & Burns, 1996), anxiety concerning exams (Abouserie,
  1994; Ever- son, Tobias, Hartman, & Gourgey, 1993; Sloboda, 1990),
  self-esteem (Abouserie; Newby-Fraser & Schlebusch, 1997), and coping
  strategies that students use (Dwyer & Cummings, 2001). To the extent
  that stress is an important component of burnout (Maslach & Jackson,
  1981), this research is relevant to the development of a model of
  burnout among college students. Between classes, exams, employment,
  and extra- curricular activities, students are likely to experience
  high levels of stress, but do they experience burnout? Much research
  is needed to determine the prevalence of burnout, to identify
  important intrapersonal and interpersonal factors that influence
  burnout, and to develop effective inter- ventions to prevent and
  reduce burnout in college students.

References

Jacobs, S.R. & Dodd, D. (2003). Student burnout as a function of personality, social support, and workload. Journal of College Student Development, 44, 291-303.

You've actually stated 2 questions in one. The second one is answered by Jeromy, the burnout or burnout-like states are the consequence of any overworking. I would also add the health problems, but those are not particularly on topic.
When it comes to the reasons, the learning can become the addiction, as most of the things you do. It can become obsession. There are people who are collecting knowledge, and want to have as much facts as possible in their heads, such as the other are collecting the coins or stamps or anything else.
I personally know many people, which, during their studies, have spent most of their time in the library, while their effects were not better as those of their collegues, who have spent not as much as the half of that time learning. That people were simply like ill when they weren't learning, they couldn't find their place. Many of them are now internet-addicted or have alcohol problem. It seems to be the neurotype, that easily becomes obsessed about something (therefore, extremally vulnerable to addictions).

While the anecdotal evidence for your last paragraph is probably plentiful, it would make your answer stronger if you found a reference or two on it, I think.


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Desire to climb from evolutionary perspective?
When I go near a hill or dune, I feel desire to climb there and have a wider look on the surroundings. I know a lot of people who love mountains and want to climb higher and higher, but never have thought about why... Many people climb high building, restaurants on TV towers are very expensive, but very popular anyway.
I've recently started to think about it. From evolutionary point of view taking higher ground have made a lot of sense. Predators could be seen from larger distance, and in the era of fighting communities, higher grounds such as hills were higher to conquer.
But is such theory scientifically proven? Are there actually any researches on why people want actually to climb higher?

It's an interesting question, I imagine the desire is multifaceted and that it may reflect multiple desires and multiple activities. In particular, I'd distinguish between (a) the desire for a viewing experience and (b) the desire to get to the top and achieve goals.
Desire to Climb
There are many examples of people taking joy in climbing.
This can be seen for example in rock climbing, mountain climbing, and hiking.
Obvious motivations include  motivation for exercise and a desire to experience nature. Some mountain climbers are seeking thrills (see sensation seeking). Some studies of mountain climbing mention the flow inducing nature of mountain climbing (see MacAloon et al 1983 for an analysis).
Climbing in such cases also has a rather natural goal of reaching the top. Attaining goals can be satisfying (see goal theory for further elaboration). And clear goals may be part of the enjoyment in various related activities such as in sports and games.
Part of these activities is that the process of reaching the top is often a big part of the pleasure independent of the pleasure of the final view.
Desire for a view
There is another broad class of behaviour related to people's desire for a "good view". Houses, apartments, offices, restaurants, and so on with better views are valued by people. Viewing platforms are popular tourist attractions.
Benson et al (1998) provide an empirical analysis of the price added to real estate that is attributable to various view types and quality of views. In their analysis they found that high quality ocean front views added some of the most to house prices.
I imagine a distinction could also be made between people's desire for a once off experience and a daily experience. There is a novelty associated with a viewing platform whereby for that moment you get to see the world from a different perspective. You get to see connections between streets and buildings or mountains and rivers that you otherwise miss when immersed at regular ground level. I wonder whether this desire for a novel experience is somewhat different to a desire for a pleasant view on a daily basis.
Reflections on evolutionary psychology
I'm always a little bit uncomfortable with evolutionary psychology arguments. They often have a "just so" feel about them where it is difficult to prove or disprove them.
For example, I could make up an evolutionary argument. Human ancestors presumably climbed trees and liked to survey the land. Places which provided a good overview of the surrounding land enabled greater identification of both potential benefits (e.g., food, drinking resources, mating opportunities) and threats (e.g., other tribes, predators, scarcity of food and water). Such places would also provide further information on impending weather. Thus, humans and ancestors may have been more likely to survive and reproduce if they experienced pleasure in such circumstances.
However, the above evolutionary argument could also be complete rubbish. The desire to experience a view may be connected to many other rational explanations. Or alternatively, you could look at the nature of aesthetics and how they map on to the beauty of a view.
For further discussion of evolutionary psychology and aesthetics see here
References

MacAloon, J., Csikszentmihalyi, M., Harris, J. C., & Park, R. J. (1983). Deep play and the flow experience in rock climbing. Play, games and sports in cultural contexts., 361-384.
Benson, E. D., Hansen, J. L., Schwartz, Jr, A. L., & Smersh, G. T. (1998). Pricing residential amenities: the value of a view. The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 16(1), 55-73.


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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.

And therefore, they're not making choices at random.  The closest I've gotten to random choices is asking a specific question about hiding in a circle or sphere.

It would also be interesting to know whether people could be trained to choose more "randomly".

I'm not sure selecting an item at random that requires some conscientious thought is possible?  The card example looks like people picking the first card which comes to mind based on familiarity, maybe considering the whole subset requires too much thought.  However if a magician asked me to think of a card at random I would most likely avoid the most familiar and pick the last card which comes to mind.  With numbers between 1-1000 the subset is much simpler so you may think a number involving 3's or 7's is "more random" than 500.  If you have to think about it then it surely can't be random.

To truly choose at random, you would need free will, and that has been questioned quite convincingly https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/10982/predictive-experiments-on-neuroscience-of-free-will

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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?

I think the first notions come from neurolinguistic programming, which is largely unsubstantiated by science.  It's one of those things that correlates with some people some of the time, but it doesn't quite allow for generalization.  While I think your second example with writing is poetic, I think you may be reading too much into it.

I've noticed that I'm doing exactly that when I'm thinking of sth, and other people must notice that because they know that I'm thinking about something and not finding the answer in memory because they're guessing that, so they must use some hints...

