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Difficulty of expressing thoughts verbally
Some people find it difficult to express their thoughts verbally. They may often feel that their words don't give their thoughts enough justice, and that their thoughts could've been verbalized better.

What can the causes for this be?
Can it be "cured" or alleviated, maybe by reading, and participating in conversations?

This is not a direct answer to the question, but a related construct that may be useful is alexithymia.
Alexithymia is a personality construct describing relatively decreased ability to identify and express emotions. Psychometrically, the alexithymia construct has seen extensive use and undergone testing that by and large supported its validity (Bagby, Parker and Taylor, 1994a; Bagby, Parker and Taylor, 1994b). In clinical populations, the causes have been theorized to include anterior cingulate cortex and right hemispheric dysfunction, but the cognitive neuroscientific evidence is currently mixed (Zaidel, 2005).
Unfortunately, I am not aware of any direct parallel for the inability to adequately express thoughts, nor of any direct treatments, and I was not able to find anything in the literature. Hopefully, the alexithymia construct may still be of some use in finding an answer.
References

Bagby, R. M., Parker, J. D., & Taylor, G. J. (1994). The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale—I. Item selection and cross-validation of the factor structure. Journal of psychosomatic research, 38(1), 23-32.
Bagby, R. M., Taylor, G. J., & Parker, J. D. (1994). The twenty-item Toronto Alexithymia Scale—II. Convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity. Journal of psychosomatic research, 38(1), 33-40.
Zaidel, G. T. E. (2005). Alexithymia, interhemispheric transfer, and right hemispheric specialization: a critical review. Psychother Psychosom, 74, 81-92.

To add on, alexithymia may be characterized in particular by the inability to automatically access and apply emotion concepts (i.e., emotion words) for use in emotion perception or labeling (e.g., Nook, Lindquist, & Zaki, 2015).

This is my opinion. I have no sources for this.
The common concept of thought in Western culture, going back to philosophers of the Enlightenment such as Leibniz, Locke, Hume and Descartes in the 17th and 18th century, is that of rational and, especially verbal thought. Philosophy and psychology (which grew from philosophy at the end of the 18th and during the 19th century) have maintained this focus on verbal thought and for the most part ignored other forms of thinking.
As an effect, both the general public and scholars think of thought as being in the form of words and, therefore, capable of being expressed in words without any loss of content. Conversely, if you find yourself unable to express your thoughts, you think of yourself and may be perceived as lacking clear thinking or verbal competence.
That, in my opinion, is a misconception.
Because, while there may be people who are very verbal and rational, there are certainly many people who have other things going on in their minds besides words. I, for example, think in images, emotions, body perceptions and other sensory registers. When I consider a problem and its solution, I don't always use words in my mind, and certainly not logic, and if I do, these verbal thoughts are always supplemented by those other kinds of thinking.
But since Western communication largely relies on verbal expression, and since it is difficult to translate many of these non-verbal thoughts into words, the result is that I find it hard to say what I think, and that others find it hard to understand what I mean.
This need not be a problem in face-to-face interaction, though. There is non-verbal communication. You can hug someone, cook them a great meal, or create art. All of which are communication and an expression of thought.
Once you stop thinking of thought and communication as merely verbal, you can begin to find ways of ordering your thinking without translating it into words, and ways of expression that don't rely on words alone.
The statement that "a picture says more than a thousand words" is true, you know.

Introverts Process Information Deeply
Trying to think of exactly the right word is called “word retrieval.” And this can be hard for introverts. In social situations, this may translate to us falling behind fast-talking extroverts. At work, we may come off sounding like we don’t know what we’re talking about, even when we do. In the classroom, we may shrink from raising our hand, because we know it will be challenging for us to put our thoughts into words if we’re called on.
One reason word retrieval can be difficult for introverts is we process information deeply. We chew on ideas, turning them over and over in our minds, analyzing them from every angle. When you’re turned inward reflecting on something — even something as simple as, What should I have for dinner? — it’s hard to talk. Introverts don’t think out loud like extroverts do. We generally do our processing inwardly. Quietly. Without words.
https://introvertdear.com/news/the-science-behind-why-introverts-struggle-to-speak/


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What is the difference between creators of derivative works of art and original creators?
I like to write and am a frequent user on writers.stackexchange.com. Many questions there and in other writing or art related communities ask a variation of:

I want to use the setting / characters / names / story of this or that work of fiction to create my own. May I legally do so?

While books and movies inspire the want to be creative in me, I have never felt inclined to use the world or characters or plot of another for my own narratives or create fan fiction. When I read a question like the one quoted above, I always think: "Why don't you just invent your own world, characters, and story? Don't you have a story inside you that needs to be told ?!?"
Reading those kind of questions makes me wonder what the difference is between creators of derivative works and creators of orginal art.
Sure, everyone is inspired by what they read in books or see in movies, and no one comes up with a tale to tell from a vacuum. Wanting to tell a story you have made up is not per se superior to wanting to tell a (variation of a) story you have read, and many derivative works are better written and more entertaining than their originals. Nevertheless I somehow feel that there is a difference – in motivation, goals, maybe personality.
You could, for example, conceive of creativity as a continuum from the purely derivative to the purely original, with different creators having more or less original ideas. This is a common concept, and we generally admire original creators more, because we feel they have more creative "genius".
Or you could take another common perspective and understand artists as being more or less mentally disordered, and originality being a result of the intensity of the artist's depression, schizophrenia or borderline personality, and art being an "outlet" or a method of self-reflection or some other way for them to deal with their dysfunction.
There are other ways to interpret the difference. Looking at myself, for example, no matter if my inspiration was life or art, what made me want to write (or make movies or draw) was always a feeling of lack: that something was missing from the story I read, that something about how the story was told left me unsatisfied, because, no matter how touching, that story was never truly about me, never completely told of what concerned me. I don't know how you would characterize this type of motivation to create. Maybe I'm so self-absorbed and egocentric that I cannot care about the creations of others, while those wanting to contribute to another's invention are more socially competent, more collaboratively inclined, even more warm and caring.
What is the difference – in ability or personality – between creators of derivative works and those inventing their own new worlds and characters and stories?
Is there anything in the research on creativity that could explain this difference?

How can you be sure this isn't just fundamental attribution error on your part, or something along those lines?

You have a lot of implicit information about your own works, and relatively little information about others' work beyond what they present and what you subjectively infer from that. How do you know the perceived difference isn't simply an artifact of that information asymmetry?

The same question applies to the process, though. You have your entire memory of yourself and compare it to maybe one or two instances from the other.

I'm not sure what kind of response you expect from me. As I said, I'm happy to discuss the question here or in chat.

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How can fear be a positive emotion?
Fear is something we all feel, and we typically experience it as negative.  It seems difficult to treat it as a positive emotion or find any satisfaction in overcoming it.
So my question is: Can people learn how to have positive experiences with being afraid?

Evolutionary, fear increases survivial chances because it protects us from dangerous situations - or at least makes us prepare better for them...

So this may be long-winded, but I gotta get through some theoretical background first!
Conceptual Act Theory
If we take from the Conceptual Act Theory (CAT) of emotions (Barrett, 2014), then we can consider emotions like fear to be what are called "situated conceptualizations." This means that we feel an emotion when we make meaning out of our situated affective experiences (what CAT calls a "conceptual act").
For example, I'm making a conceptual act when I interpret (conceptualize) as fear my high arousal and negative affect in the context of anticipating a snake bite.  What this means is that I'm automatically categorizing my experience using an emotion concept (i.e. fear) that I've learned.
As Condon, Wilson-Mendenhall, & Barrett (2014) point out:

Emotion concepts make affective changes in the body meaningful, guide action, allow communication about one’s state to another, and influence another’s mental state and actions.

So categorizing my experience as "fear" is just like categorizing a big gray moving thing with a trunk as an "elephant."  The elephant categorization makes meaning of the moving gray mass, allows me to compare it to other objects, communicate what I saw, guides my actions, etc.
Emotion Variability and Pleasant Fear
What's interesting about CAT is that it predicts tremendous variability in emotional experience. The ways in which we can conceptualize our situated affective experiences are vast.  In this sense, CAT might predict something like pleasant fear. I've shown you this image before (from Condon et al., 2014), but it's even more relevant here:

As you can see, our prototypical fear concept involves negative feelings.  We are very familiar with this negative fear concept, and so we can easily and automatically apply it to our affective experiences.
On the other hand, we never really talk about what it might mean to experience pleasant fear.  The pleasant fear concept is not in our folk taxonomy of emotions. We're unfamiliar with it. Thus, we'll have greater difficulties activating that concept and applying it to our experiences.
Conceptual Learning
So, can we learn to experience pleasant fear?  Yes!
But at the moment there's little empirical research on learning emotion concepts (in adulthood).  We can probably draw from the literature on emotion socialization in children (e.g., Widen & Russell, 2010), but I'm not personally convinced that we can make an easy parallel.
There is potentially some indirect evidence that there is rapid conceptual learning when exposing remote tribes to Western emotion concepts (Sauter, Eisner, Ekman & Scott, 2015, and a response by Gendron, Roberson, & Barrett, 2015).
Also, there's some emerging evidence (Kashdan, Barrett, & McKnight, 2015) that we can improve people's levels of "emotion granularity."  High emotion granularity means you label your affective experiences using many different emotion words (happy, sad, surprised, angry, remorseful, contemptuous, etc.).  Low granularity means less diverse labeling (happy, sad, good, bad).
So if we can teach people to make more fine-grained conceptualizations of their affective experiences (i.e., improve granularity), you can probably learn to experience pleasant fear.
Conclusion
This is a new and growing area of research, so you'll have to stay tuned for more direct evidence.  But overall, you can learn new emotion concepts like pleasant fear, and you can get better at using them with practice.
Emotion Utility (Edit)
It's also possible to treat negative fear as having positive utility (see Maya Tamir's work, e.g., here).  That is, even though fear might feel unpleasant, you might learn to view it as serving some adaptive function within certain contexts, e.g., facilitating quick withdrawal from danger.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fear as "an unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger."
Fear is helpful when it helps you to avoid things that are not good for you.
Fear is harmful when it stops you doing something what is good for you or someone else.
So, even when fear is helpful (positive), it is not pleasant, but when you properly react to it, you can experience a pleasant feeling of satisfaction after your action; for example, you can feel safe after reacting to fear and running away from a danger or feel peace and joy after doing something despite fear.

