# Question
Title: Psychological explanation for exorcisms?
I'm doing research on alleged testimonies and evidences of the spirit realm. In particular, I've been lately reviewing testimonies and live recordings of exorcisms, some of which I find particularly impressive. I say impressive because in my opinion the exorcisms look quite convincing, and I lack the expertise in psychology and neuroscience to provide a convincing explanation other than assuming that everything is staged (which I wouldn't be able to prove either).

Common patterns are that the allegedly possessed person seems to switch personality (as though the alleged entity's personality is taking over), sometimes the exorcist and the alleged entity establish conversation, sometimes the person starts to "throw up" the alleged entity out of their body right before full deliverance is achieved.

Here a few examples (timestamps included): example 1, example 2, example 3, example 4, example 5, example 6, example 7, example 8, example 9, example 10, example 11, example 12.

What is the psychological explanation for exorcisms?

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Possibly related questions:

# Answer
> 3 votes
Google Scholar reveals a substantial quantity of learned research on the topic of exorcisms, of which the items below are but a few:

* Ferracuti, S., & Sacco, R. (1996). Dissociative trance disorder: clinical and Rorschach findings in ten persons reporting demon possession and treated by exorcism. Journal of personality assessment, 66(3), 525-539. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa6603\_4
* Ross, C. A., Schroeder, E., & Ness, L. (2013). Dissociation and symptoms of culture-bound syndromes in North America: A preliminary study. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 14(2), 224-235. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2013.724338
* McNamara, P. (2011). Spirit Possession and Exorcism: History, Psychology, and Neurobiology \[2 volumes\]: History, Psychology, and Neurobiology. ABC-CLIO.
* Henderson, D. J. (1976). Exorcism, possession, and the Dracula cult: A synopsis of object-relations psychology. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 40(6), 603.
* Bull, D. L. (2001). A phenomenological model of therapeutic exorcism for dissociative identity disorder. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 29(2), 131-139. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164710102900204
* Pfeifer, S. (1994). Belief in demons and exorcism in psychiatric patients in Switzerland. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 67(3), 247-258. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8341.1994.tb01794.x
* Rosik, C. H. (1997). When discernment fails: The case for outcome studies on exorcism. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 25(3), 354-363. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164719702500304

As for many religious behaviours, exorcism behaviours appear to exist between non-intersecting religious and cultural groups.

A review of the abstracts suggests that involvement in exorcism is considered to be a Dissociative disorder. The Mayo Clinic also has an interesting article on Dissociative disorder.

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, behavior, hypnosis, religion
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# Question
Title: Why do people fear ghosts but not believe in fairies?
I don't have any data to back this up, but it seems people are quick to question their non-belief in the horror side of the supernatural (while in dark rooms and the like), but still scoff at the idea of magic, and other fictional tropes. Even if the person knows perfectly well that ghosts don't exist, why does that particular myth prove hard to dispel?

I'm new to this site, so I apologise if it's not an appropriate question here.

# Answer
> 1 votes
There are some arguments for the origins of religion based on the byproducts of our adaptive cognitive mechanisms and biases. A prominent one is the *hyperactive agency detection device* (HADD)--we are quick to infer the presence of intentional agency upon hearing a sudden unexplained noise or unnatural movement, especially in low perceptual quality situations (e.g. the dark). The cultural description of ghosts and other feared supernatural entities align with the situations in which HADD is likely to be triggered, but not so much fairies.

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Tags: fear, rationality
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# Question
Title: What is the neurological basis for the association between Bipolar type 2 and autism spectrum disorder (ASD)?
Bipolar disorder type 2 and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is regularly seen together. What is the neurological explanation for this?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Google Scholar identifies several learned articles that discuss the association/overlap between bipolar disorder type 2 and autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including:

* Khanzada, N. S., Butler, M. G., & Manzardo, A. M. (2017). GeneAnalytics pathway analysis and genetic overlap among autism spectrum disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 18(3), 527. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms18030527
* Stahlberg, O., Soderstrom, H., Rastam, M., & Gillberg, C. (2004). Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other psychotic disorders in adults with childhood onset AD/HD and/or autism spectrum disorders. Journal of neural transmission, 111(7), 891-902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00702-004-0115-1
* Gandal, M. J., Zhang, P., Hadjimichael, E., Walker, R. L., Chen, C., Liu, S., ... & Shieh, A. W. (2018). Transcriptome-wide isoform-level dysregulation in ASD, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Science, 362(6420). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat8127

Excerpts from the above include:

> The conditions show similar neuropsychiatric behavioral disturbances, including impaired social interaction and communication.

> Twenty-three genes were common to all three disorders.

> Overlapping genes impacted dopamine and serotonin homeostasis and signal transduction pathways, impacting mood, behavior and physical activity level.

My non-expert interpretation of the above is that there are genetic processes at work that drive the similarities in behaviour associated with these conditions.

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Tags: neuroscience, psychiatry, autism, personality-disorder, bipolar-disorder
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title: Can two neurons stimulate each other?

text:
# Question
Title: Can two neurons stimulate each other?
Is it possible that two neurons stimulate each other in an everlasting two neuron circuit?

# Answer
We refer to neurons that are connected to each other as having a "reciprocal" connection (however, the term is also used to refer to *regional* reciprocal connections in addition to neuron-neuron connections).

For typical neurons, much more than one input is necessary to reach action potential threshold, so you wouldn't expect reciprocally connected neurons to result in an "everlasting" response of the two cells. Pyramidal cells in neocortex, for example, are often connected to their neighbors, but that doesn't mean one always fires after its neighbor. Holmgren et al 2003 tested 542 pyramidal cell pairs from layer 2/3 of rat neocortex. 61 of those pairs were connected, and of the 61, 7 were connected reciprocally, and these were much more common among cells less than 50 microns apart.

There are, however, central pattern generators that can include reciprocal connections to create a repeating rhythm. These networks typically involve substantial inhibitory components, though, rather than just two interconnected cells.

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Holmgren, C., Harkany, T., Svennenfors, B., & Zilberter, Y. (2003). Pyramidal cell communication within local networks in layer 2/3 of rat neocortex. The Journal of physiology, 551(1), 139-153.
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, neurophysiology, neuroanatomy
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# Question
Title: How many participants are needed for online reaction time studies?
I am a Master's student focusing on psycholinguistics and I am preparing for my thesis. What I will be looking at are register effects and for that I will be conducting 2 online experiments using Ibex (participants will hear context sentences, be presented with a set of visual stimuli and then react to the visual stimuli). As far as I know, online RT studies are not as reliable as those which are conducted in the lab in the sense that they are noisier and less accurate. There is a great thread which discusses this topic How valid are reaction times collected from online studies? and where it is claimed that online RTs studies can be reliable if they are well powered. All in all it makes sense but I am confused as to how many participants are too little and how many are just enough. Your help is very much appreciated!

# Answer
There are four variables of interest in a statistical power analysis: power (often chosen as 0.8 or 0.9 by convention, this is the probability of correctly rejecting the null hypothesis if it is false), tolerated false-positive rate (alpha, often chosen as 0.05 by convention), sample size, and the effect size (which in turn depends on the variability of the observations and the difference between groups).

When you do a power analysis, you can choose any one of those variables to calculate provided you have all the others. In your case, you want to know the sample size you need so you need to choose or estimate the other numbers.

If you know what statistical test you are using, there are numerous online calculators to help you choose a sample size. Personally, I like to use the free software G\*Power.

Power and alpha are typically chosen by convention, so what you still need to know to determine your necessary sample size is the effect size you are looking for. If you have an experiment that you expect to have a large impact on reaction times, you don't need as many participants. If you are looking for a subtle effect, you need more. You can choose that threshold based on what is reasonably interesting/clinically relevant (this is ideal but sometimes frustratingly difficult to settle on), or you can base it on pilot data (can be dangerous when pilots are based on small sample sizes).

If you don't have any preliminary data, the best way to estimate the variance in observations would be to look at other similar studies collecting online reaction time data.

Overall, if you want to make sure you have a sufficiently powered study, it's good to use conservative estimates. If you guess that your effect is smaller and the variability is larger than what you hope, then you have a better chance of a sufficiently powered study.
> 4 votes

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Tags: measurement, reaction-time, psycholinguistics
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# Question
Title: Are there cases of drug addict that "forget" their addiction after some brain damages?
I'm interested in what I naively call "memory of addiction" - i.e. the brain restructuration that drugs addicts have and which causes the addict to need more and more to be satisfied.

Then, knowing that some brain accident can cause amnesia, I wondered if there were cases of people who were drug addicts that "forgot" or lost there addiction after some accident (shock, stroke or whatever...).

If you had any report paper on the subject, I'd be glad to know.

# Answer
I'm not aware of truly "forgetting" as in amnesia, but there have been reports that brain damage can disrupt the behavioral pattern of addiction which I think qualifies as what you describe as what "causes the addict to need more and more to be satisfied".

Naqvi et al 2007 reported that:

> smokers with brain damage involving the insula, a region implicated in conscious urges, were more likely than smokers with brain damage not involving the insula to undergo a disruption of smoking addiction, characterized by the ability to quit smoking easily, immediately, without relapse, and without persistence of the urge to smoke

Patients in this study had damage from either stroke or from surgical resections for cancer or epilepsy.

