text:
Link between visual-spatial + verbal working memory and intelligence/academic achievement?
What is the link between someone's visual and spatial working memory, their verbal working memory, and different types of cognitive abilities or tasks? More specifically, intelligence tests (WAIS, Stanford Binet, etc.) and would this relate to educational outcomes in different fields (maybe SAT scores, graduation rates in different fields, and GPA, etc.)? Is there a relationship between these variables? Some cite working memory as the most important predictor of early academic success.
Somebody who has a strong verbal working memory may generally perform well on other types of verbal tasks included on intelligence tests: vocabulary, verbal reasoning, analogies, antynoms, etc. And be better suited to learn about fields such as literature, biology, foreign languages, etc. because there is a lot of linguistic mastery required in these disciplines.
Or on the other hand, if somebody has a strong visual-spatial working memory they may generally perform well on intelligence tests on other types of visual-spatial tasks that also recruit reasoning ability and long-term memory. And would be better suited to learning about fields such as physics, mathematics, art, architecture, etc. because there is more of a visual-spatial component in these disciplines.
Of course, there are many other factors that affect ability and learning. Working memory would be a small determinant but a determinant nonetheless. Furthermore, there is research which shows a link between spatial ability and achievement in STEM subjects up to graduate level studies for example.
Cognitive abilities from both of these broad areas (overall visual-spatial and verbal ability) certainly overlap highly — same with other types of reasoning abilities such as numerical and logical. However, I assume each area has a bias as to what types of cognitive abilities are used more.
There seems to be a very strong correlation between the two types of working memory or short-term memory. That's what I wanted to find out mainly: What is the relationship between the different types of working memory or short-term memory and other types of reasoning abilities (non-working memory reasoning tasks including verbal ability, numerical, spatial, etc.)? Are the different measures of short-term and working memory measuring approximately the same thing?
How common is the occurance of individuals that have poor verbal working memory and high verbal reasoning scores on intelligence tests for example? How about for visual-spatial working memory and non-working memory visual-spatial scores on intelligence tests?
I've read a few papers on this subject but am unsure of the answer.
Hopefully, someone can point me in the right direction. Thanks.
References:
Timothy F. Brady, Talia Konkle, George A. Alvarez; A review of visual memory capacity: Beyond individual items and toward structured representations. Journal of Vision 2011;11(5):4. doi: 10.1167/11.5.4.
Teixeira, Rosani Aparecida Antunes, Zachi, Elaine Cristina, Roque, Daniela Tsubota, Taub, Anita, & Ventura, Dora Fix. (2011). Memory span measured by the spatial span tests of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery in a group of Brazilian children and adolescents. Dementia & Neuropsychologia, 5(2), 129-134. https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S1980-57642011DN05020012
Spatial Ability: A Neglected Talent in Educational and Occupational Settings
Harrison J. Kell & David Lubinski
Roeper Review Vol. 35 , Iss. 4,2013

Related: https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/15946/is-working-memory-equivalent-to-fluid-intelligence

Work in progress -

What is the relationship between the different types of working memory or short-term memory and other types of reasoning abilities (non-working memory reasoning tasks including verbal ability, numerical, spatial, etc.)? Are the different measures of short-term and working memory measuring approximately the same thing?

This is  a good question, but you are a funny person: say hello to positive manifold.
The concept of the general factor of intelligence emerges from the observation that all cognitive tasks are positive correlated with one another, or display positive manifold. It's as though they're all tapping into this invisible phlogiston, the general factor of intelligence/psychometric g. Perhaps the following puts it more succinctly:

From: Sternberg, R. J., & Kaufman, S. B. (Eds.). (2011). The Cambridge handbook of intelligence. Cambridge University Press.

Is there a relationship between these variables?

As above. The reason why WM is most predictive of academic achievement is essentially because it's thought that it's tapping into the general factor most.

Somebody who has a strong verbal working memory may generally… Or on the other hand, if somebody has a strong visual-spatial working memory they may generally perform well on intelligence tests on other types of visual-spatial tasks

What you are saying sounds perfectly cogent, but you are making one important assumption here that I don't necessarily agree with: that visuo-spatial WM and verbal WM are so thoroughly dissociable that one can have one that is stronger than the other in the way that I kick a ball real good with my right foot, but am a total ponce with my left foot. Although they are considered separate cognitive structures, I would anticipate that they're still very highly correlated in most people, individual differences notwithstanding.
Here is a snippet I have found:

However, later in the same reference, there is an interesting chapter on individual differences in visuo-spatial WM ability. In it, the authors describe a sample comprising children with learning disabilities where the deficit could be characterised as High Verbal/Low Visuo-Spatial intelligence, and vice-versa. Under some circumstances, the abilities can be dissociated:

From: Cornoldi, C., & Vecchi, T. (2004). Visuo-spatial working memory and individual differences. Psychology Press.

Of course, there are many other factors that affect ability and learning. Working memory would be a small determinant but a determinant nonetheless.

Here, I disagree. Have you ever attempted to entertain a complicated concept comprising multiple components, only to have it "fall out of your mind" for lack of a better word? In order to process complicated concepts, you need to have some. Working memory is king, and all other abilities are subservient to it.

How common is the occurance of individuals that have poor verbal working memory and high verbal reasoning scores on intelligence tests for example?

I am going to make a bold a priori claim: it is simply not possible for this to occur.
To argue my point, consider what you are implying: suppose someone was reading a passage of text with a long sentence. If they had very low verbal WMC, what would happen is that the beginning of the sentence would decay before they got to the end; they could never hold the information in the fore of the mind sufficiently long enough to process it, prod it, and synthesise an idea. Likewise for a sophisticated verbal reasoning task; a complex reasoning item has multiple components that must be considered simultaneously.
This reference describes it perfectly:

From: Cowan, N. (2012). Working memory capacity. Psychology press.
Effectively, what I am saying is that robust WMC is a necessary but insufficient component of verbal reasoning ability.

How about for visual-spatial working memory and non-working memory visual-spatial scores on intelligence tests?

I'm a little confused by this, but I think you're making the same analogy as above. Same deal. However, I will make the point that WMC would represent the bottleneck in cognitive resources that would predict performance.
Having made this claim simply from first principles, let me dig up some evidence for my claims.


text:
What is the cause of frequent nightmares?
Is there a reason why people dream of demons, ghosts, and other scary creatures? More specifically:
What factors cause frequent nightmares to occur?

Nightmares can be defined as (Pagel, 2000):

...vivid and terrifying nocturnal episodes in which the dreamer is abruptly awakened from sleep. Typically, the dreamer wakes from REM sleep and is able to describe a detailed, associative, often bizarre dream plot. Usually, the dreamer has difficulty returning to sleep.

Nightmares are common and can be a normal reaction to stress. Frequent occurrence of nightmares, however, may become a disorder when it impairs the sufferer's everyday life and may then be referred to as Nightmare Disorder (formerly Dream Anxiety Disorder) or "repeated nightmares," which is a term defined more specifically as a series of nightmares with a recurring theme (source: Psychology Today).
Nightmare disorder is defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as:

[R]epeated awakenings with recollection of terrifying dreams, usually
  involving threats to survival, safety or physical integrity.

Causes of nightmare disorder, according to WebMD, Psychology Today and (Sheaves et al., 2015) are:

Anxiety or stress, for example due to a major life event
Depression
Psychosis
Sleep deprivation
Illness with a fever
Medication side effects
Drug or alcohol withdrawal
Excessive alcohol consumption
Sleep apnea, narcolepsy or restless legs syndrome or other sleep disorders
Eating just before going to bed, which raises the body's metabolism and brain activity

References
- Pagel, Am Fam Physician (2000); 61(7): 2037-42
- Sheaves et al., Can J Psychiatry (2015); 60(8): 354–61

source: Stack Exchange

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sort: votes


text:
Why do people bully other people?
What is the psychology behind bullying from the bullier's perspective?
What kind of people become bullies? Do bullies generally have anything common in their childhood histories?
N.B. This question excludes Cyberbullying.

Are you including cyberbullying here? Because it seems there's a signficant profile difference.

Long story short, aspiration for leadership / dominance.
By having bullied someone (and not having been told where to get off), the bully effectively establishes dominance over the victim, which indulges their ego and makes them feel strong and lifeworthy.
Anybody with power or strong character can become a bully towards less strong/powerful ones, unless educated or motivated not to.
That said, bullies do not necessarily have anything common in their childhood histories that caused them to become bullies, however, having been bullied in the past or having seen bullying increases the likelihood of one becoming a bully. Vivid examples of this are dedovshchina and ragging — where people justify their bully behaviour by "I was bullied by older mates before, now it is my turn to take it out on the newcomers", or simply seeing that as a de-facto tradition.

@anonymous - I just added another paragraph to address the last question.

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text:
Does the digit span test draw on any executive functions besides working memory, if "chunking" is not used?
Does the digit span test draw on any executive functions besides working memory, if "chunking" is not used?
This answer neatly explains what chunking is

This ["chunking"] is much easier explained in the domain of letters/words, e.g.
  we'd recognize USA as substring among random letters. Similarly most
  would recognize the pattern 1945 (WWII end) by paired association, or
  12321 algorithmically.