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Do people struggle to empathise with people who are very different to them?
Do people struggle to empathise as much with people that are especially different to them?
For bonus points: does that include learnt qualities, like being very knowledgeable about something?


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Does being read to improve reading speed?
So my girlfriend is not what you would call a fast reader. She understands completely what she reads, but she reads rather slowly. I'm trying to be a good boyfriend and help her out with this, but the only two things I can think of that would help are getting her to read a lot and maybe being read to. I know in my personal experience that being read to helped to improve my reading speed but I may just be an outlier.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: "is being read to actually something that improves reading speed?" and "other than the aforementioned methods, are there other ways to improve reading speed?"

Most people [citation needed] can read much faster than they can speak. Unless we're talking about incredibly slow reading, I would imaging that being read to would end up being quite a bit slower.

There is no scientific proof that being read at an adult age enhances reading speed.
However, slow readers read faster when the format of a document is enhanced. Is your partner more responsive to a specific background color, a particular contrast or a particular font? Such visu-attentional factors play a fundamental role in our ability to read.
You may want to investigate the letter spacing effect for example. It has been shown that children with dyslexia read faster and with less errors when a paragraph is less crowded. Here are two paragraphs written with the exact same font (spacing between lines and spacing between letters are wider in the second paragraph, with an extra space between words).
Here is the image:

There is also a ton of other possibilities that can be tested using a word processor such as Microsoft Word (spacing is sometimes called kerning), or activating the Accessibility option in Mac's preferences. What you have to keep in mind is that, once you find a combination that feels OK, reading a lot makes you read faster.
REF: Zorzi et al. (PNAS, 2012). Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia.
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/28/11455.short

I would recommend two solutions. One is that you learn to read for understanding not speed unless it is a fluffy novel. You can read fluff at light speed because there is nothing there to challenge understanding. You have to read differently for different subjects and types of material. A book that is an incredible help for learning to read different subjects and materials is http://www.amazon.com/How-Read-Book-Intelligent-Touchstone/dp/0671212095
"How to read a book: a guide to intelligent reading"
That is one solution the other is, figure out what substance might fix some sort of deficit of substances in the brain. For me having had schizoaffective I had a deficit of pregnenolone in my hippocampus. I learned about this substance by researching my illness and reading from others with similar experiences on the forums at forum.schizophrenia.com
So: If you think pregnenolone is in short supply then you could get it real cheap at great quality at pipingrock.com I only take half of a 50 mg dose. Do your research on this and other nootropics, that is what cognition enhancing substances are called, then experiment.
I was a slow reader, it could take me an hour to read a page in my academic text for social problems and solutions course and I would fall asleep and not read anything, now I can read anything without getting tired for hours because I found what my brain needed. Preg helps others with out the deficit too so it might be worth a try.

I can't see why simply being read to would improve your girlfriend's reading speed; after all, except for the possibility that she might thereby be exposed to more literary language than she usually encounters in speech, it would be little different from hearing someone narrating a documentary or describing something on the radio. (Here, I am disregarding the benefits from potentially  strengthening the bond between you in the course of reading to her.)
Without knowing exactly why your girlfriend's reading speed is low, I can only make the preliminary suggestion that if you do decide to read to her, you do so from your copy of the text in question, and have her simultaneously follow it in her own copy. That would at least give her the experience of (I assume) reading faster than normal without the pressure of struggling to decipher the words by herself at a rate that she would find uncomfortable or onerous, and perhaps begin to give her the sense that she could read faster if she wanted to, or if she actively decided to try to speed up her reading. It will, of course, help quite a bit if you are able to read aloud without stumbling, and can make your delivery expressive and engaging. It is also  highly desirable that the text you are reading is entertaining to her, and/or that it corresponds to what she finds interesting.
However, there are really some other questions that should be answered before you draw any conclusions about the best method for increasing her reading speed. For instance:
1) How does your girlfriend's reading speed actually compare with the average? Is it in the normal range, or is it exceptionally slow?
2) Does she noticeably struggle to read, or does she just read at a speed that is comfortable for her?
3) Does your girlfriend subjectively consider her reading speed to be a problem? Objectively speaking, is it an obstacle in some necessary aspect of everyday life?
4) If she struggles to read, what is the underlying reason? Is it merely lack of practice, or does she have dyslexia or some other cognitive obstacle?
If there seems to be some reason to suspect the latter, then some kind of professional input may be required.
I hope this is helpful.

The way to improve your (or your girlfriend's) reading speed, is to, well, read faster.
There are courses available do this by forcing your eyes along a passage by either highlighting or displaying a word or groups of words for a set amount of time. As you progress through the course, the time between word groups gets shorter.
There are many resources online for speed reading courses. You should be able to find free courses pretty easily.
Another tool is http: // www . spritzlet . com (I don't have the rep for this link), which will display single words for a user-set amount of time. This tool is very useful, since it also highlights the middle of the word, increasing shape recognition.
These tools can also help her get a baseline for what other answerers have mentioned: How is her average speed in general? Google says 300 words per minute is average. That's just a little bit more than a full page of double-spaced, 12-point text on a letter-sized page.
I will tell you that reading quickly has less to do with comprehension in general and more to do with word recognition. How many times have you read a page in a book, but not absorbed it? Have her read this paragraph. If she can do it (even slowly), then she probably doesn't have a problem with word recognition.


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What benefit is there to playing highly repetitive games?
I quite enjoy playing games which requires many repetitions of the level in order to get right. These games are often constant-speed scrolling obstacle-course type games where the player must navigate obstacles correctly to finish the level. Often many of repetitions of the level are necessary. For example, geometry dash (not affiliated with them at all, I promise!).
I often wonder if there are any benefits to playing these games. I know that the repetitive nature creates neural pathways in the brain, but I don't think this newly developed ability is going to be used outside of one game in particular.
A friend of mine mentioned that perhaps these games would improve neuroplasticity, and some research indicates that certain types of games do have cognitive health benefits, (for example, in older adults). However, I haven't been able to find any information about this type of game in particular.
Do these types of repetitive games have any neurological benefit outside of an improved ability to play a particular game?

Lumosity has a research section that explains how their repetitive games help in day-to-day activities. They claim it's peer reviewed, although all of the papers are published to their site.
However, Science based medicine had this to say about a study with games similar to Lumosity...

This one study, of course, is not definitive. It is possible that more training is needed before significant benefits are seen. Perhaps
  video games are more effective because they are more engaging and
  players will spend more time playing.What this study shows, however,
  is that products sold as brain training games had no documented
  benefits after six weeks of use.
Putting this study into the context of the overall research, it does
  make us more cautious about concluding that there are general
  cognitive benefits to brain training games or entertainment video
  games. Benefits are likely to be closely related to the specific tasks
  involved in training, and not transfer to unrelated tasks.
But there is already enough published evidence showing visual
  tracking, multitasking, and executive function benefits from action
  and strategic video games respectively that this study will not be the
  final word. When there is conflicting research, more study is needed.
This study is most applicable to brain training products, and shows
  that the marketing claims for these products are not justified. There
  is very unlikely to be any benefit, or any specific advantage, to
  “scientifically designed” brain training applications. For now, you
  are better off just playing a video game.

So, more or less, there isn't any information suggesting that these repetitive "brain games" actually help develop skills outside of learning to play the game better.

Thanks for your first answer at Cognitive Sciences! Could you perhaps conclude this answer with a short wrap-up of the rather long quote? As of now it seems basically a copy-pasted answer.

@AliceD updated


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Are psychology students more neurotic than the general population?
Using the NEO-FFI to measure Big Five personality traits among students from our faculty, we found that students of psychology are more neurotic (t = -2.34, p = .02) and less open (t = 5.98, p < .001) than the general population. Are there published studies that verify these results?

There is a related question here http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/q/8583/7001 re whether psychology students fairly represent the general population.  Two of the studies I cited in my answer look at Big Five in this group, as I'm sure do many others, since psychology students are a common subject pool.  Have your results been corrected for gender differences?  There are typically more female students in psychology programs, and women are often found to have higher neuroticism scores for example, so I would expect higher average scores in psychology students as a result.