*Naqvi, N. H., Rudrauf, D., Damasio, H., & Bechara, A. (2007). Damage to the insula disrupts addiction to cigarette smoking. Science, 315(5811), 531-534.*

See also this review:

*Droutman, V., Read, S. J., & Bechara, A. (2015). Revisiting the role of the insula in addiction. Trends in cognitive sciences, 19(7), 414-420.*

However, I'd note that brain damage studies like these are quite complicated because damage to one area is often accompanied by other damage, and few subjects have similar lesions, so I'd be more hesitant than some of these authors are to implicate the insula specifically. Notably, the insula is near subcortical structures and fibers of passage that could also be involved.

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Stelten, et al 2008 is a review of neurosurgical attempts to target addiction. These are mostly case studies/series and involved complex cases typically with multiple co-occurring psychiatric conditions. The authors raise ethical concerns with some of the studies, as well, including issues of consent and the permanence of interventions and the lack of control comparisons.

*Stelten, B. M., Noblesse, L. H., Ackermans, L., Temel, Y., & Visser-Vandewalle, V. (2008). The neurosurgical treatment of addiction. Neurosurgical focus, 25(1), E5.*

You can also find more recent papers and reviews that cite this one on Google Scholar which might be a good place to continue your literature search.
> 3 votes

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Tags: brain, addiction, brain-injury
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# Question
Title: Why do some individuals enjoy watching scary videos?
* Does watching scary videos affect mental health?
* Are some individuals more/less prone to feeling scared than others?

# Answer
> -2 votes
Below are some reasons why some people enjoy and what happens when watching a scary movie:

> Horror entertainment can trigger the fight-or-flight response, which comes with a boost in adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine. The brain can then process surroundings and conclude that the experience is not a genuine threat.

Below are some causes and effects of watching a scary movie:

> Excitation transfer: This theory states that people who experience an emotional response to horror also experience more enjoyment when threats are resolved.

> Individual empathy: People who are less empathetic enjoy horror films more, according to Professor Ron Tamborini. He suggests that “viewers with high levels of empathy should dislike horror films because they react negatively to the suffering of others.”

> Sensation-seeking: People who watch horror movies may want to stimulate sensory reactions. Studies indicate these viewers may be more aggressive than other people.

**Source of Reference** \- Concordia University

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Tags: emotion, psychology, behavior, well-being
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# Question
Title: How to view or download an open access article from ARVO journals?
I would like to read or download this ARVO Journal's article, but I just cannot find any button on the website with this functionality: https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2139676 I have already registered and logged on, but the situation has not changed. Could you please help me find a way?

# Answer
> 0 votes
The paper you are linking to is an abstract presented on the Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting of 2011. Study abstracts are submitted to the conference organizers and often appear in the conference program and/or on the conference web site. They describe the work that will be/has been presented as an oral or poster presentation on a conference. Often the abstract is the only written record that remains of a conference prezzo. In other words, the abstract you are seeing is the paper itself, there is no further material to be downloaded, which explains the absence of the download button. If you click on the specific 2011 issue, you'll see hundreds of prezzo abstracts listed there, including yours. On the website of VSS there's unfortunately only information about the last conference held, I believe in May 2020.

You can contact the study authors and ask if they are willing to share the poster or the slides of the prezzo. In my experience, authors are often happy to share their research. Perhaps the results have been published in a journal paper in the meantime.

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Tags: neuroscience, reference-request, vision
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title: View fMRI results with AAL3 atlas

text:
# Question
Title: View fMRI results with AAL3 atlas
I have an fMRI overlay that was output from meta-analysis software, so I only have the .nii results file, no raw data. I would like to view this file in conjuction with the AAL3 atlas.

* I usually use FSL but I cannot work out how to get the AAL3 atlas to work in FSL (I've managed to get the aal3v1.nii file into the right place but when I try to select it in the atlas pane, it hangs).
* I'm less familiar with MRICron but I did manage to get the AAL3 atlas to load. I cannot, however, get the brain region labels to show and it's the labels that I need.
* I have never used SPM before. I've tried following several instruction manuals/tutorials but cannot even work out how to view my overlay. The AAL3 instructions are for SPM and talk about setting up contrasts and so on but I only have the .nii file - I don't have any data to analyse.

Can anyone offer an idiot's guide to viewing an overlay with the AAL3 atlas, please, in any program? I've spent so many hours trying to work this out but I'm totally lost.

# Answer
I think to use the MRIcorn is the easiest way, You can put the AAL3v1.nii.gz and AAL3v1.nii.txt into the mricron-templates folder.

by the way which software you use to do fMRI meta-analysis?

best, Hui Zheng Shanghai Mental Health Center
> 2 votes

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Tags: fmri, spm
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# Question
Title: Is there a Brain Mechanism for Reluctance of Studying?
For example, it could be the case that a person has less **Acetylcholine**, a key hormone that enables/helps to establish connection between neurons, so, the person has to go through more hardship to remember, thus study becomes difficult and difficulty makes the person reluctant. this is just an example.

Is there any book, research paper explaining why a person becomes reluctant to study using biological mechanism/brain chemistry or any type of method?

# Answer
> 4 votes
As in everything in psychology and the studies of behaviour and the brain, there are many interpretations for the extremely complicated process of learning. If you want to check a basic (But detailed) book on most of the early understandings on the subject of Learning, I recommend anything written by Michael Domjan; specially ***"The Principles of Learning and Behavior"***.

Also, the studies showed in ***"Cognitive Psychology"*** by Robert Stenberg (Mainly memory and perception) could shed some light. If these books are not enough, you could always look for more specifics in some books in neural science, like: ***"Principles of Neural Science"***, written by Eric Kandel (Chapter 9 covers mostly learning, but I still recommend Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7 and 8)

If you want a more casual answer, learning is something we don't wanna do sometimes because it is very frustrating, exhausting and hard. Even more, if you're trying to study a very difficult subject, where you start to acknowledge your own cognitive limitations and falling victim to our impatience.

Hope this helps.

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Tags: neuroscience, learning, brain
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between conditioning and learning?
The more I think about the difference between learning and Pavlovian conditioning, the more I'm unable to see how they differ. Even though in theory associative learning is just a portion of learning.

Here is the classical conditioning:

What if we have an observer watching the process? I think that even when the food and the bell are not for them, the fact that they observe their effects to the dog can lead them to a condition response as well. The process is as follow:

* **Before conditioning:** the observer has a belief that that food will make the dog excretes salivation, but bell alone is not. We say that the belief "food will make the dog excretes salivation" is an unconditioned belief, and "bell won't make the dog excretes salivation" a no-conditioned belief.
* **After conditioning:** the observer has a new belief that "bell alone will still make the dog excretes salivation". This belief is a conditioned belief.

We have this analogy:

* **Unconditioned observation:** Observe that the dog is fed
* **Conditioned observation:** Observe that the dog hears the bell
* **Conditioned belief:** Food will make the dog salivating
* **Unconditioned belief:** Bell alone will still make the dog salivating

Am I missing something?

# Answer
> 0 votes
1. In Pavlov experiment, the unconditioned response and conditioned response is the same (both are salivating). In the analogy, the unconditioned belief is not the same with the conditioned belief.
2. In Pavlov experiment, the unconditioned response can only happen after the unconditioned stimulus. In the analogy, the unconditioned belief can be recalled ("activated") even though there is no unconditioned observation.

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Tags: learning, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: Can someone be healed from a long-held addiction or compulsive disorder in an instant and without therapy due to a dramatic spiritual experience?
Can someone be healed from a long-held addiction or compulsive disorder in an instant due to a dramatic spiritual experience and without therapy?

My question is motivated by multiple conversion testimonies in which people claim to have had dramatic life-changing spiritual "encounters" or experiences that put an immediate end to behavioural addictions, substance addictions, mental health issues, among others. For illustrative purposes, I'm sharing below two conversion testimonies that I find quite impressive and don't know how to explain from a psychological point of view, and therefore I believe they can be interesting case studies.

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**Testimony 1**: From Atheist To Believer In Jesus Christ - How Jesus Cured My Eating Disorder - Christian Testimony

This testimony has many details, but I want to focus here on the eating disorder aspect of it (from 15:47 to 23:34), and the experience this girl had that made her free in a matter of seconds. This girl had been suffering from bulimia and anorexia for 4 years, with multiple failed attempts to quit the behaviour up to that point. According to her testimony, in December of 2017 she was throwing up in the bathroom, she was feeling impotent, hopeless and desperate. In the midst of this, she had the sudden occurrence to mentally cry out "Jesus" and immediately, in a matter of seconds, a feeling of immense love and peace overwhelmed her. But most astonishingly, as a result of this overwhelming emotional experience, her 4 year bondage to bulimia and anorexia immediately stopped. According to her testimony, the experience happened 2 years prior to the recording of the video, and she has never relapsed or even had the desire to ever since.

She devotes a good part of the video to describe in great detail her bathroom experience. She employs an interesting analogy to help the audience understand her experience: she referenced her maternal love for her 5 year old son as a strong baseline, and then claimed that the sense of love that overwhelmed her in the bathroom greatly surpassed it.

I find this testimony quite impressive, and there are 2 aspects that I find particularly intriguing:

* This lady experienced a spontaneous emotional transition from deep despair to overwhelming love and peace in just seconds. How is this possible?
* As a result of this 'ecstatic' experience (let's call it that way), she was instantly healed of bulimia and anorexia, despite a track record of 4 years of failed attempts at quitting.

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**Testimony 2**: MY TESTIMONY: JESUS SAVED ME FROM DEMONS, ATHEISM, SEVERE DEPRESSION & MORE!!