It's one of those things that correlates with some people some of the time It's definitely not complete BS, but it's not something I would bank a research career on or use as a lie detection method.  By analogy, you may have an uncanny trend of eating steak on Sundays, but that may be influenced more by the fact that you do your grocery shopping on Saturdays and steak is usually on sale, and not anything to do with your appetite for steak being on a 7-day cycle.

(so really, I'm not trying to rain on your parade, just saying that it's kind of a neat observation, but I'm not sure it could be validated -- as always, anyone is welcome to prove me wrong on that)


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How to measure dominance and submissiveness?
Introduction
Interpersonal dimensions of personality (Sullivan, 1953) have been described in a circular model, the interpersonal circumplex, since Leary (1957). The two dimensions that define this circumplex are warmheartedness(pleasantness) versus coldheartedness and dominance versus submissiveness. Two better known measures based on Leary's concept are Mehrabian's Trait Dominance-Submissiveness (Mehrabian & Hines, 1978) and Trait Pleasure-Displeasure Scales (Mehrabian, 1978) (which combine with a Trait Arousability Scale, Mehrabian, 1977, into the PAD; Mehrabian, 1996b), and the Interpersonal Adjective Scale (IAS-R; Wiggins, Trapnell & Philips, 1988).
If you analyse the dominance/submissiveness scales from these instruments, it becomes clear that dominance is here understood to be the ability to assert oneself, while submissiveness is the complementary inability:

The 26 items of the Trait Dominance-Submissiveness Scale ... assessed the generalised feelings of control and influence over one's relationships and life circumstances (e.g. 'I control situations rather than let them control me' (+), 'I work best when someone has outlined a job for me' (-), or 'Domineering people don't intimidate me' (+)). (Mehrabian, 1996a)

The adjectives related to submissiveness in the IAS-R make this negative construct of submissiveness even more clear: timid, bashful, shy, forceless, are four of the eight self-descriptors from this scale.
Contrary to this perspective on submissiveness as incompetent and powerless, other conceptions are possible: some egalitarian individuals might not be unable to dominate others, but simply unwilling; some loving individuals might find fulfillment in selfless devotion; and with the ever expanding service economy, hopefully professional service providers enjoy serving their customers – it would be a dismal life for a majority of us, if we didn't.
Submissive pleasure is an important factor in certain forms of romantic relationships, from the wife choosing a traditional provider/facilitator-household in feminist times to the happy spanking BDSM couple.
Question
Are there measures, scales or instruments that measure a positive, joyful concept of submissiveness, as it is conceived by BDSM?
If not, is there a measure of the "service provider personality"?

References

Leary, T. (1957). Interpersonal diagnosis of personality. New York: Ronald Press.
Mehrabian, A. (1977). A questionnaire measure of individual differences in stimulus screening and associated differences in arousability. Environmental Psychology and Nonverbal Behavior, 1, 89-103.
Mehrabian, A. (1978). Measure of individual differences in temperament. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 38, 1105-1117.
Mehrabian, A. (1996a). Analysis of the big-five personality factors in terms of the PAD Temperament Model. Australian Journal of Psychology, 48, 86-92.
Mehrabian, A. (1996b). Pleasure-arousal-dominance: A general framework for describing and measuring individual differences in temperament. Current Psychology, 14, 261-292.
Mehrabian, A., & Hines, M. (1978). A questionnaire measure of individual differences in dominance-submissiveness. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 38, 479-484. doi:10.1177/001316447803800235
Sullivan, H. S. (1953). The interpersonal theory of psychiatry. New York: Norton.
Wiggins, J. S., Trapnell, P., & Philips, N. (1988). Psychometric and geometric characteristics of the Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (IAS-R). Multivariate Behavrioral Research, 23, 517-530.

Maybe you should rephrase your question as "are there any psychological theories defining submissiveness as a fulfilling, productive and joyful personality trait?" and on a second note, "could provide examples of any measures, scales or instruments applied to any of those theories?"

What dominance tendency stand for

I am using TRUE (http://www.salleurl.edu/tsenyal/true/features.html) and SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin) interface includes a scale for dominance, along with valence and activation. The scale allows you to rate dominance from 'controlled' to 'in control' on a scale from 1 to 9.
References

Planet, S., Iriondo, I., Martínez, E., & Montero, J. A. (2008). TRUE: an online testing platform for multimedia evaluation. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on EMOTION: Corpora for Research on Emotion and Affect at the 6th Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation (LREC 2008). Marrakech, Morocco.


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Why does speaking with rhythm help a subject get into a trance?
Various hypnotism teachers tell you to speak with a relaxed voice with rhythm. You can see Derren Brown on this in The Experiment - The Assassin (from 4:48 to 5:40):

Soft, rhythmical language, repeated phrases ...

Also here, in a paper from Robin Allott:

A number of elements in successful oratory can be identified. Oratory uses some of the techniques also found in poetry: sound patterns (assonance, alliteration, repetition); strongly marked rhythmic patterns.

Why does rhythm help getting the subject in a trance?

Hypnotism is often considered "fringe" psychology, and there is no mention of "speaking with rhythm" on the wikipedia for hypnosis. Perhaps you could do some more research, and provide a few citations (preferably scientific articles) that indicate this technique is commonly used in hypnosis. Also, who are these "hypnotism teachers"?

@Jeff thanks for the help, I added two sources to my question.

This is not exactly my area, but I suspect it simply may not be anyone's area.
It is not clear from the research literature that speaking rhythmically does help get into a trance, mostly because it is not currently clear that "trance" is distinct from other forms of dissociation (though dissociation is often confusingly described as "trance-like" or variations thereof). The closest recent paper I could find (Becker-Blease, 2004), simply reports on subjectively reported associations between certain kinds of music and the experience of a "trance" state, but this does not answer the questions of why or whether speaking rhythmically induces dissociative states.
A non-paywalled review of dissociation and dissociative states in a clinical context can be found in a Review of Psychiatry chapter by Putnam, 1991. Putnam employs the following definition of dissociation:

Dissociation is a process that produces a discernible alteration in a person's thoughts, feelings or actions so that for a period of time certain information is not associated or integrated with other information as it normally or logically would be.

