text:
.Do students learn better when challenged (specifically, in math education)?
Originally posted on Math.SE,
but it was suggested cogsci.SE would be a more suitable venue.
I'm aware of two publications that have trickled onto the radar screens
of non-specialists:

Fortune Favors the Bold by Diemand-Yauman & Oppenheimer
Designing Effective Multimedia for Physics Education
 by Derek Muller
(TED talk)

The former focuses on the impact of "disfluency" on retention and success when processing written material, and the latter seems to focus on learning in the
case where preexisting misconceptions need to be corrected (physics).
I'm interested to hear about similar research results in the learning of
abstract concepts, specifically mathematics.
The motivation described in the original question on Math.SE is the
fact that many mathematicians seem to hold the (painful, to students)
belief that forcing students to struggle (in some sense) is beneficial.
I've quoted multiple examples of this attitude from various sources in
the original question, you are welcome to have a look.
Does current research support the belief that (in mathematics) difficult
learning is better learning?
This might be in terms of retention, long-term achievements, motivation, etc'.
Update
I've posted an expanded form of the question on matheducators.SE beta: https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/875/
Still hoping for helpful answers from the cogsci.SE community.

FWIW, I found some of the blockquotes included initially to be helpful. Others may prefer a briefer post, so I won't recommend a rollback, but I'd encourage interested readers to check out the previous revision with quotes included.

It seemed appropriate on Math.SE but excessive when posted here. I did my best to adapt to the imagined audience. Perhaps I should ask a new question on the effect of length of SE post on response motivation.

Maybe; hard to say! That would be a cool question. I'd be tempted to do some original research to answer it! I'm thinking it would be negative binomial regression predicting number of answers from character count – both linear and quadratic terms, because OPs that are too long or too short probably reduce answer count. Probably tons of important moderators to consider though...

-1 Ethnocentric and unable to be generalized to any group. I'm going to flag too broad

@caseyr547, "too broad" I can understand, but what does ethnocentric have to do with it?

Let me begin by saying that the answer is nowhere near as simple as you or I would like it to be. There are several reasons for this, but the main reason is that there are myriad ways that students can struggle through the material.
I became interested in this subject when I was a graduate teaching assistant in the Industrial Engineering program at Iowa State. One of the classes that I taught dealt with the concept of measurement variation, which inescapably includes several important statistical concepts, which to me (having had four advanced statistics/methods courses) were painfully obvious; however, my students had no hope whatsoever.  When lab report grading time came around, I was very disappointed to see that even my brightest students completely missed the point of the experiment, <sarcasm> despite my obviously brilliant instruction </sarcasm>.
So, I set out to do research and conduct experiments into exactly why my students had trouble with this material.  I've written two papers on the subject (with a third in-work).  Here are some of my general findings:

The learning process depends upon the learner (pre-existing knowledge and conceptions), the material (type and difficulty), and the teaching method. These three interact in a complex way, as several researchers have explored. The most comprehensive set of literature on this can be found by searching Cognitive Load Theory.
Problem-based learning (which is what @JohnYetter describes in his answer) has been proven to be a highly effective teaching method for science and math when executed properly.  Proper execution of PBL requires that students are familiar with the method, and my studies have shown that properly-designed scaffolding (things that help guide the process and point out key concepts) is a significant, essential component.
Lecture does not appear to have any effect on learning (at least for measurement variation and the related concepts), and may actually harm the learning process (this is what I am studying further right now).

The theories agree that the reason PBL is effective is that it forces students to make the necessary schematic connections to build their knowledge. The intent of the process is to take novices and begin to develop their knowledge base such that it functions more like an experts' knowledge base (there are proven differences between how novices and experts explore problems).  Along with this, I think that you need to have a particular type of student, one who has self-discipline and doesn't give up. Such students are well-suited for engineering and science; students who don't possess these abilities or who are not capable of rapidly adapting find themselves on the way over to a non-technical degree (so my studies of engineering students only automatically exclude this population of students, which is another piece I need to study further).

Harvard's Eric Mazur who advocates "Peer learning" indeed speaks of his own experience in that the conceptual difficulties students wrestle with are ones the lecturer is long past. Other things being equal, "Peer learning" suggests students can overcome those difficulties more effectively when aided by peers engaged with the same problems. Would you recommend some canonical or survey papers on "Cognitive Load theory"?

Interesting stuff! Lecture surely affects topic-relevant learning relative to a roughly equivalent control (e.g., attending off-topic presentations, poetry recitals, or listening to filibustering politicians) though, no? You must be comparing it with different instructional methods, or at least in combination with other methods...? Would love to see any further detail you could offer on that. Please don't be shy about citing your papers either!

In descriptions of PBL courses I've encountered so far, a repeating motif is that students end up investing more time overall on the course then they would in a corresponding traditional lecture course. That's not a bad trick as such, but can you cite a study that assigns the effect to the method rather then overall increased effort?

@user4549 - Many theorists in the realm of learning attribute the increased effort on the part of the student as the main reason PBL is effective.  In other words, that's precisely the point!

I have an anecdotal answer with regard to learning Physics. I sat in on a colloquium where a Physics professor discussed his experience with a course that was taught completely through experimentation. Students had to derive their learning of Physics completely through semi-guided experiments, and no lecture. In the beginning of the course, the professor reports that students found the process very tedious. However, as they got the knack for experimentation, they enjoyed it more, and retained their learning exceptionally.
In this case, I think that struggle can lead to better learning. If you personally derive a concept from first hand experimentation, you are very likely to remember it. In that case, you are not learning science, you are learning to be a scientist. That distinction between learning about versus learning to be almost always deepens understanding, and consequently recall.
On the other hand, this does not apply to struggle for struggle sake. It seems likely that there are some teaching methods that require students to struggle, and actually work. Yet there may be other methods where the struggle is fruitless.

Thank you, In my recent readings I've encountered similar descriptions from of such experiments, e.g students feel less confident/comfortable but in fact perform better.

There is however a difference between physics (especially at undergrad level) and math in terms of level abstraction. The Derek Muller reference above specifically mentions that in physics, often overcoming preexisting misconceptions is key, in math I would assume the situation to be different.

I agree. In physics, at least until you get to mathematical physics and quantum mechanics, you can always fall back on empirical method. That makes it a lot different than straight math.

Robert Bjork calls this desirable difficulties. That is, students seems to learn best when they are required to encode and retrieve information. Some examples of desirable difficulties include: testing, spacing/interleaving, generating information, changing studying environments, etc. In the long run, these seem to promote long term learning.

All true, but I wonder to what extent these are really the issues at hand in the OP. If you check the edit history, or maybe the references given as context, you may note that much of the supposedly good "struggle" seems to be due to a lack of guidance: a "figure it out for yourself" sort of mentality.

Norman Triplett's research on social facilitation shows, that people tend to be better in simple tasks or physical activity (cyclists were faster) in presence of others. However, in cases such as solving mathematical tasks, quantity of tasks solved increases, while the quality decreases (social loafing). The answer therefore depends on whether you use "be better than all these people" challenge or "show yourself you're the best" challenge.
Most of the researches, however, show that motivating or challenging students causes rather  stress and tension than better results.

Interesting, the final sentence seems to contradicat the other answers, if taken broadly. Can you cite your sources?

Triplett, N. 1898. The Dynamogenic Factors In Pacemeaking And Competition. In American Jurnal of Psychology. 1898, 9, p. 507-533.

So you believe that research has conclusively shown that "motivating" students leads to decreased performance due to a single paper, about bicycle racing, from 1898?


text:
Book about Asperger's for Asperger's
Is there a book that people with Asperger's can read to better understand their diagnosis and how to cooperate with people?

From a non-technical point of view, I think that The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is an excellent place to start, for this with Asperger's and those without.

Aspergers as a diagnosis is no more its been merged into autism spectrum disorder. Its really not that bad of a diagnosis compared to full blown Autism or something like Schizo, Bipolar or BPD.
Here are some books and resources:
ASD Me Learning Functioning Spectrum
Autism Spectrum Disorders: Foundations, Characteristics, and Effective Strategies
Ten Things Every Child with Autism Wishes You Knew: Updated and Expanded Edition
Asperger's From Wikipedia
I can speak from personal experience the therapies for AS listed on wiki sometimes really work; CBT and anxiety medication really helped me. My brain kinda adapted to the anti-depressant though and I haven't found or really needed anything anxiety in a few months. You'll find social skills like cooperation are this wonderful thing you can practice online with friends and if you mess it up they will be really kind and understanding. I really fail when interacting with frenemies.
I have fun talking to people at Wrong Planet (an autism community) as well. Some people there are less functioning than AS so you have to have compassion and understanding. Others still are higher functioning than me which of course makes me a little jealous but I've learned that I'm not alone and neither are you.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


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Is it possible to devise a scientifically valid model for personality preferences or tendencies?
I have been interested in preferences, personality types and related topics for about two years, mainly as a by-product of a personal introspection process. For a long while, I have been quite enthusiastic about Myers-Briggs types, and saw the whole typology thing as an interesting model that can provide insights about ourselves. Nevertheless, I have now realized many of its pitfalls, like the often too categorical classifications and bogus descriptions, and more importantly the lack of scientific testability. I have studied some alternatives like enneagram, but these models seem to fall within the same class of funny, interesting but probably not very scientific toys.
So, my question: is it possible to devise a scientifically valid, testeable model for personality preferences or tendencies? Does something like "personality" exist or is just mumbo-jumbo?