This testimony describes a somewhat similar experience to the first one. In short: a woman tells that for decades she used to deal with severe depression, strong anger and hatred issues, porn addiction and compulsive stealing. She also mentions that she used to be a lesbian, and for many years experienced sleep paralysis "attacks" at night and felt "evil presences" during these episodes. According to her testimony, one night she experienced a sleep paralysis episode that was unusually intense (extremely intense). In similar fashion to the previous testimony, she cried out in desperation "Jesus, save me" a couple times, broke down emotionally, cried for 1 hour, and experienced afterwards a sudden freedom from all her past addictions and mental health issues, without relapses. This experience is narrated in detail from 27:37 to 33:41 in the video.

But there is more. At 42:41 she tells that her change was so dramatic that it even affected her sexual preferences. Yes, that's right, her same-sex attraction stopped -- she wasn't a lesbian anymore.

I find this second testimony incredible as well. This woman had an intense episode of sleep paralysis, cried out for help in desperation, broke into tears and cried for 1 hour, and then, boom!, all her addictions and mental health issues were pretty much gone. Back to factory settings. Completely healed. No therapies needed. Just an ecstatic/cathartic experience and that's it.

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I'm really intrigued to know a psychological explanation for these testimonies. I imagine that if we could learn how to tap into the power of our minds to suddenly turn our emotions into peace and love (like in the first testimony) or experience a strong emotional catharsis (like in the second testimony) to free ourselves from years of addictions and unhealthy compulsive disorders in a matter of seconds, that would just revolutionize therapy and addiction recovery programs.

So, what is really going on psychologically in these testimonies? Do these experiences have a name? How is it possible for a person to suddenly quit years of addiction or compulsive habits or mental health issues in a matter of seconds, without therapy and without relapsing?

# Answer
> 5 votes
The answer to this question is indeed: We don't know - as @ChrisRogers correctly explained. However, let me mention some related research that may help shed some light on the question.

Previous research has suggested that spiritual experiences may be associated with beneficial outcomes in addiction treatment, though evidence is largely associative, and often retrospective. Cases of spontaneous recovery from addiction linked to intense experiences are also not hard to come by in the literature, but as Sellman (2009) puts it:

> ... dramatic life‐changing experiences are hard to manufacture.

Hence the crux of the problem: How to practically test this phenomenon? How can researchers manufacture dramatic spiritual experiences in the lab so that they can be studied? There is a fair bit more discussion of this problem in Sellman's book: Future of God in Recovery from Drug Addiction (2007).

Recently, a new venue for such research has opened back up: Psychedelics. Psychedelics can fairly reliably manufacture intense mystical experiences in patients. Thus, we now have a potential practical solution to the problem of studying the effects of dramatic spiritual experiences!

Already, several highly publicized studies have suggested that psychedelic drugs can be useful in the treatment of addiction. A few of these preliminary studies looked at spiritual experience as a potential mediator of this effect. Garcia-Romeu, Griffiths, & Johnson (2014) for example, tested psilocybin on habitual smokers with a history of failed attempts at quitting, in a small non-randomized or controlled pilot study (read: preliminary!), and found:

> Smoking cessation outcomes were significantly correlated with measures of mystical experience on session days, as well as retrospective ratings of personal meaning and spiritual significance of psilocybin sessions. These results suggest a mediating role of mystical experience in psychedelic-facilitated addiction treatment.

Other effects of the drug and its intensity were not predictive of long-term outcomes, suggesting that the spiritual experiences themselves may have been responsible for the effects, with the drug only a trigger. Other studies (eg, Bogenschutz et al, 2015; Dakwar et al, 2014; Dakwar et al, 2018) found similar results (again, preliminary!) with alcohol and cocaine addiction. This is by no means the only interpretation of the effects of psychedelic drugs on addiction - for example, such experiences may simply accompany whatever underlying effects the drug induces.

As research into psychedelics is again possible, we may learn more about the potential mediating role of dramatic spiritual experiences in addiction recovery through them.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I haven't got half an hour at the moment to sit and watch this video at the moment, but there can be many reasons someone with religious convictions may be able to abstain from addictive behaviours.

It is impossible, to determine categorically what exactly invoked the change from a neurological point of view scientifically and from a psychology stand point you only have anecdotes to work from.

Large scale psychological studies on how this works have not been conducted that I know of. And, in order to consistently leverage this potential we would need to be able to measure the state of mind along with how and what that person is thinking at any specific moment in time.

While an empathic person can have **an idea** what someone **might** be thinking, mind reading is not physically possible, so therefore this cannot be leveraged from a pure scientific standpoint at this time.

Once large scale psychological studies on how this works have been conducted, we may become closer to leveraging this ability within people.

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Tags: emotion, addiction, spirituality, compulsive, eating-disorders
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# Question
Title: Are human behavior and brain dynamics well described as an optimization?
A very general approach to describe the dynamics of the brain is through differential equations. Instead, one could choose a more restrictive approach and describe it as an optimization. Can we assume that observed human behavior can be explained well as an optimization of an unknown cost function? What is the scientific evidence for and against this?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Quirin et al (2020) have developed a dynamic systems approach that uses optimisation consider behaviour and personality.

Quirin, M., Robinson, M. D., Rauthmann, J. F., Kuhl, J., Read, S. J., Tops, M., and DeYoung, C. G. (2020) The Dynamics of Personality Approach (DPA): 20 Tenets for Uncovering the Causal Mechanisms of Personality. Eur. J. Pers., https://doi.org/10.1002/per.2295.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, behavior
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# Question
Title: What branch of psychology deals with the Framing Effect?
What branch of psychology deals with the framing effect (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981)? Any notable related literature?

Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1981). The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice. Science, 211(4481), 453-458. Retrieved September 5, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1685855

# Answer
> 3 votes
Gestalt psychology (Interpretrations of problems) and cognitive psychology (Problem solving). If you are fairly new to these topics, Robert Stenberg's ***"Cognitive Psychology"*** is pretty simple and explains a lot of the basics of this complicated issue.

It should be noted that Tversky and Kahneman are specialist in cognitive psychology itself, and have more works on this subject; but I still recommend Stenberg's work to appreciate a lot more of these books if you are starting to learn in psychology and the likes.

Hope it helps.

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Tags: reference-request
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# Question
Title: Is pleasure synonymous to positive reinforcement?
I'm thinking about what pleasure is from the perspective of the integrated information theory of consciousness. As I understand it, according to the appraisal theory of emotions, the orientation on the good-bad spectrum is essential for every emotion. From the point of view of these theories, it seems pleasure should occur every time whenever a decision leads to a state evaluated as positive. Is this what modern research suggests or is there a better theory on what pleasure is information-wise?

In other words, what is the algorithm of pleasure according to contemporary science?

# Answer
Before I even start to try answering this question, it should be said that there is no clear and definitive answer. Endless debates are everywhere on the subject of consciousness but nothing has come close to becoming concrete, since many fields of knowledge have very different thing to say (like biology, philosophy, and of course, psychology).

So, as a psychologist, I will give information to try to give the best answer I can from my perspective:

Going to early psychology, in behaviorism (the works of mostly Pavlov, Skinner and Watson) have come to the conclusion that human behaviour will always steer in direction of receiving rewards and avoiding punishment, in other words, yes: our decisions are always in search of pleasure and escaping,reducing eliminating and (preferably) staying away of stressful stimuli.

The feelings of pleasure are tied to the neurotransmitter of dopamine, as it is well known, and the feelings of stress and discomfort are tied to cortisol (It is a lot more complicated than that, but I am trying to be simple and to keep it short). These hormones are released when the enviroment interacts with a person in a certain way, meaning that the objects or actions themselves are not what bring these emotions, but our perceptions and appreciation of the stimuli in question. This is the foundation of the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.

Thanks to everyone's definition of pleasure and stress being different, and our own definitions of these terms can evolve and change (Mostly to our ever-changing perspective and more accurately, our neurotransmitter receptors adapting accordingly to the amounts of dopamine or cortisol being received) is that we don't make the same choices than the rest of humanity or even that our decisions are not always constant, since we make decisions are in the moment, and our solution to the problem "What is going to give me the most pleasure?" is made somethings in the split of a second.

These hormones have been guides to ensure our survival as a species, making us feel good about things that are good for us (Like good food and sex) and making us flee or solve bad situations (Like the pressence of a predator, or being socially rejected). But as we grew smarter, we learn to "cheat" our innate reward system to make us feel good a in much more ways and situations. Smoking, drugs, and junk food does sure give a rush of dopamine, but the pleasure it gives surely contradict the effects they do to our health, so dopamine and cortisol are no longer reliable indicators that we are doing a "good choice."

We can even make this MORE complicated if we start bringing in to this discussion the psychodinamics theories of Consciousness and the Unconscious, since if these ideas are to be believed, we could be making decisions that bring us stress and discomfort subconsciously, trying to appease the desires that we are not aware, giving some form of pleasure that we do not even accept.

And bringing this wall of text to a conclusion, you COULD try to make a formula of behaviour with the variables of stress and pleasure, but would it be scientifically accurate and consistent? I don't think it can be done, by the very nature of biology and neural science, there is an constant evolution of pleasure and our understanding, and too many variables to be an effective algorithm to be applied to a considerable size of persons. But it surely has been theorized.