Unfortunately, while subsequent literature in the same line of research has tentatively described a difference between clinical and nonclinical dissociative experiences (Waller, Putnam and Carlson, 1996), this was only descriptive, and did not attempt to investigate ways of inducing dissociative states. The focus appears to have remained on clinical dissociation.
In conclusion, the literature and evidence currently does not seem to distinguish between the two possibilities that nonclinical dissociation either can or cannot be induced by rhythmic speech, and there does not seem to be any meaningful consensus or even particularly influential views on the cognitive processes underlying nonclinical dissociation. It simply does not seem to be an active area of psychological research.
References

Becker-Blease, K. A. (2004). Dissociative states through new age and electronic trance music. Journal of trauma & dissociation, 5(2), 89-100.
Putnam, F. W. (1991). Dissociative phenomena. Review of psychiatry, 10, 145-160.
Waller, N., Putnam, F. W., & Carlson, E. B. (1996). Types of dissociation and dissociative types: A taxometric analysis of dissociative experiences. Psychological Methods, 1(3), 300.


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Psychopaths' Response to Expected Losses?
It has been observed that psychopaths will accept positive expected values past some sort of notion of risk aversion by non-psychopaths.
Are there any observations of psychopaths' responses to negative expected values?  The quoted study's only valid if it shows that psychopaths respond properly to expected losses.

Shiv, B., Loewenstein, G., Bechara, A., Damasio, H., & Damasio, A. R.
  (2005). Investment behavior and the negative side of emotion.
  Psychological Science, 16(6), 435-439.

@Jeff No.  That one's asking about whether psychopaths adhere to the Kelly Criterion, assuming that they prefer positive expected values.  Kelly places logical limits on gambles vs risk, payoff, & "bankroll".  This one questions whether just because they accept positive expected values down to nothing, they may just love to gamble.

interesting thought. i think that is actually the point of the study though-not to show that these patients "prefer" positive gambles, but to show that their deficit can be advantageous in the right context. bechara has shown in the iowa gambling task that emotion lesion patients end up choosing the decks with negative EV. but as you suggest, it would be interesting to see if these patients, e.g., are more likely to play the lottery (with negative expected value) as well. since these patients had prefrontal damage, and thus problems with inhibition, i suspect they would.

@Jeff Totally, but I'm wondering if they're as perfectly selfish as they're "defined" to be.  The lotto's a potentially dangerous example since it becomes a positive expected value every 5 years.  Kelly would prevent a psychopath from lottoing though.  Wait, are psychopaths now limited to prefrontally damaged?

what do you mean by becomes a positive expected value every 5 years? maybe you'll win every 5 years, but the expected value remains negative, always.

not sure how psychopaths are clinically defined, but bechara's studies are not about diagnosed psychopaths--they are about patients with lesions to emotion-related areas

@Jeff Looks like I misread the study.  Oh well.  I'm still curious about whether psychos accept negative expected values.  Re lotto always being negative, the last huge drawing was not even after taxes (I think).  There was another satisfying the criterion around 2005 or so.  The odds are 175M:1.  The ticket costs $2.  As long as the instant payout is +$350M, it's positive.  I think whether taxes should be taken into account is probably best left to the quant exchange.  LOL

ah, good call, but even still... the odds of being the sole winner is a lot less than the odds of being a winner. splitting the jackpot makes a big difference! but you're right, it can be close.

I do not normally respond negatively about a cited study. This study you have cited is rather glib and very flawed. It could be a better evaluation of a person's mathematical ability as opposed to:

Fear seemed to play a large role in risk-avoidance behavior of the
  normal participants.

The other flaw in this study, is to even attempt to correlate giving subjects the money (as it is no personal loss) and using  a rather trivial amount, $20.
Any person with a basic understanding of mathematics, would know that the odds were in favor to betting each time. This cannot be compared to real life risk aversion, where there are unknown risks associated with return, and the financial investment is far greater (as it is coming from the individual's pocket).
My views are supported by the following study In fact the results could be accounted by this study
 Mathematical-Verbal Ability Differentials and Somatic Expressions of Situational Anxiety.
Are there any observations of psychopaths' responses to negative expected values?
The following study would demonstrate that on an emotional level, a person with clinical psychopathy would have no response to negative expected values, but the cognitive  (purely intellectual) awareness of negative expected values would be intact. This could play out in many ways given the circumstances, as life itself is never so clear cut.
Suffice to say, if it involves the fear of harming another of self harm, this would not be consideration for average psychopath.

CONTEXT: Psychopaths belong to a larger group of persons with
  antisocial personality disorder and are characterized by an inability
  to have emotional involvement and by the repeated violation of the
  rights of others. It was hypothesized that this behavior might be the
  consequence of deficient fear conditioning.
OBJECTIVE: To study the cerebral, peripheral, and subjective
  correlates of fear conditioning in criminal psychopaths and healthy
  control subjects.
RESULTS: The healthy controls showed enhanced differential activation
  in the limbic-prefrontal circuit (amygdala, orbitofrontal cortex,
  insula, and anterior cingulate) during the acquisition of fear and
  successful verbal and autonomic conditioning. The psychopaths
  displayed no significant activity in this circuit and failed to show
  conditioned skin conductance and emotional valence ratings, although
  contingency and arousal ratings were normal.
CONCLUSION: This dissociation of emotional and cognitive processing
  may be the neural basis of the lack of anticipation of aversive events
  in criminal psychopaths.

Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

I do not see how you have made the following deduction:
The quoted study's only valid if it shows that psychopaths respond properly to expected losses.
Mathematical-Verbal Ability Differentials and Somatic Expressions of Situational Anxiety
Robert L. Milliken and Bernard Spilka
The Journal of Experimental Education
Vol. 31, No. 1 (Sep., 1962), pp. 3-26
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20156598
Deficient fear conditioning in psychopathy: a functional magnetic resonance imaging study.
Birbaumer N, Veit R, Lotze M, Erb M, Hermann C, Grodd W, Flor H.
Source
Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology and Section of Experimental Resonance Imaging of the CNS,
 Department of Neuroradiology,
 University of Tübingen,
Tübingen, Germany.

If memory serves, I think participants were allowed to keep any money they do not gamble.  Yes, my last comment you referenced was overly critical.  What I meant is that it would be hard (for me at least) to draw conclusions unless if the psychopaths gambled everything away when offered negative expected values.

