# Question
Title: Which statistical tests to use when analyzing NASA TLX?
The NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) is a subjective, multidimensional assessment tool that rates perceived workload. A set of different scales (Mental Demand, Physical Demand, Temporal Demand, Performance, Effort, Frustration) are combined into one measure ranging from 0 to 100, the task load index.

Which statistical tests can be used to compare these test results? I am particularly concerned with whether or not the task load index could be considered an interval variable, and thus whether, for example, a simple student *t*-test could be used. In particular, is the NASA-TLX scalar invariant? Can a difference between two means (e.g., 50 and 60) be interpreted as equal to a difference between two other means (e.g., 10 and 20)?

If not, what are the consequences of using a wrong test? What *is* a suitable test?

# Answer
> 6 votes
In Stevens' levels of measurement framework, the NASA-TLX is an ordinal scale, not an interval scale, because there is no way to know a priori how much "workload" each point corresponds to. In other words, we can only know how much workload a point corresponds to after observing the data from our sample. Indeed, Hart's own review of the NASA-TLX suggests that workload is "ill-defined" (Hart, 2006).

While levels of measurement often seems to be taught in behavioral and social science as accepted fact, however, the levels of measurement framework is quite controversial among methodologists. It is a useful enough heuristic taxonomy for didactic purposes, but it is not known to be *inferentially* meaningful. Analytic relatives of the t-test (i.e., least-squares/maximum likelihood regression) exist for all four types, so the type of scale should not necessarily concern you too much here. I have not encountered it outside the behavioral sciences.

Statistical inference is essentially a mathematical pathfinder that formally relates a specific question to a specific answer by way of the evidence. It is therefore impossible to say what a suitable test would be without knowing the specific question(s)―**different analyses test different questions**. For the same data set, one analysis may be meaningful (i.e., discriminates between conceivable answers) for one question, but not another; for another analysis, this may be reversed. The consequence of using a wrong test is that you effectively answer a question you did not ask, while not answering the question you did ask.

## References

* Hart SG. NASA-Task Load Index (NASA-TLX): 20 years later. Paper presented at the HFES; San Francisco, CA. 2006.

# Answer
> 4 votes
> I am particularly concerned with whether or not the task load index could be considered an interval variable,

Yup.

This is a fundamental assumption people make when constructing, administering and analyzing any measure under the classical test theory (CTT) paradigm i.e. count items and add 'em up.

That is to say, your variable is certainly treated as though it is linear, but are the *scores* actually linear? is it valid to combine scores on each factor to derive another score?

Even further, conceptually, let us presume that two individuals have the *same task load index*. Do they possess, quantitatively, the same amount of the latent variable? Not necessarily.

This is a fundamental assumption and inherent flaw in classical test theory.

> Can a difference between two means (e.g., 50 and 60) be interpreted as equal to a difference between two other means (e.g., 10 and 20)?

They could be, but this is an assumption you are making by applying classical test theory. As noted above, you are also assuming that two individuals with the same score are equal. This is also an assumption that may or may not be correct.

> If not, what are the consequences of using a wrong test?

This is a no-brainer and I’m sure you know the answer to this: the wrong inferences will be made regarding results, and how they are applied in a meaningful way.

Suppose perceived workload is non-linear and instead, say, exponential, and it is tightly correlated with the "likelihood of totally spazzing out." NOTE: despite earnest lobbying on my behalf, I was unsuccessful in convincing the APA to consider *Low Spaz Threshold Disorder* for inclusion in the DSM-V. Oh well, there is always DSM-VI. notwithstanding, incorrectly assuming workload is linear might lead you to erroneously think that someone with a score of 70 has only a slightly higher likelihood of spazzing out relative to someone with a score of 60.

> What is a suitable test?

If this actually concerns you - and it should if you care about validly measuring the construct, look into item-response theory (IRT) which departs from the CTT that is commonly applied.

Briefly, IRT is a statistical model that specifies the probability of each response option to an item as a function of the target trait thought to be measured. Respondents are no longer scored by the number of items they answer correctly. Instead, they are assigned an estimate of their location on the underlying distribution of ability (ϴ). Although it's commonly applied for exams, where the term ability is meaningful, ability can also be taken to mean level of depression, stress, happiness, procrastination or any other latent trait of interest. In your case, perceived workload.

**IRT can take into account the non-linear relationship between an individual's score and their level of ϴ. When estimating a person's ϴ, parameters such as item difficulty and discrimination can be taken into account.**

For each item, one can derive an item characteristic curve (ICC), which maps the probability of endorsing an item according to an individual's ability. Think of ϴ as being scored in standard deviations. This figure shows the ICC for a dichotomous variable.

Of greater relevance to your problem, this can also be done for items that are polytomous. Note how the estimated ϴ shifts in a non-linear fashion as we go from endorsing 0, 1 ... 3 in step-wise manner. That is, within a single item, the level of ϴ can differ substantially between likelihood of endorsing "agree" versus "strongly agree."

A test characteristic curve can also be derived as shown below. The true score is the essentially the raw score. As you can see, about 15 points separate people with ϴ = -1 vs. 0, while about 10 points separates ϴ = 1 vs. 2. Once ability estimates are determined, appropriate statistical tests can be applied.

In theory, I think you *could* apply IRT to the NASA-TLX. You would probably need to treat each subscale as though it was actually an item, with the workload index as the summed score. There are also several assumptions that need to be considered when applying IRT. One important one in your context is that it assumes that single latent trait is being measured. As I know little about the NASA-TLX, it's unclear to me if this is the case. And you will need a large dataset to calibrate the curve functions.

A simple but informative primer can be found here:

**A Simple Guide to the Item Response Theory (IRT) and Rasch Modeling**

http://www.creative-wisdom.com/computer/sas/IRT.pdf

Note: the Rasch model is the most common model of IRT, but it deals with dichotomous data. What you're after is a polytomous model, but you would do well to first understand how the Rasch model is applied.

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Tags: methodology, statistics
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# Question
Title: How to get started in Cognitive Science?
I'm currently studying Philosophy and am planning to focus on the Philosophy of Mind/Perception + Philosophy of Language in the forthcoming years. However, I'd really wish to get into Cognitive Science for my further postgraduate career, but I'm not sure where to start given the vastness of the field. I believe that I still can incorporate some Psychology or Computer Science modules into my current curriculum in the next semester.

**My question is, if I want to get into the Cognitive Science, which pre-requisites are essential to master beforehand?** By pre-requisites I mean the range of subjects that would facilitate my transition into the field. I've found several 'Introduction to Cognitive Science' textbooks, but none of them happen to elaborate upon the pre-requisites.

# Answer
*Cognitive sciences* is an extremely broad term, and really more of an interdisciplinary term for fields related by a focus on explaining behavior in terms of mental processes, with varying ways of operationalizing what that means exactly. (See MaríaAnt's excellent answer to a previous question, "What is the difference between behavioral science and cognitive science?")

### Mathematics

Mastering some types of math is extremely helpful for postgraduate work. You will need to be *very* comfortable with doing algebra at least to a high school precalculus level, for starters. Understanding and expressing a hypothesis in the form of a statistical model is almost entirely algebraic, and unless you're comfortable manipulating differences and interactions between variables, you'll be limited to relatively simple questions. You'll also have a considerable head start if you have at least a passing familiarity with inferential logic, standard probability theory, matrix algebra and basic calculus.