So far my links have been Wikipedia articles, to make researching a bit simpler if you are not willing to read entire books and articles, but I do not recommend this if you are serious about your learning of the subjects. Here I will list some books and explain how they relate to your question:

1. The Principles of Learning and Behaviour by Michael Domjan. This detailed book can help you understand every facet of the more earlier works of behaviorism and some of the more present ideas.
2. Neurochemistry of Consciousness by Elaine Perry. It surely is a heavy read, but very insightful and detailed if you are for the task.
3. Unconscious Influences on Decision making by Géraldine Coppin. While I am not usually font of psychodinamics theories of decisions, I feel obligated to link at least an article to let you read on it and make your own conclusions.

Hope this helps.
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, emotion, theoretical-neuroscience, reinforcement-learning, happiness
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title: IQ-EQ oscillation

text:
# Question
Title: IQ-EQ oscillation
I know a guy who was very smart in school and university and had a high IQ. For example, in middle school he used to read high school science and math books like they're nothing but he had low EQ and low emotion control (probably because he had no father figure). Now this guy is in his late 30s and he say he's not as smart as he was, he has trouble understanding some of what he wrote or read 15 years ago, but he now understand emotions better which is clear when you see him interact with other people.

He used to analyze people logically which led him to many awkward moments and many confrontations (especially with girls) when he explained the inconsistencies in their arguments but now he really can read people emotions from their body language, their voice, their words.... which led him to wonder if some of his IQ became EQ. Suppose that he decides to live far from people and study his favorite subjects again, will his EQ decrease and become IQ?

# Answer
IQ" is a very broad and full of misconceptions. While it may be the most popular form for measuring intelligence, it has been debated a lot of it's scientific properties and accuracy.

In the case you explain,the individual in question has high understanding of mathematics and logic and low emotional intelligence. If we are following the famous interpretation of Gardner's of intelligence with the Theory of Multiple intelligences, **there is no direct correlation between the two**; but, by logic and human limitations, not everyone can have high intelligence in all its different encarnations. It can be perfectly normal to be considered a genius in some area but "average" in others.

As we understand this, it is no secret that an emotional unstable person may have difficulties getting their thoughts in order and may have poor performance by stressful factors formed by their disruptive psyche. I feel obligated to note that to be unstable by your emotions, you need to first recognize and acknowledge them, and to do that you need to develop some tools provided by emotional intelligence.

And as well, there are many theories that as we grow old if not maintained and reinforced, our intelligence may start to deteriorate, and that many factors that increase this process are tied to psychological stress.

There is definitely endless variables that can not be determined by the lack of details in the case proposed, but this is just a broad interpretation and should not be taken as absolute truth and be used to explain every person that may fit this case.

If you want to research more on your own, the previously mentioned Garner's Multiple Intelligences: New Horizons in Theory and Practice is a must read to understand one of the most prominent theories of intelligence.

Emotional intelligence can be studied in much more detail in the work of Goleman in Emotional Intelligence.

And while it can be a heavy read, any serious book on neuroplascity can be helpful to understand the ever changing brain and it's functions and "agility". For example, Neuroplasticity by Mohed Constandi.

Hope this answer helps you.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, intelligence, iq, emotional-intelligence
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# Question
Title: Short form of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory questionnaire
Recently I have been reviewing several articles related to psychopathy outside the forensic area and I have observed that a very popular questionnaire in a college setting is the Psychopathic Personality Inventory(PPI). So far I have not been able to find this questionnaire explicitly.

As far as I understand, the questionnaire was developed in this paper Psychopathic Personality Traits and Somatization: Sex Differences and the Mediating Role of Negative Emotionality by Scott O. Lilienfeld and Tanya H. Hess, 2001.

I was wondering if you could tell me where I can find the questionnaire?

I would appreciate it very much, thank you.

**Reference**:

* Levenson, M. R., Kiehl, K. A., & Fitzpatrick, C. M. (1995). Assessing psychopathic attributes in a noninstitutionalized population. Journal of personality and social psychology, 68(1), 151. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.68.1.151

# Answer
An open version of the PPI is available here: https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/LSRP.php
> 1 votes

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Tags: personality, reference-request, test, psychology
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# Question
Title: Does the functionalism view of sociology assume that institutions are intentionally designed to serve their functions?
From my limited knowledge, the structural-functional view focuses on the functions of different institutions.

However, that doesn't state what created these institutions in the first place. Even if institutions were created randomly, they will still serve whatever "function" they happen to serve.

Does the functional view assume that the institutions are purposefully designed to serve their functions? If so, does this view focus on particular mechanisms? Institutions can be designed by the government, or come up "endogenously" by groups of people getting together, or can just happen by chance (and survive if it happens to address certain needs).

# Answer
Since there have been no answers in five days, perhaps I can give a partial answer. I am by no means an expert, so I hope someone will point out my mistakes or if there is any bias (which I am sure there is). Also, my knowledge is limited to political science, but still I hope there is something that you can get from this.

In Britannica, structural functionalism, is defined as "a school of thought according to which each of the institutions, relationships, roles, and norms that together constitute a society serves a purpose, and each is indispensable for the continued existence of the others and of society as a whole." So for Britannica, the view seems to be about mutually interdependent structures in society. According to wikipedia, a common analogy likens these structures to "organs." The wikipedia article also lists a lot of criticism to this approach. To give an example of "real research" along these lines; many view the *Varieties of Capitalism*-framework (Soskice & Hall, 2001) as functionalistic (but you should make up your own mind about that, of course ;)).

A common critique of structural-functionalism is indeed that it explains the existence of institutional arrangements based on some notion of efficiency or optimality. This critique seems to be very common among historical-institutionalists in political science, who stress that institutions are the products of historical processes, and even in cases where they are the products of some group of actors to solve a particular problem, they can often "outlive" their creators and, with time, change to serve entirely new purposes.

An example of this can be found in Kathleen Thelen's critique of the structural-functionalist perspective. In her book *How Institutions Evolve* (2004), she describes (among other things) how the German system of vocational training evolved from being a system initially designed to weaken the position of the labor movement, to the diametrically opposite position of being a central pillar in the cooperation between the state, employer associations and labor. I recommend reading the introduction and following the references therein - she also references research using the functionalist perspective!

Pierson (*Politics in Time*, 2004) defines a "functional interpretation" as a view where "institutional arrangements are explained by their outcomes," or where "institutions take the form they do because powerful actors engaged in rational, strategic behavior are seeking to produce the outcomes observed." This he calls "actor-centered functionalism," which he distinguishes from "societal functionalism," in which institutions exists because they fulfill a certain function for society as a whole.

For Pierson, functional accounts are seen as inadequate for historical research, as they are unable to account for "lag" between the moves of actors and actual institutional outcomes (among other things). I recommend reading Piersons introduction and chapter 4 and 5 if you are interested in what he says about functionalism (I really recommend the entire book, actually :)).

As for my subjective view (for whatever its worth to you ...), I'm not really sure what functionalism really is. I have read many articles that analyze institutions or human behavior using game-theoretic models and so on, and in my (narrow) view, this literature represents the stereotype of functionalist accounts. Even so, there are works that utilize game-theory in historical research (see especially: Greif, Avner, 2006, *Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy*) and that tries actively to overcome the sort of criticism that I have cited above, so there is certainly a blurry line of demarcation here.

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I am sorry for the heavily biased reply to your post, and I am not entirely sure it was the answer you were looking for. Reading the critique of researchers in the "historical institutionalism" camp will certainly answer your question positively - functionalism is indeed about purposefully designed institutions (but, as Pierson points out, this does *not* mean that the perspective is without merit!).

Moreover, due to my own narrow perspective; what researchers subscribing to functionalist views themselves think, I do not know. Also, if there is any difference between sociology and political science I cannot tell. Hopefully someone will reply with a more informed view if they feel this reply is inadequate :)
> 1 votes

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Tags: sociology
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# Question
Title: Is it true that mirror neurons can make a man with an amputated arm feel sensation just by looking at someone else's arm, like Ramachandran said?
In this Ted Talk Ramachandran sais that mirror neurons can make a person with an amputated arm feel sensation, is it true? And if so, why doesn't the brain feel a sensation by looking at someone else's arm when your arm is intact?

# Answer
> 2 votes
Ramachandran's original research can be found at:

Ramachandran V. S. (2005). Plasticity and functional recovery in neurology. Clinical medicine (London, England), 5(4), 368–373. https://doi.org/10.7861/clinmedicine.5-4-368

A replication study has subsequently been performed:

Daniëlle Ezendam, Raoul M. Bongers & Michiel J. A. Jannink (2009) Systematic review of the effectiveness of mirror therapy in upper extremity function, Disability and Rehabilitation, 31:26, 2135-2149, https://doi.org/10.3109/09638280902887768

The conclusion of the replication study was:

> The present review showed a trend that mirror therapy is effective in upper limb treatment of stroke patients and patients with CRPS, whereas the effectiveness in other patient groups has yet to be determined.

The replication study indicates that the mirroring effect is true at least in some situations.

The Ted lecture you refer to (time = 4:45) suggests that we do feel a sensation in our own arm when we sense that someone else may be feeling pain in their arm. Perhaps this is the basis of empathy?

Ramachandran conducted subsequent research:

Ramachandran, V. S., & Hirstein, W. (1997). Three laws of qualia: What neurology tells us about the biological functions of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 4(5-6), 429-457.

This subsequent research indicates that if the area of the brain that contain the mirror neurons is damaged, then the individual may suffer a loss of empathy.

> Conversely, bilateral damage to the amygdala may lead to a loss of emotion and empathy.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Mirror neurons exist and have been recorded from in primates and humans - these are cells that respond to the actions and inferred perceptions of others.