I see now that there is a lot of overlap with the question you mention. And, yes, big5 is definitely better.

It's not perfect either though! I am sincerely curious. There's plenty of room for debate. Also, the question I linked hasn't been answered sufficiently IMO, so there's room for you to define a slightly different niche of the debate here as well.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How are personality traits "encoded" in the brain?
How are personality traits – such as optimism, sensation seeking or need for cognition – "encoded" in the brain?
Do people with different levels of, say, extraversion have different neuronal structures? Or do they have different amounts of certain neurochemicals, different numbers of receptors, or other kinds of functional differences?
So if you want to change a trait, can you simply stimulate or supplement neuronal functionality, e.g. by administering the lacking neurochemicals, or do you have to "destroy" and "rebuild" the neuronal structure, e.g. through learning?

As with anything in learning, whatever you do (weather it be attitude, thinking, behavior, or skills) - the more you do it, the stronger the neuron connections that support that ability are.
For an entrepreneur, working so much begins to harden in his brain structure, so it's easier to keep it up.

Its two questions, could you split it? (Knowing how something is encoded does not mean that we know how to change it. For example, we know that some diseases are "encoded" in viri, but we cannot cure them.)

The "second part" is not about how to change it, but about where to aim. If you know that a desease is caused by a virus, you might not know how to treat it, but you know where the treatment has to aim: on the virus.

Cool question...really huge though. I'll have to revisit this as I find time to add more. For starters, I just saw an interesting link in @ForbiddenOverseer's question, "Are there any personality theories that use the scientific method?" For some info on cerebral blood flow and extraversion, check out Johnson and colleagues (1999). Here's an excerpt of the abstract:

RESULTS: Overall, introversion was associated with increased blood flow in the frontal lobes and in the anterior thalamus. Regions in the anterior cingulate gyrus, the temporal lobes, and the posterior thalamus were found to be correlated with extraversion. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of the study lend support to the notion that introversion is associated with increased activity in frontal lobe regions. Moreover, the study suggests that individual differences in introversion and extraversion are related to differences in a fronto-striato-thalamic circuit.

In an earlier answer today (to What makes a sight or an image mesmerizing and irresistible?), I implied that sensation-seeking relates to the behavioral activation system, the nucleus accumbens and VTA, and dopamine. Support for those relationships ought to be available through Wikipedia.
Here's a summary of other info from my lecture on biopsych for my class on personality a few years ago:

Frontal lobe

Activity has been correlated to negative emotionality via fMRI.
Cooperative people show more activity during social interaction, implicating reward sensitivity.
Aversive attention and motivation is right lateralized; approach motivation and aversion inhibition is left lateralized.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) knocks out self-enhancement bias temporarily.
Damage reduces emotional experience, regulation, and inhibition – cf. Phineas Gage, Capgras syndrome, and the history of frontal lobotomies.

Amygdala

Implicated in identification of rewards & threats

Activates in extraverts receiving pleasant stimuli (e.g., happy faces, scenes, & emotion words; pleasant tastes)
Activates during social attraction; generates sexual responsiveness
Activates in shy people viewing unfamiliar faces
Also in pessimists when shown a picture of a snake
Overactive in people with anxiety disorders such as PTSD

Activated by unexpected emotional conflict – stronger in neurotics viewing conflicting cues.
Inhibited by anterior cingulate – cf. brain tumor in Charles Whitman, UT tower sniper ’66

“I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts.  These thoughts constantly recur, and it requires a tremendous mental effort to concentrate on useful and productive tasks.”

Ascending reticular activating system – acts like a valve on incoming stimulation

More “wide open” (active) in introverts

Stronger reaction to lemon juice stimulus
Faster responses to noises in brainstem via EEG

Reaction to erotica, violence, mutilation, insects, etc.:

High sensation-seeking: arousal and reward area activation
Low sensation-seeking: emotional self-control area activation

Electrode stimulation of substantia nigra $\rightarrow$ depression!
Governs reactivity, not baseline arousal

Optimal arousal threshold is the same distance from rest regardless of extraversion
ARAS affects acceleration from stimulation toward the threshold. See simplistic figure:

I've got a few answers here on neurotransmitters and hormones already:

Testosterone affects aggression, competitiveness, sexual motivation, sensation-seeking, risk aversion, empathy, and abstract reasoning. See "Are there recent theories on physiognomy?" and "What are the cognitive effects of increasing testosterone levels in men?"
Monoamine oxidase A affects maladaptive vulnerability to stress resulting in antisocial behavior. Mu-opioid receptors relate to collectivism and pain sensitivity. Serotonin also relates to collectivism and anxiety. See "Innate personality tests: do they exist? If not, why?"

Judging from effects of TMS (and tDCS), intelligence may relate to cortical excitability and myelination – see "Can learning be facilitated by transcranial magnetic stimulation?" As for changing personality in general, neuroplasticity may be important to consider, but biofeedback may be able to take advantage of it to alter neuroticism – see "Neuroplasticity and Treatment of Depression". Chronic malnutrition might even affect neuroticism by deeper mechanisms than subjective stress resulting directly from deprivation – see "The effect of proper food intake on emotions and brain function". Other links seem to exist between physical and mental well-being – see "Does mental satisfaction lead to physical satisfaction?" – but I'm probably getting further afield here than you intended answers to go.
Reference
- Johnson, D. L., Wiebe, J. S., Gold, S. M., Andreasen, N. C., Hichwa, R. D., Watkins, G. L., & Ponto, L. L. B. (1999). Cerebral blood flow and personality: A positron emission tomography study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 156(2), 252–257. Retrieved from http://journals.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=173270.

More to come soon from my lecture on biopsych for my class on personality a few years ago...Just a little short on time at the moment.

Here's something I didn't mention: Riva et al. (2014). Reducing Aggressive Responses to Social Exclusion Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS). Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsu053

Personality studies are typically investigated via the "big five" traits.  Some attempts to legitimize the personality traits through biology have been pursued [1].  Following are some excerpts from a particular study that proposed a hypothesis and searched for confirmation in 116 subjects.  Of course, this means we should be wary of confirmation bias when interpreting the results.  Interestingly another investigation framed the question as "personality influences on brain reactivity" [2].  I personally find this backwards.  I think personality is an ermegent property of brain (coupled with environmental influences and social roles, of course).
The authors predict mechanisms for personality traits depend on sensitivity and efficiency of processing circuits.  So, for instance, someone may be more neurotic because their circuits that detect dangers and threats have a lower threshold for detection.
Detection threshold play an important role because no detection system is perfect; for a sufficiently complex detection process, you have to set your threshold to bias either towards false positive or false negatives.  If you were in the military or medical profession, you'd likely want to to learn more towards false negatives because you'd rather spend time on an innocent/benign than let a guilty/malignant through.  Whereas, if your in business and going for efficiency, you might lean towards false positives and go ahead and sell the customer malfunctioning goods and hope only half of them want a return (as long as your customer isn't military or medical).
So a neurotic person could be said to have a detection system that leans further towards false positives than the "neurotypical" person.

Extraversion was associated with the volume of medial orbitofrontal cortex. This region is involved in coding the reward values of stimuli, and has therefore been hypothesized to be a substrate of Extraversion (Depue & Collins, 1999), which appears to reflect sensitivity to reward. Increased volume of orbitofrontal cortex has been associated with Extraversion in two other studies (Omura, Constable, & Canli, 2005; Rauch et al., 2005), and our study provides further evidence for this association.
Neuroticism was associated with reduced volume in dorsomedial PFC and a segment of left medial temporal lobe including posterior hippocampus, and with increased volume in the mid-cingulate gyrus, including both gray and white matter. These associations are consistent with the theory that Neuroticism represents the primary manifestation in personality of sensitivity to threat and punishment, encompassing traits that involve negative emotion and emotional dysregulation.
Agreeableness was associated with reduced volume in posterior left superior temporal sulcus and with increased volume in posterior cingulate cortex. The superior temporal sulcus is involved in the interpretation of other individuals’ actions and intentions on the basis of biological motion (Pelphrey & Morris, 2006), a process that may be more efficient in individuals who score higher in Agreeableness.
Conscientiousness was associated positively with volume of the middle frontal gyrus in left lateral PFC. The region of association was large, stretching from close to the frontal pole to the posterior region of lateral PFC. The middle frontal gyrus is crucially involved in maintaining information in working memory and in the execution of planned action. In terms of brain function, moving from posterior to anterior regions of lateral PFC appears to entail an increasing hierarchy of abstraction and complexity, in terms of rules that are maintained and selected to guide behavior
We found no associations with Openness/Intellect in regions large enough to be significant at p < .05, corrected. However, we did find that Openness/Intellect was associated—at p < .01, uncorrected—with one region consistent with our hypotheses: an area of parietal cortex involved in working memory and the control of attention. A previous study found that a nearly identical region (Talairach coordinates: 46, −33, 45) showed the strongest correlation between neural activity (during a difficult working memory task) and intelligence (J.R. Gray et al., 2003). This finding is significant because Openness/Intellect is the only Big Five trait that has been consistently and positively associated with intelligence (DeYoung et al., 2005)

Reference
[1] DeYoung, C. G., Hirsh, J. B., Shane, M. S., Papademetris, X., Rajeevan, N., & Gray, J. R. (2010). Testing predictions from personality neuroscience brain structure and the big five. Psychological Science, 21(6), 820-828.
[2] Canli, T., Zhao, Z., Desmond, J. E., Kang, E., Gross, J., & Gabrieli, J. D. (2001). An fMRI study of personality influences on brain reactivity to emotional stimuli. Behavioral neuroscience, 115(1), 33.