### Theoretical content

There is no theoretical content which should be learned *universally* before going into cognitive science, really. If you want to work in a particular field of cognitive science, then it is of course necessary to familiarize yourself with that particular field's literature. If you want to work with perception, you should be intimately familiar with the perception literature and relevant models, but need not necessarily know much about the clinical literature; if you want to work with AI, computer science is essential, where it's not at all critical in educational psychology. Different (sub)fields tend to be their own little fiefdoms.
> 2 votes

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Tags: study-cognitive-sciences
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# Question
Title: How to efficiently get a sense of the meaning of a score on a non-aptitude test that you encounter in a journal article?
**Context:** When reading research articles in psychology, you often encounter new non-aptitude self-report psychological tests (e.g., measures of personality, well-being, psychopathology, learning style, stress, goal orientation, etc.). Most of these tests involve obtaining the sum or the mean of a set of items for one or more scales or subscales. Each item typically involves item text and a consistent set of response options (e.g., Likert-type response scales, yes-no response scales, etc.). There are thousands of such scales, some which are frequently used; others are used only once.

A lot has been written about how to assess test validity. However, here I wanted to focus particularly on how to assess what a particular individual or group score means. Specifically, I'm thinking of the situation where you are reading a journal article and you encounter a scale that you have not seen before, such as:

* A 10-item measure of self-esteem on 1 to 5 scale; group mean is 3.2. Is the sample generally high, low, or moderate in self-esteem?
* A 30-item check-list of good eating habits with a mean of 20.7. Does the sample have good eating habits?

For well developed tests, there is a test manual. Other times there is a website or key journal article with information. Finally, in some cases, very little information is readily available. In some cases useful information is given in the methods section, but typically, on its own, this is inadequate. Thus, the process of trying to locate information such as item content and normative comparisons begin.

A lot has been said about normative and criterion referenced test interpretation. If you are using a test in clinical practice or you are using a test in your own research, you should invest time in understanding what different scores on the test actually mean. However, when casually reading a journal article you can encounter many tests. In such cases, the article is one of many, and you might just want to get a quick sense of what a given score means.

### Question

* **What is a good way to get both a normative and absolute understanding of the meaning of a group or individual non-aptitude test score?**
* **What is an efficient way of obtaining the information required to make such a judgement?**

Note the use of the term "non-aptitude". I'd like to exclude discussion of intelligence testing, ability testing, and knowledge testing, and so on.

**Update:** To clarify, I didn't mean to imply in the question that item information was not available anywhere. I guess the question is referring to the general situation where there probably are previous uses of the measure in the literature, and there might be a key article that describes the measure somewhere. I guess I'm thinking of a good general strategy for securing relevant information and then using it to form an understanding of the scale properties.

# Answer
Tough question.

I'm going to assume that the question pertains to measures which lack all the information you've outlined: test manual, validity studies, website and key articles, item content and normative comparisons. If these assumptions are correct, then what you are a describing is an insufficiently explained measure. I will argue that we necessarily cannot know what such a scale means in any scientific sense.

A scale is a measure. A *scientific* measure is a process which generates evidence, i.e., observations that discriminate between different possible answers to a specific question. (Data may constitute evidence with respect to one question and not another.) The outcome of this discrimination, or analysis, is what the scale "means", i.e., the logically sound interpretation we may make on the basis of analyzing the evidence.

To determine whether a method does, in fact, generate evidence, we need to be able to replicate it independently. But the premises imply that we don't have enough information to do so. Because we cannot independently verify which hypotheses the evidence generated by the method discriminates between, if any, there is no way to know what it means.
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, test
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# Question
Title: Which area of the brain was first correctly associated with a specific function?
I have read on this website that Broca's area was the first area of the brain to be associated correctly with a specific function, in that case language. But I couldn't find any other source for the statement, so I wonder if this statement is true. Any idea?

# Answer
> 8 votes
Broca is generally considered the first person to localise structure to function, however, there are some earlier individuals to consider:

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**EDIT: i recommend the chapter *Neurolinguistics from the Middle Ages to the Pre-Modern Era: Historical Vignettes* in: Stemmer, B. & Whittaker, H.A. (1998). Handbook of Neurolinguistics. Academic Press: London.**

it has a very thorough look at this topic as it relates to language localisation and cites a number of case studies published well before broca. there are some departures from what i have written below and whittaker seems to give more significance to bouillaud's work. of note, bouillaud identified the significance of the double-dissociation paradigm in demonstrating the localisation of function:

> Bouillaud claims first to be able to demonstrate that speech movements may be compromised separately from limb movements and second to demonstrate which part of the hemispheres is involved in the control of speech movements. **To prove his first claim he states that two actions are functionally separate if they can be disrupted in isolation from each other**, which is evident for three cases in which a severe speech disorder was not accompanied by any impairment of limb movement or by any defect of nonspeech tongue movements. Thus, speech has its own motor control center.

wittaker notes that broca wasn't the first to localise language to the frontal lobe, but the political and scientific climate was such that he was essentially credited for this. in 1859, for example, he had founded the French Anthropological Society, which by the early 1860s had already commenced debating the cerebral localisation of mental functions.

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**Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828)**

Known as the father of phrenology. Most will generally mock gall for this theory, but you need to appreciate his ideas in context: he was the first to propose that the brain is the organ of an individual's faculties, tendencies and feelings. Of relevance to relating structure to function:

> Gall did not study patients with acquired loss of speech but instead, studied the bumps and protrusions on the skill of highly musical persons... Gall localised the music faculty (Tonsinn) in a specific location of the brain, which was in close proximity to the area for language.

Kennaway, J. Music and the Nerves, 1700-1900.

**Jean-Baptiste bouillaud (1796-1881)**

Another alternative. In 1825 he wrote:

Finger, S. (2001). Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations Into Brain Function.

**Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens (1794-1867)**

But perhaps the most compelling of the three is flourens:

> ... in 1825 Flourens carried out localised lesions of the brain in living pigeons and rabbits, observing the effects on motricity, sensility and behaviour. These experiences demonstrated convincingly for the first time that the main division of the brain were indeed responsible for largely different functions. When the cerebral hemispheres were removed, for example, all perceptions, motricity, and judgement ended. **When the cerebellum was removed, the animal's equilibrium and motor coordination suffered.** When the brainsteam was removed, the result was death. Thus \[he\] concluded that the cerebral hemispheres are responsible for higher cognitive functions, the cerebellum for regulating and integrating movements, and the medulla for vital functions, such as circulation, respiration and general bodily stability.

Eiss, H. (2014). Insanity and Genius: Masks of Madness and the Mapping of Meaning and Value.

# Answer
> 7 votes
Phineas Gage had his famous spike through the head in 1848, which lead to some discoveries about the function of that area, but these were quite general. See:

But, Broca appears to be the first to identify a specific area:

> In 1861, the French surgeon, Pierre Paul Broca, described two patients who had lost the ability to speak after injury to the posterior inferior frontal gyrus of the brain.

Reference:

* Dronkers, N. F., Plaisant, O., Iba-Zizen, M. T., & Cabanis, E. A. (2007). Paul Broca's historic cases: high resolution MR imaging of the brains of Leborgne and Lelong. Brain, 130(5), 1432-1441.