In papers by Ramachandran and others, they have shown that patients who have their arm anesthetized report experiencing a sensation of touch when they see someone else's arm touched:

*Case, L. K., Abrams, R. A., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2010). Immediate interpersonal and intermanual referral of sensations following anesthetic block of one arm. Archives of neurology, 67(12), 1521-1523.*

*Case, L. K., Gosavi, R., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2013). Heightened motor and sensory (mirror-touch) referral induced by nerve block or topical anesthetic. Neuropsychologia, 51(10), 1823-1828.*

These papers of course strongly suggest, but do not necessarily prove, that these phenomena occur due to mirror neurons.

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, mirror-neurons
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# Question
Title: Why do we sometimes forget the retrospective component of a particular task?
I'm sure everyone experienced it quite a few times before. For example, sometimes when we go to the kitchen to grab something the moment we get to the kitchen you forget what you were trying to get. Why is that?

# Answer
I must begin by stressing that while this is an interesting question, it is also very complex (much like memory itself). Similar to other areas of Cognitive Psychology, depending on which expert you ask, you might get different explanations. My background is in prospective memory and cognitive psychology, and this is how I would address this question. I believe this framing is crucial to contextualize my answer.

On a high level, we can classify memory into retrospective memory and prospective memory. Retrospective memory is where to be remembered item occured in the past (people, events, tacit skills). Prospective memory (PM) concerns how we remember to do things in the future (i.e., "remembering to remember"), or remember to perform an intended action at the correct time/situation. A classic example of PM is having to remember to pick up milk on the way home from work. Your ability to do this may be directed by *active maintenance* (e.g., reiterating to yourself for hours), self-generated cues/offloading (e.g., a phone reminder), or environmental cues (e.g., driving past the shop).

In prospective memory, it is common for individuals to remember to complete the prospective (e.g., go to the shop), but forget the retrospective component of the task (e.g., what to buy at the shop). This is the experience you are talking about. There is a wide literature of laboratory based experiments that attempt to explain the processes underlying why individuals sometimes forget to perform a PM task (see Smith et al.; or Brandimonte et al.; or Scullin et al.), or forget to perform the retrospective component (for review, see Mcbridge & Workman).

Without getting deep into the neurological or exact cognitive level for *why you would forget the retrospective component of a task*, consider some factors that may decrease/increase probability of forgetting:

* Task interruptions 'disrupting' your memory trace
* A long duration between encoding an intention and having to retrieve the specific item from memory.
* Pre-existing clinical disorder or ageing related disorder. Intoxication related brain function inhibition.
* The to-be remembered retrospective component was unfamiliar, indistinct. You failed to encode the item properly in the first place.
* Having a strong memory trace through implementation intentions can support memory for the retrospective component.
* There's evidence that cue valence/salience (i.e., being positive/negative or distinct) or important improves memory for the retrospective portion of PM.

That is but a small subset of possibilities. On a cognitive level, an activation based explanation would be that the "to-be remembered retrospective memory item" dropped below some critical threshold of neural activation, and was forgot. Interference based approaches would argue that some event during the retention interval disrupted the stored model or memory item, thus leading to forgetting. Neuropsychology based approaches would be able to map more specifically regions of the brain to forms of forgetting in laboratory based tasks.

In summary, we don't really know exactly why people forget things in any arbitrary context. However, psychologists can identify and classify the *kind of forgetting* that occurred, and provide suggestions of the *likely* factors that would have contributed to that forgetting. Neuropsychology approaches would assist in grounding these explanation in terms of neurological processes.

## Further Reading:

Brandimonte, M. A., Einstein, G. O., & McDaniel, M. A. (Eds.). (2014). Prospective memory: Theory and applications. Psychology Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-02930-000

Smith, R. E., Hunt, R. R., & Murray, A. E. (2017). Prospective memory in context: Moving through a familiar space. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition, 43(2), 189–204. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000303

Burgess, P. W., Gonen-Yaacovi, G., & Volle, E. (2011). Functional neuroimaging studies of prospective memory: What have we learnt so far? Neuropsychologia, 49(8), 2246–2257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.02.014

Schaper, P., & Grundgeiger, T. (2018). The effect of different distractions on remembering delayed intentions. Memory, 26(2), 154–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2017.1339090

Anderson, F. T., & McDaniel, M. A. (2019). Retrieval in prospective memory: Multiple processes or just delay? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 72(9), 2197–2207. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021819845622

Ball, B. H., Brewer, G. A., Loft, S., & Bowden, V. (2015). Uncovering continuous and transient monitoring profiles in event-based prospective memory. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22(2), 492–499. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-014-0700-8

Dismukes, R. K. (n.d.). Prospective Memory in Aviation and Everyday Settings. 22.

Heathcote, A., Loft, S., & Remington, R. W. (2015). Slow down and remember to remember! A delay theory of prospective memory costs. Psychological Review, 122(2), 376–410. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0038952

Kuhlmann, B. G., & Rummel, J. (2014). Context-specific prospective-memory processing: Evidence for flexible attention allocation adjustments after intention encoding. Memory & Cognition, 42(6), 943–949. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0405-2

McBride, D. M., & Workman, R. A. (2017). Chapter Seven - Is Prospective Memory Unique? A Comparison of Prospective and Retrospective Memory. In B. H. Ross (Ed.), Psychology of Learning and Motivation (Vol. 67, pp. 213–238). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.plm.2017.03.007

Scullin, M. K., McDaniel, M. A., & Shelton, J. T. (2013). The Dynamic Multiprocess Framework: Evidence from Prospective Memory with Contextual Variability. Cognitive Psychology, 67(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2013.07.001
> 3 votes

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Tags: memory, working-memory, short-term-memory
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# Question
Title: Raven Progressive Matrix: why's my chosen square wrong?
Source: *Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count* (2009). pp. 7-8.

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

### My attempt

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

# Answer
It is a very simple question.

In **1**, three vertical lines were occupying the top space in the diamond. In the lower half of the diamond, half the space was shaded and the other half was unshaded.

In **2**, two vertical lines were occupying the top space in the diamond. In the lower half of the diamond, all of the space was shaded.

There was hence a net loss of one vertical line and increase of one shaded space. That is the same operation you should have conducted in **4**.

In **3**, two vertical lines were occupying the upper-half space in the square. Similarly, half the bottom-half space of the square was shaded. Therefore, there must now be in the empty space a square containing one vertical line and a fully shaded bottom-half space.

It was not the relative positions of the vertical lines that you should have considered, but the quantity thereof.

I hope I don't have to explain to you why there should be a square in the empty space.

Anyways, that was my interpretation of the question. Hope this helped.
> 3 votes

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

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

All this added yields the picture at the bottom right. You didn't notice, interpret or actioned on the stripe removal, perhaps.
> 2 votes

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Tags: methodology, test, iq
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# Question
Title: Do we learn to improve our working memory capacity without sitting WM tests?
Do we learn to improve our working memory capacity without sitting WM tests?

Working memory capacity can be measured, but I wondered whether the only way to improve it is learning techniques for working memory tests, such as the digit span test.

I *think* I remember that working memory capacity is relatively stable in adulthood and reaches that level at a relatively young age in childhood. Hence, I'm asking whether general education improves our WMC, not for supposed brain training techniques.

# Answer
I'm not a psychologist so be cautious about drawing conclusions from what I say.

Education can teach us to use our working memory more effectively by:

1. Learning how to do better chunking (which sometimes comes at a cost of time and effort spent on recall and on creating the chunk, but this can be improved with practice).
2. Using our strongest domain(s) when appropriate, taking into account our capacity and "chunking skills" in each domain.
3. According to this answer:

> The evidence for domain-specific modalities is largely based on the (lack of otherwise expected) interference between them.

This means that **maybe** you could spread your items-to-remember across different domains to use otherwise untapped capacity, and (based on information from the linked answer) the usage order of domains matters.

However, since some (if not all) of these methods come at a cost and require conscious effort, the advantages of remembering more this way are limited and not equivalent to increasing your actual working memory capacity.

## Examples:

Remembering a number by the pattern it draws on a phone's unlock screen.

Remembering a shopping list by imagining a set of (memorable, ridiculous) images where each image includes 2 items, one of which is also included in the next image (1st image: items 1 and 2, 2nd image: items 2 and 3, and so on). Then you can recall the first image, and recall each next image by asking what other image included an item from the current image. This is a good example of how verbal/auditory memory isn't always the best choice for remembering a list, unless your visual memory is much worse.

Remembering a number by recognizing (mathematical or other) patterns in it, so you can reconstruct the number (or part of it) from these patterns.

---

While you didn't ask for "brain training techniques", training is part of learning, if you want to become educated on how to use your working memory more effectively, you will need to practice the methods and see them in action, and they involve using skills that will improve with more practice.

For more information, read about methods of memory champions \- people who manage to quickly memorize many things, such as card decks, long numbers and speeches. Their methods can be used by anyone, you don't have to be an exceptional person to be able to do impressive things with your memory, I tried it myself and was surprized at how well and how easily it worked for me.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Based on what I'll explain below, I'm going to have to say yes—but I don't know that there's a lot permanency to it.