I'm not sure I believe that the digit span is a test of a single raw cognitive function.
e.g. surely we don't need to "chunk" for perceptual speed to play a role: would that be helped by other executive functions?

if "chunking" is not used?
  This answer neatly explains what chunking is

Chunking is a strategy for more efficiently storing information by changing the way you encode or process it. Effectively, you're arranging/re-arranging information in a way that makes sense to you. Chunking refers to breaking it up into meaningful lots. For example:
Suppose you had a digit span task. Normal capacity is 7 plus/minus 2 digits. I was presented the following digit span numbers:
11111111111111111111111112221111111111111111111111111
I could store it as: 1-1-1-1… however, by the time I got to the end, the information I encoded at the start would have decayed.
So instead of trying to store it that way, I could break it up into the meaning parts: twenty-five 1s, three 2s, twenty-five 1s.
Wow! Did I just increase my digit span to over 53 digits? No, not quite. I just changed the way the information was encoded.
By chunking information, one can store more information by more efficiently structuring it.
That said.

Does the digit span test draw on any executive functions besides working memory, if "chunking" is not used?

Yes, it does.
It actually becomes a better measure of executive function. And working memory.
First, is there a reason why you're looking at digit span? I ask because it's not a good measure of working memory capacity/executive function. Also, your use of digit span may be leading to a number of misconceptions about what is going on during the  WM task, and it's because the digit span task is biasing your understanding of it.
To begin with, any digit span test requires executive function. This is because at a bare minimum, you need to be paying attention to new information. You need to rehearse it. You need to store it.
Instead, if you would like to get a better conceptual idea of what working memory tasks are trying to measure then have a look for the "N-back task". You should be able to download it. Recommendation: Try to "walking yourself through" the sorts of things you need to do in order to perform the task. It's a hard task. In fact, they don't recommend it be used to actually test WM because performance is too unreliable to be used as a measure of WMC.

I'm not sure I believe that the digit span is a test of a single raw cognitive function.
  e.g. surely we don't need to "chunk" for perceptual speed to play a role: would that be helped by other executive functions?

What you're asking ought to be inferable from first principles.
First, you need to look at positive manifold. See all those intercorrelations? They're all positive. When you move them around, however, you identify the way that different tasks build up on one another.
The easiest way top make sense of this is to look at Carroll's Three Stratum Model. The single abilities are right at the bottom. But our digit span test is at stratum II

I'm not sure I believe that the digit span is a test of a single raw cognitive function.

There is no such thing as test of a "single raw cognitive function". For example, the closest to what I presume you're thinking of is say, a reaction time task. This is called an elementary cognitive task (ECT). But it's not like reaction time is comprised of a "single raw cognitive function". Instead, (and I think this is what you mean is) this is meant to tap into independent processes as maximally possible.
But more to the point, digit span is meant to be a measure of WMC. It's "higher up" in terms of requiring that there is integrity of simpler cognitive processes below it.
It's a higher-order task. It's simply not possible to tap a single raw cognitive function. Even without looking it up, I know that it has to be tapping into numerical ability.
This is what a good test of WMC will be tapping into. However, digit span doesn't do this, because it's only going to be loading on the phonological loop:

e.g. surely we don't need to "chunk" for perceptual speed to play a role: would that be helped by other executive functions?

I think I know what you're getting at. Let's just way that, perceptual speed has to have some role, because if you're, say, looking at a computer screen, light hits your eyes, the travels through the optive nerve and to your brain, Then you create a mental representation somewhere, and then perform higher order processing on it. But if you're asking will it affect it any meaningful way? Then no. But more importantly, one shouldn't design a cognitive task that does.
There are good and bad tasks. A well designed test of WM is will not try to "tap into" perceptual speed, because if you did poorly in that task, you would not know if it was due to a bottleneck in WMC (which you want) or perceptual speed. This is particularly relevant if somebody has a brain injury where damage in more elementary cognitive process renders then incapable from even performing the task.

no offence, but such a long answer telling me you "think" i'm mistaken like ten times is a pain

i think you're saying it does because no cognitive function (e.g. phonological loop) acts on its own. that makes sense. i'm not sure what you're getting with the stratum image, especially given that the digit span test surely can't be at stratum 2, because it's a test

well, thanks for the honesty.

"It's 'higher up' in terms of requiring that there is integrity of simpler cognitive processes below it. It's a higher-order task. It's simply not possible to tap a single raw cognitive function. Even without looking it up, I know that it has to be tapping into numerical ability." lots of it's there, and e,g. in the 2nd sentence still not sure what you mean: in what way is WM a "task"? and i'm not sure that WM, or the digit span test, taps into numerical "ability", rather the inverse, to whatever amount. i like the idea WM is the core limit for mathematicians

@user3293056 my apologies, definitional drift. digit span is the task, WM is the construct, WMC is cgnitive ability construct. during the digit span task, when you saw/heard the digits, why did your brain construct the 1 as a one and not an 'L' or a straight line? and did you "see" the 0 as a zero instead of as a circle with a hole in it? if so, if even in just a primitive way, you must be tapping into numeracy. not in a sophisticated way, but a concept of a number system.exists. but i will double check, cos it's an interesting question.

The representations of numbers as words are processed differently to their arabic numerals e.g. five versus 5-> http://psypress.co.uk/ek5/resources/pdf/u3r2jbjrlq3h5b68.pdf

a lot of what you're saying seems fine but perhaps a little quick. no need to apologize, and thanks for responding! incidentally, i would like to know the answer to what i said, what role WM or WMC has in postgrad mathematics

WMC is strongly correlated with IQ. i think it's like r=0.8-0.9. it's been ages i read into this, but some think it's the general factor of intelligence. i recommend you look into brain WM training exercises: they use the n-back task.

wasn't aware (and doubt) it is that high, only that yeah some researchers say it's what makes g

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text:
What is the rationale for the normal distribution of intelligence?
What is the rationale for the normal distribution of intelligence?

I'm asking what the rationale is for saying that 68% of variance within intelligence falls within 1 standard deviation either side of the mean, and 95% within 2, etc.. That's just what "normal distribution" means. Here is a picture:

Why not suppose that intelligence is e.g. a uniform distribution? You can see clearly, in the picture below, that if it's modeled in that way:

someone's deviation from the mean will be equal to the probability of their score.

@user3293056 The response so far shows your question is ambiguous. Therefore, I recommend you update your question to clarify what you mean by 'rationale' and that you add a reference where you found the statement "68% of variance falls within 1 standard deviation ...". In addition, in your second paragraph (starting with "To be specific"), it would help to clarify how you understand 'significant'. Lastly, I recommend simply removing the last question. Based on the answers you get, it might become irrelevant or you can then phrase it better (including what you learned).

@StevenJeuris it may help if you name two or more ambiguous ways that you might read the question?

In regards to 'rationale': "Why is a normal distribution used when talking about IQ results?" (based on prior comments I expect this one to be your question), "Why do IQ results follow a normal distribution?" (what AliceD's answer currently addresses) "What is the rationale behind making IQ results follow a normal distribution?" (what baca's comments seem to refer to). P.s. thank you for the edit! Definitely clarifies your current understanding better. Down vote retracted.

@StevenJeuris well yes i had already pointed to how i was unaware of the central limit theorem.

You pointed this out in comments to AliceD's answer ... You asked me to point out how the question was ambiguous, I highlighted three different ways in which it could be interpreted. Ideally, you clarify which one of the three specifically you mean. Your question should stand on its own, and not rely on any subsequent comments you make on answers (or even on the question itself).

Short answer
IQ scores are distributed normally, because they follow the  central limit theorem.
Background
When we measure IQ scores in sufficiently large populations, they will be normally distributed. This holds for healthy controls, as well as groups of people with ADHD or reading disabilities (Kaplan et al., 2000), and also in people with mild to moderate mental retardation (Bellugi et al. (2003).
Many biological variables follow a normal distribution quite well. This is a result of the central limit theorem, which says that when you take a large number of random numbers, the means of those numbers are approximately normally distributed (McDonald, 2012). When for example the weight distribution is sampled in a population, it will vary with age, nutrition, disease status etc. The addition of these independent random variables result in the variable (in this case weight) to become normally distributed ("bell shaped"), even if the original variables themselves are not normally distributed (source: wikipedia).
Hence, your statement Do we as a society have the right attitude to variation in human intelligence? Because it seems to me we are either over-nurturing the extremes, or should not represent it as a normal distribution doesn't really apply here, as IQ score distributions have nothing to do with 'us as a society having the right to do something'.
References
- Bellugi et al., Enfance (2003); 3(55): 237-49
- Kaplan et al., J Learning Disabilities (2000); 33(5): 425-32
- McDonald, Handbook of Biological Statistics, 3rd ed. (2012). Sparky House Publishing, Baltimore, Maryland

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

To support what Alice said, we know from GWA studies that the "Heritability [of intelligence ] is caused by many genes of small effect" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270739/ so that's probalby a good enough reason for the central limit theorem to apply to the IQ distribution in a population. The short summary "IQ scores are distributed normally, because they follow the central limit theorem" is too elliptical without mentioning at all why the premisses of the central limit theorem apply to IQ (but I've upvoted nonetheless, because it is explained later, although just by analogy

@AliceD,is IQ test norm measured data or perfect normal distribution data?