# Answer
> 5 votes
for the record, and as confirmation of what the above answers affirm regarding ancient times here is the abstract from a fairly recent historical review of the subject:

*Fragments of neurology can be found in the oldest medical writings in antiquity. Recognizable cerebral localization is seen in Egyptian medical papyri. Most notably, the Edwin Smith papyrus describes hemiplegia after a head injury. Similar echoes can be seen in Homer, the Bible, and the pre-Hippocratic writer Alcmaeon of Croton. While Biblical writers thought that the heart was the seat of the soul, Hippocratic writers located it in the head. Alexandrian anatomists described the nerves, and Galen developed the ventricular theory of cognition whereby mental functions are classified and localized in one of the cerebral ventricles. Medieval scholars, including the early Church Fathers, modified Galenic ventricular theory so as to make it a dynamic model of cognition. Physicians in antiquity subdivided the brain into separate areas and attributed to them different functions, a phenomenon that connects them with modern neurologists.*

F.Clifford Rose - Journal of the History of the Neurosciences: Basic and Clinical Perspectives Volume 18, Issue 3, 2009

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Tags: reference-request, neurology, neuroanatomy, history-of-psychology
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# Question
Title: Who first used the term 'filter' in cognitive science context?
Donald Broadbent's 1958 book *Perception and Communication* is the oldest work I can find that makes use of this term.

However, I wonder if perhaps someone else had used the term earlier, or if Broadbent had used the term in published work before that date.

# Answer
Colin Cherry coined the phrase the Cocktail party effect to describe the ability for people to tune or filter out distraction and focus on one thing; the illustration being able to focus on a conversation amidst all the background noise at a cocktail party.

Broadbent's filter model of attention was developed from Cherry's work proposing the concept filtering information. Cherry first used the idea of a filter. Broadbent was the first person to officially coin the term `filter` as it is used within this context and within a cognitive model.
> 5 votes

# Answer
as others have mentioned, Colin Cherry's *cocktail party problem* highlighted a crucial bottleneck in information flow at the highest levels of sensory-motor neural integration. by giving this phenomenon a sexy title Cherry showed an intuitive gift for public relations! however the ground for his thinking was prepared by prior theoretical developments - from the point of view of psychology one should mention Kenneth Craik's work during WW2. undoubtedly the seminal event was the publication at the end of the 1940's of Shannon and Weaver's *Mathematical Theory of Communication*. this book codified a set of ideas which had been arising naturally in many different areas of study due to the rapidly increasing impact of automatic computation, control systems and electronic communications.

as a footnote, it may merit attention that Donald Broadbent's early use of the term *filter* in 1958 occurred at pretty much the same epoch as the mathematically sophisticated work of Rudolf Kalman (cf *Kalman Filter*) and co-workers was finding its way into the literature.

the rather close semantic association between the new "sciences" of *cybernetics* and *ergonomics*, as also the intimate connection of both with what engineers were coming to know as *automatic control theory* should alert us to the fact that it would be naive to view this paradigm within psychology as a form of pure research. in fact it has always been very task-oriented, and relates to the increasing role of human beings *as components of complex systems* in the context of large-scale engineering, industrial and military applications. Kalman's team was funded by the US Navy, whilst the MRC Psychology Unit at Cambridge was always a government research department run on civil service lines rather than an academic institution.

this background may explain the otherwise curious fact that in the 1950's a huge research effort was directed towards questions relating to *vigilance*. interesting as it may be, the experimental vigilance paradigm would seem an unlikely choice of topic if we wished to interpret human information processing research in terms of the task of developing a unifying model of mammalian behaviour.

an event-filled decade or so of detailed empirical research and conceptual development in the sphere of *human information processing* is neatly epitomized by looking at Broadbent's groundbreaking *Perception and Communication (1958)* and comparing it with his comprehensive review of the field in *Decision and Stress (1971)*
> 3 votes

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Tags: history-of-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is 'intuition' related to 'extrasensory perception'?
I come from a computer science background and am a big time AI enthusiast. I am trying to think about how can we map 'intuition' to a process in artificial intelligence. As I understand, 'intuition' means generating (correct) knowledge (for ourselves) about something without knowing 'how' we did it. This leads to the following questions:

* Is 'intuition' related to 'extrasensory perception' (ESP)? As far as I know, ESP is not accepted by the scientific community but I could not conclude the same about 'intuition'.
* If they are related, how does scientific community explain 'intuition'?

I seek pointers to relevant literature which would help me understand intuition from the perspective of cognitive sciences. My thought process has inclined me towards believing that there is nothing like 'intuition' and everything is deterministic which is why an AI can never be intuitive.

# Answer
No, intuition is not related to ESP in modern cognitive science.

### A modern view on intuitive thinking

While ESP certainly retains its pseudoscience status (e.g., Rouder and Morey, 2011), intuition and intuitive thinking has been used in the psychological literature in evolving ways over the years. Outside the heydays of Skinnerian radical behaviorism, the notion of intuition has been consistently present in the cognitive sciences.

An influential modern model of intuitive thinking is called dual process theory (e.g., Evans and Stanovich, 2013). The dual process theory model, which entered the public consciousness with Daniel Kahneman's popular *Thinking, Fast and Slow*, proposes that reasoning happens by two discrete "paths": the deliberate and reasoned System 2, and the fast and intuitive System 1.

This account explains intuition and intuitive thinking in terms of different heuristics, which should be familiar. Heuristics can have multiple subtly different meanings depending on field and context, but broadly speaking, a heuristic is a decision process which is usually right. You can find a number of references about heuristics in this question.

While ESP is non-deterministic almost by definition, dual process theory does not take a position on determinism. We are simply not consciously aware of the underlying heuristic machinery's workings. (As Artem notes in his comment.)

## References
> 8 votes

# Answer
* **Is 'intuition' related to 'extrasensory perception' (ESP)? As far as I know, ESP is not accepted by the scientific community but I could not conclude the same about 'intuition'**.

You're correct, ESP is not accepted by the community, and presuming, for the sake of argument, it could be true, the scientific experiments should be trivial to be done and replicated.

* **If they are related, how does scientific community explain 'intuition'?**

Intuition is deeply embedded knowledge you have acquired. As a simple example, when you hear a foreign speaker, you "just know" that some words "sound" wrong. And so would they, if you try to speak their language without having acquired it over many years (and most specially, the younger years).

There are at least three schools of thought here, not at all incompatible, in my opinion:

1. **System 1 versus System 2**

In the first school/set of studies one calls intuition as "System 1", and research tends to focus on deviations from "rationality".

As an example: a bat and a ball cost 1.10, the bat costs 1.00 more than the ball. How much is the ball?

Subjects respond .10. But that is the wrong answer. Here is the wikipedia page on "Thinking, fast and slow", from Daniel Kahneman, and here is the one on its major school of thought.

2. **A second school, mostly headed by Gary Klein and colleagues, concerns recognition-primed decision**.

Here we have the ongoing action of jet pilots or firefighters as they rush to solve rapidly changing situations. The books by Klein and the references on the wikipedia page will give you some pointers.

I have a presentation of his work here (never mind slide 10), and I have proposed that this model is reconcilable with the amazing results of Benjamin Libet, and the slides are here.

3. **Computer models of fluid concepts.**

Another set of researchers, following Douglas Hofstadter, have built computer models that are, in a very simple way, "intuitive". You may want to check "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies" and the later thesis (Called Phaeaco, Musicat, Metacat, SeqSee, Letter Spirit, or my own project Capyblanca on an intuitive chess machine, published here and here, with source code available here).

These models have some deeply embedded knowledge that can reflect the properties of human intuition. A simple example is the project Numbo (on Hofstadter's book), that "knows" that 19x21 is "close" to 400, but still has to do some "thinking" to get to the correct answer. Here we get in-between System 1 and System 2: System 1 "points" to a number close to 400, and System 2 kicks in and does the final computing.