I'm not a psychologist, but I do have low working memory and seem to notice when and how it improves and worsens (for me, personally). So, I can give you my personal anecdotal opinions (with no guarantees as to their accuracy, nor to how they might affect other people besides myself):

As a teenager, I seemed to notice dramatic gains in working memory through playing Chess regularly with a challenging, but realistic opponent (one I could work up to beating, rather than one that trounced me all the time no matter how much I practiced). These gains actually seem to last a long time (potentially up to several months after stopping), but they're initially very stressful (and later addictive) for me to work at gaining, and after that long time has elapsed and the benefit is gone, I don't know that they have any lasting benefit with regard to working memory. It seemed to take a few weeks of serious playing to get a particularly nice effect. It's important to note that at the time, I was not impulsive in my decisions, and I analyzed all my options before making a move (rather than using intuition). I didn't memorize moves in advance. Finding a proper Chess opponent is difficult. The stress comes back when the working memory goes.

The Chess seemed to help me with decision-making, and foreseeing obstacles and solutions (outside of Chess). It improved the number of things I could foresee in my working memory, and such.

I discovered that listening to audiobooks while typing out what I heard (as best as I could), seemed to improve my working memory (and my typing speed).

Recently, I discovered that practicing four-part songs on a digital piano seemed to increase my working memory (including as it pertains to story-writing). I like this method quite a bit, and it's what I do now.

Stress seems to decrease my available working memory, while comfort seems to increase it.

I think memorizing paragraphs of text every day for a long time actually had a negative impact on my working memory (although it might have had initial gains). I think the reason is that I wasn't working on long-term retention, but just on like one or two-day retention. I tried memorizing too much stuff.

I'm light-sensitive, and it seems that some kinds of light can negatively impact my working memory.

Some drugs are supposed to impact working memory.

So you know, here is a list of situations that require working memory that I struggle with:

* Taking directions (people usually lose me after the first two steps)
* Audio lectures
* Reading (Even though I know what all the words mean, I sometimes have to reread a paragraph several times)
* Answering questions that require me to make a decision
* Conversations
* Explaining things I know, vocally
* Doing much of anything when I'm nervous
* Transitioning between activities
* Completing/ending activities
* Taking notes (yes, that's a coping mechanism that just isn't ideal)
* Consulting multiple sources to complete an assignment
* Telling people what I just read. The need to do so seems to take the working memory required to remember the stuff I read.
* Knowing what people are talking about, especially if they they answer simple questions with long stories (instead of with one word or one sentence answers).
* Helping people with their computer software-related stuff. I still do it, successfully, but I usually have to waste a lot of time listening to them talk about stuff that I just can't process, before I do it.
* Taking messages for other people
* Making commitments wherein it wasn't my idea to make the commitment; I mean if someone asks, Will you do such and such after you finish what you're doing? I prefer them just to ask after I finish instead.
* In-class assignments (where the teacher tells the assignment vocally, without writing it down)
* Listening to people, especially if they talk slowly (it's easier for me to understand people that talk fast, because I can fit it in all at once more easily)

However, I'm good with some of the working memory tests they give. Like, where they ask you to repeat back numbers. That's not really a challenging environment for me by comparison to the above. Numbers are easy because they're in small, separable chunks, and they have simple meanings, often without much context. Numbers are also easy to repeat quickly. Words in a conversation or in instructions are more difficult, because they're bigger and involve more things, and not just a linear process that requires little effort. Plus, it's harder to get distracted with numbers. I can remember a license plate number a lot more easily than I can remember a list of three or four things someone else wants me to do.
> 0 votes

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Tags: measurement, memory, working-memory
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title: Disorders altering body language?

text:
# Question
Title: Disorders altering body language?
Are there neurological or psychological disorders that do not affect emotions per se, but affect how they are expressed physically by the body?

For example, normally positive emotions are associated with the tips of the lips curling upwards; do some people express positive emotions in different ways?

Alternatively, when an average person finds something funny, for some period of time they breathe abnormally (so-called laughter); could some people's reaction entail e.g. blinking instead of that?

# Answer
This is usually referred to as emotional expression or affect display, which can be verbal as well as non-verbal, whereas body language is exclusively non-verbal, and not exclusive to emotion.

This function can certainly go wrong:

> There are a few disorders that show deficiency in emotional expression and response. These include alexithymia, autism, hypomimia and involuntary expression disorder.

And also:

> Disorders involving ... reduced affect displays most commonly include schizophrenia, post traumatic stress disorder, depression, autism and persons with traumatic brain injuries.

However, afflicted individuals do not typically substitute one expression for another - they usually either do not express some emotions (eg, Spock, who would have been diagnosed with alexithymia), or they express some emotions inappropriately (eg, the Joker, who presumably suffers from PBA). It's unlikely that someone would express happiness by tapping their foot, or laughter by blinking their eyes.
> 3 votes

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Tags: emotion, abnormal-psychology, body-language, disorder, emotional-expression
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# Question
Title: When we all fall asleep, where do we go?
I was thinking about dreams from a psychoanalytic perspective. I want to know about falling asleep. What is everybody's destination on that bed? Is it the future past or our imagination?

# Answer
> 1 votes
In short, it depends on the dream. Sometimes dreams can play out a past event **with or without truth**, sometimes they can project a **possible** present and future. Sometimes they can play out a fantasy you may have and have no bearing on reality at all.

Whilst I am a defender of Freudian and Neo-Freudian psychology, please be aware that this covers areas of psychology considered by some here to be pseudoscientific

> Sigmund Freud’s *The Interpretation of Dreams* was one of the most important books of the 20th century.
>
> First published in 1900, it provides a groundbreaking theory of dreams and an innovative method for interpreting them that captivates readers to this day (Freud Museum of London)

Sigmund Freud said:

> The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.

For this reason, there are many books and websites purporting to be an accurate way of interpreting your dreams. Some believe that interpreting dreams can be a way of working out what you will do or should do. Freud himself said these books are not to be followed.

The main thing to take to mind is that dreams cannot be relied upon to accurately recall or predict anything.

> Dream interpretation was an important "technique" in psychotherapy. However, after over a hundred years of research, there is still no scientific consensus on the meaning of dreams, or even if they mean anything at all! Dream interpretation is currently patent quackery. (RationalWiki)

To call dream interpretation "quackery" would signify that dream interpretation is seen as a means of therapy. Whilst there is no scientific consensus on the accuracy of dream interpretation, and therefore it is pseudoscience; it is not a form of therapy and never was. It is a tool, which whilst possibly inaccurate, can give an **indication** as to **possible** areas of concern when exploring with your client where problems lie.

Take for example the Freudian case of "Wolf Man" Sergei Pankejeff.

> Pankejeff sought treatment for depression in 1910 after his sister and father committed suicide. Freud fixated on a dream about wolves (hence the "Wolf Man" moniker) Pankejeff reported and spun a strange tale from this (RationalWiki)

Freud

> interpreted \[the dream\] in minute detail to represent a disguised memory of the patient, at age one and a half, observing his parents engaging in “coitus *a tergo* \[from behind\], three times repeated.” (Esterson, 2003)

Without knowing the full details of the dream and the conversation between Sergei and Freud, we cannot determine how he came to this idea, however, this is a **possible** interpretation according to Freud.

## References

Esterson, A. (2003) Freud's Theories of Repression and Memory. *Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice 2*(2) http://www.srmhp.org/0202/review-01.html

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Tags: dreams
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# Question
Title: Why does a person's mind keep imagining situations with problems that do not exist and continue solving those problems in the imagination?
Why does a person's mind keep imagining situations with problems that do not exist and continue solving those problems in the imagination? This keeps the person generally in absent-mindedness and oblivious of the real problems at hand and fails to solve real problems in life. Is is any syndrome or disorder? What is the solution? IS there something like CBT/DBT/IPSRT that can make a change?

# Answer
> 1 votes
It sounds like you're talking about what psychologists and neuroscientists commonly call episodic future thinking or mental simulation. In this cognitive state, we simulate possible future scenarios, often pertaining to social interactions we might have, or survival situations. This allows us to pseudo-test hypotheses regarding the possible outcomes for an imagined scenario based on inference and the memories of our past experiences in similar situations. This may be adaptive if it allows us to prepare contingency plans for those scenarios, should one arise. We do this habitually, perhaps because there are so many possible scenarios to simulate, and the more we explore options and form tentative contingency plans, the better prepared we are for the world. It might also just be a rewarding activity in and of itself.

Absent-mindedness, mind wandering, or distractibility by one's own thoughts may be problematic if we are chronically distracted away from the present moment and the tasks that need to be accomplished at the moment. Mindfulness therapies may be helpful in training the ability not to let the mind wander and instead focus on desired tasks. Activities that require concentration may also train this ability, such as music performance. In severe cases, stimulant medication may be helpful, such as amphetamines or methylphenidate.

Regarding neural mechanisms for these states, there has been quite a lot of research and speculation in recent years on the interplay between two major brain networks, typically called the default mode network and the salience network. In functional connectivity MRI studies, the default mode network seems to be active during the state you described, whereas the salience network is active during focused attention on the external world and while completing a task. It may be that differences in how these networks have developed in an individual dictate the strength of their tendency to internally simulate rather than focus on the external world.

Here's a study regarding these networks and PTSD: Neural Dysregulation in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Evidence for Disrupted Equilibrium between Salience and Default Mode Brain Networks

# Answer
> 0 votes
There is something I heard of can be done but don't know how effective it is(it seems like it could be effective but I haven't seen any actual research done on it, just a bunch of theory that's honestly a little bit woo woo). In a book called "The Inside Out Revolution" by Michael Neill he talks about the idea that all of our experiences are our thoughts/neural impulses in the brain and the attempt to correct/to fix the thoughts is the thing that drives us down a bad spiral.