What does "volume" signify? Other than volume, these studies show only where a trait is encoded, but not how, if I understand them correctly.

How is still a matter of hypotheses.  The authors introduce hypotheses in the beginning, but also reference literature (such as Depue & Collins).  Encoded is probably not the right word though;  "encoded" is used to describe lower processes like sensory processing well (rate coding, for example) but personality is more of an emergent property.

I've updated the answer with more detail as to how the authors are explaining the how.

On a totally personal basis..
I know music stimulates the brain drastically. I've noticed those that seem to love learning tend to lean more toward Classic music or Techno... (that's a totally biased opinion though)
On a researching note..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_basis_of_personality
The above link should be a great start for you!

The biological basis of personality is the theory that personality is
  influenced by the biology of the brain. Though closely related to
  personality psychology, the biological basis of personality focuses on
  why or how personality traits manifest through biology, in addition to
  identifying personality traits. This is investigated by correlating
  personality traits with scientific data from experimental methods such
  as brain imaging and molecular genetics.

I have been researching ways to decrease latent inhibition and the answer seems to be to increase certain chemical levels in the brain such as Dopamine..
but the down side is the increased chance of becoming Schizophrenic...
But as far as the optimism thing goes, increasing Serotonin levels might be the way to go..
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2077351/
The above is a helpful article on how to increase the Serotonin levels in your brain without the use of drugs.

Lower platelet serotonin receptor function was associated with lower
  mood in one study, whereas better mood was associated with higher
  blood serotonin levels in another. Two studies found that greater
  prolactin release in response to fenfluramine was associated with more
  positive mood.

Hope this helps and good luck with your research!!


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

The price anchoring effect (even on arbitrary numbers like last digits of your ID) may be interesting for such a proposal - see a experiment description at http://danariely.com/the-books/excerpted-from-chapter-1-%E2%80%93-the-truth-about-relativity/ - you might be able to do something similar in the class.

Examples of psychology in marketing: http://www.poweredbysearch.com/psychology-of-marketing/

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

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

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


text:
How are research participants normally divided into equal groups to allow scientific comparison?
I'm neither a academic nor familiar with the proper English choice of words regarding research. However, I would really like to know a few things about the process of doing a research with people itself as a subject, so that I can apply it to my work.
I would like to know how normally the participants are divided into multiple groups, so that the results can be scientifically compared to each other.
I understand this can have detailed answers, I am really looking for a abstract method to achieve this such that I have meaningful results.

Adding to Jeromy's answer, the answer to your question would depend on what you want to study.
If you study normal behavior, common to all people, you assign your participants randomly to the experimental and control group. The experimental group receives the factor you want to study (e.g. watches some advertising), while the control group does not, and then you calculate the avarage difference in their behavior (do those that watched the advertising buy more of that product?).
If you study abnormal behavior, found only in certain people, these certain people (e.g. people suffering from some mental disorder) go into one group, people without this abnormality (e.g. people without that mental disorder) go into another group. Both receive the factor your want to study or are given the same task, and then you calculate the average difference in their behavior.
This, obviously, is not a random assignment. There are different techniques to counter biases (such as more old people with dementia in one group, because dementia usually happens in old age, so that performance differences might be attributable to age, not dementia). For example, you may "match" participants in relevant aspects, so that when you find a participant with, say, dementia, you search for a participant without dementia who has the same age, same sex, same educational background etc., so that their differences are unlikely to result from these secondary factors.
There are also experiments without control groups, or any kind of group assignments. For example, if you study something in which all (healthy) people are the same, you do not need a control group. For example, if you want to research human three dimensional vision, you could work with only one participant, because you could rightfully assume that all human beings have two eyes in approximately the same position, so that individual differences would not influence understanding the basic process. Many classic experiments in fundational fields of psycholoy such as perception were done with only one or a mere handful of participants.

It sounds like you are talking about random allocation of participants to groups for the purpose of running a between-subjects experiment.
You can learn more by reading about

randomized controlled trials.
random assignment

In terms of practical details for random assignment, there are many ways that you can do random assignment.

The Social Psychology Network has an online application that generates random assignments to groups: http://www.randomizer.org/
You can use your own  random number generator
Most software for running psychological experiments (e.g., Inquisit) will have tools for randomising the allocation of participants to groups


text:
What is the most readable screen font?
Fonts (i.e. letters) that facilitate reading in print don't always read well on a computer screen. New fonts such as Verdana have been developed especially for screen presentation of text.
There is some research that compares the readability of those fonts that are available across most operating systems: Times, Arial, Helvetica and Arial. For example, this study found that Times New Roman can be read faster than Verdana.
But there are thousands of other fonts, and maybe one font not commonly shipped with any OS would be even more easily readable, or at smaller sizes. Of course no empirical research can include all fonts that exist, but maybe there is some research that goes beyond the common websafe fonts.
Have there been attempts to create the most readable screen font that were supported by empirical tests? Or is there empirical research into screen font readability including non-websafe fonts?

I recall reading/hearing somewhere that fonts with serifs are more readable when small, and sans serif fonts might be better when large. Not sure if that's true, but it suggests an interesting question of moderation anyway.

Are you sure you want to use empirical tests for the determination? What about using discernment between different letters based on image size and image differences?

For print (Generally)

In his book Cashvertising, Drew Eric Whitman cites a 1986 study of fonts (printed on paper) that found only 12 percent of participants effectively comprehended a paragraph set in sans-serif type versus 67 percent who were given a version set in serif typeface ...
In a test of three different fonts, two serifs (Garamond and Times New Roman) and one sans serif (Helvetica), he found

66 percent were able to comprehend Garamond;
31.5 percent Times New Roman, and
12.5 percent Helvetica(out of a total of 1,010,000 people surveyed).

(Source)

On screen (Generally)

Several observations can be made regarding the examined font types. First, no significant differences in reading efficiency were detected between the font types at any size. There were, however, significant differences in reading time. Generally, Times and Arial were read faster than Courier, Schoolbook, and Georgia. Fonts at the 12-point size were read faster than fonts at the 10-point size. In addition, a font type x size interaction was found for the perception of font legibility. In general, however, Arial, Courier, and Georgia were perceived as the most legible.
For font attractiveness, Georgia was perceived as being more attractive than Arial, Courier, and Comic, while Times was perceived as more attractive than Courier. (Bernard, et al. 2002)

But it is not that simple
Dyslexia sufferers can have different requirements.  Most of the recommendations come from associations for people with dyslexia and they agree in using sans-serif fonts. The British Dyslexia Association recommends

Use Arial, Comic Sans or, as alternatives to these, Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, and Trebuchet
Most users prefer dark print on a pale background but colour preferences vary
Avoid green and red/pink as these are difficult for colour-blind individuals. (British Dyslexia Association, 2012).

Also
WebAIM also has articles and resources for those with accessibility in mind
References
Bernard, M. et al. (2002). A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which Size and Type is Best? [Online]
Available at: Wichita State University Software Usability and Research Laboratoryhttp://usabilitynews.org/a-comparison-of-popular-online-fonts-which-size-and-type-is-best
British Dyslexia Association. (2012). Dyslexia style guide [Online]
Available at: http://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/common/ckeditor/filemanager/userfiles/About_Us/policies/Dyslexia_Style_Guide.pdf


text:
What is a sweet pain, exactly?
Why some pains are sweet? Some pains give pleasure not even bodily pains but mentally also in daily affairs, an individual may intentionally impose mild difficulties on his self. Is there a cognitive or evolutionary reason behind it or it is a disorder?

Endorphins and flow experience I suppose. Seems adaptive enough to have some mechanism for overcoming short-term distress for the sake of long-term gains, but like most things, this can be taken to extremes. There's some debate regarding the status of masochism within the normal–abnormal spectrum. See also internalization, which includes self-harm among other forms of maladaptation.

According to Applied system-vector psychoanalysis masochism happens among people with dominant "dermal vector" who have been endured painful physical punishments in childhood.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to report an F statistic in APA style?
How do you report F statistics in APA format? I am working on PHD and am not certain that I am reporting the F statistics in the proper manner.
I have been reporting it as F (_,_). The second space I am unclear as to what number gets placed there.

This arguably belongs on CrossValidated.

I agree with @jona, in that APA format is not unique to cognitive sciences, whereas the question is explicitly statistical. However, there may be a duplicate on CV already, so I'd recommend checking before migrating. I don't see any harm in leaving it here in any case.