If your interest is on computers & intuition, you should definitely read Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts & Creative Analogies and the above thesis.

I also did a quick interview to "Psychology Today" some years back about intuition, but that's more about pop journalism than actual science. In my opinion, this is one of the most promising areas of research in cognitive science.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology, intuition
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# Question
Title: Do researchers and laypeople understand statistics differently?
I'm looking for references related to how researchers and laypeople understand concepts of statistical inference. In particular, I'm looking for articles in which subjects could demonstrate statistical competence by evaluating statistical claims. Does anyone have a relevant reference?

# Answer
> 9 votes
Even among researchers there is widespread misunderstanding of core statistics ideas. Look at the work by Geoff Cumming. Example paper title: 'Researchers misunderstand confidence intervals and standard error bars.'

# Answer
> 3 votes
To add to Tom's answer and expand on my comment that lay people and researchers both generally have an inadequate understanding of basic statistics, another study by Hoekstra, Morey, Rouder and Wagenmakers (2014) asked 120 researchers and grad students plus 442 first-year students in psychology to indicate whether the following six different interpretations of a 95% confidence interval were correct.

> **Questionnaire content** (Hoekstra, Morey, Rouder and Wagenmakers, 2014)
>
> 1. The probability that the true mean is greater than 0 is at least 95 %.
> 2. The probability that the true mean equals 0 is smaller than 5 %.
> 3. The “null hypothesis” that the true mean equals 0 is likely to be incorrect.
> 4. There is a 95 % probability that the true mean lies between 0.1 and 0.4.
> 5. We can be 95 % confident that the true mean lies between 0.1 and 0.4.
> 6. If we were to repeat the experiment over and over, then 95 % of the time the true mean falls between 0.1 and 0.4.
>
> (I highly recommend looking up the quite humorous questionnaire, featuring Professor Bumbledorf, in Appendix 2.

On average, participants endorsed more than three of these statements, and all three subgroups gave substantial endorsement for individual statements. **All of the statements are wrong, however.** Only eight first-year students and three researchers gave a flawless response, i.e., all false, despite the questionnaire explicitly raising this possibility!

> The correct interpretation is, “If we were to repeat the experiment over and over, then the confidence intervals contain the true mean 95% of the time.”

(Mouse-over for the correct interpretation.)

### References

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, reference-request
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# Question
Title: Is there a way to compare the subjective experiences of two different subjects upon an object?
It is the major problem of all cognitive sciences to deal with subjectivity. On the other hand, in order to figure out what is cognition or psychology, one must ultimately deal with this problem. As a starter, I wonder if there is any study about identicalness of perceptions among subjects. Are the perceptions of two different subjects on an object identical? In other words, can the perceptions of two subjects about a tomato differ from each other? One may experience the redness of tomato as what the other call blue.

# Answer
## Can We Compare Subjective Experience?

Consider this pain scale, variations of which are commonly used in medical settings:

If two people answer "6 - distressing, miserable pain," can we reliably compare the subjective pain intensities between the two individuals? How would we know that one person's experience of "distressing, miserable pain" is the same intensity as the other's?

## Supertasters and Taste Perception

What's helped us to answer a question like this comes from Linda Bartoshuk's work on taste perception in so-called supertasters vs. normal tasters.

Bartoshuk famously uses blue dye to reveal the number of tastebuds on participants' tongues. As you can see below, supertasters have a lot more tastebuds than normal folks (and what Bartoshuk calls "non-tasters"). As a consequence of this, we see variation in taste perception.

What's important is that the number of taste buds provides a reliable physical/genetic basis by which to predict taste perception (e.g., bitterness intensity). So we would expect reports of bitterness intensity like so: supertasters \> normal tasters \> non-tasters.

Consider this 9-point scale assessing bitterness intensity:

If a supertaster and taster both rated a 5 on this scale, we'd wonder why there wasn't a difference. In fact, how could we know that a 5 for a supertaster is the same intensity as a 5 for a normal taster? Perhaps a 5 is twice as bitter for a supertaster than a normal taster, but this scale is not suitable for determining that.

## Cross-modality Matching

Without getting into too much detail, the solution to between-group comparison is cross-modality matching. Basically, we ask participants to compare their experiences of bitterness to, for example, the brightness of a light.

Importantly, perceptions of brightness are presumed to be independent of perceptions of taste (i.e., having more/less taste buds isn't related to perceptions of brightness). So variation in brightness between the two groups will be the same on average. Thus, it can serve as a potential means by which to compare subjective intensity of taste perception.

Bartoshuk uses this example with sound that I find easy to understand:

> We put earphones on everyone and ask both groups to adjust the loudness of a tone to the sweetness of the soda. If hearing and taste are really independent, then the average perception of loudness should be the same in the two groups, but subjects with the high density of taste buds set the tone to 90 decibels (about the loudness of a train whistle), and those with the low density set the tone to 80 decibels (about the loudness of a dial tone). As we know that a tone of 90 decibels sounds twice as loud as a tone of 80 decibels, we can conclude that the soda tastes twice as sweet to those with the high density of taste buds. We have identified a systematic difference in taste intensity between these two groups.

You can also use imagined sensations. For example, Fast (2004) has found that:

> supertasters matched the bitterness of dark chocolate to the brightness of low beam headlights at night, while nontasters matched it to the brightness of the moon.

Consider this scale, which uses cross-modality matching to assess perception of candy sweetness intensity between supertasters (ST) and non-tasters (NT):

When using these matched modalities, you get systematic differences in sweetness perception that you otherwise wouldn't see using the standard 9-point sensory scale above.

## Further Reading

*I didn't give a particularly comprehensive outline of cross-modality matching, so for more information, consult the sources below.*

Bartoshuk, L. (2014). The measurement of pleasure and pain. *Perspectives on Psychological Science, 9*(1), 91-93.

Bartoshuk, L. M., Fast, K., & Snyder, D. J. (2005). Differences in our sensory worlds: Invalid comparisons With labeled scales. *Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14*(3), 122-125.

Kalva, J. J., Sims, C. A., Puentes, L. A., Snyder, D. J., & Bartoshuk, L. M. (2014). Comparison of the Hedonic General Labeled Magnitude Scale with the Hedonic 9-Point Scale. *Journal of Food Science, 79*(2), S238-S245.
> 8 votes

# Answer
These are some of the common ways that psychologists use to test subjective experience:

* **Introspection.** Introspection has fallen a bit out of fashion after the hype surrounding mathematical psychology, but in some areas introspection still is a valid method, especially if other approaches are impossible or unethical.

A famous psychological self-experiment whose result rely solely on introspection is that of Niels Bierbaumer, who let himself be injected with a deadly dosis of curare, which he survived because he was mechanically ventilated by a respiration therapist.
* **Interviews.** Just ask what a person feels or thinks. Quite often they simply tell you the truth.
* **Questionnaires.** Some are straightforward, some try (some even succeed at) hiding what information they are after. Compared to interviews they have the advantage of allowing only standardized (questions and) answers, which can then by evaluated mathematically.
* **Implicit tests.** An example is the implicit association test, in which different reaction times to different stimuli (e.g. words or images) are interpreted as a person's bias towards those stimuli.