Imagine if you were to sit in a blank room for 15 minutes, no artwork on the wall, no music, no phone or anything else to keep you distracted. If you are the average person, during this time you would have experienced many different things(pizza sounds good right now/ do they hate me/ I wonder if peanut butter has real pennants in it/ etc). Even though nothing in your surroundings was "causing" you to experience any of these thoughts/sensations. They came about as a result of your thoughts/neural impulses/imagination and faded back away into nothing.

The idea he proposes in this book is a realization that everything we experience is a function of our thoughts first and not our environment, when you start having this insight the terrifying/nagging/constant/repetitive negative thoughts carry much less weight.

I mentioned earlier that the thoughts come and fade back into nothing, his theory is that some disorders are caused by this broken loop. If a person takes some of these thoughts too seriously they will fixate on them more and more and not allow them to fade back into nothing as they normally would as do other random thoughts/neural impulses. He makes the argument that a lot of disorders are caused by a correction mechanism gone wrong, instead of having the insight that the thoughts we are experiencing are just that... thoughts, we take them seriously, we think that the thoughts are a function of our environment/circumstances because we fail to realize that the causal mechanism for our sensations are mostly our own random neural impulses.

According to the author, the reason why people keep on trying to solve their problems in their minds is because the thoughts we all have every day feel like they are real and we haven't learned to recognize them as just our thoughts

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, attention, therapy, fear, ptsd
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# Question
Title: What degree of control do we have on eye movements?
When something "new" and "interesting" enters our visual field it can usually happen that our eyes move toward the new target. How "intentional" and "controllable" are these movements? What degree of control do we have over this event? Since the movement is amazingly quick (maybe 0.3 seconds), it seems unlikely that a complex decision has been made, so can it be considered involuntary or beyond our control?

# Answer
**Short answer**
We have a lot of control over our eye movements, including saccades. We can suppress saccades and make an anti-saccade instead. So can monkeys, our close cousins. Children have a lot more difficulty with the anti-saccade task, however.

**Background**
*Saccades* are fast eye movements, as opposed to the slower smooth-pursuit responses of the eye (Purves, 2001). Saccades are generally initiated when a visual target appears suddenly in our field of view. They can be made either voluntarily, or involuntarily. Once initiated, a saccade cannot be interrupted (source: Brown University). However, a saccade can be suppressed before it is executed. This can be investigated with the anti-saccade task (Munoz & Everling, 2004). In this task, the subject is instructed to look *away* from a suddenly appearing target and make an eye movement to the opposite side. This is difficult. However, humans can do it, and even monkeys can be trained on the task, although kids are reported to have a lot of difficulty with it. Anti-saccades have a longer delay than saccades, and have a larger margin of error in terms of the accuracy of putting the 'anti-target' on the fovea of the retina. Many of the anti-saccades are preceded by an (unintentionally initiated) pro-saccade, where the subject focuses on the target first, before making the intended eye movement to the opposite side.

**References**
**-** Munoz & Everling, *Nature Rev Neurosci* (2004); **5**: 218–28
**-** Purves *et al*. (eds). *Neuroscience* 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001). Types of Eye Movements and Their Functions
> 6 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, vision, neurophysiology, eye-movement, self-control
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# Question
Title: What are the factors that make the membrane more permeable to Potassium ions than Sodium or Chloride (or any other ions)?
I'm just into my first week of Neuroscience and reading about membrane/action potential. It is my understanding that when the membrane potential changes, it is more K+ ions move across the membrane compared to other ions to bring it back to equilibrium because the membrane conductance to K+ is higher, which makes the other ions have less of an impact on the membrane potential (which is also why the resting potential is closer to K+ than Na+). Can any of you list the factors that makes the membrane more permeable to K+? Is it proportion of channels or any inherent characteristics of K+ ions? Thank you :)

# Answer
> 1 votes
The two-pore-domain potassium channels. There is otherwise nothing intrinsic in the membrane that makes it more permeable to potassium, but the membrane contains these channels which are referred to as "leak" channels because they are not voltage-gated and are always open. These allow cells to turn the concentration gradient maintained by the sodium-potassium ATPase into an electrical gradient.

Other channels are also present and can contribute to the membrane potential at rest, but the two-pore potassium channels are typically the largest contributors.

Most of what you've written as background in your question is only applicable to *rest* so be sure to consider that as you learn about action potentials and post-synaptic potentials. What *is* true is that if you were to hold a cell at 0 mV without any voltage-gated channels, you would see much more potassium leaking out than other positive ions moving in, and this is why the inside becomes more negative (establishing the resting membrane potential). The resting potential is the potential at which the net charge of ions flowing across the membrane is *equal*: that is, there are just as many positive ions flowing out at rest as there are flowing in. If anything else were true the cell would *not* be at equilibrium and the membrane voltage would continue to change until it were true.

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Is there a mechanical/vibrational communication method between pre- and post-synaptic terminals in addition to chemical and electrical synapses?
I recall hearing something about there being a mechanical way that two neurons can communicate with each other in addition to the chemical and electrical synapse methods. Something about a certain frequency or physical pulse that can travel along the connexons across the gap junction that is received by the post-synaptic terminal.

Did I make this up?

# Answer
**Short answer**
Action potentials travelling through the axon are accompanied by a mechanical displacement of the axonal membrane.

**Background**
Multiple studies have shown that a mechanical displacement of the axonal membrane accompanies an action potential. Hady & Machta (2015) used a computer model to show that these mechanical displacements are generated by the storage of energy in the neuronal membrane when the action potential travels through the axon that alter the compressive electrostatic forces across the membrane. These forces lead to co-propagating mechanical displacements accompanying the action potentials, which the authors have dubbed 'action waves' (Hady & Machta, 2015).

It is important to realize that the action potential drives the action wave and communication between neurons. As far as I understand, the action wave has no known physiological function in neural communication, although it is a point of debate (Fox, 2018).

<sub>**Reference**
**-** Fox, *Sci Am* (2018), April issue
**-** Hady & Machta, *Nat Comm* (2015); **6**: 6697</sub>
> 1 votes

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Tags: neurophysiology, communication, electrophysiology, neuro-transmitters, cell-signaling
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# Question
Title: Is unconsciousness actually superior to the conscious mind?
In Blindsight by peter watts, the author mentions something called a "neurological bureaucracy", in which the conscious mind has little purpose other than acknowledging what has already been thought and done by the unconscious mind and taking credit as its own work. The book uses examples like Eureka moments and a musician performing, where the unconscious mind takes control over the conscious mind and is superior.

"Every dancer and acrobat knows enough to let the mind go, let the body run itself."

Despite being fairly convincing, the theory seems to be in conflict with the very nature of human cognitive process. Does such claims has any backing in current scientific discovery?

Is being totally unconscious superior? Or is it only superior to a conscious mind in a "Complete" Chinese room scenario, where the system/brain has already been fed with enough information to compute all its "results"?

# Answer
**Q: Is unconsciousness actually superior to the conscious mind?**

**Short answer:**

In some aspects, yes; in some, no. Both unconsciousness and consciousness are essential for organisms that have evolved to have consciousness; these organisms can’t survive without both of them.

**Long answer:**

All mental processes are unconscious in the sense that we never are conscious of the processing at any of the processing steps in any mental process (e.g., we never are conscious of the processing at any of the processing steps in the processing processes of vision, sound, taste, language, decision making, etc. and never know what the processing at each step is like); we are conscious of only the results of some mental processes (e.g. we are conscious of the vision, sound, taste, meaning of words, and decisions resulting from the corresponding mental processes and know what they are like) while the vast majority of mental processes have unconscious results, such as the information of the pressure in the blood vessels, blood pH level, and blood electrolyte and hormone levels (e.g., we never are conscious of the pressure in the blood vessels, blood pH level, and blood electrolyte and hormone levels and never know what they are like).

(N.B. To avoid confusion, it should be note that mental processes whose results we can be conscious of are often called conscious mental processes even if we are not conscious of the processing at any step of their processing processes, and that mental processes whose results we cannot be conscious of are often called unconscious mental processes.)

The major differences between unconsciousness and consciousness is that the following occur if something is conscious but do not occur if it is unconscious:

1. The mind has the awareness and experiences of what that something is like – what the vision of the house is like, what the sound of the song is like, what the taste of the honey is like, etc. (Compare these to the unconsciousness cases: the mind doesn’t have the awareness and experiences of what the blood pressure at 120 or 130 mmHg is like, what the blood pH of 7.35 or 7.45 is like, what the blood sodium level of 135 mEq/L or 140 mEq/L is like, etc.)
2. The mind can share the information of that something to its various parts that include the cognition part, the symbolizing part, and the storage part. Thus, it can think about, analyze, compare, and do other mental activities regarding that something intentionally; it can directly represent that something with symbols – written signs, sounds, gestures, etc. – thus, it can communicate information about that something to other members of its species; and it can intentionally memorize and recall that something, at least with some details and for some time. For example, we can do these activities (think about, analyze, compare, talk and write about, and memorize and later recall) to the vision of the house, the sound of the song, and the taste of the honey, but we cannot do these activities to the unconscious registration of the blood pressure, blood pH, and blood sodium level.

These properties of being globally available for various mental processes, being able to be stored and retrieved, and reportability certainly give organisms that have consciousness flexible response mechanism to cope with infinite challenges it may encounter in the environment and thus increase the survival chance of the organisms and their species.

Thus, although unconsciousness performs the vast majority of mental processes and are essential to life, there are something that is survival-promoting that unconsciousness cannot do while consciousness can. In the former case, unconsciousness may be considered superior while in the latter case consciousness is certainly superior.