Back at you!  Well, I'm still on the fence.  This all started for me b/c I saw an article titled something like "Is Warren Buffett a psychopath" that referenced the two studies in my two questions.  It got me thinking "can WB's wealth really be boiled down to some sort of superman emotional control?" since he literally started from $0 (no family money, Graham refused to hire him for years(?), etc).  Just a curiosity for me.  I think I still need to see their responses to -E[X(t)] to be satisfied...

lol, no way can I expect an immediate answer here: this is a very difficult stack, like math, where answers come from research that's probably few and far between since its so cutting edge and the difficulty (value) of the stacks' general concepts is so large.  jmho.  (+1 for your studies, question's value!)


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Does the transcription method used (e.g., printing, handwriting, typing, voice recording, etc.) affect memory retention?
When I was in high school, one of my teachers used to make us hand print copies of materials from transparencies on an overhead projector (I may be showing my age), with the reasoning that re-writing notes by hand was better for memory retention.
I later was told, via sources I can no longer recall, that typing out notes wasn't as good for memory retention because it was too easily done without thinking. Hand printed/written notes, I was told, were superior because they forced you to think about the words and letters being written, whereas typing uses more or less the same actions for each character and can be done faster with less conscious thought. Anecdotally, I know I certainly type faster than I write, and am better able to multitask as I do.

Is there any evidence to support the idea that writing is better for retention than typing?
Does it matter if you print or handwrite the transcription?
Do other transcription methods, such as dictating into an audio recording device, have better or worse retention rates?

A recent senior thesis by Schoen (2012) addressed this exact question. Students watched a filmed lecture and were randomly assigned to take notes with either by typing or handwriting. After the lecture, students were given a few distractor tasks, and then given a retention test. Other students were assigned to take notes from a textbook, instead of a lecture.
In contrast to your theory, there was a main effect of transcription method, such that typing notes led to better retention. However, there was an interaction with context, and it appears that there is no simple main effect for textbook notes. (see figure below)
One could posit that this interaction occurs because of the demands of the task. Taking notes by typing is easier and faster, i.e. more fluent. Hand-writing notes leads to higher cognitive load, which may lead to the student paying more attention to note-taking and less attention to the lecture itself. This would explain why textbook notes showed no effect. I only skimmed through the paper, but it seems very interesting and right to the point of your question, so I would suggest reading it for more info.

Additional information:
Before looking this up, I expected the opposite pattern. Bjork & Bjork (2009) have found
that creating desirable difficulties in learning can promote retention. For instance, it is well known that generating information, such as fill-in-the-blanks, promote better retention compared to, e.g., multiple choice tests. Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, &  Vaughan (2010) have found that presenting study material in hard-to-read fonts leads to better encoding and retention of the material.
Similarly, a study by Yang, Gallo, & Beilock (2009) looked at the effect of motor fluency on retention. Subjects typed a two-letter dyad (such as ae or aq). Fluent dyads were letter pairs which were typed with two fingers; these pairs are typed faster and more easily than dyads that used the same finger because there is no motor bottleneck. Subjects were later given a recognition test to determine which dyads were presented to them. They found that subjects produced more false alarms for fluent dyads than disfluent dyads. This is particularly strange because false alarms, by their nature, were not actually typed by subject. This effect only held for expert typists, corroborating previous literature which suggests that fluency leads to false recognition. (Presumably for novice typists, none of the dyads were fluent enough to produce a higher level of false alarms).
So it seems there is a confluence of effects here. Disfluency--that is, making things more difficult--can promote deep processing and lead to better encoding and retention. However when this process causes one to neglect other information, such as paying attention to the lecture itself, retention suffers.
For additional reading on the effects of fluency on problem solving, I suggest Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre (2007) and Oppenheimer (2008).
From Schoen (2012):

Alter, A. L., Oppenheimer, D. M., Epley, N., & Eyre, R. N. (2007). Overcoming intuition: metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(4), 569. PDF
Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. (2009). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. New York: Worth Publishers. PDF
Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M., & Vaughan, E. B. (2011). Fortune favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118(1), 111-115. PDF
Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008). The secret life of fluency. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(6), 237-241. PDF
Schoen, I. (2012). Effects of Method and Context of Note-taking on Memory: Handwriting versus Typing in Lecture and Textbook-Reading Contexts. Pitzer Senior Theses. Paper 20. PDF
Yang, S. J., Gallo, D. A., & Beilock, S. L. (2009). Embodied memory judgments: a case of motor fluency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(5), 1359. PDF

During one of corporate trainings I was given, the presenter mentioned that if you only hear something, you retain about 17% of information. If you hear and say it, you retain even more. If you hear, say and do, you retain the most. I think seeing and typing falls under one of these, but I doubt it's the most effective method of retention

@Alex interesting tidbit. i think that general concept is probably true, but that 17% figure is definitely false.

Sorry for the late accept. I wanted to read through the Schoen paper before accepting, and although I read over the abstract as soon as I finished your answer, I just got around to reading (well, skimming) the rest of it now. Thank you for the detailed answer, and for finally putting this occasionally nagging question to rest.

@AgentConundrum glad i could help!


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Inducing Auditory-to-Visual Synesthesia
I recently watched an interesting video that was discussing conveying color to the blind through language. It implied that there may be a way to insert the sensation of color into a person's mind via a series of sounds.
I have looked for articles on this and haven't been able to find much. I was just curious:

Is it possible to induce a kind of auditory-to-visual synesthesia?
Are there any articles on this?

Link to video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evQsOFQju08
Yes I know :)

I have edited this question because I don't believe this qualifies as synesthesia. Let me know if you think I've altered the meaning of your question.

@Jeff I appreciate your interest, but I've decided to revert to the previous edit since I feel your contribution did change my question. I am essentially asking if there is a way make someone hear in color. Is there a term that you know of that conveys this idea better than synesthesia? If so, definitely feel free to edit again.

i understand. my concern is that 'synesthesia' is a neurological conditions, and so it is impossible to 'induce synesthesia' by virtue of its definition (short of rewiring the cortex...). Perhaps just changing it to 'synesthesia-like symptoms' would suffice, or maybe someone else has a better suggestion

also, could you possibly cite or provide a link to the original video if possible? it could help us figure out if a) your interpretation is simply incorrect or b) the claim isn't really a scientific one, etc.

@Jeff Haha, well I have a guilty pleasure Youtube channel, vsauce. Not exactly the most reputable source of scientific material, but interesting nonetheless. The question now includes a link if you're interested.
The wording of the question was my own. If the terminology was not quite right, by all means adjust it.

I have read that people without eyesight will "see" via an auditory echolocation, ie. their occipital lobes fire up despite a lack of visual input. While not an answer, it could be related.

great video. Maybe you seen this question?