@kittygirl normally distributed. No data set will reach perfect normality, at least in this world :)

@AliceD,if IQ test norm is not perfect normality,how can we use mean 100 and sd 15 to mesure?Is that means norm of psychology test not completely equal to actual data but artificial normalized?

@kittygirl could well be


text:
What did Freud intend as the referent of 'Das Es' (Latin: 'id')? Why didn't he name with the referent?
Wikipedia states:

The terms "id", "ego", and "super-ego" are not Freud's own. They are latinisations by his translator James Strachey. Freud himself wrote of "das Es",[5] "das Ich",[19] and "das Über-Ich"[28]—respectively, "the It", "the I", and "the Over-I" (or "I above"); thus to the German reader, Freud's original terms are more or less self-explanatory. [...]

What's the referent of the German pronoun 'Es'?
Why didn't Freud name (the concept known as ⟨Es⟩) with the referent itself instead? I.e., wouldn't naming ⟨Es⟩ as 'Instinkt' to mean 'instinctual drive' make the term easier to understand and more self-explanatory?

See https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/18092/7001 re why this question is off-topic here.

@ArnonWeinberg - I don't agree - see here

This is a great question! It's a shame that the only answer didn't quite grasp what you were asking. I'm struggling with the same problem and I stumbled upon an interesting discovery thanks to your insight. In Spanish (even when it's closer to Latin than english, the native language of James Strachey) the accademic-accepted translations are Ello, Yo, Super-Yo, which are (roughly) direct translations to das Es, das Ich, and das Über-Ich. Im not sure though why we didn't follow the "Id" translation, perhaps it was better to just sticking to the original Freud concept.

Short answer
Freud din't come up with that terminology, he borrowed it from his contemporaries.
Background
According to wikipedia Freud borrowed the term "das Es" from Georg Groddeck, a German physician to whose unconventional ideas Freud was much attracted (Groddeck's translators render the term in English also as "the It").
Nietzsche, who is thought to have influenced Freud also often used the German pronoun das Es. Freud’s English translator indeed used the Latin word 'id'.


text:
How likely is it that rate-of-test-taking impacts on WM tests?
Rate-of-test-taking (also known as r9) is one of the main subsets of processing speed, so is tested via e.g. the symbol digit coding task. I believe it is affected by e.g. depression.
How likely is it that rate-of-test-taking impacts on WM tests, the digit span test etc,?
It was pointed out in this answer that tests of WM should create a "bottleneck" so that other cognitive processes are implicated less. What about r9?

According to "The neuroscience of working memory capacity and training" by Christos Constantinidis & Torkel Klingberg asserts that training can increase WM capacity, however this does not translate into better reasoning power:

Ongoing research  aims to elucidate the extent to which the
  improvements  also translate to various other abilities, such as
  academic  abilities, that statistically correlate with WM capacity.
  Indeed, transfer to reasoning ability has been reported to  be small,
  with inconsistent findings.

However, transfers to attention seem more promising:

More-encouraging  transfer results are seen for attention: several
  randomized,  controlled trials, some of them including children with
  ADHD, show decreases in inattentive behaviour in every-day life after
  WM training

They cite to support this:

Klingberg, T. et al.  Computerized training of working  memory in
  children with ADHD — a randomized,  controlled trial.  J. Am. Acad.
  Child Adolesc. Psychiatry  44 , 177–186 (2005)
Brehmer, Y., Westerberg, H. & Backman, L. Working- memory training in
  younger and older adults: training  gains, transfer, and maintenance.
  Front. Hum. Neurosci.  6 , 63 (2012).
Green, C. T. et al.  Will working memory training  generalize to
  improve off-task behavior in children with
  attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder?  Neurotherapeutics 9 ,
  639–648 (2012).
Bigorra, A., Garolera, M., Guijarro, S. & Hervas, A.  Long-term
  far-transfer effects of working memory  training in children with
  ADHD: a randomized  controlled trial.  Eur. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry
  http:// dx.doi.org/
  10.1007/s00787-015-0804-3  (2015).
Conklin, H. M. et al.  Computerized cognitive training  for
  amelioration of cognitive late effects among  childhood cancer
  survivors: a randomized controlled  trial.  J. Clin. Oncol.  33 ,
  3894–3902 (2015)

that doesn't answer the question though!

@user3293056 you changed your question after I answered it... If my initial answer didn't answer you initial question, maybe ask a more specific question? But that's just my opinion. It's your question and you can do what you want with it. :)

ah sorry, i don't recall


text:
Do the feelings related to Transference always originate from parents?
As I understand,

Transference is a phenomenon which is related to human behavior where humans unconsciously redirect/transfer their feelings about a subject in the past to apply it to a subject in the present.

Is this definition correct?
Does the subject in the past always have to be Parents? What did Freud say about this?

Short answer
Transference is often related to feelings felt toward parents, but not always.
Background
Transference (Hughes & Kerr, 2000) is

the phenomenon whereby we unconsciously transfer feelings and
  attitudes from a person or situation in the past on to a person or
  situation in the present. The process is at least partly inappropriate
  to the present

According to (Ladson et al., 2007), transference are

unconscious feelings that are transposed onto another significant individual.

These feelings can be beneficial for therapeutic purposes, but intense, sexualized transference can be disadvantageous. Sexualized transference is

any transference in which the patient's fantasies about the analyst
  contain elements that are primarily reverential, romantic, intimate,
  sensual, or sexual.

The authors give an example of projections of sexual feelings experienced during early childhood relationships.
So although transference per se is often described in relation to parental feelings of submission, vulnerability and openness in a relation between therapist and client, transference can take other shapes.
References
- Hughes & Kerr, Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (2000); 6(1) 57-64
- Ladson et al., Psychiatry (Edgmont) (2007); 4(3): 47–50

I've never encountered the def from Hughes and Kerr until now, but the more general one from Ladson I'm sure I've seen two dozen times at least, even if just used implicitly (e.g. by illustrating it with an example). So I think the latter is the usual meaning. It appear Freud coined the term... but what he meant was somewhat narrower than what's in use today.


text:
Psychological explanation for the success of "class systems" in video games
Over the last decade, Role Playing Games and Mobile Online Battle Arenas have been a dominating force in the video gaming industry, millions of people playing sometimes every day and often being quite passionate about their favorite game.
The thing that strikes me when looking at the most successful of those games (not sure I'm allowed to say any names) is the recurring presence of "class systems", ways to label characters and players with a specific set of abilities and roles.
Examples of this are the classic "warrior, mage, hunter, assassin..." classes attributed to RPG characters or the the "tank, support, damage dealer..." roles that players in MOBAS take on in a team.
What I find interesting is that players seem to like having a more or less defined role, class or play style in these systems.
One such example of this phenomena is the use of the pronoun "a" to refer to someone or oneself:
      "I am a mage player"
      "He is a [insert MOBA character name] main" (main here means most played character)
      "Where the heck is our support?" (referring to the player playing in the support role)
      "She is the best [insert MOBA character name] on the     EU server"

Is there a psychological explanation to why people seem particularly attracted to these systems that "label them" in a way?
My hypotheses:
  - The discomfort of not fully knowing one's personnality and capabilities drive people to "symplify their personnalities" by endorsing specific roles in these games.

  -  Players "specialize " themselves as a way to get singled out and feel special.

Please tell me if there is something I can do to make the question better, this is my first time asking on this site.

I'm not sure the effect is as direct as you think. I don't play games much nowadays, but even in RTS-style games where no such roles are assigned by the game, people seem to prefer the kinds of team engagements that are conductive to roles ("econ player", frontline/attack player, "suicide spot" [that's a somewhat daft name for having to fight an ultimately hopeless delaying/defense action] etc.). And that's probably for the same reason soccer is popular... uniformity in a team is boring.

The "All about that Base" paper might have some answers you seek. After skimming it I think your assumptions are somewhat wrong, since MMORPGs but not MOBAs seem to be played mostly for immersion. So while they may both have classes, they serve different role for player experience, it seems.

"The Proficiency-Congruency Dilemma" paper analyzes MOBAs from a the classic team sports perspective. They find that "Novice players maximize proficiency more than elite players." So, I as suspected, playing a particular role in MOBAs is less important for the highly competitive players.

There are many explanations and counter examples for this phenomenon. Perhaps I can provide my two cents.
According to Kendrick et al pyramid, an updated pyramid of need, Status/Esteem seems to be reasonably applied to the class systems. Such systems allow the players to practice mastery, in other words, the need to feel competence. This is similar to your understanding of "specialize themselves to feel special".

For example, two players of healer/damage class may compare HPS/DPS
(Healing per second / Damage per second ) to see who is more
competent. Tanks see who understand the mechanics of the fight more
thoroughly. At this point, the goal shifts from defeating the boss to climbing the highest in the HPS/DPS meter. (this is similar to many sports, where players play for the stats).  This example applies to "World of Warcraft", one of the earliest MMORPG that introduces the triangle system (tank, healer, damage). The class system provides a measure within the group.
Another example would be "Guild Wars 2", a game that has no class
system. Players heal, attack, and tank on their own even in a group
setting. The game is a relatively much relaxing game in comparison
with World of Warcraft, which has many hard core gamers.