Taking your example, you might present a person with the word "Tomato", an image of a tomato, or the actual object, and measure how quickly they click on the word "tasty", and compare that to how quickly they click on the same word when they are presented with, for example, a banana.
* **Observation of behavior.** Either in an experimental setting or a field study. I don't know what the correct term is for observing normally occurring everyday behavior (in contrast to artificial behavior like clicking buttons when you see words on a screen), but I will give an example:

You invite people for a study that you say is about emotions in movies. That study is only a "cover story" to the real test you are doing. Participants have to watch a movie and (that is the fake study) fill in a questionnaire about it. What people don't know is that some of them get to see a happy movie, others see a sad movie. The movie is long, and the questionnaire is even longer (and you set the experiment to fall into people's lunch time, so they arrive hungry), so you give them something to eat between the movie and the "test": there is a bowl of tomato salad, a fruit salad, some bread, and so on. What you are interested in and what you actually observe and measure is, wether people are more inclined to eat tomato salad after a happy or sad movie. (The number of participants and their random distribution to the two movies will average out the fact that certain individuals like or dislike tomatoes.)

There are many other ways to indirectly study human (and animal) emotion and thought, and it is part of the ingenuity and creativity of scholars to invent ever new study designs. There are too many of them for me to list them here (and I certainly don't know half of them), but if you are interested, there are many books in every scientific library that teach about designing studies, and many articles (some freely available online) that show how research is actually done.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception
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# Question
Title: Lecture versus problem-based learning of psychology
Studying psychology at a German university, the first two years of your curriculum will be almost entirely filled with lectures: students sit in an auditorium, listen to the professor talk for 90 minutes, they take notes, read a book or two, memorize as much of the content of lecture and books as they can, and at the end of the semester they take an exam. There are six to eight lectures per week, adding up to 12 to 14 hours, and there are an equal number of exams, adding up to the same number of hours.

From my experience and from talking to fellow students, I have the impression that we don't learn much in this way. We call it "bulimic learning": eating up huge amounts of information in a short span of time, barfing it up during the exams, and then immediately wiping our minds of it to hurriedly fill it up again for the next test. This feeling of not learning much is not wholly subjective: a large part of the early education is methodological, and the superficial and incomplete understanding of this area becomes painfully apparent once we have to apply it in more practical seminars. Most of us have to look up even basic statistical procedures that we had to know to pass our tests.

Talking to the professors that teach these courses, the replied to my critique of the current system with pointing out that there are a hundred to two hundred students visiting each lecture, and that it would be impossible to teach them in any other manner. I am not convinced of this. Other disciplines, for example in the humanities, manage the same ratio of students per professors only with seminars, none of which have more than 30 students, and completely without lectures.

Science – and I mean all science –, in my opinion, is a practically applied occupation. Even a practitioner of a more theoretical field, like metaphysics or theoretical mathematics, creates new ideas, "experiments" with them, and writes a paper about them. There is no creativity and nothing practical in learning for an exam, while there is no science that you cannot teach in an applied manner, if you are willing to be less normative about what students need to know: let them find their own problems, their own literature, their own ideas, and present them, discuss them, and revise them. Just as they would do as graduated scholars and researchers.

In a review of studies comparing problem-based learning, with learners "actively elaborating their conceptual frameworks", and traditional teaching through lectures, Reynolds (1997) found that problem-based learning "encourages deep rather than shallow strategies of learning", while "students who followed a traditional curriculum ... manifested poorer learning strategies which favoured reproducing information, with less attention to personal comprehension". Additionally, "PBL courses tend to be associated with better attendance and **less distress and depression**". Results regarding the increase in knowledge appears to be contradictory, however.

**I wonder if there is more (and more recent) research on different methods of teaching psychology, or on the relative merits of lecture versus seminar style teaching, in or outside of psychology.**

---

Sources:

* Reynolds, F. (1997). Studying psychology at degree level: Would problem-based learning enhance students' experience? *Studies in Higher Education, 22*, 263-275. doi:10.1080/03075079712331380886

# Answer
There is a large amount of research of research that compares the effectiveness of problem based learning (PBL) with more traditional approaches such as lectures. Most of it stems from medical science education, and attests to the positive consequences of PBL (see the meta-analysis by Walker & Leary, 2009). However, some researchers have questioned how rigorous this research is and others have doubts whether the benefits of PBL are worth its costs - as it can be quite resource demanding (for a starting point into this discussion and literature, see e.g., Pease & Kuhn, 2011).

Furthermore, there seems to be much heterogeneity in the effectiveness of PBL (e.g., Walker & Leary, 2009). Several meta-analyses have been conducted in an effort to explain these differences. A good starting point into the subject may be Strobel and van Barneveld's (2009) meta-review of PBL-meta analyses. Quoting from their abstract:

> Problem-based learning (PBL) has been utilized for over 40 years in a variety of different disciplines. Although extensively researched, there is heated debate about the effectiveness of PBL. Several meta-analyses were conducted that provided a synthesis of the effects of PBL in comparison to traditional forms of instruction. This study used a qualitative meta-synthesis approach to compare and contrast the assumptions and findings of the meta-analytical research on the effectiveness of PBL. Findings indicated that **PBL was superior when it comes to long-term retention, skill development and satisfaction of students and teachers, while traditional approaches were more effective for short-term retention as measured by standardized board exams**.

\[emphasis added\]

If you are looking for research on PBL in psychology, the journal Teaching in Psychology may be worth a look. The journal is more of an outlet for publications on specific exercises and teaching-related resources ("hands-on-approach"). However, the proposed teaching methods and exercises (which could be often regarded as PBL) are usually compared to traditional approaches in small evaluation studies. Other than that there doesn't seem to be much research that looks into the effectiveness of PBL in psychology on a broader level.

**References**

Pease, M. A., & Kuhn, D. (2011). Experimental analysis of the effective components of problem-based learning. Science Education, 95, 57–86. doi:10.1002/sce.20412

Strobel, J. , & van Barneveld, A. (2009). When is PBL More Effective? A Meta-synthesis of Meta-analyses Comparing PBL to Conventional Classrooms. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 3(1).

Walker, A. & Leary, H. (2009). A Problem Based Learning Meta Analysis: Differences Across Problem Types, Implementation Types, Disciplines, and Assessment Levels. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 3(1), 6-28.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I completely agree with you that psychology could be taught in much better ways. However, teaching just about any science in the way that you are wanting is a lot harder than you might think. It can't be compared to the humanities.

You are correct that all science is a practice and that you learn to be a practitioner through solving problems and receiving feedback. However, in science there is a massive overhead cost before one can actually work with the material. I got my undergraduate education in psychology by spending 10-20 hours/week in a lab for four years... THEN I was ready for graduate school. The courses were great to get my imagination going, but the lab was an absolute necessity. Learning any science means learning a lot of boring (and I mean REALLY boring) skills, most of which are entirely useless outside the field. Many times we learn a particular skill just to run a single study, then never use it again.

To do a single study in psychology takes a really long time. Participants have to be recruited, computer apps need to be programmed, teams of RAs need to be coordinated and trained, procedures need to be planned and tested and revised and tested..., etc.

To be clear, I'm not saying that the way we teach psychology at the undergraduate level is adequate. What I'm saying is that the optimal way to teach psychology would require a massive (read: expensive) overhaul to the system and ratios of students to professors that are not feasible. I think psychology is taught the way it is because it exposes people to the different topics with the hope that some of the useful information will be retained. For students who really like psychology, the assumption is that they will seek out their own education in psychology by finding a professor to work with. If your concern is just at the conceptual level, then I agree with you and I wish we could do more. However, if your concern is practical and you want an education in psychology, your only real option is to start devoting 40-80 hours per month working on 1-on-1 with a professor (or grad student) on a project.
> 0 votes

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Tags: teaching-of-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the neurobiological difference between Jungian Judging and Perceiving individual?
Jungian or Myers Briggs type indicator reserves the last letter of a 4 letter archetype to stand for Judging or Perceiving.