Thank you, @ArnonWeinberg, you are right. The gender differences in the same testing are very similar to the differences to the general population. I don't have the data and do not know if the results were corrected for gender but it seems not.

In general, females score higher on neuroticism and psychology students are predominantly female.
In some young adult norms that I've seen in the NEO-PI-3 test manual, females score about two-thirds of a standard deviation higher on neuroticism.
In my experience at the undergraduate level, about 70% to 85% of students are females. For example, in my most recent paper using a third-year Australian undergrad psych sample (n = 393), we had 79% females (Horwood & Anglim, 2018, JHB).
I believe also that neuroticism declines with age ( e.g., https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562318/ ) and psychology students as with other university students tend to be 18 to 25 or so.
You'd have to look a little further to see whether there are differences after controlling for age and gender differences; i.e., whether there's a deeper reason for any differences.


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What does the death of a fictional character mean?

Aristotle approached the question of story and meaning in this way: Why is it, he asked, when we see a dead body in the street we have one reaction, but when we read of death in Homer, or see it in the theatre, we have another? ~ Robert McKee, Story

When a fictional character is killed, no one dies – and the readers and viewers know this, no matter how much they identify with the story. So what does this narrative device actually mean? Aristotle thought that the death of a character evokes emotions in the viewers that then allow the author to convince them of his narrative argument. He calls this "pathos". Following Aristoteles, the death of a character "means" that the audience becomes more susceptible to what the author wants them to believe (the moral of the story). But that is the author's perspective on what he can do with the death of a character, and does not explain how the audience experience and understand it.
To answer this question, we may have to first understand how the audience perceives the character.

A character is no more a human being than the Venus of Milo is a real woman. A character is ... a metaphor for human nature. ~ Robert McKee, Story

A character is a symbol that stands in for something that affects the reader or viewer: their deams and aspirations; or their fears. And thus the death of a symbol may symbolize that a dream will remain unfulfilled or a fear is overcome. Death in the media, I believe, is not final but transformative, and not real but symbolic, and this becomes most apparent in the journey to the underworld (read "death") of many mystical heroes. But that is only my opinion.
Is there research that tries to answer this question from the perspective of psychology?
Or, in the absence of such research, how would you study it?

In his comment, Steven Jeuris remarks, that a fictional character's death means that he dies in the fictional world. Let me elaborate on that.
Readers of fiction don't read like news readers. A newspaper reader reads to learn what has happened in the world he lives in, and (maybe) to understand why. Because these events (and their reasons) affect his own life and the decisions he has to make.
Readers of fiction, on the other hand, do not read to be informed. They read to experience emotions, to escape their own lives, to be inspired, and so on. The facts of the fictional world are irrelevant to their own lives, but the emotions they elicit, the ideas they generate, and the time spent away from the demands of their own lives are important to them.
If a neighbor, politician or artist dies in the real world, and I read about it, this affects my own life. My life has been changed (because a person is missing from it) or it will be changed (because politics will change). If a fictional character dies, nothing changes in my life.
What is changed, is the story.
And story logic is not like the chains of cause and effect (or chance) that govern the events in real life. In the real world, many (if not most) people die through forces that lie outside of their influence. They die of old age or are run over by drunk drivers. In the fictional world, everything happens by design, and that design is based on the story's premise and the characters actions. In a fictional world, no one dies by chance, and even old age has a meaning.
Very simplified, in a (classic type of) story a character achieves his goals, if he overcomes his deficits. If he refuses to grow, he fails. Death is the reward for moral failure. Think of the hero killing his antagonist or the first two knights being eaten by the dragon: these characters don't just die and then they are dead, but their death means that their way of life was wrong.
But of course stories are usually more complicated than that today. Characters aren't simply good or bad, they are "realistic", like real people. And the world they inhabit isn't as simply structured as that of a fairy tale, it is "realistic", like the real world. In Game of Thrones, characters die apparently like in the real world: despite being the good guys.
But still, it is not the real world. If the good guy dies in Game of Thrones, it is not because Game of Thrones is realistic and characters in its world die just like people in real life, but because it is not what we are used to from narrative conventions and it surprises us. The death of the good guy in Game of Thrones means that we cannot trust what we have learned about how stories work. It does not mean that someone died. It is sad and frustrating, because we wanted Ned Stark to succeed, but at the same time it is thrilling and satisfying, because it is novel.
These are just examples, and there will be disagreement over the interpretation of these stories, but I hope they serve to illustrate that the death of a fictional character does not mean (to the reader !) that this "person" has died in the fictional world. It means something different or on top of that to the reader (who knows, which is important, that no one has died !).
Of course, every death in fiction might be interpreted differently – depending on the specific story. But I think that it must be possible to generalize and find an underlying similarity or several "types of fictional deaths".
Finally, I think that this question does not belong on another site, because the study of the psychology of reading books or viewing movies (that is, the psychology of the audience) is the task of the psychologist just like advertising psychology (which also deals with how stories work on their audience).
So if you want, think of my question of belonging in advertising psychology: Does the clean shirt the housewife pulls from the washing mashine mean that the shirt has been cleaned? No. It means that the washing powder is better than other washing powders (or, if you are a cynic, that that is what the advertiser wants us to believe). The meaning of the clean shirt depends on the intent of the narrator and the circumstances of the narration (in an ad).
Similarly, the meaning of a fictional death will depend on the (reader perceived) intent of the narrator (who, by the way, is not the author) and the circumstances of the narration (a book, a tv show). But I don't want to do a (subjective) literary interpretation (like I did here), but learn how this has been studied or, if no such studies have been undertaken, study it with psychological methodology.
Hope this now makes a bit more sense.

What do you mean, "what does [it] mean"? It means the character dies in the fictional world? It's quite unclear what you are after.

I've got no idea what this is about. Maybe it should be on a literary stack exchange?

I see no contradiction between "In a fictional world, no one dies by chance, and even old age has a meaning.", and "In the real world, many (if not most) people die through forces that lie outside of their influence." From the fictional person's perspective, it can be said to be just as 'meaningless' no? Why do you adopt the perspective of a narrator for one but not for the other? The 'meaning' you seem after is narrative.

Maybe a sound question, but I would not guess what about exactly. Above all: What does ›mean‹ mean? Applied to a real person, is that asking for the sense of life and death, for the consequences of them dying for society, for the grief work of someone close? — A psychological perspective that comes to mind looks at imagination, planning, pretend-play, bonding with fictional characters, emotion regulation, etc. (not necessarily specific to death). Try google »death fictional characters psychology« for ideas. Maybe refs in http://www.academia.edu/1842144/Ways_of_being_close_to_characters help.

@StevenJeuris "From the fictional person's perspective, it can be said to be just as 'meaningless' no?" Sure, but the fiction doesn't exist for the character, but for the reader. It is his or her perspective that is the only relevant one (or their perspective on the character's perspective). Life has no reader (or at least, his perspective is unavailable to us), so it is only our perspective that counts (or our perspective on that divine reader's perspective). There's a fundamental difference.

@StevenJeuris Well, "narrative" would be the widest meaning. But there must be a difference between narrating a death and narrating not a death.

"There's a fundamental difference." That was my point. Then why compare them? I feel it only complicates your question. Your question pertains to how people 'feel' or find 'meaning' in death in fiction, which without specifying further what interests you feels either opinion based or too broad to me. Can you imagine an answer fitting within one  post on this site? What would constitute an answer?

I would vote moving this to some other site. If you want to simplify the question to "how can I find out about the psychology of people reading fiction", then the answers are quite trivial: you can ask them! For example you could ask people about their beliefs/emotions after reading a story where the character dies. Or you could measure their arousal and compare it to some control story where there is not a death. I'm not sure that will answer what you want to know though.

Given your accepted answer, it seems your question was more along the lines of "How do people respond to/cope with the death of fictional characters? Is there research into this, if not, how would you investigate this?"

Sensory Stimuli, especially interoception, proprioception, and exteroception, seem to significantly affect observers exposed to death, (imho, from my experiences in refugee camps, and war).  Alternatively, "virtual" stimuli presented in the form of books, and even television, do not seem to illicit the same degree of these bodily responses.  I really feel that exteroception is a very significant factor to consider, (esp. nearness).  Also, I feel that the question could be reasonably reduced to Perceiving Death in Dreams vs. Reality.

There are various reasons why this question is interesting for cognitive science research.  Examples:

Children's programming is more violent and features more death than adult programming.  Children's first exposure to the concept of death is often in fiction.  Nonetheless, we know little about the meaning of death of fictional characters to children.
Research done in Somalia following the airing of a BBC radio show depicting the fictional death of a young girl from diarrhoea - one of the biggest killers of children - shows that listeners were greatly affected by the story, learned preventative measures, and put their knowledge into practice, potentially saving lives.
Grief counsellors often report patients presenting the same symptoms for grief over a fictional character's death as that of a relative or friend.  Furthermore, using the same therapy has similar effects on grieving for fictional loss as it does for real.  As such, some counsellors advocate for treating such grief the same as the real thing, rather than something less serious.
Fiction writers are also interested in this question for obvious reasons.  For example, what makes Anna Karenina's death (considered one of the most tragic deaths in fictional history) so powerful to readers?