There are way many other possible explanations on this aspect, but it might be hard to examine specific reasons because there is too much variation in the individuals.


text:
Is there an innate human bias against admitting you are wrong or uncertain?
During interactions with people, I've noticed that it seems like certain people have a habit of admitting uncertainty and a willingness to admit error. There doesn't appear to be a clear group that I could bucket them into (like scientists, conservatives, etc.), but these people seem to be a minority.
After thinking about why people might bias against admitting they were wrong, I couldn't come up with a good reason. It would almost seem better for an organism to admit a mistake and learn from others, than stick to something that might actually be wrong.
Is there an innate human bias against admitting you are wrong/uncertain? If so, has any research been done on why?

It's surely a combination of self-serving bias and avoiding cognitive dissonance. I'm not sure it there's a more specific name for it that has wide acceptance. It's been variously called "certainty bias", "feeling of certainty", "illusion of certainty" etc.

+1 very good answer, although self-serving bias and certainty bias is not exactly the same concept. The first is about self-esteem, the second is routed in the innate need to have the sense of certainty in a very complex and unpredictable world. Also another related concept is Depressive realism : " depressed individuals make more realistic inferences than do non-depressed individuals ... but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased."

Well, admitting that you are wrong can be extremely uncomfortable. Majority of the time. We, humans, project guilt onto others to maintain viable self-image.
Psychological Projection Wikipedia
You can think about your action/sentence as an independent sub-personality that is loosely connected to you. If you admit that you are wrong you are basically killing a part of yourself, which is, of course, uncomfortable process - it requires a lot of strength to actually do it.
Here is a wonderful quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:

The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.

Also, it is extremely uncomfortable for our psyche to simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.
Cognitive Dissonance Wikipedia


text:
What is the consensus on the Golden Rectangle?
What is the concensus (if there is one) in modern psychology regarding the well-known dubious belief that the Golden Rectangle is the rectangle that is most aesthetically pleasing to any given individual (as opposed to other rectangles - say ones with simple side ratios such as 1:2)?
I have only been able to find a few papers on this topic, but all of them were from the 19th and 20th centuries. I would like to know what modern psychology has to say about this topic.

Psychologists' methods did not experience any dramatic shift at the end of the 20th century, last time I checked. Ok, maybe they became more aware of the replication issue/crisis.

@Fizz I would still like to hear a full answer from a psychologist from 2018 :)

Possible duplicate of Is Golden Ratio's association with perceived beauty a myth?

A quick search found a 2015 paper titled "Time to let go? No automatic aesthetic preference for the golden ratio in art pictures."

The golden ratio is a frequently studied topic in many scientific disciplines, and, in psychology, it has been proposed as being a (universal) law governing aesthetic preferences. Empirical evidence for the golden ratio is equivocal and typically demonstrated through explicit (i.e., conscious, deliberate) evaluations using direct measurement methods (e.g., surveys). Here, we examined whether the golden ratio reflects an automatically elicited preference using the Implicit Association Test. We used real art images, with the foreground object presented in the golden ratio as well as either in the center (Studies 1 and 2) or ¾ ratio (Study 3). Both explicit and implicit evaluations did not reveal a clear preference for the golden ratio over other ratios. A possible preference for the golden ratio does not seem to be automatically elicited and may, rather, be driven by art expertise. This again calls into dispute the universality of a preference for the golden ratio.

So based on this it's disputable, at the very least, that the golden ratio is as pleasing as the received wisdom claims. I could not find something like a meta-analysis.


text:
How can I take the Token Test?
I want to take the Token Test
Is there some website where I can take the test for free?
Alternatively, is there some simple guide to how the test works so I can re-create it?

There are different varieties of the Token Test (e.g., Moreira (2011)). Several of them using physical tokens are explained pretty well and can likely be me made at home (e.g. here). I wasn't able to find free digital versions.
Reference
- Moreira, Rev psiquiatr clín (2011); 38(3)


text:
What is the diagnosis when someone suffers only from negative symptoms of schizophrenia?
If someone has almost all of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and no positive symptoms of schizophrenia whatsoever, is that enough to be diagnosed with a mental disorder?
I understand that a diagnosis of schizophrenia is not possible with only negative symptoms.

I have edited the post but feel free to roll these changes back. Personally, I think it is entirely irrelevant to the question whether someone has a strong libido yes or no.

It seems more accurate to remove it so the question won't be narrowed, I just thought it might be relevant to the specific case

Thanks for the feedback. Self-help questions are explicitly off-topic here, which was another reason to remove it to generalize it. I think it's a great question now. +1

You will find that diagnoses are rarely applied in strictly tabular way - if this and this then that. So for your theoretical question it would help to list the symptoms as bulletpoints and if you can in brackets the most extreme example of that symptom.

Short answer
Many people in the general populace suffer one or more negative symptoms that are associated with schizophrenia, but are not diagnosed with a mental illness whatsoever.
Background
Indeed, for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, negative symptoms alone are not enough. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (DSM-5), to meet the criteria for diagnosis of schizophrenia, the patient must have experienced at least 2 of the following symptoms:

Delusions
Hallucinations
Disorganized speech
Disorganized or catatonic behavior
Negative symptoms

Werbeloff et al. (2015) note that, similar to psychotic experiences, negative symptoms are common in the general population, namely between 20–22%. The vast majority of these people do not manifest a clinically diagnosed psychiatric disorder. Negative symptoms do appear to be associated with the development of schizophrenia later in life, and to other non-psychotic disorders. However, neither negative symptoms nor psychotic experiences alone predicted later schizophrenia in their study. It was only the combined presence of both strong positive psychotic experiences and negative symptoms together that showed a statistically significant risk for later schizophrenia.
Reference
- Werbeloff et al., PLoS One (2015); 10(3): e0119852

I read most of that study, and it seems that although ~20% of the population have 1 or more negative symptom, each negative symptom is found only in ~0.5%-~2.5% of the population (Table 2). So I wonder what it means to have almost all of them.

@JimmySmith - valid question and I honestly don't know. Perhaps others can jump in


text:
What is the difference between problem solving and intelligence?
What is the difference between problem solving and intelligence?
All I know is that the tower of hanoi is thought of as a problem solving test, perhaps due to its lack of automation, I don't know. I'd assume that "intelligence" is broader, measured by iq tests and reflected in skills etc..
Is it just that intelligence is learnt?

One is a somewhat measurable skill and the other is a theoretical construct. Or something like that.

The definition of intelligence I like the best is "the ability to increase the probabilities of survival". In such case, we humans are excellent problem-solvers, but non intelligent, due to we're going on a path where our probabilities of survival are decreasing. In addition, this definition includes emotional, rational, spiritual and physical intelligence, as known in classical literature.

First, intelligence (as a notion in psychology) is a theoretical construct... with numerous definitions. Wikipedia's article on intelligence lists a lot of them. Just going with the fist one there (which comes from an op-ed signed by many intelligence researchers), intelligence is defined as

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

So, at a theoretical level, problem solving is seen a specific (but pretty important) aspect of intelligence. In practice, the way intelligence is usually tested in IQ tests, involves solving some types of problems (assuming a generous defintion of "problem"). Which essentially entails operationalizing intelligence. It's fair to say IQ tests test some specific types of problem solving. Of course the hope is that these correlate well enough with "problem solving anything".
There have also been some definitions proposed in psychology literature for what "problem solving" should mean. I'm not sure any of them has gained enough acceptance to be worth mentioning here.
IQ tests are however not the only investigated paradigm covering problem solving. There's a lesser known one that talks about CPS ("complex problem solving"), proposed in one definition to be:

“(…) the successful interaction with task environments that are dynamic
  (i.e., change as a function of the user's interventions and/or as
  a function of time) and in which some, if not all, of the environment's
  regularities can only be revealed by successful exploration and integration
  of the information gained in that process.”

However it's not terribly clear how that is different from the theoretical notion of intelligence. What is different is how [C]PS is operationalized, i.e. the tests used to measure it... and that actually affects the level of correlation:

This theoretical ambiguity is reflected in empirical findings on the
  relation between CPS and intelligence. Multiple early studies indicated
  that, while performance in CPS tasks varied tremendously among individuals,
  psychological assessments of general intelligence were unable
  to explain this variability (Brehmer, 1992; Rigas & Brehmer, 1999).
  Kluwe,Misiak, and Haider (1991) summarized 11 of these early studies
  on the relation between CPS and intelligence and concluded that most
  of them failed to show a close relation between intelligence scores
  and CPS performance measures. This led several researchers to suggest
  CPS to be a cognitive construct mostly independent from intelligence
  (Putz-Osterloh, 1985). Rigas and Brehmer (1999) summarized this
  view in the different-demands hypothesis. To explain the weak correlations
  that researchers observed between measures of general intelligence
  and CPS performance, this hypothesis suggests that CPS tasks
  demand the performance of more complex mental processes than intelligence
  tests [and they mean IQ tests] do, such as the active interaction with the problem to acquire knowledge on the problem environment, which, in turn, results
  in low empirical correlations between the constructs.
  [...]
In reaction to these problems, Funke (2001) introduced Linear Structural
  Equation systems (LSE) and Finite State Automata (FSA) as formal
  frameworks that allowfor the description of underlying task structures.
  Both of these frameworks enabled the creation of single complex systems [SCS],
  which are independent of any semantic embedment (Greiff,
  Fischer, Stadler, &Wüstenberg, 2014) as they only specify an underlying
  system that can be clad in multiple semantic contexts.
  In particular, the LSE formalism has been widely adopted by CPS research
  and has led to the development of a considerable number of single
  complex systems (e.g., Multiflux, Kröner, 2001; FSYS,Wagener, 2001).
  In a further advancement, after Leutner, Klieme, Meyer, and Wirth
  (2004) had used a combination of two single complex systems for measuring
  CPS, Greiff, Wüstenberg, and Funke (2012) used the LSE framework
  for the development of the multiple complex systems (MCS;
  Greiff et al., 2014) approach, which was featured in the Program for International
  Student Assessment (PISA) 2012, the arguably most important
  large-scale assessment worldwide. [...]
The comprehensive answer to the question on the relation between
  CPS and intelligence however, appears to depend on the
  operationalization of CPS.Whereas themoderator analyses did not indicate
  significant differences between measures of general intelligence
  and measures of reasoning in respect to their relation to measures of
  CPS, there are substantial differences inmean effect sizes found for studies
  using different operationalizations of CPS. The smallest average effect
  size for the relation of CPS and intelligence was found for classical
  measures of CPS, M(g) = .339, followed by single systems based on
  LSE, M(g) = .471. CPS scores gained from MCS tests are related most
  strongly to intelligence, M(g) = .585 [...]
However, unlike classical measures of CPS or SCS, current MCS tests
  do not feature some highly complex elements of problem solving such
  as the recognition and handling of time-delayed effects. Thus, the cognitive
  demands posed by MCS tests are likely to be relatively closer to
  those posed by intelligence measures. Following the different-demands
  hypothesis (Rigas & Brehmer, 1999), this might be causing the high correlations
  of intelligence and CPS scores obtained from MCS tests. In
  order to test this hypothesis, it would be necessary to develop MCS
  tests that feature highly complex elements while simultaneously maintaining
  high levels of reliability.

The bottom line is that there are problem solving abilities not entirely captured in basic IQ tests. Whether that tells us anything about "intelligence" vs "problem solving" is a matter of how one construes these notions theoretically.

Also asking if "Is [it just that] intelligence [is] learnt?" is a pretty different question, and I will not devote too much space to that here to that.
Of course intelligence (as usually measured, IQ) develops over time in adolescence, and according to some empirical stuedies the more schooling a child has, the better the outcome for IQ tests as well.
But this raises the question: what allows one to learn (better)? The answer, according to some is that there's no distinguishable factor between intelligence and learning ability. So basically, the question is circular in this view: you learn (better) because you are (more) intelligent, which make you (even more) intelligent. And that seems a pretty widely held view:

However, if we think of IQ as prediction devices, there is no better predictor of future learning than past learning. Furthermore, past learning does not just predict future learning—it often enables it.

But that hinges on the definition of intelligence as being this whole encompassing thing, which includes learning ability. Just going back to the opening definition of intelligence, but emphasizing a different portion of it should be enough to illustrate this:

A very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings—"catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do

It would make a good separate question whether learning ability and problem solving (rather than intelligence) can be substantially differentiated in cognitive tests... and whether assuming such a testing separation is possible, are the results highly correlated anyway?


text:
I have two different IQs; which one is the real one?

I took a WAIS IV and got a 128(SD15), but I have a somewhat large spread between Verbal(129) and Performance (122). The numbers may be off by 1 point or so. This was taken in a country and language where the average IQ is 106.
I took the non-verbal IQ test administered by the "International Society for Philosophical Inquiry" and passed. This means that I have an IQ that is over 145 (SD15).

Which of these is my actual IQ?

Actually both these scores are telling you the same thing. They can both be interpreted as Very Good Results, and any finer level of detail is chasing noise. Some minimal google scholar searching suggests that WAIS correlates with itself somewhere between .7 and .9, and that a correlation of .8 across different kinds of test is considered 'very good'. This means discrepancies of the size you describe are not super rare. There's another factor working against you too, because you're in the tail of the distribution, and those agreement numbers are overall! The test-retest consistency inevitably gets worse as you get out into the tails.
There's a nice longer discussion here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-worries/
Key quotes:
"...population averages of thousands of IQ estimates [are] valuable and useful research tools. It just means you shouldn’t use it on yourself."
"...even if you avoid the problems mentioned above and measure IQ 100% correctly, it’s just not that usefully predictive."
"After investing so much work debunking IQ denialists, I feel like this is really – I don’t know – diluting the brand. But I actually think it’s not as contradictory as it looks... If you really understand the idea of a statistical predictor"


text:
Raven Progressive Matrix: why's my chosen square wrong?
Source: Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009). pp. 7-8.

  The example that the problem-solver must follow is set up by the two figures in the top row of the left panel. The figure at the left in the bottom row then specifies what has to be transformed in order to solve the problem. The six figures on the right correspond to the answer alternatives. The solution of the problem requires you to notice that the figure in the upper left of the left panel is a diamond and the figure in the upper right is a square. This tells you that the answer has to be a square. Then you must notice that the bottom half of the upper diamond is divided into two, with the left portion in black. The fact that the left half of the figure on the right is also black tells you that the corresponding portion of the square on the bottom right must match the corresponding portion in the lower left diamond-that is, the entire bottom half must be black. Then you notice that to make the top right figure, one of the bars has been removed from the top left diamond while symmetry of the bars has been preserved. This establishes that you must remove one of the bars of the square at the bottom while preserving symmetry. Now you know that the correct answer must be the square at the bottom right of the answer panel.

My attempt

Between #1 and 2, 2 orange lines remain, the blue is removed, and nothing is added. So in #3, the 2 orange lines remain. #3 has no blue middle line that can be removed. So how can the right answer be #5, where the green line has been added to #3?

You got the numbering wrong. As the text says, it goes on the top line first (1 left, 2 right), then bottom row (3 left, 4 right). Solving the puzzle is « If 1 gives 2, then 3 gives what? » and not the order you used (btw your reasoning is perfectly correct, you just did not follow the rule of the test)

@marsei I don't understand your comment. What's the referent of 'it' in your 'it goes on the top line first'?

It is a very simple question.
In 1, three vertical lines were occupying the top space in the diamond. In the lower half of the diamond, half the space was shaded and the other half was unshaded.
In 2, two vertical lines were occupying the top space in the diamond. In the lower half of the diamond, all of the space was shaded.
There was hence a net loss of one vertical line and increase of one shaded space. That is the same operation you should have conducted in 4.
In 3, two vertical lines were occupying the upper-half space in the square. Similarly, half the bottom-half space of the square was shaded. Therefore, there must now be in the empty space a square containing one vertical line and a fully shaded bottom-half space.
It was not the relative positions of the vertical lines that you should have considered, but the quantity thereof.
I hope I don't have to explain to you why there should be a square in the empty space.
Anyways, that was my interpretation of the question. Hope this helped.

As the text you provide explains, there is a flow of thinking involved:

diamond-diamond / square - ? (answer: square - you got that one right)
bottom half becomes filled (you got that one too)
one stripe removed above

All this added yields the picture at the bottom right. You didn't notice, interpret or actioned on the stripe removal, perhaps.

Sorry, but how didn't I notice 3? In my post, I wrote 'the blue is removed'.

@Canada-Area51Proposal well you might have noticed but interpreted it incorrectly

How can I remove a (middle) stripe in 3, when there's none?

@Canada-Area51Proposal you can't. You can remove a stripe

@Canada-Area51Proposal This really gets into what a perfectly fair test question ought to be. Because in this case, two things were changed with respect to the stripes: 1) a stripe was removed and 2) a stripe was moved. Whereas in the other features (location of shading and shape), only one aspect was changed. Is that a fair question? That depends on what you believe about the test.


text:
Which computer video games can improve intelligence, barring Medal of Honor?
Source: Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009). p. 49.

  We have every reason to believe that these sorts of visual exercises actually improve fluid-intelligence skills and the executive functions that underlie them, including working memory and control of attention. Researchers have shown, for example, that video-game players can attend to more things at once than can nonplayers. Video-game players can also ignore irrelevant stimuli more effectively than nonplayers and can see objects in a broader visual field than nonplayers. To make sure that what they have observed of computer-game players is not just a self-selection effect (with the fluid IQ hotshots being the ones most likely to play computer games in the first place), the researchers had non- players learn a game—Medal of Honor [emboldening mine]—that they thought would teach the attention-control skills of their video-game players, and had other nonplayers play a computer game that the researchers did not believe would be capable of teaching attention control, namely, Tetris. Subjects played the computer games for an hour a day for ten days. At the end of the period, Medal of Honor players did better on the attention-control tasks than did Tetris players.

Exclude Medal of Honor that's already cited overhead.

I'm pretty sure you can find lots of information on Chess (which has been available in video game form for decades). In my experience, it helps with decision making and working memory (if you don't memorize moves to play like a computer), whereas Arimaa helps with resourcefulness and creativity. Games like Cut the Rope can help people to think logically with physics principles and timing. Personally, I think all games help toward intelligence (but what kind is the question).