Part of being a Judging type is punctuality - being on time, keeping appointments, taking commitments seriously.

At the same time, for a Perceiving type time has a lot less meaning, and such people are not as punctual and can be late, miss appointments or just drop commitments.

From personal experience, it appears that the same individual can alternate between these two archetypes. **I'm interested if there's a distinct neurobiological process or a brain region that is responsible for punctuality - being on time, keeping commitments, etc.**

# Answer
> 5 votes
As the Myers Briggs is not particularly valued among personality researchers (see here, for example), it is unlikely that you will find research explicitly focusing on this question.

However, the MBTI types **Judging** (and its counterpart **Perceiving**) have been shown to **overlap with** the Big Five personality dimension **conscientiousness** (Judging = more conscientious, Perceiving = less conscientious, see this earlier answer). Therefore, you can look for research on the relationship of conscientiousness and brain structures. A limited amount of research as explicitly investigated this question.

Quoting from a review by DeYoung (2010, p. 1173-1174):

> Conscientiousness appears to reflect variation in the capacity for self-discipline and organization that is necessary for this form of top-down control. Conscientiousness predicts academic and occupational success, as well as behavior that promote health and longevity (Ozer & Benet-Martinez, 2006). It is likely to be associated with functions of the prefrontal cortex, the brain region responsible for much of the human ability to plan and follow complex rules (Bunge & Zelazo, 2006; Miller & Cohen, 2001). A structural MRI study found that **Conscientiousness was associated with greater volume of the middle frontal gyrus in lateral prefrontal cortex** (DeYoung et al., 2010), a region involved in maintaining goal-relevant information in working memory and in the execution of planned action based on abstract rules (Bunge & Zelazo, 2006).

There are some other studies on related constructs that may be interpreted as reflecting reflecting low conscientiousness (e.g., impulsivity, novelty seeking, and sensation seeking)

Again from DeYoung (2010, p. 1174):

> Functional neuroimaging studies have found that individual differences in self-reported impulsivity are associated with neural activity in both dorsal and ventral regions of lateral prefrontal cortex (Asahi, Okamato, Akado, Yamawaki, & Yokota, 2004; Brown, Manuck, Flory, & Hariri, 2006). Caution is required in interpreting studies of impulsivity, novelty seeking, and sensation seeking because these traits are heterogeneous in their associations with the Big Five, usually associated with Extraversion and sometimes with Neuroticism, as well as with Conscientiousness (Depue & Collins, 1999; Markon et al., 2005; Whiteside & Lynam, 2001). They seem to be compound traits, influenced by multiple more basic traits. Their compound nature appears to reflect the fact that problems of impulse control may be exacerbated both by weakness of the top-down control systems that override impulses (the presumed substrate of Conscientiousness) or by potentiation of the impulses themselves, which may be responses to cues of reward (Extraversion) or punishment (Neuroticism).

Note that this is correlational research that can't answer your *causal* question.

For a critique of this line of research ("oversimplification") see here, for example.

Also note that the review I cited (DeYoung, 2010) is quite old considering how fast paced the neuroscience literature is. The review should get you started for digging deeper. I couldn't find a more recent review, but there are some additional studies.

For example, Forbes et al. (2014) compared people with brain lesions and found that

> focal damage to the left \[dorsolateral prefrontal cortex\] (Brodmann’s area 9) was associated with high neuroticism and low conscientious factor and facet scores (anxiety and self-discipline, respectively). Compared with lesioned and normal controls, veterans with damage in left DLPFC also reported higher neuroticism and lower conscientiousness facet scores, slower reaction times on the California Computerized Assessment Package assessment, and lower scores on the Delis–Kaplan executive function battery. Findings suggest that while neuroticism and conscientiousness remain psychometrically independent personality dimensions, their component facets may rely on a common neurocognitive infrastructure and executive function resources in general.

**References**

DeYoung, C. G. (2010). Personality Neuroscience and the Biology of Traits: Personality Neuroscience. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 1165–1180. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00327.x

Forbes, C. E., Poore, J. C., Krueger, F., Barbey, A. K., Solomon, J., & Grafman, J. (2014). The role of executive function and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the expression of neuroticism and conscientiousness. Social Neuroscience, 9, 139–151. doi:10.1080/17470919.2013.871333

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Tags: neuroscience, measurement, cognitive-neuroscience, personality, mbti
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# Question
Title: What is the definition of affective cueing?
In contrast to **affective priming**, what is **affective cueing**? I'm not sure how to differentiate between the two.

I found a good review on affective priming in Karl Christoph Klauer (1997) in the European Review of Social Psychology, and from this I gather that affective priming simply is a priming which is targeted at emotions instead of at reactions. I did not find any definition of affective cueing so far. The best I could manage was from this question, however it does not help me at all, nor do the reference in there.

# Answer
There is no agreed-upon definition of **affective cueing** because it's not a proper name. If you google for "affective cueing" you only find a handful of hits and in them the term is used differently, mostly to indicate that some cue (a stimulus that carries information) is of positive versus negative valence.

In contrast, **affective priming** refers to a specific, experimental research paradigm:

> Affective priming investigates whether the evaluation of a first stimulus, the prime, that is to be ignored, affects the processing of subsequent stimuli.

(as described in the article you found)
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology, emotion
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# Question
Title: Does thinking out loud negatively affect one's ability to think internally?
I'm a professional programmer, and I also practice math. During both, I constantly talk out loud, even for simple problems. However, when I'm around other people I suppress the talking and I feel like I lose a significant amount of clarity.

My assumption is that speaking out loud provides additional clarity because:

1. You're actually speaking, so you have to utilize more parts of your brain, including to physically move your mouth, which would decrease distraction/increase focus
2. You're hearing it, again utilizing more parts of your brain since you have to process external auditory signals

Whereas, the auditory simulation (essentially virtual stimulus) that the brain provides during silent thought is... not as intense as the real stimulus (speaking and hearing), thus utilizing less of the brain.

My question is **not** about whether thinking out loud helps you figure out a problem.

**My question is can long-term frequent thinking out loud have negative effects over one's ability to think internally/silently?**

And if there are negative long term effects can they be corrected in a short time by shifting your thinking back to a silent process?

# Answer
Yes, anti-correlation between extrinsic and intrinsic brain networks may be altered by different practice. I give an example of how meditation affects anti-correlation between extrinsic and intrinsic brain networks.

> "Human experiences can be broadly divided into those that are external and related to interaction with the environment, and experiences that are internal and self-related."
>
> "Anti-correlation between extrinsic vs. intrinsic systems was stronger during FA (focused attention) meditation and weaker during NDA (non dual awareness) meditation in comparison to fixation (without mediation). However, correlation between areas within each system did not change across conditions. These results suggest that the anti-correlation found between extrinsic and intrinsic systems is not an immutable property of brain organization and that practicing different forms of meditation can modulate this gross functional organization in profoundly different ways."