First, a definition: "Synaesthesia is a curious condition in which an otherwise normal person experiences sensations in one modality when a second modality is stimulated." [1] There are two basic explanations for this phenomenon: the hyperconnectivity
hypothesis and the disinhibition-unmasking hypothesis [2]. The former says that the condition results from excessive neural connections between two modalities, and the latter says that it results from a lack of inhibition of signals. A quick search reveals that it is indeed possible to induce this condition (with drugs, for example), and it isn't necessary to rewire any neural connections [2,3,4]. This is an example of how the brain transmits/filters information by many mechanisms, connectivity being just one of them.
[1] Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Edward M. Hubbard. "Synaesthesia--a window into perception, thought and language." Journal of consciousness studies 8.12 (2001): 3-34.
[2] Kadosh, Roi Cohen, et al. "Induced cross-modal synaesthetic experience without abnormal neuronal connections." Psychological Science 20.2 (2009): 258-265.
[3] Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Diane Rogers-Ramachandran. "Synaesthesia in phantom limbs induced with mirrors." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 263.1369 (1996): 377-386.
[4] Luke, David P., and Devin B. Terhune. "The induction of synaesthesia with chemical agents: a systematic review." Frontiers in psychology 4 (2013).

I think the only documented case of this is Neil Harbisson. From my understanding he has a camera attached to an implanted bone vibrator and a processor unit that converts color to audible frequencies. I believe, although cannot find any references, that the implanted portion of the device is similar to a bone anchored hearing aid.


text:
How to conduct surveys using facebook?
More and more often I read in papers, that an online survey has been conducted through Facebook. What I have yet to understand is how this can best be done.
I understand that Facebook allows the creation of a survey app that allows surveys to be embedded in fan pages or timelines.
Thus, I have many little questions:

How and where do the existing Facebook survey apps (like https://de-de.facebook.com/simple.surveys) store their data? How does this comply with scientific privacy and data security concerns?
Which apps are best, and why?
I would like to run the actual survey on my own website. Is it possible to embed an external website in a Facebook app?
How can I implement a survey that does not need the test subject to allow the app access to profile data?
Since there is no way to advertise a survey on Facebook, except by having someone use it and let his friends know that he uses it, how do you, who have conducted surveys through Facebook, find a large enough and random enough sample? Or: How do you advertise your survey?

My overall question is
Regardless of the little questions above, I'm interested in:

What is an effective way to conduct surveys using Facebook?
Are there any existing tutorials that describe best practice?

A lot of the time I take this to mean "We wrote a survey on some third party site, but distributed it on Facebook". I don't think they necessarily refer to using a Facebook app to do so, although some certainly would have done.

I aggree that building my own FB survey app or interface will be a time consuming undertaking. But we are doing very many surveys and would be able to reuse the results from this one-time effort many times and believe it would be worthwhile.

This is just a few thoughts.
I agree with @adb that an obvious way to use facebook for conducting surveys is just to provide a link to an external website that runs the survey.
There is an interesting article by Tan and colleagues where they talk about using paid advertisements to get targeted participants on Facebook.  I thought the following statistics were interesting in highlighting the sheer scale required in order to convert an ad into completed surveys:  1.1 million ad impressions resulted in 280 clicks on the advertisement of which 59 responded to the survey of which 39 completed the survey.
References

Tan, H., Forgasz, H., Leder, G., & McLeod, A. SURVEY RECRUITMENT USING FACEBOOK: THREE STUDIES. FULL TEXT

Thank you, Jeromy, that's a great article. Tan et al. wanted to recruit students from Victoria, Australia, taking a "Maths Methods" course. There probably aren't 1.1 million such students (but I don't know). Maybe the ad wasn't targeted (enough). Also you need to divide that number by repeat views (people usually see a lot of FB pages, all with the same ads, during six days). I think FB is good for recruiting general samples (e.g. teenagers), because FB users aren't required to supply much information to make it possible to safely close-target an ad.

The whole idea behind integrating the survey into FB is making filling out the form more entertaining. We want to display some of the results to the users and maybe make it possible for them to display some of the results on their "wall", like game results, thus recruiting more participants who want to see how they score in whatever we want to test.

I'm keen to hear what works. Hopefully others have more to say.

If and when the survey is completed, I'll answer my question here.

You could try third party suppliers.  There is currently a company offering free facebook surveys. Basically, create an account, create a survey, enter in a bit of information and presto, you have a survey.  Try www.hiprewards.com.  Building your own survey app for facebook is not a trivial undertaking.

I don't want sensitive data to live on someone else's servers. For example, I'm collecting contact data, because we want to do a longitudinal study and want to be able to contact our test subjects in a few years time. Also, the tools I have seen don't offer the flexibility that I have by coding my own survey form.


text:
"Memory and the Computational Brain" by Gallistel & King
I am looking for opinions on this book particularly whether it is a suitable intro to the field of cognitive neuroscience. What I would not like is a book that is really a collage of introductory articles that bear little relation to one another. Several of the introductory books on Amazon are that way. That is no way to learn a subject, imo (but I digress).
Gallistel and King begin with Shannon's information theory, but do not imo go very far into the physiology of neurons nor do they discuss how the codes derived from brain activity are connected to human or animal behavior. What I am looking for is more comprehensive and thus a longer book. Is there such an introductory book?

To clarify, I am looking for an intro to cog. neuroscience that begins with information theory, continues on with the physiology of neurons, and ends with discussion of human or animal behavior. Thanks.

If you are interested in information theory and neuronal physiology, you shouldn't be looking for an intro to cognitive neuroscience, but rather cellular neuroscience.  Most applications of information theory in modern neuroscience are related to neural coding.  The classic (and recently updated) text is Kandel's "Principles of Neural Science".  Byrne and Roberts' "From Molecules to Networks" has a more quantitative approach, but is not as comprehensive.


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Can prolonged neural adaptation lead to HPPD?
The human brain adapts to a constant stimulus of our neural system. For instance, if we ride a train and look out of the window for a long time and the train stops, we have the feeling of slowly moving backwards.
There are other, more extreme stimulus like a neave strobe as shown in this picture:

This particular animated image produces a rapid neural adaption causing us to see things moving for about 10 seconds. I have also observed that binaural beats cause minor ear ringing symptoms if listened to for a longer period of time.
The burning question here is: Can prolonged stimulus to such images or sounds cause Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder?