This paper by Shams, Foussias, et al. (2015) gives a good meta-analysis of studies that have been conducted on the effects of video games on intelligence. Some games described as improving cognition were:
Super Mario 64:

"Significant increase in gray matter volume in the right HC, right DLPFC, and bilateral cerebellum in the video game group compared to the control group"

Tetris:

"Puzzle game group improved in attention and visuo-spatial ability"

Starcraft and The Sims 2 (female subjects):

"Games that emphasize rapid switching between multiple information sources led to a significant increase in cognitive flexibility"

There's many other games covered in this paper, displaying a variety of cognitive and neuroanomatical changes in subjects who played them regularly for a somewhat extended period of time (typically 1-2 months).
Additionally:

"A number of structural imaging studies have found that video game play can alter brain structure, especially gray matter volume. These studies have typically analyzed a particular video game or video game type. The most commonly studied category in the last few years has been complex strategy games such as Super Mario 64 or Space Fortress..." (emphasis added by me)

Reference:
Shams, T. A., Foussias, G., Zawadzki, J. A., Marshe, V. S., Siddiqui, I., Müller, D. J., & Wong, A. H. (2015). The Effects of Video Games on Cognition and Brain Structure: Potential Implications for Neuropsychiatric Disorders. Current Psychiatry Reports, 17(9). doi:10.1007/s11920-015-0609-6

The Mozart Effect, memory training, and so on... So many methods of improving intelligence being suggested. In all cases it takes years and years of studies, then meta-analyses are published showing small aggregate effects and evidence of publication bias. Is this the next 'method of improving intelligence' that is gonna fall to the replication crisis? It certainly has all the markers that should worry any serious scientist: very small samples (seriously, just ignore n<100 studies), many comparisons, no large scale replication tests. It's a methodological mess.

From cited article to show what I'm getting at: In their study of 20 volunteers who participated..., They studied 70 human volunteers who played..., Another study investigated cerebral structural plasticity in 48 healthy volunteers..., Their study had two phases, one of which had 50 healthy volunteers..., A study by Anderson et al. (2011) performed fMRI imaging in 20 healthy volunteers..., Twenty-nine volunteers underwent fMRI scans..., Another study using the same game included 45 healthy volunteers..., changes caused by video game play in 30 healthy adult volunteers.

I simply looked at the citations in a row (in the section Prospective Studies--Structural and Functional Brain Effects), not a single study of sample size larger than 100 before I was out of comment space. Let's just say that I would bet a lot of money that these studies wouldn't replicate in larger samples.

As a general point, many foundational principles of psychology suggest that  playing individual computer games will not improve intelligence.
Learning tends to be fairly localised. Near transfer also happens (i.e., where there are common elements between one task and another task; e.g., playing one 3d shooter helps you play other 3d shooters).
In general, changing broad and complex traits such as as human intelligence, presumably requires complex and long-term interventions (e.g., like the fundamental structure of education).
Any correlations between video game playing and intelligence could be explained by third-variables.
If video game playing has an effect on intelligence, it is likely to be very small. And it would presumably it would be dose dependent, where presumably, it would be more about a long period of playing diverse games that would yield any effects.
That said, more localised effects on specific cognitive abilities seem more conceivable.
the Shams et al (2015) article mentioned in @optimizedp is interesting. That said, this is a difficult topic to study, and the vast majority of research in the area is underpowered.

This answer is much more reasonable. 'Underpowered' is an understatement. I glanced through the Shams et al (2015) article, and the referenced studies have very small sample sizes. Unfortunately, this is a common issue in research on improving intelligence.


text:
Why is cultural understanding often wrong?
One common set of beliefs that I time and time again find wrong are the 'cultural norms' that are taught to people as if to make them more educated about differences in behaviors across cultures.

In Asia, it is often believed by Western-educated individuals that averting eye gaze is a show of respect. On the contrary, it is naturally a human instinct that eye contact will serve to establish emotional bonds between people. Without eye contact, people will lose a lot of the natural opportunity to connect between people. In this sense, eye contact is inherently not differently understood depending on culture, but rather a common language hard-wired into our neurological anatomy. It is also wrong how people think prolonged eye gazes are rude in Asia only -- it is rude in America as well. Nobody likes to get stared at, whatever the intentions.
So it follows that if an adequate eye gaze is indeed understood as an affront, then it is the necessity to preserve hierarchy that is preventing meaningful connections being made between persons of differing hierarchies. In my country, South Korea, there is a lot of discussion of how the society as a whole lacks communication -- between political factions and individuals in the family. No wonder! Compounding the problem is the fact that hierarchy and language are also correlated -- the honorific system is extremely complicated compared to any other Western language.
In the same way, Asian hierarchical culture is not a difference, but more often than not a problem. It is a genuine hindrance to democratic ways of life. When often western modes of behavior, like the fact that it is okay to walk out of a lecture hall, or put legs atop of a college style desk-chair combo, or to address professors by their name, are arguably examples of when liberty goes too far, there is in Asia, the contrasting draconian rules on the other side of the spectrum. Ageism -- the belief that age translates to authority, is one of them. Most companies prize experience over education -- unless the experienced are also well-educated. An attachment to external validations, like credentials, are super important.
To refer to the book "The Geography of Thought", therein the author makes a distinction between the 'weak dialectic' versus the 'linear logic' that Westerners use. I think this is less a cultural difference as it is the result of the Enlightenment and the formal logic developed by specific Enlightenment figures. The book argues that Asians who are expatriates or who have a PhD use linear logic more heavily. This already serves to prove that logic is borne out of a different intellectual history, rather than simply being a product of culture. In other words, intellectual styles are the result of a specific process that was unique to the Western world.

“It is often believed by Western-educated individuals that averting eye gaze is a show of respect.”  Can you reference any material which puts this idea across?  I have always been taught the same as you describe on eye contact.

As the answerer says, I have a hard time understanding your post. It would be good to end the post with a succinct one liner that explicitly rehashes the question.

I have a little difficulty understanding your question. are you asking why do we percieve slightly different behaviors as culturally different? I would say that for me cultural difference is a continuum or degree rather than difference. For example, as you wrote, prolonged eye contact is rude everywhere, but how much is acceptable might be different. Also for me the source of difference doesn't make it not culturally different. Every cultural difference comes from a source, socio-economic, geographic, historical etc. The different intellectual developments led to some cultural differences at least that's my opinion. Of course we can discuss if we should focus on differences or similarities among human groups. I would say should we choose between. I hope that was what you were asking.
P.C: to be honest, I was thinking about my own experiences and observations but when you think about one of the most popular theories about culture, Hofstede's four dementional theory, sees cultures in a continuem of four dementions (tolerence for uncertainty, individuality-collectivity, masculanity-feminaty, power of distance)(Hofstede, 1983).  It is not some cultures avoid uncertainty or seek it, but that some cultures/social groups avoid uncertainty or seek it more than other cultures/social groups for example.
Hofstede, G. (1983). National cultures in four dimensions: A research-based theory of cultural differences among nations. International Studies of Management & Organization, 13(1-2), 46-74.


text:
How can I not get a joke in my dream?
The Dream
Today I had a dream. I was in class where I and my classmate were chosen to be examined. Once seated in front of the teacher we got our questions. She accidentally saw mine and made a funny remark about it. I did not get it at first and so I just smiled in a general way. Since in real life she is used to me getting her jokes she immediately explained it to me. Only then did I understand it and had a good laugh.
The Question
How can I not get a joke made de facto by myself (even though on behalf of someone else) in a dream?

Welcome to this stack. Very interesting! However, we do expect questions to be based on limited initial research here (e.g., an article clarifying this is a more common phenomenon, not an isolated case you encounter). To help with this, I suggest generalizing it, i.e., do you think there is a real reason to focus specifically on 'not getting jokes'? It makes a nice example, but try to phrase it as a general question.

One possibility: did you remember the actual joke, or only the notion there was a joke you did not get? Thinking back on similar dreams I had, I believe it is typically the 'feeling' associated with the experience you recall and not concrete things. Without trying to remember the concrete, it 'feels' like there was an actual joke.

@StevenJeuris Thank you for the warm welcome! Now that I think about it, in order to understand the joke I had to recall a specific situation in the past (which my classmate had reminded me of). Shall I rephrase this question or delete it and ask a new one?

@StevenJeuris I am pretty sure I knew what the joke was about immediately after waking up, but I don't remember it now precisely. But maybe it was just a feeling, I am not 100% sure.

you can rephrase this question as if you asked it the first time around with the additional guidance I gave you in an edit.

This question itself is pretty hilarious. ^_^

It maybe the joke was the dream-equivalent of a MacGuffin, a fuzzy, unimportant placeholder that wasn’t materialized into actual language, and that the point of the scene was to experience awkwardness, embarrassment, inferiority or exclusion that others had the upper-hand with in-group knowledge unavailable to the subject?
It would fit that what seems real in a dream isn’t necessarily real... that the idea of certainty came from the dream while waking up, but the actual content of that certainty likely never existed.

No, the joke was not built on me not being able to answer the question. It was targeted at me, but not in the offensive way. I was actually flattered in the way: "hey, you you actually remember this?". Now, whether it was materialized into actual language - I think it was. I can't be 100% sure though.

I swore someone crashed into the wall in my bedroom. There was no one there and there was no logical source of it. Not even Casper or Slimer. I thought it was very real and woke up, but I’m completely convinced now I dreamt it due to Exploding Head Syndrome (EHS). But you see, the feeling of real, surreal or dream is itself a manifested feeling that can also be dreamt. Furthermore, the brain doesn’t wake up entirely and instantly... some parts are pressing an imaginary snooze button while taking a final exam naked while other parts are woke to the real world and ready for coffee.