Given these findings, your practice of speaking out loud may favor extrinsic brain network paths which could explain your loss of clarity when you suppress "thinking out loud" while among other people.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250078/
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, educational-psychology, problem-solving
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# Question
Title: Is there any research showing success of teaching with smell?
Cognitive science holds that smell is the sense that has the strongest ability to trigger memories. It is discussed in awe.

We see anecdotes such as the sudden striking memory of sitting in your grandmothers kitchen when you were 6 - because you have just smelled the same scent of the food she cooked (30 years later). Has anyone been using scent timed with instruction to improve performance? I am only seeing studies of the effect of certain smells (peppermint, cinnamon, etc) on the neural activity of lab rats being watched with fMRI.

**Is there any research in which a control group (no smells) performed worse than an experimental group (had smells during learning and testing?)**

# Answer
> 5 votes
I am a bit amazed, but there is, at least for scent as a memory retrieval cue:

Aggleton and Waskett (1999):

> This study determined the extent to which re-exposure to the unique combination of odours present in a museum (the Jorvik Viking Centre in York) aids the recall of a previous visit to the museum, which had typically taken place several years earlier. To test this, three groups of participants completed questionnaires about the contents of the museum, but in different conditions. One group completed the questionnaire in the presence of exactly the same distinctive odours as those present in the museum at the time of their original visit. Those in two other groups were given either a different (control) set of odours or no odours at all. After a brief delay, the same questionnaire was presented again to participants in all three groups. Those who had initially been given a novel (control) set of odours were now tested in the presence of the genuine Jorvik museum odours, while the group that had received the Jorvik odours were now tested with the control odours. The third group received no odours on either test. Only the novel odour-Jorvik odours condition led to a highly significant improvement in performance. This interaction showed that the museum odours could act as effective retrieval cues for this incidentally acquired, real-world episode.

* Wow 1: The average time since the last museum visit was 6.7 years!
* Wow 2: At the time of writing, the paper has been cited more than 120 times according to Google Scholar!
* Wow 3: Vikings!

**References**

Aggleton, J. P., & Waskett, L. (1999). The ability of odours to serve as state-dependent cues for real-world memories: Can Viking smells aid the recall of Viking experiences? British Journal of Psychology, 90, 1–7.

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Tags: learning, memory, experimental-psychology, sensation
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# Question
Title: How to set up a binocular rivalry experiment which splits a single image in two separately controlled ones?
The question is about the actual physical setup and steps needed to take in order to experiment with the phenomena. I found a tutorial on jove.com, "How to Create and Use Binocular Rivalry", and it also has a dedicated explanatory article. However, the experiment I want to make is tricky in the following sense:

A regular binocular rivalry experiment has two separate images set up, and normally the image features are controlled in a way that is suitable to exhibit a whatever the experimenters want. In the case that I want to make, images are not separate, they are basically left and right parts of a single image that is usually viewed as a single image as well.

In the experiment, I will manipulate left and right halves of that single image separately, but I want to present halves to different eyes. The particular problem is that I want to calibrate the physical setup so that the physical boundary between images is not exactly visible. I can't just split left and right - the border between the images in the eyes of the observer has to be as small as possible.

**How can I present each half of a face, split vertically down the middle, independently to each eye (e.g., left half-left eye), without putting a visible physical boundary between the two image halves?**

# Answer
> 4 votes
This is an interesting methodological problem. On the one hand, it seems that any method which would present the halves to the correct eye, and only that eye, would entail a visible boundary, and any method with an invisible boundary would be unable to present the halves as desired. Virtual reality systems present stimuli to each eye separately (e.g., the commercial Oculus Rift), and may therefore present a solution here. It is, however, conceivable that the brain will not correctly integrate two separately presented halves of a face into a percept, and I am not aware of any direct studies, nor can I find any.

One related and interesting example of using virtual reality to study complex visuo-motor behavior, the outfielder problem, was provided by Fink, Foo and Warren (2009). They equipped participants catching baseballs in the air with a Cybermind Visette-Pro HMD virtual reality helmet in order to manipulate the perceived motion of the baseballs. Their ability to successfully execute such a complex visual manipulation suggests that virtual reality systems should be a viable solution for presenting halves of faces independently to each eye.

## References

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, methodology, vision, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: Is it actually helpful to write todo lists?
I've watched these two videos recently

What this author suggests is writing down your tasks instead of keeping it in your prefrontal cortex, therefore you'll be more free to think about task at hand. I think I've read the book long time ago and there is some research mentioned (as in most books alike).

Except for complex tasks that need to be broken down, I almost never had the benefit of writing task to a to do list. I actually found it terrible that my brain seemed to partially forget things while relying on the list \[ which I didn't bring with me or I was in the hurry and forgot to look into my phone app\]. I don't know if I was biased by the content of the book or if there is some science behind forgetting tasks that you jot down on the piece of paper.

I understand that some people have a more complex day than me and need todo list for not-so-related things, but I find it somewhat scary that so many people so easily rely on something else remembering things for them.

I tried using lists because I was afraid I'll forget what I need to do. When it started bothering me, I decided not to write anything but longer grocery lists. And it's interesting how my brain started remembering things and recalling them exactly when I need them. I didn't feel my brain was cluttered, because I remembered tasks at the right time and right place\[ I never thought about grocery list during working hours and vice versa\].

**I don't know it there is any well known research behind this "write things down to unclutter your brain"-thing, or it all boils down to poor memory or lack of commitment to remember something important ?**

Side question, but related : is it even possible to quickly forget the task and leave it written on the piece of paper ?

I just want to know if this thing really works or it just sells similar books for time management.

# Answer
There is some research that suggests writing a to-do list will help "unclutter your brain." The research is related to the phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik effect.

The basic observation behind the Zeigarnik effect is that we tend to think more about tasks and goals that are incomplete. This leads to, among other things, increased priming for concepts related to a unfinished goal relative to a finished one (Förster, Liberman, & Higgins, 2005).

Masicampo & Baumeister (2011) investigated whether making a plan to finish a goal, as opposed to actually finishing the goal, could lead to a similar reduction in intrusive thoughts about the goal. They report:

> In several studies, we activated unfulfilled goals and demonstrated persistent goal activation over time. Unfinished goals caused intrusive thoughts during an unrelated reading task (Studies 1 and 5B), high mental accessibility of goal-related words (Studies 2 and 3), and poor performance on an unrelated anagram task (Study 4). Allowing participants to formulate specific plans for their unfulfilled goals eliminated the various activation and interference effects. Reduction of the effects was mediated by the earnestness of participants’ plans: Those who ultimately executed their plans were those who also exhibited no more intrusions (Study 4). Moreover, changes in goal-related emotions did not appear to be a necessary component of the observed cognitive effects (Studies 5A and 5B). Committing to a specific plan for a goal may therefore not only facilitate attainment of the goal but may also free cognitive resources for other pursuits. Once a plan is made, the drive to attain a goal is suspended—allowing goal-related cognitive activity to cease—and is resumed at the specified later time.

In sum, there seems to be some evidence that uncompleted tasks do lead to intrusive thoughts, and that finishing the tasks reduces intrusive thoughts. Alternatively, making and committing to a plan to finish the tasks can reduce the instrusive thoughts even in the absence of finishing the task.

**References**

Förster, J., Liberman, N., & Higgins, E. T. (2005). Accessibility from active and fulfilled goals. *Journal of Experimental Social Psychology*, *41*(3), 220-239.