I think the title focuses on APA style and in general I think that APA style (i.e., psychology) is on topic for cogsci (see this meta discussion). However, the body of this question is mostly a general statistical question that would be very much at home on CrossValidated. On balance, I think it would be fine on either site.

The F ratio statistic has a numerator and denominator degrees of freedom. Thus, you report:
F (numerator_df, denominator_df) = F_value, p = ..., effect size = ...

The numerator degrees of freedom relates to the factor of interest; the denominator degrees of freedom corresponds to the degrees of freedom for the error variance.
The exact way that these degrees of freedom are calculated depends on the statistical test you are using. Standard textbooks will describe these approaches.
For example, in a standard one-way between subjects ANOVA with $k$ groups and $n$ participants per group, you would have $k-1$ numerator degrees of freedom and $kn-k$.
Generally, you will be able to read off these numbers from the output of your statistics package.
Example
Here is an example with k=3 groups and n=5 participants. See the df in the "group" row and the "error" row.
F(2, 12) = 24.667, p < .001.

The numbers inside the parentheses are the degrees of freedom for the F-statistic.
The second number is the within-group degrees of freedom. When you have the same number of subjects in all conditions, then the second number will be the number of subjects - the number of cells (conditions) in your design.


text:
Is there a name for a person who looks for a name for another person's supposed faults?
Every few days there is a new question here at Cognitive Sciences asking for a scientific term to describe a behavior that the inquirer finds fault with.
Examples include:

Is there a term for a person who moves from one field of expertise to a new field and has an inflated belief in their competence in the new field?
Is there a formal name for the "love" of arguing?
https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/7639/is-there-a-formal-name-for-the-annoyed-by-who-tries-to-force-me-trait
Name of the bias where someone really needs something after they find out it exists
Is there a name for the tendency to use proper nouns often in conversation?
and so on

Reading this type of question, I often get the impression that the person asking them is affronted that the person they describe in obsessive detail did not agree with their view or follow their advice, and now want to regain their sense of self-importance by pathologizing the other. It seems to me that many, if not most, of these questions are not based on facts but on the egomaniacal deslusion of knowing better.
For example (using the first question above):

How does the inquirer know that the person moving to a new field is not an expert in it? Is he himself expert enough to judge the other's expertise? It is a well-known fact that even experts often disagree so violently that they accuse each other of complete ignorance. So how can the average cogsci.SE passer-by competently judge anyone's expertise or lack thereof?

You'll be easily able to find similar objections to all other questions.
So what is the name for that affliction?

I trust the irony of your question is intentional :) Irony aside, if you're really looking for an answer, I'm thinking it might lie somewhere among "patronage/condescension", "intellectualization", and "stereotyping". If you're not, maybe this ought to be a meta-question.

@NickStauner Is there a name for people who do not perceive the irony of what they are doing / asking? (pinch) (Oww!)

Haha this is funny

Narcissist. I had an aunt who was very negative about everything and everyone! I was also thinking cynic is a fitting answer.

I personally, but explicitly do not support the teachings of Freud, but this sounds like what Freud would call "Intellectualization."  This is supposedly a defense mechanism.

Please explain. I have no idea what Freud meant with that term and therefore don't understand your answer.

Could you provide a source for your terminology?


text:
Psychology of brand names
Marketers use the fact that different letters are associated with different mental images and emotions when they create brand names.

Studies show that letters and their combinations produce different connotations in terms of size, shape, brightness and overall impression of an object. The letters <a> and <o> symbolize depth and size, while <i> evokes the mental image of something small. Among consonants, soft, voiced sounds such as <d>, <l>, <m>, <n>, <w> can be distinguised from hard, voiceless sound such as <f>, <k>, <r>, <t>, <p>. The soft consonants evoke associations of harmony, softness, gentleness and femininity, while the hard cononants are connected to hardness, dynamism, vigor, strength and masculinty.
(translated from http://comrecon.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/namen-sind-wegweiser-bei-konsumentscheidungen-naming-branding/)

On some other brand name blog I read that the letter <b> is associated with trustworthiness.
What are those studies, and what else has been found regarding the psychology of letters (graphemes) and sounds (phonemes)?

This is particularly prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry, I'll see if I can dig up the reference.

your link does not work, 2) your question is interesting, 3) I assume those studies are anything but scientific. What letters symbolize is probably strongly depending on culture and other determinants (education, genetics) but most of all restricted to a certain language.

Furter, any sentence starting with "studies have shown" without reference makes me sceptical.

@NikolasRieble 1) That was two years ago. I guess the page was deleted by the site owner or moved to a new place. Good practice is giving the source anyway. Sort of like citing a book of which all copies have been burned by the Nazis. Does that make the citation false?

@what: No worries, your citation is not wrong, I only aimed at improving it: by directly citing the original papers ("studies"), you would have enabled me to answer your question two years later. Anyhow, did you find an answer for that question? Do you still have the original sources? If so, please provide them. I am - as I said - interested in the question.

What you are looking for is usually considered within synesthesia, specifically auditory-visual synesthesia.
Usually these topics are developed in "commercial or industrial psychology" in a general way and more specifically by psychologists incorporated in marketing, these last studies are often not published, are made for the best initial orientation of the product with a line of consumers.
Here is a general book:
https://books.google.es/books?id=ESH7AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA812&lpg=PA812&dq=psychology+synesthesia&source=bl&ots=zC3KmJPT2h&sig=pGlZ9qPf1d14T7i96AL8OmMvVSo&hl=es&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmnYvRyanVAhUNfFAKHbX-CV84ChDoAQhWMAY#v=onepage&q&f=false
It seems that what ultimately interests most is why (cerebrally) and what repercussions (especially in clinical) has this phenomenon.
You will not find it difficult to find end-of-grade papers, there are also theses.


text:
What is the most common form of delusional misidentification?
The delusional misidentification syndrome (DMS) is a condition in which a patient consistently misidentifies persons, places, objects, or events. Broome (2004) affirms that:

The most common form of delusional misidentification is not that of either the exotic Capgras or Fregoli syndromes but delusional misidentification for place... delusional misidentification tends to occur in the context of a patient believing that they are at home or on holiday rather than in hospital and may not necessarily involve close family members or other intimate relationships.

While Feinberg and Roane (2005) claim that:

The most common form of misidentification is the Capgras syndrome... this disorder consists of the delusional belief that a person or persons have been replaced by ‘‘doubles’’ or imposters.

This seems to be the most widely held opinion. Cf. David (1997).
None of these authors provide a reference (they may be referring to their private clinical experience). Can anyone provide a reference that substantiates or contradicts this claim?


text:
Are there first person accounts of monothematic delusions?
Monothematic delusions are delusions that concern a single topic (Davies et al. 2001). They are often the result of acquired brain damage and include the Delusional Misidentification Syndromes, such as Capgras delusion (which involves the conviction that a close relative or spouse has been replaced by an impostor), as well as Cotard delusion (which may involve the conviction that one is dead) and somatoparaphrenia (which involves the conviction that a limb or an entire side of one's body is not one's own).
While there are untold numbers of first person (experiential) accounts of schizophrenia and, therefore, schizophrenic delusions (which usually present as polythematic), from Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903) to Elyn Saks's The Center Cannot Hold (2007) and various accounts published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, I have not come across first person accounts of any monothematic delusions so far.

Since asking the question, I was able to locate a first-person account of monothematic delusion, namely, of denial of ownership of one's own limbs (somatoparaphrenia/asomatognosia). It is due to the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks, who in his fourth book A Leg to Stand On (1984) described his recovery after a fall in a remote region of Norway in which he injured his leg. Following surgery to reattach his quadriceps muscle, he experienced an emotional period in which his leg no longer felt a part of his body. He describes his confusion, seeing the “disowned” plastered limb (Sacks 1984: 45,49, 49–50):

I had felt the leg in front of me . . . but now I could see it wasn’t
  there at all but had got shifted and rotated. . . . I had a
  sudden sense of mismatch, of profound incongruity –
  between what I imagined I felt and what I actually saw,
  between what I had “thought” and what I now found. I felt, for
  a dizzying, vertiginous moment, that I have been profoundly
  deceived. . . .

The experience of touching the leg was “inconceivably shocking and uncanny”:

I seemed to have lost “my leg” – which was absurd, for there it
  was, inside the case, safe and sound – a “fact.” How could
  there be any doubt in the matter? And yet there was. On this very matter of “having” or “possessing” a leg, I was
  profoundly doubtful, fundamentally unsure.

This alarming state of uncertainty later resolves itself into
what seems closer to a fully delusional state:

[the leg] became a foreign, inconceivable thing, which I looked
  at, and touched, without any sense whatever of recognition or
  relation. It was only then that I gazed at it, and felt I don’t
  know you, you’re not part of me, and, further, I don’t know this
  “thing,” it’s not part of anything. I had lost my leg. Again and
  again I came back to these five words: words which expressed
  a central truth for me, however preposterous they might
  sound to anyone else. In some sense, then, I had lost my leg.
  It had vanished; it had gone; it had been cut off at the top. I
  was now an amputee.