How can we find out whether we really dreamt the thing or whether we just had a certain feeling and later on made up the story to cause that feeling? Sometimes when I wake up I do have certain feeling and recal a fuzzy situation from dream (which later on somehow gets more and more detailed). Other times, including this one, I actually recall the situation more concretely with actual people and vivid images of them and the environment.

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


text:
What is the neurophysiology of a thought?
PURPOSE
1) To find out if there is evidence in favor of one of Hebb's claim. In is book "The Organization of Behavior" he claimed that cell assemblies are the physiological foundation of thought. According to Sebastian Seung, in his book "Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are", a  thought is an association of ideas.

Is there evidence that support Hebb's claim?

2) In addition to (1) I want to know in which other ways Hebb has contributed to neuroscience. I have provided some examples below.

So, please leave links to research papers that support any other claim he has made.

BACKGROUND
The Organization of Behavior
"The Organization of Behavior - A Neuropsychological Theory", by D.O. Hebb, is one of the classics in the field of neuroscience, as you may know.
Hebb wondered about the nature of thought, and how ideas might be represented in the brain.
He was puzzled as to why the intelligence of some individuals remained intact after brain surgeries, where  a large part of their brain was destroyed.
In his book, it is suggested, that these high IQ scores were

"due to a conceptual development which brain damage does not easily reverse."

Given these observations, Hebb asked:

"... what is a concept physiologically ...?"

Which then prompt Hebb to claim that cell assemblies were the physiological basis of a concept/thought.
Hence, my question:

Is there any scientific evidence that support that the cell assembly is the basis of thought/a concept?

HEBB'S CONTRIBUTION TO NEUROSCIENCE
Some of his ideas have been confirmed; for example, in "Biological Psychology",Breedlove, Watson, Rosenzweig, teach that memory storage requires neuronal remodeling. This finding is grounded on Hebb's observation, which was confirmed by Kelso and Brown, 1986, that

"Ensembles of neurons, or cell assemblies, linked via synchronized activity of these Hebbian synapses, could then act together to store memory traces."

The above observation is related to the maxim:

"cells that fire together wire together."

Hebb's hypothesis about how synaptic connections grow stronger or weaker in response to experience gave rise to the idea of Hebbian synapses.
A Hebbian synapse is a synapse whose strength depends on its effectiveness in driving the postsynaptic cell; for example, cells during visual deprivation do not fire together; consequently, they do not drive the postsynaptic cells. In turn, the synapses get weaker, i.e., less sensitive.
In contrast, if cells are stimulated by the visual field, cells fire together, driving postsynaptic cells. This in turn strengths synapses.
REFERENCES
Biological Psychology: An Introduction to Behavioral, Cognitive, and Clinical Neuroscience, Sixth Edition, Breedlove
Organization of Behavior - A Neuropsychological Theory, Hebb
Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are, Sebastian Seung

I am unclear on the purpose of the second question in relation to the first. Perhaps it makes sense to focus this question on just the first, and ask the second (in case still interested) in a second post?

What do you mean by thought exactly? Are you talking about how objects in the world could be represented in the brain or meta-cognition of internal states in the brain?

SyntonicC - A thought is an association of ideas.

Rather than adding an 'edit' section which states that you are not going to make any edits, could you please just edit the question so that it becomes a cohesive whole, or not comment on it at all? 'Edit' sections are discouraged. P.s. at a glance I do not understand the edit. I have the impression it is not in line with my recommendation of removing the second question, but adding yet another question?

Hence, my question: Is there any scientific evidence that support that the cell assembly is the basis of thought/a concept?
This paper Thinking in circuits reviews this matter in detail, and its references can provide more related scientific evidence.
Question: What is the neurophysiology of a thought?
I think the following papers can provide some current information about the neurophysiology of thought:
1.How neurons make meaning
2.Brain Networks and Cognitive Architectures
3.Language and thought are not the same thing

While well-sourced, this is not an answer; Could you attempt to provide a synopsis that answers the question? Reference-only answers are more of a comment. Yet, +1 for your research efforts.

I'm sorry; I can't. This subject is a very big, detailed, and still advancing subject. I'm studying it too but not proficient to the level that I can write a good synopsis. As the poster of this thread asked for links to related matter, I just did what I could. I hope the abstracts of these papers can provide fairly good synopses on various aspects on the issue he'd like to know.

Should we close the question? Questions should not be overly broad. This one seems to be.

I’m rather new on this site and don’t quite know the rule/regulation about which question should be closed. Would like to leave it to experienced people here (including you, who have 14,000+ reputation) who have more expertise and certainly better judgement on this matter.

@AliceD  Instead of editing this post, which would have ended with too many changes, I a created a new post to clarify what I was asking. Here's the link: [https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/20161/is-there-any-evidence-for-the-cell-assembly]

@47squared - it's best to edit a post, as people have put effort in commenting and improving the original question. Only if the underlying question is sufficiently different  another post is OK. As you probably noticed, people are suggesting Hebbian learning in your other post, which is the explicit topic here! Please try to avoid this in the future. Because this post has received an answer, I might close the second post as a dupe. I have to see how much they differ.  I'd encourage upvoting the answer here by the way. There's research effort shown.


text:
Is writing ability associated with IQ or intelligence?
Is greater ability to write well i.e. analysis of books/literature/research papers associated with higher I.Q. scores?
Statistically speaking, is writing ability normally distributed like I.Q. is?

Probably yes to both without looking at any literature, just given how IQ is tested/construed... it has verbal part in some tests. Why do you suspect it could be otherwise? Or are you (better) asking about the degree of association?

What's the correlation?

Could you clarify about how you would evaluate someone's ability to write good analysis objectively? Once this is defined, it would be easier to search whether it correlates with IQ.

The SAT, a standardized reasoning test, has both a reading and a writing component (As well as a mathematics component). It is very well known in the psychometric literature that the SAT correlates substantially with IQ. In fact, the SAT is a fairly good proxy for an IQ test. From this we can conclude fairly confidently that writing/reading correlates with IQ.

The second question (normality) is somewhat easier to answer because it depends less on the exact measures used.

reading and writing abilities are normally distributed in the general education framework.

Meaning for people who are actually schooled and tested (in the US for the above study). The sample for the above was "316 boys and girls who were assessed annually in grades 1 through 4".
As for the first question (association between IQ and writing ability), the qualitative answer is obviously going to be yes. There is even one proposal to use samples of written text to estimate the writer's IQ!

The primary focus of this research is to introduce a
  method of measuring an individual’s IQ by analyzing
  the vocabulary in said individual’s writing. In this
  paper, we show that the ratio of SAT words in a
  dataset of writing samples is roughly normally
  distributed, though with an obvious left skew. We go
  on to show a method that can be used to calculate an
  individual’s IQ with this ratio and provide samples
  with measured accuracy.

Alas, the claim isn't terribly well supported because the IQ was self-reported for the sample they used to test their assumption.
Found a study relating to 2nd laguage acquisition:

The result of this study revealed that IQ made significant contribution in predicting reading comprehension (23.42%) and writing achievement (16.08%).

I don't have the full text, and the abstract isn't terribly clear, but presumably the amount of langauge education was standardized somehow... otherwise this result makes little sense.
From a more elaborate study (primary language) there are various intermediate factors affecting the various measures of writing quality... but most of these intermediate factors correlated with non-verbal IQ as well:

As shown in Table 3, there were moderate correlations between the scores on the
  cognitive background tests, except for the measure of attention in dichotic listening
  which did not correlate significantly with any of the other variables. [...]
While the narrative product measures were significantly correlated with a number of
  cognitive abilities, the narrative process measures were only correlated with reading
  and spelling skills (see Table 6). Children with better reading and spelling abilities
  made more online revisions than their peers. Moreover, children who were good
  spellers transcribed faster than their peers. The cognitive measure of selective
  attention was significantly associated with the ability to use capitalization and
  punctuation in writing.
[...] Although narrative macrostructural quality was correlated with a number of cognitive measures, only oral language skills and spelling were significant
  predictors in the final model, implying that the other measures did not significantly add to the model’s prediction.


text:
Is there any evidence for the cell assembly?
What is a cell assembly?
In Principles of Neural Science Eric Kandel, and colleagues wrote:

After this strengthening has occurred, a group of three neurons that are strongly coupled by excitatory synapses form a cell assembly (Figure E–5C). Neuroscientists generally use this term rather imprecisely. One must look to mathematical models of networks for more precise definitions, which generally have some- thing to do with the presence of strong mutual excita- tory interactions within a group of neurons. The word “assembly” emphasizes that the group did not initially exist but was constructed through the strengthening of the synapses of the neurons in the group, which in turn was caused by the simultaneous activation of the neurons.

In [1] the cell assembly is defined as:

A large group of cells that tend to be active at the same time because they have been activated simultaneously or in close succession in the past.

Sebastian Seung in [2] defines the cell assembly like this:

... the neurons are excitatory and are mutually connected by synapses into a structure known as a cell assembly.

Hence, my question;
What is the best evidence, if any, for the cell assembly?
Thanks!
[1]: Breedlove, Watson, Rosenberg, Biological Psychology 6th Edition
[2]: Seung, Connectome - How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are

Have you looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory? it does mention some experiments.