No.  This disorder requires the sufferer to have used hallucinogenic substances in the past:

Previous use of hallucinogens by the person is necessary, but not sufficient, for diagnosis of HPPD. For an individual to be diagnosed with HPPD, the symptoms cannot be due to another medical condition.

from Wikipedia following the DSM-IV criteria reproduced here.

A. The reexperiencing, following cessation of use of a hallucinogen, of one or more of the perceptual symptoms that were experienced while intoxicated with the hallucinogen (e.g., geometric hallucinations, false perceptions of movement in the peripheral visual fields, flashes of color, intensified colors, trails of images of moving objects, positive afterimages, halos around objects, macropsia, and micropsia).


text:
What is the null hypothesis, when there is no research hypothesis?
(a) Apples grow to different sizes, from small to average and large. Farmers want large apples.
(b) There is this rare bug, the apple bark bug, which lives in the bark of apple trees. Due to its rarity, the apple bark bug is not well understood.
(c) Agronomists are divided about the effect the apple bark bug has on the size of apples. Some believe that apples from trees that have been infested with colonies of this bug are smaller than on trees without such an infestation; others believe that in fact they are larger.
The ministry for agriculture has commissioned a study on the effects of the apple bark bug on apple size. Based on the results of this study they want to either exterminate the apple bark bug, ignore it, or cultivate it. There is no scientific literature on the matter, there is no reliable data, and the research institute commissioned with this study now wonders:
What should be the null hypothesis?
As natural scientists they know they cannot present their limited observations as general fact, but only falsify a hypothesis. But what should it be?
The third semester student apprentice from the nearby university, who has just finished a course in the theory of measurement, suggests:
H0 : Applebug = Appleno bug
H1 : Applebug ≠ Appleno bug
His friend, who has heard the same lecture, rolls her eyes and suggests:
H0 : Applebug ≤ Appleno bug
H1 : Applebug > Appleno bug
The research group leader smiles and compliments them on their attentiveness.
What does he suggest?
This is, of course, an example, illustrating a question relating to psychological research: How do we define the null hypothesis, if we have no presupposition about the effects of an intervention?

To me it looks like there are two competing research hypotheses, rather than no hypothesis.

Not really. Any hypothesis must have an alternative hyothesis in such a way that between them they cover all possibilities: either x = 1 or x ≠ 1. Tertium non datur (there must not be a third possibility). The two opposing oppinions that either the bugs make the apples large, or the bugs make the apples small, leave a third possibility, that the bugs don't affect the apples at all. So you cannot test one hypothesis against one other, you'd be testing one against two others, which is impossible. You always need two, and the sum of their probabilities must be 1: p(h0) = a; p(h1) = 1-a.

This seems way out of scope... philosopy S.E. might be a better place, since this deals more with the philosophy of science rather any particular field.

I disagree with @zergylord about this being out of scope. Cross Validated would've been a far better suggestion if s/he'd been right, but I don't see a need for migration.

So your independent variable is the bug, and your dependent variable is apple size.
The question asks whether you are testing a directional hypothesis.
Given that researchers are divided about the direction of the effect of the IV on the DV, it makes more sense to treat it as a non-directional hypothesis:
i.e., H0 is that apple size is equal with and without bugs.
The alternative hypothesis is that they are not equal. Or in some senses, there are two alternative hypotheses, one suggesting an increase and another suggesting a decrease.
Of course, you ultimately want to conclude whether there is a difference and if so what is the direction of the effect. Thus, confidence intervals from a frequentist perspective or a posterior density from a bayesian perspective might be more useful in understanding the direction and degree of any effect.
You may also want to read about suggestions for testing the hypothesis of no group differences.

I recieved this same answer from another source through personal communication. The phrasing was: If you have no presuppositions, you conduct a bidirectional test. If you can reject H0: p = 0.5 and your estimator is for example p̂ = 0.7, you can interpret this as p > 0.5

I encounter a lot of situations like this in personality research. I don't think it's true that:

As natural scientists they know they cannot present their limited observations as general fact, but only falsify a hypothesis.

Limited observations of empirical information are still as factual as anything else. One may not want to present explanations of them as general theory, but one doesn't need a null hypothesis to generate theory. If the ministry's budget for the study is set, and the sampling procedure is too, then why not just collect the data and describe it the best one can? The scenario suggests a natural quasi-experiment, so causal inference would be limited unless laboratory-controlled experiments were used instead of naturalistic observation...and controlled experiments still might fail to apply to natural ecosystems by limiting the bugs' expression of any preferences they might have. Given no perfect solution, it seems inferential power is inevitably limited in this scenario. I don't see any hope for retaining a confirmatory hypothesis testing framework either, given the explicit lack of a hypothesis to confirm.
In an exploratory framework, clear data description is roughly as good as (even debatably better than) hypothesis testing. It doesn't pretend to be something it's not if reported appropriately, and doesn't replace real information with a choice of simplistic models. One way to take an exploratory approach in this case would be to estimate the effect size of the group difference and calculate confidence intervals. If zero is within your confidence interval, you might not want to reject the null hypothesis, but then again, why wouldn't you? It's probably false anyway, even if it's only ever-so-slightly off in whichever direction, even if only due to other uncontrolled variables. IMO, better to focus on what you do know:

$${\rm Apple}_{\rm bug}\ne{\rm Apple}_\text{no bug}\\d=\frac{\bar{x}_{\rm bug} - \bar{x}_\text{no bug}}{s_{\rm pooled}}\\{\rm CI}_{d(1-\alpha)}=\text{[Lower bound, Upper bound]}$$

I don't see why the ministry couldn't make an appropriate decision based on this information; none of its limits are unnecessary AFAIK, whereas the value of a test statistic is tied to the choice of null. What if the ministry only cares about substantial nonzero effects, but throws enough money at it to detect very small effects reliably? A rejected null then does less good than a narrow confidence interval, which might rule out both zero effect and substantially larger than zero effects given a small effect and large sample.


text:
How many samples are there when test subjects come through different recruitment strategies?
Let's assume I want to conduct a survey. To find test subjects, I post an ad in a local newspaper, one on a locally relevant website, distribute flyers in front of the train station, and have managed to get one complete class from a local school to partake.
Due to the different recruitment methods, each will probably have drawn quite different samples from the population: the local newspaper is mostly read by older people with medium to high education; the institute website is mostly visited by students and researchers; the flyer is given to commuters; then there is that group of pupils, all of the same age and education level.
In my test, I ask my test subjects to specify how they knew of the test:

ad in newspaper
ad on website
flyer
they were tested in class

So I can group my data according to the recruitment method, if I want to.
Is this all one sample? Or have I drawn four samples?
And if this is one sample, how then do you draw two or more samples?