Methodology
The currently popular paradigm in psychology for testing the effect of fiction on subjects involves correlating exposure to fiction with various scales of social understanding and empathy:

Subjects may be directly exposed to fictional material as part of the experiment (eg, asked to read a passage or view a clip), or their lifetime exposure to fiction may be estimated through self-reporting via the Author Recognition Test (ART), a validated task-based measure.
The Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) can be used to measure subjects' tendency to become immersed and engaged in narrative.
The most popular tools for measuring social skills and theory of mind are the Mind-in-the-Eyes task (MIE) or Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) - well known tests involving labelling mental states from pictures of eyes.  Other tests of social aptitude are also commonly administered.
Indexes of affect and emotion are also used to measure effects; eg, depression, stress, self-esteem, etc.

In neuroscience, researchers like to compare neuroimaging results of subjects exposed to fictional material, to results of exposure to corresponding real events.  For example, how does the brain react to reading about an action compared to performing that action.
Fiction vs non-fiction
Evidence indeed supports your assertion that fiction has a different effect on readers than non-fiction.  Far from an unrealistic, fake, or disengaging experience, a variety of different experiments suggest that subjects are more engaged (Appel & Maleckar, 2012; Goldstein, 2009), learn empathy and improve social skills (Djikic et al, 2013; Mar et al, 2006; Johnson, 2012; Bal & Veltkamp, 2013), and score better on Theory of Mind tests (Kidd & Castano, 2013), following exposure to fiction, than after exposure to non-fiction with the same content.  There is even evidence that reading fiction may affect personality (Djikic et al, 2009).
In an experiment by Ebery and Meyvis (2014), subjects predicted that they would be more engaged and emotionally impacted by stories based in fact than fiction.  The participants were then given a story to read about the death of a young girl.  Though all participants read the same story, half were told it was based on true events, while the other half were told it was a fictional account.  Contrary to their beliefs, actual results demonstrated that subjects were more engaged and emotionally impacted by the same story when told in advance that it was fictional.
Evidence of these effects of fiction has been replicated across various media formats, including film, and video games.  There are also some notable exceptions: Television for instance, often has an inferior effect.  Hypotheses suggested to account for this difference include lower quality content, and at least in children, television is also a less social affair compared to other media where parents are naturally more involved.  There is also a difference in effect between literary fiction and popular fiction.
There are, similarly, different effects across genres (eg, comedy vs drama), presentation quality (eg, matching soundtrack), and continuity (eg, technical problems).  Thus there are many factors that affect results, together constituting the overall engagement or immersion factor (sometimes referred to as "transportation" or "experience-taking"), that in turn affects the meaning of a fictional character to its audience.
Mental states
This is still a relatively immature area of research, so the usual caveats apply, as many variables have not been explored yet.  For example, many of these results have not been tested across cultures, though there is some indication that personality is not a significant factor in results (Mar et al, 2009).
Already however, some high-level theories about the meaning of fictional characters have started to emerge.  One such theory is fiction as simulation (eg, Mar & Oatley, 2008; Oatley,1999):

fiction ... is simulation that runs on minds of readers just as
  computer simulations run on computers. ... in the simulations of
  fiction, personal truths can be explored that allow readers to
  experience emotions-their own emotions-and understand aspects of them
  that are obscure, in relation to contexts in which the emotions arise.

This view is supported by the learning effects of fiction on readers as reviewed above.
Rather than focusing on simulation, learning, and practice effects, an alternative approach emphasizes the similarity between the effects of literary events and real-life events (eg, Zwann, 2004).  Support for this view comes from neuroimaging of subjects exposed to fictional content compared with subjects experiencing the real counterpart.  Such studies show that the same areas of the brain are activated in both cases (Speer et al, 2009; de Vignemont & Singer, 2006; Mar, 2011), suggesting that the mental states involved are essentially the same.
What does this mean for the death of a fictional character?  Well, if mental states evoked by fictional stories simulate or mirror mental states evoked by real-life events, then the death of a fictional character could have the same meaning as the death of a real-life person.  The death of a favoured character in a television show may have the same effect as the death of a favourite celebrity; the death of a highly engaging fictional character in a book may have the same impact as that of a close friend or family member; and the death of a protagonist one identifies personally with in a story may be equivalent to coming to terms with one's own mortality.

Amazing answer, Arnon. Thank you very much for your time and effort. I deeply appreciate your help.

Great, well cited answer to a rather confusing question. I would just note that, although there is lots of evidence that empathy/imagination involves some "simulation" (we put ourselves in the character's shoes), for obvious reasons none of these studies have compared people grieving to real people vs. fictional people. I don't think anyone would claim they are equally affecting.

Glad it was what you were looking for @what. :-)

I am not a psychologist. However, I am a writer, so I will try my best. When an author sets out to create a fictional work, he or she aims to immerse the reader in the world, to get the reader to care for the characters. All of this is done in order to leave an impression on the reader--an emotional connection established between the character and the reader makes a work of fiction that much more better.
When killing a character, an author is attempting to use the connection that the reader has with the character in order to produce emotions in the reader. In addition, the author may be aiming to support a major theme in the work. However, the death of a fictional character mainly serves to produce emotions in the reader, and give him/her a sense of resolution to the character.


text:
If you sleep during the day, do you need less sleep at night?
If, say, you sleep 2-3 hours during the day (in the afternoon) - Do you need less sleep at night?
After all, subjects feel less tired in the evening after sleeping during day.
Can sleep hours be accumulated in a linear fashion? For example: Will sleeping 3 hours during the day justify sleeping just 4-5 hours during the night?

Related: Can you catch up on sleep over the weekend?

Short answer: Yes, if you sleep 2--3 hours during the day, you generally need less sleep at night.
Important considerations: However, the short answer is not the full story. In particular, in answer to your question about whether or not sleep hours can be accumulated in a linear fashion, the answer is strictly no, but approximately yes.
To understand the problem with assuming linearity of sleep, consider the extreme example of "sleeping" for one minute, and then being awake the next, and keep doing this for the entire day. In theory, you would have spent 12 hours awake, and 12 hours asleep. But of course, you'll feel exhausted, and would be in desperate need of some good sleep.
What's important to keep in mind, is the different stages of sleep. See http://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/how-much-sleep-do-you-need.htm for a good overview.
The Stages of Sleep:

Non-REM sleep
Stage N1 (Transition to sleep) – This stage lasts about five minutes.
  Your eyes move slowly under the eyelids, muscle activity slows down,
  and you are easily awakened.
Stage N2 (Light sleep) – This is the first stage of true sleep,
  lasting from 10 to 25 minutes. Your eye movement stops, heart rate
  slows, and body temperature decreases.
Stage N3 (Deep sleep) – You’re difficult to awaken, and if you are
  awakened, you do not adjust immediately and often feel groggy and
  disoriented for several minutes. In this deepest stage of sleep, your
  brain waves are extremely slow. Blood flow is directed away from your
  brain and towards your muscles, restoring physical energy.
REM sleep
REM sleep (Dream sleep) – About 70 to 90 minutes after falling asleep,
  you enter REM sleep, where dreaming occurs. Your eyes move rapidly,
  your breathing shallows, and your heart rate and blood pressure
  increase. Also during this stage, your arm and leg muscles are
  paralyzed.

In Conclusion: Sleep hours can be thought of as accumulating linearly in blocks of sleep cycles. That is, as long as you hit the right sleep stages during your nap, it counts! Generally, a complete sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes, so sleep in multiples of 90 minutes would be ideal...

That's a very good explanation! +1

To add to this answer - sleeping more than 30 minutes, but less than 90 minutes can result in "sleep inertia" - when the person wakes up during N3 sleep stage - it takes time to shake off this kind of sleep, and there would be urge to fall back asleep.


text:
Are younger people less capable of driving?
I've seen articles saying that teen drivers have the most accidents out of every age group. Those articles also claim that teen drivers are less capable of driving as their brains are less developed than someone 25 years of age or older.
Are these claims that younger people are less capable drivers true?

Could you link to that source that claims that teens are less capable drivers? Also, this question may be a better fit for [cogsci.se].

I would like to add that from my reading, driving is a difficult skill until it is practiced to the point where it is done subconsciously and no conscious attention is paid to the process. To get to that point, a person requires experience and owning a car. A teenager who drives parent's car part time might not have enough time to get driving experience.

I think it would be tough to pinpoint an exact answer on this. There are too many confounding variables. But I would generally chalk it up to lack of experience for a number of reasons. Experience is powerful training on the road.

Research shows that teenagers are not any less capable at driving, per se, but that the adolescent brain undergoes a period of neural changes that often lends itself to risk-seeking behavior. From Somerville et. al (2010):

In adolescence, there is a heightened propensity to engage in risky behaviors that can lead to negative outcomes, including substance abuse, unprotected sex, inflicting harm on others, injuries, and death. According to the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS, Eaton, et al., 2008) the four leading causes of death that account for 72% of adolescent mortality – motor vehicle accidents, unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide - are preventable. Such statistics suggest that these fatalities may be attributed, in part, to poor choices or risky actions (e.g., accidents, injuries) and/or heightened emotionality (e.g., suicide) underscoring the importance of understanding the biological basis of emotional and incentive-seeking behavior of adolescents, the focus of the present review.