If a cell-assembly is self-contained, what role is the computation it is performing?

@Seanny123 a cell assembly(CA) may compute a memory. A CA is a graph. eg a CA w vertices(neurons) A, B, C, D. Edge a connects A to B; edge b connects B, C; edge c connects C,D; edge d connects D,A.  in response to some stimulus, you recollect A, which then triggers B, which then triggers C, which then triggers D.

@Seanny123 I would also like to add this. Since recollecting an event involves thinking, then a cell assembly is also computing thought.

@Seanny123 So in this sense the cell assembly is self contained. the connections between neurons in a cell assembly are retained without input from the outside.

Is there a difference between a cell assembly and a group of neurons learning to integrate? Also, what type of evidence are you looking for? Are you looking for computational evidence, wherein I can show you a biologically plausible model? Are you looking for neurophysiological evidence, wherein this structure appears or is learned in the brain?

@Seanny123 Any type of evidence will be appreciated. Show me the biologically plausible model please. If you have neurophysiological evidence provided it as well. Thanks

I'd encourage you to merge this question with your original one. Otherwise I'll have to close one of them being a dupe. Likely this one, as your original has received an answer.

@AliceD there Is no reason to close one; I’m asking two different things.

@AliceD A potential answer for the first question[1] is: "the neurophysiology of thought is a cell assembly; here is the evidence..." In contrast, a potential answer for this one is: "There is no evidence for the cell assembly or Yes, here is the evidence for the cell assembly..." The questions generate different answers.
[1]https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/20147/what-is-the-neurophysiology-of-a-thought

I think there is a bit of confusion here based on your definition "a set of connected neurons that continuously fire at one another without input from the outside of the cell assembly" - that is not what a Hebbian cell assembly is.

It’s a difficult issue to answer your question myself, but I’ve found a few more references that may help answer it: 1.Neural syntax: cell assemblies, synapsembles and readers, 2.Molecular codes for neuronal individuality and cell assembly in the brain, 3.Neural Code—Neural Self-information Theory on How Cell-Assembly Code Rises from Spike Time and Neuronal Variability.

@BryanKrause I made some changes to my post; hopefully, these changes clear things up. I would like to hear what you think a cell assembly is. thanks

I would like to point out that stackoverflow/stackexchange encourages you to answer your own question.
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/17845/etiquette-for-answering-your-own-question

EVIDENCE FOR THE CELL ASSEMBLY
The idea of the cell assembly is grounded on the following 3 principles:

The neurophysiological basis of a concept is the cell assembly, ie population coding.
The neurons in a cell assembly continuously fire even after environmental stimulus ceases.
Learning gives rise to cell assemblies through the interaction between presynaptic and postsynaptic synapses.

NOTE I will briefly talk about the first two principles; however, there is evidence for all 3.
EVIDENCE FOR PRINCIPLE 1
In The Organization of Behavior Hebb observed that brain surgery did not affect intelligence. Given this he proposed that the cell assembly was the neurophysiology basis for a concept.
The studies that support this principle show this; different neurons get activated in response to the same feature, but, unless the neurons function collectively, an object is not identified.
(Averbeck 2006) reports that individual neurons count for little; as an example, he mentions the visual cortex. He says:

visual discrimination in the primary visual cortex (V1) is much more accurate than would be predicted from the responses of single neurons.

EVIDENCE FOR PRINCIPLE 2
Principle 2 could explain why a stimulus triggers a memory. Consider this example from Seung, Connectome:

It's a fine spring morning, and you are walking down the street on the way to work. You catch the scent of flowers; within a few steps the smell becomes overpowering. You're not yet conscious of the magnolia blooming at the side of the road, but all of the sudden you're transported far away. You remember standing next to a magnolia tree, outside the red brick house of your first sweetheart. He is holding you in his arms. You feel shy and embarrassed. A plane is flying overhead, and you hear his mother calling for you to come have a glass of lemonade.

He then goes on to explain why this might happen:

How do these connections trigger the recollection of your first kiss? Since the neurons are assumed excitatory, the activation of the "magnolia neuron" excites the other neurons in the cell assembly to become active.

Since neurons in a cell assembly continuously fire even after the stimulus ceases you remain thinking about your first kiss.
Principle 2 is supported by the following studies:
(Funahashi 2001)
(Assad 2000)
This post is not great, but I hope it helps someone.
Thanks.


text:
What are the neurological similarities between humans and primates?
I don't know exactly what primate specie is considered to be out ancestor. But the next question regards them.
Assuming that in the beginning *we considered true the remnants of many trial & error tests, the question is straightforward:
Do we have some specific neural processes similar to primates - for example those involving:

Simple comparisons*,
analogies**
you may add another?

Can we go even deeper in the animal's kingdom and find those similarities? How deep?
Any research study (paper) or essay is welcomed. I don't pretend a complete answer but some guidelines.

* like "what is bigger A or B?"
** like "if A is like they maybe B too".

Primate brains are considered to be highly similar to ours. In terms of their structure, it's more appropriate to look for the differences than the similarities.
However, you're asking for cognitive skills and these are mediated by cortical structures, and especially the higher association areas. This is exactly where the similarities are starting to break down, as the cortex, and hence higher order processing has rapidly expanded in human evolution. Notably, the surface area of the cortex has greatly expanded in humanoids through a progressive increase in the number of gyri and sulci ('wrinkles') in the cortical surface. A greater cortical surface correlates with higher cognitive abilities in humans (Fig. 1). This is what sets us apart. Cognition being

[T]he ability to interpret and connect information that is perceived in the world and to then apply this personal knowledge adaptively to future situations and problems.

While humanoids have exceptionally well-developed cognitive skills, non-humanoid primates do have been shown to exhibit quite sophisticated cognitive capabilities as well. In a review article, Hopper & Brosnan (2012) state that primates have been shown to:

Recall serial lists of images
Select purpose-specific tools and save them for later
Manufacture purpose-specific tools, demonstrating an understanding of causal relations and physical properties
Have intricate social interactions and are known to interact with and manipulate other group members

Reference
- Hopper & Brosnan. Nature Education Knowledge (2012); 5(8): 3

Fig. 1. human brain (top) and chimp brains (bottom) are very similar. Especially the cortex is larger in humans. source: Tes Teach - Brain Project


text:
Is it possible to over burden yourself?
If someone thinks a lot about their future like what are they going to do 1 year down the line or how will the live the rest of their lives and some of these ideas can be really extreme like taking a vow of celibacy in their thoughts. Can they end up over-burdening themselves and if yes then what could be the possible solution to it. Also what are the symptoms of such a man/woman?
Thanks in advance!

Welcome to Psychology.SE! Take a look at https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/high-octane-women/201311/the-tell-tale-signs-burnout-do-you-have-them.  If nobody beats me to it, I will try to formulate an answer later today

how can someone get rid of "burnout"?

As indicated in my comment, it is possible to "overburden" yourself, and there are different degrees of effects from overburdening depending on severity and timescales.  Any overburden with enough time can lead to burnout (Carter, 2013).  Other names for burnout include "mental breakdown" or "nervous exhaustion/breakdown".  Another form of burnout, but essentially the same thing is Compassion Fatigue (Carter, 2014)
Definition of Burnout
Burnout is a state of chronic stress that has led to extreme physical and emotional exhaustion, which in turn can lead to cynicism, detachment, and feelings of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment.
Carter (2013) has given a good rundown of the problem, but I would suggest subsituting the section header Signs of Ineffectiveness and Lack of Accomplishment with Feelings of Ineffectiveness and Lack of Accomplishment can lead to...
Prevention/Remedy for Burnout
This can be a huge subject, but to narrow it down in a nutshell, as burnout is caused by chronic stress, the only way to prevent it or remedy it is to do whatever relieves stress for you and incorporate it into your day, every day.  Burning the candle at both ends along with the midnight oil every day is going to lead to burnout.
References
Carter, S. B. (2013). The Tell Tale Signs of Burnout ... Do You Have Them? PsychologyToday [Online]Retrieved from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/high-octane-women/201311/the-tell-tale-signs-burnout-do-you-have-them
Carter, S. B. (2014). Are You Suffering from Compassion Fatigue?:
What to do when showing compassion feels like a burden PsychologyToday [Online]Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/high-octane-women/201407/are-you-suffering-compassion-fatigue


text:
What science-based strategies can slow down dementia?
What are some science-based strategies that could slow down dementia?
For example, do cognitive demanding tasks like solving crosswords, playing with the Rubic's cube, chess, or perhaps stuff like gardening help against dementia?

It depends on the disease that causes dementia. Dementia is a syndrome that has many causes. Some of them are treatable, such as metabolic/infectious diseases. Some are primary degenerative diseases of the nervous system, such as Alzheimer disease, Pick disease, and Huntington disease. Most diseases in the first category are treatable, many are curable. But most diseases in the second category are usually not amenable to treatment. They progress slowly but relentlessly despite any treatment.
Regarding non-pharmacologic treatments, including cognitive training or cognitive rehabilitation, they seem to have some roles in the management of dementia (H C Kales)   but not have spectacular effects and still be inconclusive in improving or maintaining cognitive and functional performance of people with dementia (Diagnosis and Treatment of Dementia).