"Let's assume I want to conduct a survey." Are you really? It looks a lot like you're doing homework.

It's not homework, but does it matter?

I think it's an interesting question. I agree that it reads like homework. @what given that it's not homework, then I congratulate you on writing creative questions to learn material. As a side point this site hasn't received a lot of homework questions, so we haven't really developed a policy on the topic. Personally, I think the general problem with homework questions is that they tend to be too specific (i.e., they don't create a general resource for the internet). In contrast, I think this is a general question.

@what - it might matter. My husband had a problem in a course of his when some homework questions got posted on one of the stackexchange sites, and many students copied the answers. The homework was supposed to carry points and be part of the final grade and all that. It would be good to know that answering your questions won't lead to similar problems for someone.

@what - other than that, I think your questions are interesting and I would like to participate in answering them as long as I know it won't cause problems for anyone out there teaching a course.

Okay, I can understand that. I study Psychology at a German university. I am currently learning statistics and research methods. I follow a lecture and sit in the university library surrounded by a multitude of books on these topics. When I only try to memorize stuff, I find what I have to learn debilitatingly boring and cannot get anything into my head. I'm the problem solving type. I need a problem to which I can apply what I'm learning, to want to understand it. So I try to think up what I would want to do with the "tools" that I learn. [contd.]

[contd.] In this case, that means that when I read about statistical hypothesis testing, all the things that I would like to research come to my mind, but for some strange reason, my real world problems are always a bit more complex than those text book examples. Or maybe I have not yet read far enough. That my questions sound like homework is due to my attempt to not simply ask a question, but dress this question in an example that hopefully makes my question more clear and more meaningful.

OK, thanks for clarifying.

I would still think that this is one sample. Nevertheless I would enter the recruitment method as a independent variable (or covariate?) into the analysis.

If this is all one sample, how then do you draw two samples?

This depends on what you are looking for. If you used the different recruitment methods to specifically draw from different populations, you can also consider them distinct samples. In general, it mainly depends on your definition what a sample constitutes in a particular case. You can recruit random people as they walk through the door and decide the first 100 to be your Sample 1 for Study X and the second 100 to be your Sample 2 for Study Y, but you could also call all 200 of them to be just one sample if it suits your needs.

@H.Muster And that is exactly why I have difficulty finding the results from statistical analyses meaningful. It all seems so arbitrary to me.

This depends on your research question, as well as the population you want to generalize your conclusions to.
If you care about whether complex sounds are easier to discriminate when they are longer, you can regard all the participants to be one sample because there is no theoretical reason to assume that people differ in this. In principle, the more universal the subject of your study is, the less you need to care about your sampling technique because any person should be as good as any other. In practice, the sample will likely be first year psychology students :)
But if you care about computer literacy or car ownership or attitudes towards standardized testing (i.e. if your question relates to individual differences or group differences), then clearly your samples are drawn from very different parts of the population. In that case you can say that you have drawn four samples. Or perhaps less - perhaps you drew two: people unlikely to have cars (school kids and train takers) and people likely to have cars (American newspaper readers and internet users). This is not the best example but you can see the logic.

Thank you, @Ana, this totally makes sense. I was so focussed on the recruitment, that I forgot to consider the purpose of the study and that my planing of that recruitment should relate to this purpose. This is a valuable insight: that everything, from the choice of test administrator to the daytime of the testing, must be put in relation to what I want to research.

@what - Yeah, looking at research from the standpoint of someone planning to do it is different from looking at it in vacuum, i.e. methods courses :)


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Do we need a pre-test to compare the effectiveness of two treatments?
Assume, I want to evaluate how effective two teachers are in teaching English to German children. Both teachers have been teaching at the same high school for twenty years, and both use a distinctly different pedagogical methodology. In fact a small competition has arisen between them: they have published and discussed their ideas and practise in journals relevant to their profession, and they have now called in a data analyst (you) to conduct this evaluation which, so they hope, will decide their contest and reconcile the former friends.
The school, where they both work, is the only school for its small town. When pupils enter this school, they are randomly assigned classes: one half of the children are assigned to one class (and one maths teacher), the other half to the other class (and the other maths teacher).
The two teachers are tired of not knowing which method is best. In the interest of their pupils they want to finally decide on the better one and both use this from now on. They hope, that you don't need to test one cohort of children when they finish elementary school, have them taught for the 8 years from 5th grade until they graduate from high school, and then measure their mathematical ability again, to come to a conclusion. Therefore they ask you:
Is it enough to compare the levels of the dependent variable post-intervention? Or do you need to measure it pre-intervention as well? Why?

But you did measure depressivity: you know that your subjects have light depression.

I changed my example to a case where we don't have the values pre-treatment.

In your example, class assignment is definitely not random at all. First letter of last name depends on language and hence ethnicity/origin and many other relevant socio-economic variables in many societies. This one was easy to debunk and could lead to some large correlations but generally speaking this sort of procedures are not a good way to randomize at all.

@GaëlLaurans Yes, okay, I edited my example. Simply assume that assignation is random. The focus of my question is elsewhere.

Well, that's why it was merely a comment. I just thought it was funny you should be so confident when it was obvious to me that this would generate strong psychologically-relevant correlations. Paying attention to this kind of things is infinitely more important than statistical niceties or including a pre-test measure. Regarding the question itself, I think Jeromy already covered it quite well. You might also want to check http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/3466/best-practice-when-analysing-pre-post-treatment-control-designs which provides a lot of references on the issues involved.

This would've been a good one for Cross Validated too (if possibly a duplicate, though I can't find one to recommend). Too many questions ask what to do with data they've already collected; not enough are about research design. Jeromy's answer is great though; I might even refer people on CV to it. :)

Answer based on your original depression example
Note that this answer was originally written based on your initial example, where you asked:

Assume, I have developed a new intervention for people with light
  depression. I want to compare the effectiveness of this intervention
  (E) with an existing intervention (C). For this, I recruit test
  subjects from the local psychotherapeutic ambulance and randomly
  assign them to either the experimental (E) or control group (C). The
  interesting dependent variable is of course depressivity.