The paper goes on to discuss how the intensity of young adults' emotional states relative to those of adults, as well as a heightened sensitivity toward reward (as well as an immature 'self-regulatory competence') are all underlying factors.
I think that this is what your article is referring to when it mentions that teenagers have 'less-developed brains'. On the other hand, one could argue the opposite. With puberty and adolescent development comes an influx of hormonal changes. With these changes come developments and mental states that are novel, new, and (at first) difficult to control. From this perspective, it is less a question of the brain being 'less-developed' -- on the contrary, there is 'too much' new development in puberty and adolescence, which can be overwhelming. As we learn to cope with these new developments with time and experience, they become easier to manage and control.

Could you rewrite the third paragraph? It took me a couple reads because there's so much going on.

I rewrote the third paragraph. Let me know if it is still hard to read.

As I mentioned in my comment, I would be less likely to blame this on brain chemistry and more likely to blame it on lack of experience. While I have not reviewed the research, it would be very difficult to isolate a mental development pattern from all the other confounding variables of young drivers.
First, driving is inherently a procedural task. It takes time to develop those skills to the point of automaticity, so there is a somewhat higher level of attention and resources being devoted to the mere mechanics of driving.
Second, our ability to respond to dynamic situations is dependent upon our brain recognizing those situations and responding in a  preprogrammed fashion. This is also something that cannot be learned other than through time on the road. For example, I learned that it is not a good idea to drive next to someone on the freeway, matching their speed, because they could suddenly decide to switch lanes. I learned that from experience, and it has helped me avoid numerous accidents.
Third, we have to consider the propensity of younger folks to want to engage in stupid things, like texting and driving. While people of all ages do this, there are plenty of reasons to point to younger generations being more active with their texting and other apps that can create major distractions.
Young drivers simply don't have the motor skills, coordination, and mental preparation that older drivers do. They also have more distractions. This doesn't mean that there are some young drivers who couldn't outdrive older drivers, nor does it mean that all older drivers are reasonable drivers. There is a lot of variation.

The most important reason for this is the risk behavior described by Sydney Maples.
In addition, young adolescents simply do not have as much experience as older people - they just recently got their license.
They have less practical exercise and less experience about dealing with any specific challenge. They also might be curious and try out behavior that older people have already tried out - and stopped doing.
These two points mean that even a future world champion race driver might have higher than average risk of accidents while in adolescent age.


text:
What's the effect of color on responses to a Likert scale?
We're implementing comment cards on our site that contain a simple Likert-type scale that uses colored buttons (red, orange, yellow, light green, green), to denote the range of negative to positive ratings.
Are you aware of any research on the effect of color on user responses to Likert-type survey questions?


text:
How does listening to music decrease stress?
I'm interested in how listening to different types of music (such as jazz, classical, etc.) can help some people calm down.
More specifically, how does the brain form a link between music heard and processed to the stress system? Is it some cortical association area or a direct circuit?

This may be happening due to beat entrainment. Different music genres have different beat and rhythm patterns. The ones that are calming will generally have a lower beat and rhythm frequencies. The lower beat and rhythm frequencies are similar to the frequency of heartbeat and breathing when a person is feeling calm and/or relaxed. Through the process of entrainment, the person's breathing and heartbeat may synchronize with the music, thus calming the person. The mechanism could be working by counter-acting the effects of shallow breathing.


text:
Does schizophrenia cause a loss of intelligence?
Does having schizophrenia cause a loss of intelligence (as measured by IQ tests)? How does present research comment on this connection, if it exists?
Furthermore, is it possible to recover from this decline in IQ? If so, under what conditions?

Regarding schizophrenia and loss of IQ:
I don't know how much we can say about the 'loss' of IQ in schizophrenia patients. If anything, it appears to me that a decrease in overall IQ is augmented by the cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia. This isn't to say that you can't increase your IQ with certain interventions, which I will touch on briefly in a second.
But first, understand that IQ depends on a number of neuroanatomical factors. Among them is volume of grey and white matter in the brain, which is notably decreased at an accelerated pace in early-onset schizophrenic patients.
General intelligence (g) is also highly correlated with fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence generally correlates with measures of abstract reasoning and puzzle solving, whereas crystallized intelligence correlates with abilities that depend on knowledge and experience, such as vocabulary, general information, and analogies (see: Factor structure). Administered IQ tests, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) are particularly concerned with measuring fluid intelligence. For this reason, a deficit in one usually mandates a deficit in overall IQ.
Fluid intelligence is more susceptible to brain injury, and in particular appears to be affected by both frontal lobe damage and deficits in working memory. There is evidence that suggests that patients with schizophrenia have dysregulated prefrontal cortices among other frontal lobe abnormalities. Furthermore, schizophrenia patients often have abnormal deficits in working memory. For these reasons, schizophrenia may be associated with impairments in cognitive / executive functioning and fluid intelligence, thus lending towards a lower overall IQ.
That being said, there are studies that have not found conclusive evidence that suggests a direct link between schizophrenia and low IQ in adulthood (though there may be some link in childhood).
Regarding the recovery of lost IQ:
Medications used to treat cognitive deficits (such as those used to treat ADHD) have repeatedly shown an increase in overall IQ score after long-term use, so I am thinking that medication would be the best route for IQ recovery. Note that this effect does not apply to otherwise high-functioning individuals. In other words, those without cognitive impairment tend to react to psychostimulant medication in ways that are wholly negative and harmful.
I also mentioned above that there is no clear link between adulthood schizophrenia and low IQ, though there is a 7-8 average point decrease found in children. This is similarly consistent with other neurodevelopmental disorders, and may be related to the malleability in the brain. In other words, time and dedication (possibly including brain training, though there is controversy surrounding its benefits) can help restore cognitive abilities that may be reduced or damaged due to schizophrenia.
On a related note, it is worth mentioning that there is a modern-day theory going around surrounding the topic of latent inhibition and schizophrenia. The assumption is that schizophrenia is linked to low latent inhibition (with LI referring to the ability to ignorant irrelevant sensory stimuli), and this persistent cognitive overload leads to psychosis, difficulty in focusing on cognitively-intensive tasks, and occasional creative genius. This effect appears to be reduced in patients who seek medical treatment for their schizophrenia.

With human subjects, there is evidence that acute, non-medicated schizophrenics show reduced LI compared to chronic, medicated schizophrenics and to healthy subjects, while there is no difference in the amount of LI in the latter two groups. [....] In summary, the basic LI phenomenon represents some output of a selective attention process that results in learning to ignore irrelevant stimuli. It has become an important tool for understanding information processing in general, as well as attentional dysfunctions in schizophrenia, and it has implications for a variety of practical problems.

You asked a great question. However, it is discouraged to include personal anecdotes on this site since individual cases can not necessarily be generalized to a population.

Just a note to add, or summarise, the above.
Of course, results vary from study to study, and more still patient to patient. The standard iq loss, or developmental deficit, is usually estimated at less than 10 points, which is clincally significant, but not necessarily life changing. Working memory is often effected. But of course the illness / disability is a complex enough entity to make drawing any conclusions on iq loss or cognitive impairment in adulthood, on an individual basis, moot.


text:
What skills or mental proceses improve understanding of longer written sentences?
This question concerns only written sentences, and presumes that longer sentences are more difficult to understand, a presumption which consists with the formula behind the Flesch–Kincaid readability tests (which I discovered from the first paragraph hereof).

What specific  capabilities, knowledge, or skills are needed to ameliorate understanding of longer sentences (which were more common in the past  in English and the Romance languages)?
What empowered olden people to communicate  comfortably with longer sentences?
Why do we today find them more difficult?

For example, despite not having studied linguistics separately, did learning Latin and Greek impart the olden people with some linguistics that cultivated their fluency with longer sentences?

Just a thought - longer sentences require a lot more focus/concentration to comprehend, which is not the case in modern society. Compare reading a book in a quiet library in "the old days" to glancing at a news article on a smartphone while in a bathroom in the 2010s...


text:
Do children really show brand preference at age 2?
As I was reading a marketing textbook, I came across a paragraph that stated research has shown children as young as two can show brand preference (although I haven't yet searched for the source in the back of the book to check what research it's referring to.)

Research shows that children evidence brand preferences at age two, and these preferences often last a lifetime. This knowledge prompted the licensing of the well-known Craftsman brand name to MGA Entertainment for its children's line of My First Craftsman toys and power tools and Time Inc.'s Sports Illustrated Kids

Marketing 12th Edition - Kerin Hartley Rudelius
Is it really the case that children are showing brand preference, preferring one brand over others when presented options, because of a specific affinity for that brand?
I'd be more inclined to believe that such children aren't showing a brand preference, but are simply not familiar with the other products. For instance, if I ask my son if he wants a Pop Tart or a Toaster Pastry, he's going to say Pop Tart because that's the term he knows. In such a case, it has more to do with how we've taught him about brands/foods, and not always distinguishing between them, then him showing a preference.