**Q: Is being totally unconscious superior?**

A: From the discussion above, the answer is obviously “no”.

**Q: Or is it only superior to a conscious mind in a "Complete" Chinese room scenario, where the system/brain has already been fed with enough information to compute all its "results"?**

A: In real life, there are infinite, unpredictable challenges in the environment to tackle with. It’s impossible to feed the Chinese room with infinite amount of information for infinite scenarios in advance so that anyone in the room can automatically respond to each scenario correctly. This is true in the case of organisms as well. It’s impossible to have an unconscious system in any organism pre-fed with infinite information to cope with infinite challenges. That’s why consciousness evolves to tackle this problem of infinite challenges.

If it were possible to feed an infinite amount of information into a system, including an unconscious system, the answer to this question would probably be yes; but in real life, it’s not possible to do so.

**References.**

1. Earl B. The biological function of consciousness. Front Psychol. 2014;5:697. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00697.
2. Dehanene S. Fathoming unconscious depths. In: Consciousness and the brain. Penguin Books. 2014. New York, New York, USA. ISBN 978-0-670-02543-5, 978-0-14-312626-3. p 47-88.
3. Dehaene S, Changeux JP, Naccache L, Sackur J, Sergent C. Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: A testable taxonomy. Trends Cogn Sci. 2006 May;10(5):204-211. DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.03.007.
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Why do human beings double down on their perspective?
I am coming at this thinking about two different situations.

1. Those in political parties digging in their heels and doubling down on their beliefs.
2. Friends or relationship partners standing their ground harder and harder in an argument.

Why do we do this? I have briefly asked some friends why we do this and the answers are all vague, non-descriptive, or circular, such as:

* Because it's human nature (non-descriptive)
* Because it makes us angry when the other person says X perspective (why does it make us angry?)
* Because it hurts to be confronted with knowledge that is outside your comfort zone (why does it *hurt* exactly?)
* Because we have a need to be right...
* ...

But none of these are satisfying answers. I would like an answer that gets at the core of why this is, some sort of mathematical or highly logical answer.

Basically these answers point at some underlying mathematical or logical reason that is not easy to articulate clearly. **For some reason** getting confronted with a perspective that doesn't agree with your own makes people angry and double down on their own beliefs.

If I try to find a deeper reason or meaning for this, I say basically that you essentially have a sphere of awareness or knowledge. Anything outside of that knowledge that conflicts with your existing knowledge makes you try to reject it. BUT WHY? Obviously some people can short circuit this process and learn to ACCEPT new information by reasoning through it, even if it is uncomfortable at first. BUT WHY IS IT UNCOMFORTABLE? Also I'm not talking about those people, I'm talking about the ones (and it happens to everyone under certain circumstances) who **double down on their perspective**. Those who you can feel are digging in their heels.

Why do they double down? Why do they dig in their heels? Because it makes you feel good. But why does it make you feel good? Because you are right and your worldview is not *shaken*. But why does this feel good? Or from a different angle, they do this because hearing the perspective makes them angry. But why does it make you angry? Because it disagrees with your perspective? Why does disagreeing with your perspective make you angry? Because it is a form of change perhaps? But why does change cause anger? Because it disrupts the balance?

I don't know. What are the deeper reasons why people do this, and then not stopping there... What is the deeper reason for that, and for that and for that? Such that the real answer will be some sort of psychological axiom, an assumption that EVERYONE agrees is true and doesn't require further explanation.

# Answer
> 0 votes
> (why does it make us angry?) (why does it hurt exactly?)

Your question made me think of the work of Festinger, Riecken & Schachter (1956) In their book "*When Prophecy Fails*" they follow a UFO religion as it anticipates an apocalypse. The authors believe that the group's beliefs are brought on by five conditions:

* A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves.
* A belief must be held with deep conviction and it must have some relevance to action, that is, to what the believer does or how he or she behaves.
* The person holding the belief must have committed himself to it; that is, for the sake of his belief, he must have taken some important action that is difficult to undo. In general, the more important such actions are, and the more difficult they are to undo, the greater is the individual's commitment to the belief.
* The belief must be sufficiently specific and sufficiently concerned with the real world so that events may unequivocally refute the belief.
* Such undeniable disconfirmatory evidence must occur and must be recognized by the individual holding the belief.
* The individual believer must have social support. It is unlikely that one isolated believer could withstand the kind of disconfirming evidence that has been specified. If, however, the believer is a member of a group of convinced persons who can support one another, the belief may be maintained and the believers may attempt to proselytize or persuade nonmembers that the belief is correct.

The authors argue that cognitive dissonance drives the behavior and that when confronted with disconfirming evidence they seek relief, in some cases, they try to find evidence that confirms their view rather than one that disconfirms it.

Using these as a guideline, one could measure someone's commitment or belief on an issue, and from there have a better idea of how likely they are to change their mind on a topic when presented with evidence that counters their belief.

It should be noted, though that the methods of study used by the authors of the book have been heavily criticized. The validity of their claims is questionable.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When\_Prophecy\_Fails

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Tags: emotion, thought, rationality, belief
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# Question
Title: Which experiment design is this? Between and within combined
The basis of my experiment are 4 neutral text snippets. For each text snippet, I create an uncertain and a certain version so that I have a total of 8 text snippets (2 versions for each text snippet, 1 certain and 1 uncertain version). The "version" of the text is the IV.

Now, the participants are randomly shown 4 text snippets at the same time (always 2 uncertain and 2 certain text snippets). The participants are asked to indicate if they perceive the text snippet as uncertain or not (DV).

On the one hand, I have a within-subject design because each participant sees uncertain and certain versions of text snippets. On the other hand, I have a between-subject design because a participant only sees either the certain or the uncertain version of a text snippet.

In my analysis, I will first examine the difference between the uncertain and certain versions in general (I sum up the results of the certain and the uncertain versions and compare the results). Then, I will examine the difference between the uncertain and certain versions of each text snippet.

My question is: What is the name of that setting? Is that setting a crossover-design?

# Answer
> 3 votes
If I understand your description correctly, you have one within-subject factor with two levels (certain/uncertain) and one between-subject factor (based on how you assign the different text snippets to different group, but I'm not sure I understand what exactly you are doing there). So, this would be a repeated-measures design with different groups (based on the assignment of different text snippets) which I would refer to as is a mixed design (https://www.discoveringstatistics.com/statistics-hell-p/porus-comparing-means/mixed-designs/), and you could analyse it, e.g., with a mixed ANOVA (https://statistics.laerd.com/spss-tutorials/mixed-anova-using-spss-statistics.php). I think crossover-design refers to something similar.

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Tags: experiment-design
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title: Motor skill: Let speed come naturally?

text:
# Question
Title: Motor skill: Let speed come naturally?
I've commonly heard that when practising a motor skill, one should start slow with correct form and one shouldn't force speed. Rather, let speed come naturally. I believe this but I can't find a citation for its prescription. Does anyone have a study to support (or deny) this?

I'm particularly interested in aiming movement in first-person shooter video-games. The input device is moving a computer mouse. I am also training in Super smash Bros. Melee, a platform fighting game. The input device is a GameCube controller. These would both fall under fine motor skill.

# Answer
> 0 votes
The following citations don't speak to starting slow, but they confirm that speed and accuracy increase with practise.

> It is interesting that with practice, \[...\] limb trajectories get faster and more asymmetric (Elliott, Chua, Pollock, & Lyons, 1995; Khan & Franks, 2000).

Elliott, D., Hansen, S., Grierson, L.E.M., Lyons, J., Bennett, S.J., Hayes, S.J. 2010. Goal-directed aiming: two components but multiple processes. *Psychological Bulletin*, 136, 1023-1044. PDF page 5.

> Decrease in endpoint variability occurs in conjunction with an increase in the peak velocity of the limb (e.g., Elliott et al., 1995).

(Elliott et al., 2010, PDF page 10)

Edit: Found some more relevant sources.

> The group exposed to the slowest speed training program was the only group \[...\] which had significantly lower time-on-target scores from the control group who trained at the criterion speed.

Barbara E. Jensen (1975) Pretask Speed Training and Movement Complexity as Factors in Rotary Pursuit Skill Acquisition, *Research Quarterly*. American Alliance for Health, Physical Education and Recreation, 46:1, 1-11, DOI: 10.1080/10671315.1975.10615298

> The effect of learning a novel skill at specific speeds on performance over a range of speeds was examined on the pursuit rotor. Three groups of subjects were given three days of training: Group 1 at 30 rpm, Group 2 at 60 rpm, and Group 3 at 30–45.60 rpm. Group 4, a control, practiced on a pegboard task during this period. On Days 4 and 5, all four groups were tested for transfer at 30, 45, and 60 rpm. For the most part, Group 3 appeared to perform equal to or better across the range of speeds than any of the other groups.

Siegel, D., & Davis, C. (1980). Transfer Effects of Learning at Specific Speeds on Performance over a Range of Speeds. *Perceptual and Motor Skills*, 50(1), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.1980.50.1.83

> Speed and accuracy are two sides of the same skill coin. although there is a strong and widespread belief in industry that the instructor should focus on developing accuracy because speed will follow, that is not true. The research is clear: if you want speed and accuracy, you must train for both and preferably right from the start of training.

James, R. (1995). Chapter 8. In *The techniques of instruction* (p. 55). Aldershot, Hampshire, England: Gower.

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Tags: learning, performance, motor, sport-psychology
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