In general, you don't need to measure pre-treatment for the dependent variable. In the limit random assignment ensures that the groups are equal. Or to put it another way, random assignment ensures that the groups are not biased to be higher or lower on the dependent variable at baseline.  A typical between-subjects t-test comparing post-treatement scores would typically provide an unbiased test of whether the intervention had an effect on dependent variable (i.e., depression) relative to control intervention.
That said, there are many benefits to including a baseline measure:

Including a baseline measure of depression will almost always give you more statistical power because you are able to control for much of the stable individual differences in the dependent variable (i.e., depression).
If you participants drop out during the intervention, it can be helpful to see whether this is related to baseline levels.
You can begin to assess individual differences in the effect of the intervention.
Where there are questions about whether random assignment was performed correctly, you can test for baseline differences.

Note there are several options for analysing pre-post treatment-control designs including ANCOVA, difference scores, and interaction effects. See this discussion for further ideas.
Note also that there are good reasons to assess an intervention by measuring more than two time points. For example, you might obtain (a) multiple baseline measures to get a sense of the stability pre-intervention (b) multiple  you might measures during the intervention to assess depression during the intervention, and (c) multiple follow-up measures particularly to see both the immediate and the longer term effect of the intervention.
Updated points based on the teaching example

It is an empirical question whether first letter of last name is related to the effect of the teaching intervention or baseline differences. In general, it would be better to have a better form of randomisation of participants to groups.
Where there are questions about the randomisation procedure, the presence of a pre-test measure can be beneficial to check this.
There are several particular issues related to assessing the effectiveness of interventions relating to children in class rooms even when students have been randomly assigned to classrooms. (a) With just one classroom each, it is difficult to tease out what is the effect of the teacher and what is the effect of the curriculum; (b) there will typically be a lack of independent observations. Thus, for example, students within the classroom may influence each other. Thus, your effective sample size is not as great as it may seem.

Okay, I understand. Let's assume this is not a treatment for depression, but something that the general population experiences, like school education. So the population we are interested in is not a subpopulation which will be difficult to identify, but simply everyone. That way it will be easy to draw repeated random samples and be sure that all samples have the same normally distributed characteristics (e.g. final school grades). [contd.]

[contd.] Would it be legitimate to measure the effects of the two "treatments" in two classes being taught by two different methods, and measuring the baseline with a third group of kids just entering school at the same time (e.g. June 11th, 2013), instead of measuring a group of first graders now and measuring the same kids again, post treatment, in ten years? (Assume the kids were randomly assigned to the experimental and controll classes etc. I'm just trying to understand the principles, the examples are made up as I go.)

The key thing you mentioned in your question is "random assignment". In general, the choice of dependent variable does not change things. That said, when you get into a specific research context, different issues arise. For example, teaching interventions have their own features related to the mode of delivery in shared class rooms.

I changed my example to better fit the question. Maybe it makes more sense this way.

I would emphasize that while random assignment is in theory sufficient (as Jeromy already noted), in reality it is very hard to obtain random samples. E.G. you can't randomly assign students to a class. And even if you did, from that point on they are all in the same class and measures are not independent anymore. Hierarchical models were developed with this application in mind, but they are suited for a variety of contexts. So maybe this might be an option.

I understand the problems with randomization. But in real world research, randomization is often impossible. Think of online surveys: there is a selection of participants based on who has access to the internet and who hasn't (and even today not everyone has), the technical requirements (someone here recently programmed a survey in Java, that only runs under Windows -- no Linux, Mac or mobile access), etc. Obviously people don't throw away the data from such surveys, and the findings get published. So, randomization problems aside, the core of my question is wether or not we need a pre-test.

@what You are confusing randomization and random sampling. It's perfectly possible to randomly assign self-selected participants in an Internet survey to different conditions and validly make inferences about the effect of this manipulation. Generalizing your conclusions to a well-defined population (beyond “people ready to participate in my study”) is problematic but that's an entirely different problem. Also note that pre-test measures can be useful for a number of things but they do not replace randomization.

@GaëlLaurans You are right, thank you.


text:
How do people develop abstract thought processes?
By abstract thinking, I am referring to not only notions of self and identity, but also aspects that can not be directly observed and 'thinking outside of the box'.  Essentially, from my own experience as a teacher, where a student gradually develops the ability to go beyond 'concrete' thinking (based on what they can sense), to be able to incorporate abstract ideas and knowledge (based on what can not be sensed).
An example of this is learning chemistry, it has been my experience in the classroom that junior science students don't always get the notion of atomic structure because they can not see or adequately visualise the details necessary; however, the can understand what happens in chemical reaction as it is clear to see.
What cognitive processes occur that allow a person to be able to think and problem solve abstractly?

A 2013 book tackles this subject : Surfaces and Essences, written by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander. They mostly cite anecdotal evidence (not only, Emmanuel Sander worked on this subject for years), but the theory is very convincing, and quite beautiful. The book received praise from some big names (including Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Loftus).
So, their theory in a nutshell : we naturally reason by analogy. Analogy is defined here as "recognizing something perceived as identical to something stored in memory" - a very large definition, that encompasses categorization. We are bad at purely abstract thinking (as the famous Wason (1966) task shows, or most tasks used in reasoning psychology), but we are very good at making abstract links between concrete things, without noticing it.
The book is filled by loads of examples, a striking one is comptuer science vocabulary. Even though computers brought loads of new "things", few new names have been invented. For example : desktop, file, directory, keyboard, window, program, application... all those words existed before computers, they have been used by analogy. When one makes such an analogy between a real, concrete desktop and a computer one, one extends the meaning of the word "desktop" - before, desktop refered to the piece of furniture ; after the analogy, desktop acquires a new, more abstract sense that encompasses the 2 concrete (furniture and computer) : a desktop is a working space... where you can store files, etc.
So, for your question : it seems that we extract abstract structures as we encode concrete examples - we can't (or at least it's much harder) directly understand the abstract knowledge. Providing good analogies is probably a very good way to teach something - if there are no such analogies, the domain remains very hard to grasp (statistics, probabilites and quantum physics are probably good examples of that).

The computer vocabulary you mention were forms of interaction, modeled this way, exactly so the concepts would be more easily graspable by users. It was created this way to be 'identical'. Your argument still holds though, since the designers decided to use this analogy themselves of course ... Just to point out, we did not 'accidentally' start calling our desktop 'desktop'. It was designed this way. ;p