EDIT: I have found a first-person account of Cotard delusion in this blog post, thanks to Vaughan Bell who found it through Keith Frankish (both authors working extensively with delusions).


text:
Is there a name for a scientist's resistance to disconfirmation of his or her theories?
Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses. And some results illustrate that people set higher standards of evidence for hypotheses that go against their current expectations, an effect sometimes referred to as "disconfirmation bias". However, I would like to know if there is a specific name (and literature) related to the tendency among scientists to resist disconfirmation of their theories.

I understand confirmation bias as including this. The Wikipedia page you link has a section on "persistence of discredited beliefs" that corroborates my perspective:

Confirmation biases can be used to explain why some beliefs persist when the initial evidence for them is removed.[45] This belief perseverance effect has been shown by a series of experiments using what is called the "debriefing paradigm": participants read fake evidence for a hypothesis, their attitude change is measured, then the fakery is exposed in detail. Their attitudes are then measured once more to see if their belief returns to its previous level.[44]
A common finding is that at least some of the initial belief remains even after a full debrief.[46] In one experiment, participants had to distinguish between real and fake suicide notes. The feedback was random: some were told they had done well while others were told they had performed badly. Even after being fully debriefed, participants were still influenced by the feedback. They still thought they were better or worse than average at that kind of task, depending on what they had initially been told.[47]
In another study, participants read job performance ratings of two firefighters, along with their responses to a risk aversion test.[44] This fictional data was arranged to show either a negative or positive association: some participants were told that a risk-taking firefighter did better, while others were told they did less well than a risk-averse colleague.[48] Even if these two case studies were true, they would have been scientifically poor evidence for a conclusion about firefighters in general. However, the participants found them subjectively persuasive.[48] When the case studies were shown to be fictional, participants' belief in a link diminished, but around half of the original effect remained.[44] Follow-up interviews established that the participants had understood the debriefing and taken it seriously. Participants seemed to trust the debriefing, but regarded the discredited information as irrelevant to their personal belief.[48]

References
  44. Ross, Lee; Anderson, Craig A. (1982), "Shortcomings in the attribution process: On the origins and maintenance of erroneous social assessments", in Kahneman, Daniel; Slovic, Paul; Tversky, Amos, Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, Cambridge University Press, pp. 129–152, ISBN 978-0-521-28414-1, OCLC 7578020
  45. Nickerson, Raymond S. (1998), "Confirmation Bias; A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises", Review of General Psychology (Educational Publishing Foundation) 2 (2): 175–220, doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175, ISSN 1089-2680, p. 187
  46. Kunda, Ziva (1999), Social Cognition: Making Sense of People, MIT Press, ISBN 978-0-262-61143-5, OCLC 40618974, p. 99
  47. Ross, Lee; Lepper, Mark R.; Hubbard, Michael (1975), "Perseverance in self-perception and social perception: Biased attributional processes in the debriefing paradigm", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (American Psychological Association) 32 (5): 880–892, doi:10.1037/0022-3514.32.5.880, ISSN 0022-3514, PMID 1185517 via Kunda 1999, p. 99
  48. Anderson, Craig A.; Lepper, Mark R.; Ross, Lee (1980), "Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (American Psychological Association) 39 (6): 1037–1049, doi:10.1037/h0077720, ISSN 0022-3514

This isn't quite what you are looking for, but it's close enough that it might help you find additional information.
Munro (2010) found evidence that people tend to discount the scientific possibility of studying something when presented with scientific evidence that goes against their current beliefs. In other words, if people were shown a result that went against their beliefs, then people were more likely to conclude that it was not possible to conduct rigorous scientific experimentation on the topic. He called this the scientific impotence excuse. In the experiment, subjects were shown an (artificial) abstract that claimed there was either a link between homosexuality and mental illness or claimed there was no link. A control group saw the same abstracts, but instead of a link between homosexuality and mental illness, the link was between a made-up group like Zavs. After reading the abstract, subjects were asked to indicate whether or not it was possible to investigate such links with scientific methods. If the results of the abstract were contradictory towards a subject's prior beliefs (as measured by a questionnaire at the start of the experiment), then the subject was more likely to say that the question cannot be investigated in a scientific manner.
This study was done with college students, who are not trained scientists, so it's unclear whether the result would generalize to scientists or not.

I think this is more related to the Observer-expectancy effect, where the researchers, looking for a certain result in an experiment, may inadvertently manipulate or interpret the results to reveal their expectations. That's what you a looking for, I suppose.

Welcome to CogSci.SE!  When possible, please include citations where the asker could learn more about the answer you're giving.

It could lead to this effect if one does manipulate or ignore results to support a desired conclusion, but the OP isn't explicitly about researchers who are handling raw results and reaching their own conclusions about them. The observer-expectancy effect wouldn't explain (at least, not directly) why a scientist might disregard results and conclusions from some other researcher who contradicts the scientist's beliefs.

well, from the OP's question, "to resist disconfirmation" imply perfectly the behavior of Observer-expectancy effect, though, I agree that both terms a quite vaguely defined...


text:
Is there any scientific literature on the "shower principle" (i.e., taking a break from a task leads to unexpected insights)?
Folk cognitive psychology has it that doing activities that remove you from your intellectual work (such as taking a shower or, like Einstein is reported to have done when it a rut, playing the violin) increases your chances of having unexpected insights. Is there a name for this phenomenon and a dedicated scientific literature for it?

See also How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer?

That moment is often called the "aha moment", the Eureka effect, or more generally, insight.  There is literature on it, but as you might expect, it is a pretty difficult thing to produce in a lab.
Some references:
The AHA! experience: Creativity through emergent binding in neural networks.
Thagard, Paul; Stewart, Terrence C.. Cognitive Science35.1 (Jan-Feb 2011): 1-33.
Gaining insight into the "aha" experience.
Topolinski, Sascha Reber, Rolf. Current Directions in Psychological Science19.6(Dec 2010): 402-405.
The aha! Moment: The cognitive neuroscience of insight.
Kounios, John; Beeman, Mark. Current Directions in Psychological Science18.4(Aug 2009): 210-216.
Neural correlates of the “aha” experiences: Evidence from an fMRI study of insight problem solving.
Qiu, JiangView Profile; Li, Hong; Jou, JerwenView Profile; Liu, Jia; Luo, Yuejia; et al. Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior46.3 (Mar 2010): 397-403.


text:
What does double dissociation really tell us?
In psychological research, a single dissociation is when a manipulation leaves one cognitive function (say, A) intact whilst severing another (say, B). This indicates the functions A and B are at least partially independent. A double dissociation is when there exists, in addition, a manipulation that does the reverse (i.e. leave B intact whilst severing A). On the Wikipedia page for dissociation in neuropsychology/cognitive neuroscience (I'm assuming the "manipulation" is a brain lesion now) it says that "establishing a single dissociation between two functions provides limited and potentially misleading information, whereas a double dissociation can conclusively demonstrate that the two functions are localized in different areas of the brain." This can't really be true, can it? Consider the following Venn diagram, where the (necessary) neural substrate of A and B are represented, including their intersection:

A double dissociation could consist of a manipulation in A \ B and another in B \ A. The functions would still be partially dependent, however, and not localized in completely different areas of the brain. So, in effect, the only thing a single dissociation proves is that the circles for A and B are not identical, and the only thing a double dissociation proves (in addition to the fact that they're not identical) is that one is not a subset of the other. Is that about right?

Double dissociation does not prove the independence of certain cognitive functions and their neural substrates. What it does is provide stronger evidence for which the best explanation is the independence of certain neurocognitive systems.
The brain is on many aspects not a marvel of engineering with many areas being responsible for a spectrum of functions and behaviours or for different aspects of a seemingly unitary cognitive faculty. On top of that, it is often difficult to make a proper classification and distinction between certain functions and behaviours (examples are episodic/semantic memory and perceptual/semantic priming) which, in many cases, limits the validity of the conclusions drawn.
So I don't know if a "conclusive demonstration" is possible. However, under properly defined terms, a double dissociation can provide strong support for independence with little possibility of an intersection between neurocognitive systems because if an intersection existed, it would be highly possible for a function to be retained at some level even after the hypothetical brain system responsible for it, suffers a lesion.

If I understand you correctly, you are essentially emphasizing that brain functions follow the principle of graceful degredation - such that if there were a (let's say large) overlap between A and B, lesions in either A / B or B / A wouldn't critically degrade A or B, respectively, because the overlapping sections would retain a significant amount of that functionality. In the double dissociation case, they are then usually critically degraded, so one can safely assume that the overlap is minimal to none. Now I'm just wondering whether there are any functions with an "Achilles heel"...

Also, following that logic - shouldn't single dissociation be quite significant evidence as well? If dissociation studies rely mainly on the notion that functions degrade gracefully, then the destruction of one function (and retaining of another) should mean that they can't share any significant neural basis.

So you are stating that a double dissociation is redundant? From what I can tell, a single dissociation is significant evidence that independence between function A and B can exist but a double dissociation is even more significant because it permits safer conclusions. If B is damaged and A is functional we can say that the statement "A only if B" is not true but we can't say the same about "B only if A". This statement will be shown to be false if a double dissociation shows B to be functional when A is damaged.