Sources cited by textbook:
Deborah Roedder John, "Consumer Socialization of Children: A Retrospective Look at Twenty-Five Years of Research," Journal of Consumer Research, December 1999, pp. 183-213.
Gwen Bachmann Achenreinver and Deborah Roudder John, "The Meaning of Brand Names to Children: A Developmental Investigation," Journal of Consumer Psychology 13, no. 3 (2003), pp. 205-19.
Elizabeth S. Moore, William L. Wilkie, and Richard J. Lutz, "Passing the Torch: Intergenerational Influences as a  Source of Brand Equity," Journal of Marketing, April 2002, pp. 17-37.

Isn't that what "brand preference" really is? Familiarity and recognition?

@GregHewgill Brand preference is choosing a specific brand over alternatives because of a variety of reasons. But, choosing a specific brand because you don't understand or know that there are alternatives isn't really brand preference, it's more an example of a product being genericized. Or with toddlers, I think it's a Pop vs. Soda deal, where their word for a type of product happens to be a brand name (on that map, see Coke used to refer to all soda pop).

My youngest uses "Chicken Nuggets" to refer to a particular chicken-oriented chain restaurant, because he knows seeing their logo means he's probably about to eat some chicken nuggets. When he gets chicken nuggets somewhere else (e.g. homemade, and I make amazing chicken nuggets thankyouverymuch), he's disappointed-angry because they don't come in the right bag. But while he "strongly prefers" that specific brand, he really likes the associated experience (the indoor playground, visiting with friends, french fries). Teasing those apart is pretty tough, I'd love to see research!

Disney is a brand. My girls aren't fooled when they see a cartoon that isn't Disney and have since probably before 2. When Inside Out came out the older one asked to go to the movie at age 4 because it was a Disney movie. Maybe there's something to that. I swear there's some black magic embedded into Frozen to make every girl love Elsa and never want to be Anna. Maybe brand recognition is actually successful subliminal messaging. Out of curiosity, why do you ask? Wondering if your kids will be upset if you buy Trader Joe's toasy Os instead of Cheerios?

@KaiQing Because to me it seems in some cases to be less about brand preference and more about psychologically manipulating children, which seems unethical to me for a business to do. Some companies do have better products, but that doesn't always translate to the children's versions. Anyway, I have very few things where I have a brand preference, on account of growing up on generics, and it's mostly the same for my son, so I can't see if it holds true in my household.

Makes sense. I believe that just about everything in ads in any medium targeting any demographic is manipulating whoever is paying attention to it. I tell my girls that pretty much every commercial is a scam and they seem to get it. I was also raised on generics and I can't say I have any real brand allegiance per say but I do have anti-brands I refuse to buy mostly because of past experience. Or brands I am reluctant to buy because of the business models they perpetuate. Interesting subject that I think would be awesome if it could be definitively accepted for this parenting site.

Is it really the case that children are showing brand preference, preferring one brand over others when presented options, because of a specific affinity for that brand?
According to research, it does seem that way.
A longitudinal study of 20 years (Guest, 1964) found that brand preferences originally expressed during the ages of 7–18 correlated with brand usage reported 20 years later, with the average amount of agreement between 1941 preferences and 1961 use being 23%. Guest concluded that early childhood experiences exert considerable influence upon later brand purchasing behaviour.
Your belief that such children aren't showing a brand preference, but are simply not familiar with the other products.
Ji (2002) whilst talking about the effects of brands such as Barbie and McDonalds on children, pointed out that parents, mass media and peers do play a part in it all:

Parents are probably the most instrumental in teaching children basic rational aspects of consumption, such as satisfying basic consumer needs in the marketplace (Riesman, Glazer, & Denny, 1956), understanding price–quality relationships (Moore & Stephens, 1975), handling money wisely (Marshall & Magruder, 1960), and shopping for different qualities among products (Ward, Wackman, & Wartella, 1977). Although parents are considered the primary socialization agents of children, no other agent of consumer socialization has received more attention (in the literature) than the mass media (Moschis, 1987; John, 1999). Through massmedia, including both advertising and editorial/program content (O’Guinn & Shrum, 1997), children may learn about new brands and products (Goldberg, Gorn, & Gibson, 1978), how to use products and who uses them (Atkin, 1978), realities and beliefs about them (Gorn & Florsheim, 1985), and preferences for them (Gorn & Goldberg, 1977). Peers also have input to children’s consumer socialization process. Studies show that young people learn the symbolic meaning of goods or expressive elements of consumption from their peers (Moschis & Moore, 1982). In addition, peers play an important role in the development of children’s preference for stores (McNeal, 1964), products (Hawkins & Coney, 1974), brands of selected products (Moschis, Moore, & Stanley, 1983), and things to collect (Baker & Gentry, 1996).

The thing is, a great deal of people do stick with what they know, and you could say this is in part due to people's comfort zones.  Whether this phenomenon is the cause of people favouring certain brands is open to opinion.  What is definite is that 100s of billions of dollars in business expenditure is spent looking at how they can use leverage such as television advertising, product design and even packaging, to encourage people to buy their product (Scheybani, 2015; Quelch & Cannon-Bonventre, 1983; Spanier, 2018).  As well as with children, this affects adult behaviour, which as pointed out by Ji (2002), is passed onto children who in turn influence their peers through peer pressures.
Your title question: Do children really show brand preference at age 2?
Ji (2002) wrote (emphasis mine):

Why Study Children’s Relationships with Brands?
  Studying the child–brand relationship phenomenon has its practical
  implications. First, children consume a wide range of products from the
  time they are born. For example, parents use J&J baby powder on their
  babies, feed them with Gerber baby food, and cover them with Huggies
  diapers. At around age two, children begin to eat their first solid food,
  often cereal (Cole & Cole, 1996), and develop relationships with certain
  brands, such as Cheerios, that may last a lifetime. As children grow
  older, they not only consume more brands such as McDonalds’ food and
  Barbie dolls through the purchases of their parents, but also begin to
  make purchases using their own income (McNeal, 1999). In all, children
  consume a wide range of brands and these early experiences may serve
  as definite influences on their choices in adulthood (Guest, 1942).

References
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Cole, M., & Cole, S. R. (1996). The development of children (3rd ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman
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Moschis, G. P., & Moore, R. L. (1982). A longitudinal study of television advertising effects. Journal of Consumer Research, 9(3), 279-286. DOI: 10.1086/208923
Moschis, G., & Moore, R. L., & Stanley, T. (1983). An exploratory study of brand loyalty development. In T. Kinner (Ed.), Advances in consumer research (Vol.11, pp. 412–417). Chicago: Association for Consumer Research.Available at: http://acrwebsite.org/volumes/6286/volumes/v11/NA-11
O'Guinn, T. C., & Shrum, L. J. (1997). The role of television in the construction of consumer reality. Journal of consumer research, 23(4), 278-294. DOI: 10.1086/209483 PDF: http://academic.csuohio.edu/kneuendorf/quillin/oguinn%20shrum%20role%20of%20television%20in%20construction%20reality%201997.pdf
Quelch, J., & Cannon-Bonventre, K. (1983). Better Marketing at the Point of Purchase. Harvard Business Review [Online]Available at: https://hbr.org/1983/11/better-marketing-at-the-point-of-purchase
Riesman, D., Glazer, N., & Denny, R. (1956). The lonely crowd: A study of the changing American character. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
Scheybani, O. How advertising has become an agent of social change. Medium [Online]Available at: https://medium.com/@moonstorming/how-advertising-has-become-an-agent-of-social-change-148aa0ef303a
Spanier, G. (2018). ITV, Channel 4 and Sky unite to champion TV advertising in face of online threat. Campaign Live [Online]Available at: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/itv-channel-4-sky-unite-champion-tv-advertising-face-online-threat/1456482
Ward, S., Wackman, D., & Wartella, E. (1977). How children learn to buy: The development of consumer information processing skills. Beverly Hills, CA:
Sage Publications, Inc.

There's a dozen references here, but which one addresses the age I asked about (age 2)? Your initial quote even says the longitudinal study was children 7+,  not 2-.

Appologies for not addressing the age 2.  I have edited to include that along with references used in the cited article.

Interesting that the quote has a citation for when children start eating cereal (something that's common knowledge), but no citation for them developing brand preference for the example of Cheerios (which happens to be the #1 selling breakfast cereal, so unfortunately does nothing to disprove my hypothesis that it's not brand preference, merely that a 2 year old is not given any other choice, or that the parents call even the off-brand Cheerios, similar to Kleenex).


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Any research into "intelligence" really out of sync with iq?
Is there any research into school children who routinely perform say two standard deviations worse on iq testing, than at school or even other intelligence tests?
I'm not interested in explaining it in terms of hard work.

What research? That it happens? On their differences? What causes it? Any preliminary research/motivation that lead you to writing this question?

Yes there is.  Howard Gardner (Harvard School of Education) spent countless years researching this very topic.  Look up his Theory of Multiple Intelligence.


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Is there a standard definition of a "hallucination"?
As far as I understand, there is a compelling sense of reality to sensory hallucinations. Do hallucinations (as, e.g. in the DSM) substitute for the sense and experience of a real reality?
For example, if a "hallucination" involves someone's face to be covered in maggots, would that entail a completely life-like, 'opaque', and entirely believable experience of that perception?

if so, is this not a_lot stranger than delusional belief?