Not redundant, no - I accept that it's better evidence, in addition to last point you made. I was just wondering whether the way the issue was presented on Wikipedia was accurate. Answer accepted!

(Not that I usually rely on Wikipedia for science information!!)

Yes, you make a good point. when I begin searching for something I always consult wikipedia but surely, it is not the last word. It usually contains a good summary of many topics and references for one to discover but at times it may have misrepresentations. Neuropsychology textbooks and particularly the one by Darby and Walsh is what I would recommend in thus case. By the way I am looking for a textbook in computer science that provides a basic understanding of the field for beginners. What would you  recommend?

It's been a while since my basic studies, but a good/great introductory one seems to be: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html It's out of print and totally free (at that link) now, which is a nice bonus! Beware though, computer science is to a large extent an abstract mathematical discipline, so this won't teach you any programming. I could recommend some other ones if that's part of your goal.

Oh yeah, if you want to read something reaaaaallly cool related to cognitive science and abstract computation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del,_Escher,_Bach. (I strongly disagree with the idea that the brain is a computer, but that book is just very entertaining)

A Hofstadter fan.. I slould have noticed from your name. Godel Escher Bach is on my to-read list after reading "the mind's I" which I enjoyed. Thanks for the recommendations, i 'll surely take a look


text:
Are there any serious neuroscientific theories of emotional valence?
Could anyone tell me if there are any serious neuroscientific mechanisms that have been proposed to explain how feelings of body states take on a positive or negative character (valence)? An example biocomputational approach based on Bayesian inference can be found here. Also related to the Bayesian brain: there is evidence that dopamine communicates prediction error, which has been proposed as a unifying principle for cognition - so I was wondering whether there were any comprehensive theories applying predictive coding to emotion (i.e. valence as prediction error of interoceptive (body) perception). Of course, any theories of valence with similarly broad import would be interesting too.

I think this model may be relevant to your question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception#Embodied_predictive_interoception_coding_(EPIC)

There is no such universally accepted model.  It seems to me that this a specific instance of the hard problem: how can matter have a subjective experience at all?
Of course we know positive experience is associated with dopaminergic action, and often the mechanism has the evolutionary function of surviving and reproducing... and we can argue the same for noxious stimuli - they signal danger in the environment and lead to aversive behaviors.
But this still ignores the phenomenology step, between stimulus and behavior; the nature of the subjective experience.  Friston's approach is interesting.  I wonder if there is any relationship to be found betweem it and Tononi's model of consciousness (integrated informatiom theory).

Oooh, the hard problem! With regard to that, I'm one of those people that believes that "to explain is to explain away". One day science will get there - perhaps the empirical evidence for IIT will start piling up! However, I was only concerned about functional properties of emotion specifically with respect to how/where valence of somatic states is determined, for now. Dopamine release is correlated with pleasure/reward, but why does that release occur? There is evidence that dopamine communicates prediction error [1], which has been proposed as a unifying principle for cognition, so I was

wondering whether someone had proposed a comprehensive explanation of emotional valence in those terms (in terms of interoceptive prediction, for instance).
[1]http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n7/full/nn.3448.html

P.S.: I have no idea how/why the Bayesian brain is related to IIT (I'm assuming you mean "Friston's approach" = Bayesian coding), and I surely won't know any more than you, considering your current occupation =).

More specifically, I meant the free energy principle.  If you haven't seen the original paper by Frist, then here!

I've heard the term sprinkled throughout various papers on the predictive brain, but haven't seen this - thanks!

@user6682 There is indeed explanation of emotions in terms of interoceptive prediction. It is named "theory of constructed emotion".  There  is beautiful explanation with links in book "How emotions are made".

With regard to the body perception question, I hope you have read this (doi: 10.1073/pnas.1321664111)

Yes, I've seen this study, interesting mapping of body states to the common emotion categories. It begs the question of how two cases of raised heat in the chest area can, in the one case be plesurable (pride), and in the other case be aversive (anger).

Welcome to cogsci.SE!  It's generally preferable to include citation/DOIs when possible, in case of link decay.


text:
For what kind of concepts do we really need an analogy?
Literature suggests that analogies are helpful in teaching and learning science concepts. But every concept can not and should not be taught using analogies as there are some concepts that can be better taught using examples and learning by doing .
My question is " for what kind of concepts do we really need an analogy ?"
Answers may include a reference to a piece of literature / some insights from teaching experience /blogs etc.

Welcome to cogsci.SE!  This is an awfully broad question--you may get more/better answers if you can do or cite some preliminary research to help readers understand where you're coming from and what you're looking for.

An analogy is simply an example when an example is impractical to present. Can you create more of a distinction, or can you present an example of literature that you are talking about?

Loosely defined, analogy is the process by which "novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones". By this definition, a number of cognitive scientists would and do say that analogy plays a role in acquiring just about any new concept - they would say that especially examples and learning by doing are means of refining one's ability to map from the known to the unknown and uncover the latter's structure/properties. In addition to the linked book, which offers a collection of papers/essays in cognitive science on analogy, you could check out Douglas Hofstadter's Surfaces and Essences: "Analogy-making, far from happening at rare intervals, occurs at all moments, defining thinking from top to toe, from the tiniest and most fleeting thoughts to the most creative scientific insights." In the appendix there is a very long list of scientific publications supporting his assertions.

+1 for Surfaces and Essences!!

The perks of being a Hofstadter fan on a cognitive science board =P


text:
Neuropharmacology and Simulation
I've been wondering whether neural simulations have had applications in (cognitive)neuropharmacological research already. One always reads about the promise of the technology in helping us cure various brain disorders, but I only know of relatively theoretical (general) models thereof derived from / supported by simulation. Has anyone actually attempted to identify drug targets computationally?

I am not sure if this is what you are asking for but I found this paper  http://m.jn.physiology.org/content/99/5/2703 However an application in vivo is still unclear as stated by the authors.

On second thought it still a theoretical model with promise of application so maybe I am not particularly helpful.

No, that's exactly the type of work I was looking for!

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is more suitable for Biology.SE. Additionally, it is too broad and unclear.


text:
Annoyance in animals
When my dog (an English Cocker Spaniel, for what its worth) is behind some glass (e.g. a glass door or a car window) and someone taps on the glass, even just a little bit, she gets into a fit of rage. She has always been treated quite well, so I can't imagine what causes her to behave like this.
The first thing that came to my mind is that she perceives whoever is tapping the glass as teasing her, and she feels disrespected, or something like that. This sounds far fetched, but could there be any merit to this theory? If not, what else would cause her to do this?
I believe we know that monkeys interpret teasing correctly (I don't know this for a fact). That is, they know when they are being teased and they (correctly) interpret it as being disrespected. Could the same thing be true for less intelligent animals like dogs?

Teasing generally seems to have two components. First, as mentioned in the title of your question, it is a matter of becoming annoyed; specifically at behavior that is (often repetitively) enacted towards oneself. Furthermore, to know that someone is teasing you it is necessary to be able to conceptualize their intentions (otherwise known as having a "theory of mind"), which is necessary in order to potentially feel disrespected. It is uncontroversial that dogs can feel annoyed, just try relieving one of its food (or tapping on the glass it is behind ;). However, the extent to which dogs are able to conceive of the mental states of others is debated in animal psychology. It has been shown, for instance, that certain populations of dogs are unable to spontaneously adapt to human social cues. However, naturally, many pet domestic dogs are great at adapting to their owners behaviors. Dogs are not "man's best friend" for no reason - they do possess the ability to learn social cues. However, it seems that this has to be taught, whereas it seems that humans have a much greater innate predisposition to TOM/mentalizing. In conclusion, dogs' TOM seems to be a significantly more superficial ability than it is in humans. This leads me to suggest that tapping on the glass causes your Cocker Spaniel to either a) want to play oh-so-badly, or b) get (really) annoyed. They surely don't understand teasing with the full social capacity of a human.


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What is the effect of irrelevant reading after study on memory consolidation?
I heard and experienced a little that unconscious mental processes involved in storing memories work really well when you are not thinking about your study subject during rest. However, I'm not sure mental effort such as reading a novel is as effective as physical effort for consolidation of studied information. What is the effect of irrelevant mental exercise on memory consolidation?

Welcome to cogsci.SE!  We encourage preliminary research, both to help the asker formulate the question well and to help the reader understand the asker's intentions, so anything that you can cite or more information you can give will improve the answers that you get.

@ucha, I don't think your question is answerable because it builds on a false premise of sorts.  Your use of the term "subconscious mind" suggests that your ideas stem from Freudian theory (or a derivative thereof), which is neither current nor scientific.  The false premise is therefore that there exists a unitary subconscious mind that can be rested or made to work particularly well.  Furthermore, this question borders on self-help, which is considered off-topic on these forums. Are you perhaps asking if there are ways to efficiently study something in particular?

thanks for replies. i couldn't explain my problem. Because i'm not used to write and speak in english and you're right i have made a lot of mistakes in science terms but i'm here to learn.
and i was wondering about both study and feautures of brain, and maybe i can tell my problem better for the next time
,good day everyone

@blz Why do you say that the subconscious is not current or scientific? I would say that if there is a Freudian concept that IS scientific, it is probably exactly this notion that we are unaware of most mental processes. See for instance http://ccrg.cs.memphis.edu/assets/papers/TICSarticle2003.pdf.

By the way, @ucha, your question is understandable. I have suggested some edits to make it clearer.

@StrangeLoop, sorry if I was unclear!  I meant that Freudian psychology is not current or scientific, not non-conscious processing. "The subconscious" in the Freudian sense is about as inscrutable as it gets (no clear predictions).  To be clear, we owe much of modern psychology to Freud's work, but Freudian psych is generally accepted to be unfalsifiable.  I just wanted to make sure that the OP wasn't basing his question on id, ego and whatnot.

@StrangeLoop, Just to further clarify my above comment, the issue remains that the OP is referring to a unitary subconscious mind, which strongly insinuates a Freudian interpretation (i.e. "The Subconscious"). Your citation doesn't deal with a unitary subconscious with it's own internal goals and behaviours, but with non-conscious processing -- a very important distinction.  We can talk about learning in the absence of conscious access, but we can't engage in a scientific discussion about "the subconscious working really well".

@blz I totally agree with you, except that OP's question didn't strike me as necessarily referring to the Freudian conception of "The Subconscious". I guess only OP can tell us that!

First off, a citation on the neurochemical effects of exercise beneficial to memory consolidation. Certain activities (post-study) that modulate neurotransmitter systems have generally been shown to affect how well the brain stores memories, such as caffeine consumption. Regarding the topic of your question, i.e. the effect of mental exercise on memory consolidation, it seems that post-study mental exertion has a negative effect on consolidation. This work cites a number of studies which generally show something along the lines of: "wakeful rest provided a more favorable condition for memory consolidation than the non-verbal cognitive task." Generally speaking, memory consolidation seems to work best under the influence of specific neurotransmitter release (induced by physical activity, for instance) or rest. After all, one main theory of why we sleep is that it is for the purpose of storing memories.


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Reconciling one-dimensional valence with distinct mechanisms for reward/punishment
It is a widespread notion in psychology that there are two dimensions to emotion: valence (aversiveness or attractiveness of some entity) and intensity. However, recent experimental studies in neuropsychology (e.g. those listed below) have given strong evidence for two distinct pathways which process reward and punishment associated with some input. This in turn compellingly suggests that valence is in fact made up of two independent dimensions, and I'm guessing there are behavioral studies reaching similar conclusions (i.e. that persons are able to have "mixed feelings"). How do we reconcile these views? Are we forced to reject one-dimensional valence on the basis of the evidence?
Distinct pathways for reward/punishment:

Paton, Joseph J., and Kenway Louie. "Reward and punishment illuminated." Nature neuroscience 15.6 (2012): 807.
(http://www.researchgate.net/publication/225043743_Reward_and_punishment_illuminated/file/e0b495227b6d325c3d.pdf)
Fujiwara, Juri, et al. "Segregated and integrated coding of reward and punishment in the cingulate cortex." Journal of Neurophysiology 101.6 (2009): 3284-3293.
Monosov, Ilya E., and Okihide Hikosaka. "Regionally distinct processing of rewards and punishments by the primate ventromedial prefrontal cortex." The Journal of Neuroscience 32.30 (2012): 10318-10330.

David Heise's affect control theory uses three dimensions for concepts. I sort of notionally associate this with the old scholastic notion of the dog (goodness), lion (power), and wolf (activity). He draws this 2-dimensionally as an 'emotion spiral'

A meta-analysis of 397 neuroimaging studies was just published looking at this very question (see here).
They tested three hypotheses:

Bipolarity - negative and positive are on the same continuum
Bivalence - negative and positive are independent
Affective workspace - valence is supported by a "flexible set of valence-general regions".

Their analyses are rather complicated, but they didn't find much support for the bipolarity or bivalence hypotheses.  Instead, in support of the affective workspace hypothesis, they conclude (emphasis mine):

These findings suggest that, at the level of regional brain activity, there is no single region or even voxel that uniquely represents positivity or negativity. Limbic tissue, including the anterior insula, rostral ACC/ventromedial prefrontal cortex, dorsal ACC, amygdala, ventral striatum, as well as several other regions including the thalamus and occipitotemporal cortex, appears to contain cells that are part of the brain’s valence-general affective workspace or “affective neural reference space

But they note that some brain regions have preferences for negativity or positivity, meaning that these brain regions may tend to represent negativity or positivity over the other.
This meta-analysis isn't definitive, but it's the best we have right now.

I think that we are.  But the notion of 'valence' is already problematic, as a variation on mathematical negation, which produces bizarre mathematical artifacts like Russel's Paradox.
It is tempting to follow natural language and find two balancing processes always add up to a sign and a magnitude.  But in fact no two processes are ever going to consistently align in perfectly opposite directions, and in the gaps there is still interesting behavior.  Something as clean as real negation only ever occurs in language and in theory.
We know from earlier studies of memory that positive or negative memories are the result of separate reactions from the back-brain and the frontal lobe, and that people can actually become attached to negative stimuli like physical pain for the pleasure they produce.
One would expect the same sort of balancing act, if not exactly the same process in a less direct form, to explain the effects of reward and punishment.  So there will be places, parallel to the situation of attraction to pain, where reward and punishment do not align as opposites.  (Situations of getting attention through punishment, or in its aftermath come to mind.)  In such situations, the notion of valence only gets in the way.


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How to interpret a BBC news article on the effect of race on intelligence?

In spring 1998, Robert Plomin claimed to have discovered a gene linked with intelligence. More recently, the Human Genome Project was cautious when approaching areas implying racial differences since research actually shows greater genetic differences within races than between races. However, not all individuals are endowed with the same intelligence and many believe this must have something to do with our genes and the way they interact with the environment. Identical twins are more likely to obtain the same score in an IQ test than twins from two separate eggs that have a different genetic make- up.
It is important to remember that genes work by interacting with the environment, so social factors will also infl uence intelligence. Intelligence tests may be more of an assessment of social factors, such as your educational background. Black children adopted into white middle-class families score signifi cantly higher on average than those in working-class families – implying a cultural slant to tests.

My classmate thinks that this article suggests that race is suggested as determining intelligence, because race is mentioned several times in the article as being linked to intelligence, whether genetically or through social factors.
 I want to check this before confronting her, but I think not. Who's right?
In my view, the first bolded sentence dismisses race as a determinant, because there are 'greater  genetic differences within' each race than between different races.
The second bolded sentence also rejects race, because it only shows a cultural slant to tests and the first sentence of the last para states 'social factors will also infl uence intelligence.'
Source: ‘Are you born brainy?’, 17 November 2004, from BBC News at www.bbcnews.com

This is kind of like when you compare men and women: in almost all cases, any statistically significant differences between the groups are rendered utterly insignificant when you consider variability within the groups. So yes, both bold sentences are what you should emphasize in your discussions with your friend.

"Identical twins are more likely to obtain the same score in an IQ test than twins from two separate eggs that have a different genetic make- up." That's an amusingly convoluted way of saying "Twin's IQ scores are highly correlated".

There is greater variation of height within the set of men and the set of women, than between the average of the two sets. Yet, the average height of women is lower than the average height of men... When will we wake up and realize that every single person is simply different from every other person, despite having things in common with many of them? Why must this be a problem for anyone? Why do we need an explanation for observed tendencies? What is the point of seeking the explanation? For height, well, people survived better when men got bigger. For intelligence... (over to you)

The relationships between race and IQ is a sensitive topic for many good reasons. It also raises a lot of deep questions about how to assess the role of genetics and environment.
A good summary of the literature on Intelligence with a discussion of racial differences can be found in the article "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns" (FREE PDF).
Within-group versus between-group variance
You write:

In my view, the first bolded sentence dismisses race as a determinant, because there are > 'greater genetic differences within' each race than between different races.

Group differences can be quantified. They are often quantified in psychology in terms of cohen's d (i.e., the size of group differences in terms of the standard deviation). You sometimes hear the claim that within group differences are larger than between group differences. This point is often highlights that just because a group on average is higher on a variable, there is a large proportion of people in the lower group than are higher than people in the higher group. The claim is often made to remind people not to stereotype. However, from a scientific perspective, we are often quite interested in the size of the difference between group means and the causes of such differences.
Importantly, group differences need to be very large before between-group variance is larger than within group variance. A grouping variable can have an effect of an outcome variable without needing to achieve this degree of group difference.
The size of the group differences says very little about whether the effect is causal.
Race as cultural slant

The second bolded sentence also rejects race, because it only shows a cultural slant to
  tests and the first sentence of the last para states 'social factors will also influence intelligence.'