Elliot et al. (2008) define a hallucination as:

A sensory experience which occurs in the absence of corresponding external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ, has sufficient sense of reality resemble a veridical perception (i.e. the perception seems to be "real"), over which the subject does not feel direct and voluntary control, and which occurs in the awake state.

They define illusions as:

These are false perceptions of a real external stimulus, for example a change in shape, size, color or texture. In some cases, where the external stimulus is minimal, the differentiation nosologically (nosology: the classification of diseases) from hallucination can be difﬁcult, although illusions carry different aetiological and diagnostic implications.

and delusions as:

[A]bnormalities of thought rather than perception (although they may develop from the latter) and may be defined as ‘fixed false beliefs, strongly held and immutable in the face of refuting evidence, that are not consonant with the person’s education, social and cultural background.' [I]ts exact meaning and usage have evolved continuously, reflecting trends in psychology. Delusional themes commonly include: guilt, worthlessness, ill-health, persecution, reference, grandeur, love, jealousy, poverty, infestation, and religion. [...]

Regarding the difference between a hallucination and an illusion, which are the most closely related ones among the three, the Stanford Encyclopedia gives a clear-cut example, namely:

For example, when one has a visual experience as of a red object, it may be that one is really seeing an object and its red color (veridical perception), that one is seeing a green object (illusion), or that one is not seeing an object at all (hallucination).

Reference
- Elliot et al. Epilepsy Research (2009); 85: 162-71

so what is the difference between a hallucination and something imagined with a compelling sense of reality, that seems to be real in that sense?

@user3293056 I would believe the difference lies in the fact that when one is hallucinating, they are unaware that they are experiencing perception in the absence of a stimulus, i.e., they believe an external sensory stimulus to be present over which they do not have voluntary control, as quoted by AliceD.
However, when one is imagining something, there seems to be no doubt by the person imagining it that it's "all in my head", i.e., awareness of lack of external stimulus and voluntary control.

ok. i think in that case then thought alienation is a hallucination, interesting. still not sure if voices have to be auditory, however. i guess my question in the OP asks if hallucinated voices always have to drown out other sounds. i very much doubt they do. cheers

I really recommend Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks.
In this book, Oliver Sacks defines hallucination as:

percepts arising in the absence of any external reality--seeing things or hearing things that are not there.

In other words, a hallucination mimics  perception.
Implanted-electrode studies
Studies have shown that if the region of the brain involved in the perception of faces is abnormally activated, individuals may hallucinate faces.
Similarly, if the region of the brain employed in reading is activated, it may give rise to hallucinations of letters.

what about synesthesia?

@user3293056 synesthesia may be the result of cross wiring between the brain area responsible for color and the brain area responsible for numbers; these two areas are next to each other. Hence, when you see a number you see a corresponding color. This fresh perspective was given by VS Ramachandran; check out his fascinating ted talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl2LwnaUA-k&list=PLhqYYxyrC-BQr_4nqWppaFcqe5LbznDCb


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The NART as a measure of premorbid IQ in serious mental illness
How reliable is National Adult Reading Test in estimating premorbid IQ in schizophrenia?
Is it compromised if the difference between current IQ and the NART is a standard deviation or more?


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Is there a term for behaving to the opposite extreme of a way one has been forced to behave?
I believe I'm having so much trouble figuring this out because I'm not sure what question to ask. As a few examples,
A child of an extremely religious family engaging heavily in behaviors considered unacceptable under their family's beliefs.
Someone who hates their career in an extremely analytical field switching to an extremely creative one (e.g. a software developer becoming a fashion photographer).
Reaction formation seemed to fit the bill, but that involves an extreme reaction to an unacceptable impulse rather than chronic exposure to a stressor. Compensation also doesn't seem to apply because that's a reaction to a self-identified weakness or deficiency.

I'm not sure, because I haven't studied Abnormal and clinical Psychology yet, but that COULD be signs of anti-social behaviour.

The pattern of behavior you are describing is called psychological reactance.
Reactance as a concept has been formalized in Jack Brehm's work in the 1960s, who has proposed a Theory of Psychological Reactance (1966). The theory posits that threats to personal freedom cause motivational arousal directed at reestablishing freedom. Consequently, the attractiveness of those behavioral choices that are eliminated or threatened can be increased.
A textbook example is a study (Brehm, Stires, Sensenig, & Shaban, 1966) in which students were promised to choose one of several music recordings. When one of the alternatives was taken away, it was perceived to be more attractive (but only when the students had the expectation that they could decide freely).
Since then, the concept has been applied to a wide variety of settings such as the role of eliminated freedom in consumer behavior (e.g., Clee & Wicklund, 1980), the persuasive effects of promotional health messages (e.g., Dillard & Shen, 2005), or patient noncompliance in therapeutic settings (e.g., Fogarty, 1997).
References
Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. New York: Academic Press.
Brehm, J. W., Stires, L. K., Sensenig, J., & Shaban, J. (1966). The attractiveness of an eliminated choice alternative. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2, 301–313. doi:10.1016/0022-1031(66)90086-2
Clee, M. A., & Wicklund, R. A. (1980). Consumer behavior and psychological reactance. Journal of Consumer Research, 6, 389–405.
Dillard, J. P., & Shen, L. (2005). On the nature of reactance and its role in persuasive health communication. Communication Monographs, 72, 144–168. doi:10.1080/03637750500111815
Fogarty, J. S. (1997). Reactance theory and patient noncompliance. Social Science & Medicine, 45, 1277–1288. doi:10.1016/S0277-9536(97)00055-5


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Are there specific neurotransmitters for specific sensations?
Nerves can detect pressure, temperature, light (eyes), sound, friction- at least. Does each sensation have its own neurotransmitter?
I'm only a little familiar with neurotransmitters. This page pretty well sums up what I know about neurotransmitters.
So it seems like its a combination of neurotransmitters that flow from any single perception area.

Within the traditional 5 senses only in smell, and possibly to a limited extent touch, are nerves the detectors.

No. For example, the neurotransmitter at the first stage of auditory processing (the inner hair cell VII cranial nerve synapse) and visual processing (rod and cone synapses with a bipolar cells) is glutamate.

There are neurotransmitters that are associated with specific functions within a neural circuit, but I would not associate a specific neurotransmitter with a specific sensation. There is also more complexity to this, because there is a plenty of receptors for each neurotransmitter. These receptors have slightly different properties, which may influence the effect on the post-synaptic neuron and consequently the percept.
Another concept is the effect of neuromodulators that regulate larger areas of the brain, e.g. noradrenaline, or serotonin. These have broad effects that change the brain state and are associated with a certain 'feeling'. For example, release of noradrenaline would lead to higher ventilation, higher heart rate, sweating etc.


text:
Books about trust
Could you recommend me some books that cover trust and how it is developed, what helps us build trust and why we might or might not need it.
I am not interested in the relationship self-help books but a more philosophical and psychological approach to the whole issue, discussions about the development of trust in the recent years and how it is affecting the society, how trust emerges and what factors influence it.
Your help is very much appreciated,
GreenJack

Blaine G Robbins has not written any books on trust to the best of my knowledge but has published some very useful research papers that could be worth a look

The only book I know of in that field is Francis Fukuyama's 'Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity'.
I haven't read it yet, but

if it is anywhere near the quality of the Fukuyama books I have read, it will be excellent, perhaps even amazing, and
given what he says about trust in the book I'm reading right now ('Political Order and Political Decay'), I would bet on amazing.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for the suggestion, Tom! I also found out that ted.com offers some interesting talks about the subject and the relationship between trust and politics.


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Are there any pain scales which measure how much of the body is in pain?
Are there any pain scales which talk about the extent of pain, i.e. how much of the body is in pain?
I'm in the process of trying to work out whether several lesions, hurt with the same intensity as a single lesion of the same severity.


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Why are people so attached to their possessions?
Why do people "set great store" by their things? If for example photos are lost or damaged, why is this a big deal? It seems to me that relationships are the only really important thing, and because we never know if the person will come home from work alive, all we can do is deal with "the person standing in front of us at the time."

A better definition/examples of "possessions" is needed. Your example is too restricted, not to mention the fact that "photos" are possessions but more importantly memories of those things (and relationships) that are past.

I think it's a primal need that is built in via natural selection. Those that had attachments to places and things outpased those who didn't. The affection a child shows for a favorite toy or a teenager shows for a favorite pair of shoes. Also, when a possession has been won over a great hardship, it has intrinsic meaning. This has a social and mental advantage when connecting to others. Social animals (like humans) must succeed in interactions to remain prosperous and leads to groupings of individuals for the overall benefits.

Would you mind citing sources for your claims?


text:
Can adults adapt to less sleep?
I am asking whether adults, especially in circumstances like a monastery or Zen center, can become able long-term to sleep only about 4 to 5 hours a night? So, that would mean: no children to care for, no heavy labor, lots of time spent meditating and doing other things that the body would find restful and undemanding...
Can the mind get along on much less hours of sleep than the usual adult? I am not asking about the absolute numbers, only if it can be reduced and sustained over years, or permanently?

No answers or comments after a week, so my guess is NO. If people could, they would. "Absence of evidence is evidence of absence" (say that three times fast). So then the real question is: why do monasteries, etc try to get people to sleep less?