I don't think the second bolded sentence entirely rejects race. However, the wording "cultural slant" does go some way towards this argument.
However, I'd challenge the "cultural slant" argument. In particular, if some environments lead to higher IQ, I would be more inclined to interpret that as an effect of environment on IQ rather than saying that IQ tests have a cultural bias. You might argue that the kind of intellectual functioning represented by IQ tests is more valued by some cultures, but that's quite different. Once you operationalise IQ in terms of a general factor that emerges from a wide range of cognitive ability measures, then it makes sense to proceed with this. This is the variable that has been validated (i.e., predicts educational attainment; entry into prestigious professions; job performance particularly in cognitively demanding job; future income; etc.)
Also, to show that environment influences IQ is interesting, but it does not refute the role of genetics. Researchers in this space (e.g., looking at twin studies) often aim to estimate the proportion of variance in IQ due to environment and genetics. To show an effect of $A$ does not mean that there is not an effect of $B$.

Which causes what? that's what I want to know. Which, is never going to get resolved, because it is all entangled anyhow.

Simple minds

We believe the burden of proof must shift to those who argue for a
100% culture-only position... they need to address why, if important
minority-specific developmental processes such as stereotype threat
(Steele, 1997) and racial stigma (Loury, 2002) exert such a powerful
influence on school achievement, the correlation matrices representing
developmental processes can be so similar across ethnic and racial
groups (Section 5). They need to explain why, if gene–environment
interactions are as widespread and difficult to disen- tangle as often
claimed (e.g., Block, 1995), identical twins reared apart grow to be
so similar (Bouchard, 1996; Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001). Some
culture-only hypotheses are too ambiguous to be tested.

These strike me as quite simplistic and ad hoc arguments. Bouchard is adding further empirical twin data about personality and "special mental abilities", rather than IQ. Neither are "developmental processes" the same thing as IQ. And yet he thinks the IQ gap is a real - unitary - difference in intelligence. Why?
A lot of researchers (this is a highly cited article) seem to have invested a lot in IQ tests being an inherently fair, and complete, measurement of G. When in reality these very same arguments can be used to support the claim that the IQ gap is not representative of intelligence.
Such is 'psychology'. If personality and so on is not much of a cultural artefact, culture and genetics are really pretty distinct here, then are the effects of a racist culture mediated by the genetics of a person? If different ethnicities only differ in IQ and not pace of development, do IQ scores reflect a norm or definition of G which is valid for all groups?
These are only "too ambiguous to be tested" if we believe IQ tests are the gold standard which cannot be added to, even interpreted. IMHO it's from a false need for simplicity: one score with the best correlations. Sadly, social and individual psychology surely doesn't work like that

different 'interpretations' here seem to stem simply from what we mean by 'intelligence' and 'racism'. the author assumes special abilities are alike to IQ in immunity from racism, but development processes are not (so IQ isn't cultural but measures something that differs). that personality is alike to intelligence, but not developmental processes (so intelligence is genetic and differs). I think I've shown how these arguments can be flipped inside out, and believe if the author does believe that American culture is racist, he should acknowledge that his argument is really too weak. that's all


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The psychology of nymphomania
So this is a question that requires maturity and discretion.  I present it as an authentic point of research for a class I am taking.  I understand the basic principles of mania, psychomania, and manic episodes.  However one thing that pops into question are possible explanations for nymphomania.  To the scientific community I ask:

Is the condition of nymphomania coupled as a symptom of mania?
Or is it some kind of hormonal/biochemical imbalance that presents itself as it's own issue?
Or is it just some addiction to the hormones released via copulation?

I am not referring to women or men with high sex drive, clearly nymphomania is in it's own class.  I personally have postulated to my class that it is something that is coupled together with mania, or as a symptom of bipolar/mood disorder in patients that are not well controlled on their medications.  My professor then instructed me to post it up here to gather knowledge and present it to my class at some point.  Any thoughts and/or opinions must be clean and professional, any nasty/vulgar language will be reported.

For those who would DV this question: hyper-sexuality is a well recognized symptom of mania and at least arguably a valid psychiatric disorder itself. Asking about the relationship between the two is a reasonable and interesting question. Martin Kafka's work is a good place to start.

Hypersexuality may well be, but the use of the term 'nymphomania' raises eyebrows, as it is clearly a socially and politically loaded choice of phrase.

::: It seems like you're trying to get to the root cause as either organic or functional? Maybe a bit of both. They jury will forever be out thus we have the stress-diathesis model for comfort. Here is some interesting discussion on the norm-referencing in assessment of manic behavior such as hypersexuality and the implications of various factors like gender. OOhh - this is a good one too actually- a very large study on the whole range of abnormal sexual activity.
In working with individuals who are hypersexualized, i've found that it's learned, it's reactive attachment gone awry...co-occurring borderline meets cyclic dysthmia.... it's never just hormone or just addiction. I have not looked at extreme cases really, though...

Mania and nymphomania are related in the same way that nut and donut are. In other words: don't let a partial homophony or possible common etymology fool you.
A mania is a psychiatric disorder that appears to be caused by overactivity of certain brain processes.
Nymphomania is currently not a recognized disorder in the DSM. It is, in the ICD-10 ("Hypersexuality"), and its inclusion in a future edition of the DSM is being discussed. This shows that there is disagreement about the status of nymphomania and hypersexuality and that scholars have not yet reached a clear understanding of the phenomenon.
One possible perspective is that hypersexuality is nothing but a possible symptom of certain different disorders, such as neurodegenerative diseases, autism, or bipolar disorder. It can be one symptom of a manic episode.
In this it is similar to coughing, which can be caused by a wide variety of causes, from particles in the healthy lung, to an infection, to psychological causes such as simple nervousness or a tic disorder. A cough is not a disease, and nymphomania is maybe not a disorder. It is a behavior which may by symptomatic for a disorder, but it may also be caused by a person's attitude, upbringing, life circumstances, and so on.
It may acutally be, by itself, just an extreme form of a completely healthy behavior, similar to people who need only four hours of sleep.

That the DSM does not cover hypersexuality says little for its validity.  The DSM is a mess of politics and business.
And concerning the "extreme form of completely healthy behavior", the current definition of a "disorder" is a set of behaviors or internet patterns that cause some problem in an individual's life.  If someone was completely functional and has no presenting problems, no matter what would otherwise be the diagnosis, few in the field would have concern.

I wrote: "by itself". No behavior in itself is pathological, only if other factors come to bear. So, of course, as soon as the person behaving in a certain way suffers from that behavior, then that behavior is considered pathological. I was just making a case for not considering a behavior pathological merely because you don't feel like doing the same. Lay people define mental disorders by comparing a behavior to their own behavior or to moral standards, which would make having sex three times a day a disorder, while a professional sees no problem if that person feels happy.


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Are some facial features more important than others in human facial recognition?
I'm often surprised by the human ability to correctly identify other individuals despite significant modifications due to ageing, hairstyle, injury etc. But, sometimes the addition of a beard and a hat can radically increase the identification error.

Are all facial regions  equally important when we try to recognise human faces?
Do we focus more on some regions than others?

In a study by Pelphrey et al., 2002 the authors show that when people are asked to scan a face, they spend about 80% of the time looking at the eyes, about 10% on the nose region, and a few percents on the mouth (the remaining few percentages were spent on other non-core features such as ears, forehead etc). Hence, the eyes by far draw the most attention and represent the most important feature when it comes to facial processing.
A typical example of a visual scan by a human subject as examined by eye tracking is the following (taken from Pelphrey et al., 2002), which shows that the subject scanned the core features of the facial image (eyes, nose, mouth):

Nonetheless, the presence of a complete face makes recognition more efficient than when looking at incomplete faces (Tanaka & Farah, 1993)


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Have the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices on human psychology been studied?
What are the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices on the human brain? Naturally they could move metals to or through the brain cell's membrane. I can also see the experience of being in a strange position, meditating, and attempting to be as still as possible for an hour and a half, might cause some long term effect. Have the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices been studied comparatively on human psychology or neurology? Could you also mention the mental health aspects?

Yes, the effects of electromagnetic fields on the brain have been studied extensively, especially with respect to cellphone, WiFi, and other small devices that emit such fields.  The results are typically mixed, but the overall consensus is that "it depends" - on the strength of the field, the environment, length of exposure, etc - and most modern consumer devices operate at levels well below safety margins.
The effects of MRIs on cognitive function have been studied to some degree, starting in the 1990s, early in their history.  The most prominent cognitive effects known include dizziness, vertigo, concentration, and awareness.  Most of these effects are temporary (limited to the time spent inside the MRI machine), typically only found in high-intensity MRIs, and in most cases require movement (movement is theorized to induce a changing magnetic field).
The long-term effects of exposure to MRIs are not well known.  However, as MRIs are in very common use, and are often a core part of studies on mental health and cognitive function, their safety is indirectly tested regularly.  As such, there is not much impetus to conduct a controlled long-term study.  Note also that MRI-related health risks tend to be more important for the operators who are chronically exposed, rather than for the patients who are only briefly exposed.
For your case, you should find out the MRI field strength used: "the majority of systems operate at 1.5T, commercial systems are available between 0.2T–7T.".  Most of the known effects on cognitive function are found with MRIs above 3T, which are relatively uncommon.  Even if you were inside a particularly powerful MRI machine, as long as you remained perfectly still, no significant magnetic field fluctuations should occur, and even if you did move, the effects are temporary.

XKCD on the matter of cell phones.