Also absence of search leads to absence of evidence.
4-5 hours per night, a lot of people do that and wake up to go to work, go to school, tend their children. It is not healthy, and lowers mental and physical perfomance but can be done for some time. One hour you will have to rest, in a bed or in a coffin.

The sources I list in this question indicate the answer is most likely 'no'. However, perhaps there is something specific going on in the case of meditation.

In non-religious contexts, there are people who practise(d) shorter, distributed sleep cycles, sleeping about 4 hours a day. I'll add a link if I find it again.

There are several questions on polyphasic sleep on Stackexchange, e.g. http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/999/does-polyphasic-sleep-work-does-it-have-long-term-or-short-term-side-effects

Still no answers after a year. Interesting. I am tempted to add an answer that just says "No", but I don't feel like taking the abuse that would bring.

A paper by Kaul et al. from 2010 suggest that meditation can indeed decrease the need for sleep. Meditation acutely improves psychomotor vigilance, and may decrease sleep need
Quote from conclusions:

These results suggest that meditation provides at least a short-term performance improvement even in novice meditators. In long term meditators, multiple hours spent in meditation are associated with a significant decrease in total sleep time when compared with age and sex matched controls who did not meditate. Whether meditation can actually replace a portion of sleep or pay-off sleep debt is under further investigation.


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Is touch sensitivity higher for females?
I read a long time ago that in a study of two-week old infants response to touch, the female babies were far and away more sensitive. In most gender comparisons, there are the familiar "two humps" in the distribution of responses, but in this case, the male and female response ranges did not even overlap: the most sensitive male infant was less sensitive than the least sensitive female.
Has this sort of difference been shown in more recent research and with other age groups? It seems to me that it would have to be innate, because two weeks is not a long time to be affected by cultural differences. I would think that this difference would persist with age, and would explain a lot of the difference in how men and women function during sex, or any sort of intimate touch.

It would be perfect if you could find the study again to include in this question.

@StevenJeuris - It may be the Lipsitt (1959) paper referenced in Christiaan 's answer

Short answer
Females are more sensitive to some, but not all somatosensory stimuli. Males are either less sensitive, or as sensitive as females.
Background
A normative study by Blankenburg et al. (2010) determined reference values for a battery of somatosensory tests including cold detection threshold (CDT); warm detection threshold (WDT); thermal sensory limen (TSL); cold pain threshold (CPT); hot pain threshold (HPT); pressure pain threshold (blunt pressure, PPT); mechanical pain threshold (pinprick, MPT); mechanical pain sensitivity (pinprick, MPS); wind-up ratio (WUR); mechanical detection threshold (MDT); vibration detection threshold (VDT) in male and female subjects in the age range of 6 - 16 years.
Girls were significantly more sensitive to CDT, WDT, TSL, CPT, HPT and PPT.
No significant difference was found for MPT, MPS, WUR, MDT or VDT.
However, the authors note that some of their findings did not match that of other studies. For example, better thermal detection in female than in males as found in their study matches the data in adults of previous studies, but did not match other studies that also used kids. The lack of sex-dependency of mechanical pain sensitivity contrasted other studies in children and adults.
I would suggest reading Blankenburg et al. (2010) for more details.
Another study showed female infants to have lower electro-tactile thresholds (are more 'sensitive') than age-matched males (Lipsitt, 1959).
References
- Blankenburg et al. Pain (2010); 149: 76–88
- Lipsitt, Child Development (1959); 30(4): 547-54

If you work in an office, you know that women are more sensitive to cold! I would expect that everyone would respond the same to pain. I was more concerned with light touch. I think the original study used a feather to touch the infants.

@nocomprende - sensitivity is generally defined as threshold, and that's what the cited studies report. Using a feather is highly unreliable. The response to cold temperature you are addressing is not referred to as sensitivity in a psychophysical sense. That's rather subjective and needs to be investigated on a rating scale. And ratings on comfortable to uncomfortable scalings are outside my expertise. If that is what you are after, you might want to consider asking a new question or adapt this one. In psychophysics, sensitivity is synonymous to threshold.

can you tell why sensitivity is synonymous to threshold in psychophysics? Common sense tells me that sensitivity is synonymous to detection.

@Ooker - sensitivity is generally characterized by determining the psychophysical detection threshold


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Why do Spiritual people try to sleep less?
In Monasteries and other spiritual contexts, there seems to be a "rule" that sleep is wasted time, and so the usual daily schedule only allows for about 4-5 hours of sleep. This might be enough for an 80-year-old, but anyone else will probably be sleep-deprived and not very functional, let alone be able to make any spiritual progress.
I asked about whether adults can get by with less sleep, and got no answers. Does anyone know why spiritual scenarios seem to try to reduce sleep hours? One thought is that people think it is associated with laziness, indolence, lethargy, unproductive time, idleness, sloth, etc. But no one tries to reduce food intake, or use of the toilet, so why is sleep the big bad guy?

Be more specific. What spiritual context? Define spiritual progress. A lot of monks do reduce food intake, search about asceticism. Think about this: If you remove every comfort from your life and yet is capable of finding inner peace, man... you are really free! And that's the non-attachment philosophy. Also, if you want to develop your mental endurance, staying awake, with cold and hungry is a pretty good exercise. Nobody goes to a monastery to live like a king it is the opposite.

@Daniel Not sure if I will add more detail to the question. The idea is more of the intent of reducing sleep in some circumstances, not what the circumstances are. Is the intent to help people? Challenge them? Enforce discipline? Take them out of their usual rut? I am not sure that mental endurance can be built up like exercising a muscle. I know that it can be reduced through overwork and not enough rest. Spiritual Progress means developing in the direction taught by the tradition that one is following. Again, the details are not the point of this question.

I think you are treating the correlation as causality. The "spiritual people" have so many other factors in their life that are different from the "regular people". Some of them, namely, the average age, daily routine, diet, level of stress and many others, have serious impact on the sleep habits.

@EmptyBrain Most of the "regular people" do not sleep enough or properly either. Nearly every person I have ever slept near has slept poorly due to simple dehydration. If we are too dumb as animals to drink enough water, then spiritual progress seems out of reach, no matter what practices we follow. Spiritual life can be stressful also. I don't see that reducing sleep ought to be the first thing that people take on.

My experience is that as someone attains inner peace, sleep becomes really only for the body to rest. For most people, sleep is a time to release stresses and strains through dreams, but as you go deep, there just isn't that much stress to recover from. Because of that and quality diet, what sleep you do get isn't tossy and turny, but very deep and of good quality. It's not really a question of deprivation, just reduced need. Also I think the lifestyle there is far less stimulus-driven and physically tiring than most people's in the modern world. Cheers!

There's a difference between spiritual people and students trying to learn something. Sleep deprivation is an effective tool of breaking old learned routines - you just cant remember them too well when sleep deprived (Source). Once you learned what you need, sleep deprivation becomes very disruptive.
An example given is performing a novel task, like reciting the months of a calendar year backwards(December - November - October...). Old ingrained pattern of (January-February-March...) gets in the way, and people who are sleep deprived are apparently doing better on a this task than control subjects, because the old pattern is not remembered as well. (Same source)
There are a number of "programs" and "cults" like Landmark Forum, which attempt to teach/brainwash/indoctrinate you into learning some new outlook on life in a very short period of time. It has been proposed that sleep deprivation is a very big part of this "reprogramming".

I suppose drunkenness would work too. I read that people with a hangover drive worse than drunk people. Also, people who are sleep-deprived drive worse. Yes, those old routines of safe driving get interrupted, in favor of the novelty of Oh Crap!!!! Screech! There is also the old joke: "I want to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa, not screaming in terror like the passengers in his car."

Let's consider what happens when we sleep. Our body specially brain gets relaxed, you will see change in brain waves. During sleeping less cycles per second waves occur than awaken times. Blood circulation increases, your brain gets repaired from everyday workings. Now some spiritual activities may elevate these situations inside your brain, specially meditation. Almost all spiritual people meditate, one way or another. Research shows deep meditation for half an hour works like 2 hours of sleeping! What monks of course do.

Welcome to CogSci.  Could you add your sources?

Thank you. I have been told that meditation is more restful than sleep. Perhaps, with certain types and levels of meditation, however I still found that I needed a lot of sleep, at least 8 hours daily to feel normal. It might have been my health situation or the stress I was under. These both made deep, restorative meditation essentially impossible for me. So I was stuck. I think that the rules need to fit the situation of the person trying to follow them, not the reverse. With good sleep and less stress, most likely my meditation would have improved.


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Third time's the Charm: any research into how we learn from error?
I have often told people that I make a mistake two different ways before I really understand a situation. Is there any research that explains how and why this works? As an analogy, there is something called a "paperclip tree", a branching structure of linked paperclips (or any other small objects that can be connected loosely). You can find the longest path through the tree by picking it up anywhere, then grasping the lowest point and picking it up again. Absolute, guaranteed, must work every time.
So, is learning by making two mistakes something like this? Something like triangulation - two points of view? I also find that I have to sleep twice before something is really integrated in to my awareness and memory. After just one sleep it disappears and can't be recalled. This is why I often tell people that I cannot remember yesterday, but before that is clear. Also why naps are so helpful for learning. Any thoughts in how these things all work? Back propagation? Default Processing? Thank you.