Masicampo, E. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2011). Consider it done! Plan making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, *101*(4), 667.
> 6 votes

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Tags: memory, concentration
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# Question
Title: What are the pros and cons of the hot sauce paradigm to measure aggression?
The hot sauce paradigm is a way to measure aggressive behavior in the lab. Participants are asked to give a portion of hot sauce to another person (who they know hates hot sauce) and who will have to eat it all, ostensibly as part of a taste test.

**What are the pros and cons of the hot sauce paradigm?**

# Answer
> 6 votes
The hot sauce paradigm was reviewed as part of a paper discussing laboratory measures of aggression. They argued that the hot sauce paradigm's main advantages are that it is very economical, easily quantifiable, less likely than other methods to be interpreted competitively, and that it has ecological validity (Ritter and Eslea, 2005).

Given the prevalence of its use, there appears to be a surprisingly limited amount of validation studies for the hot sauce paradigm. Adachi and Willoughby (2011) reported the following in a more tangential discussion of aggression measures.

> Lieberman et al. \[1999\] found that scores on \[the hot sauce\] paradigm were positively related to both trait and physical aggression scores on the Buss and Perry (1992) Aggression Questionnaire, supporting the convergent validity of the Hot Sauce Paradigm, although to date no study has measured its association with aggressive behavior outside the lab.

Ayduk, Gyurak and Luerssen (2008) suggested that one threat to the hot sauce paradigm's validity comes from *rejection sensitivity* (RS): "a processing disposition to anxiously expect, readily perceive and overreact to rejection." They reported that failing to control for RS could influence the results in a hot-sauce paradigm, but that statistical control was sufficient to guard against it.

The Ritter and Eslea (2005) review also provides an extensive and general critique of the hot sauce paradigm and other classic aggression measures, but this is not readily summarized. The potential problems raised by the review relate to mediating variables, social cognition, affect, questions of overt/covert aggression, among others. Overall, the biggest weakness of the method appears to be the apparent inability to conclusively rule out the influence of mediators and moderators.

## References

* Adachi, P. J., & Willoughby, T. (2011). The effect of video game competition and violence on aggressive behavior: Which characteristic has the greatest influence?. Psychology of Violence, 1(4), 259.
* Ayduk, Ö., Gyurak, A., & Luerssen, A. (2008). Individual differences in the rejection–aggression link in the hot sauce paradigm: The case of rejection sensitivity. Journal of experimental social psychology, 44(3), 775-782.
* Buss, A. H., & Perry, M. (1992). The aggression questionnaire. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 452– 459.
* Lieberman, J. D., Soloman, S., Greenberg, J., & McGregor, H. A. (1999). A hot new way to measure aggression: Hot sauce allocation. Aggressive Behavior, 25, 331–348.
* Ritter, D., & Eslea, M. (2005). Hot sauce, toy guns, and graffiti: A critical account of current laboratory aggression paradigms. Aggressive Behavior, 31(5), 407-419.

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Tags: measurement, methodology, aggression
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# Question
Title: Is it easy in languages other than English to read a paragraph where all but the first and last letters of every word have been rearranged?
I was really surprised how fast I was able to read and comprehend following text:

> I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.

Does this phenomenon relate to the language structure, i.e. is specific to English?

Would trick works for languages with longer words, like German?

Does the same phenomenon exist for Asian, non-Latin alphabet based type languages like Mandarin?

**UPDATE:**

I have tried to scramble longer words as suggested in answer below and it becomes more difficult to read: "Ceefrconne of iantrintaeonl enatldocatiiuss" (Conference of international educationalists).

Moreover, if letters just pair-wise permuted - it easier to read than random permutation. My initial feeling is that it should be certain metric that define closeness(distance) of the words to its right spelling. Then "easiness" and speed of comprehension will be proportional to that distance.

# Answer
The scrambled words game is very useful in persuading the less sophisticated to take a passing interest in their own cognitive processes! it is intriguing and also rewarding as it shows we can do something apparently rather difficult more easily than expected. However, the difficulty will be greater for second language learners at earlier stages of study.

Thinking about the unscrambling process is also a useful illustration of certain established principles of cognitive psychology, many of which have a close relation to information-theoretic measures like message redundancy and channel noise. Such matters may well be further detailed in the references given by Leo, so here I will just mention a few obvious ones without going into subtleties. Those setting cryptology-based puzzles, like anagrams or crosswords, have probably given considerable thought to many of the same themes.

Most examples of word-scrambled texts I have seen conform to the case where individual words have the usual separators (spaces, commas etc.). It is a reasonable hypothesis that primary word-segregation is a (pre-conscious) analysis, fairly well automated.

*Topical familiarity, general word-frequency*

Another fairly automated effect, though quite dependent on individual experience

*Letter-order*

The edge-effect enhances perception of letters at the beginning and end of a word. Scrambled words with the first and last letters intact also greatly benefit because these strongly-perceived letters are precisely the ones often generating superior cues to the associative thesaurus, perhaps including a subvocal phonetic component.

*Word length*

Whilst short words are objectively easier, word-length itself provides significant information, and in longer words this may partially compensate for increased complexity.

*Rarity*

Less familiar (or *exotic*) letters are more readily noticed in scrambled text due to an analogue in selective attention to effects of feature-contrast long known of in studies of short-term memory. Such letters assist also because they restrict search, due to their presence in a much smaller subset of lexical items.

*Semantic expectation*

This is dependent on the ongoing robustness of the perception of meaning. A text which would be challenging even unscrambled will offer much greater difficulty if scrambled.

*Elimination via syntactic constraint*

English, whose case-endings and verb conjugations have largely been smoothed away is particularly dependent on word-order in phrases as a cue to the function of a particular word (as verb, noun, adjective, adverb &c)

*Internal morphemic articulation of words*

Various issues partly encapsulated in the German example cited by Leo.

*Orthographic articulation*

In longer words characteristic high-frequency constituents (things like "-ness", "-tion", "-ily", "pre-" &C) may be cued simply by the presence of the letters in the word. This is similar to, but distinct from, word-frequency effects.

*Distraction*

Certain combinations of letters may increase the perceptual effort required because they have strong internal coherence, but happen to be misleading in the particular case.

Before pronouncing on the likely differences between languages, I think it would be more worthwhile to obtain a clear and thorough understanding of the roles of the above factors, and similar ones, in the process of sentential scrambled word-perception.
> 8 votes

# Answer
The neologism used to describe this phenomenon is **Typoglycemia**.

It relates to the cognitive processes behind reading written text.

Randomising letters in the middle of words have little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text.

Because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but as a whole, it would work for any given language where we can apply the same randomisation and keep the words separated in the same order.

Let's take the notorious **German** example *Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän*, meaning *Danube steamship company captain*:

* Our noun *Donau* remains the same
* It is possible for our noun *dampfschiffahrts* to be reformed into *dampfschiff**f**ahrts*
* Our noun *gesellschaft* becomes the adjective *gesellschaft**s***
* Then our noun *kapitän* remains the same

Let's see what happens when we scramble the compound lexeme:

* Unscrambled German: *Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän*
* Scrambled German: *Dsnegapcfssamspfkaihdoftctflhreulasihatän*
* Unscrambled English: *Danubesteamshipcompanycaptain*
* Scrambled English: *Dbipiutpaccmmaapeansytoeshann*

Virtually impossible! Now let's see when we scramble each lexeme, then compound it:

* Original German per lexeme: *Donau-dampfshiffahrts-gesellschafts-kapitän*
* Scrambled German per lexeme: *Doanu-dhsffhmftpiacras-glhcselefasts-kipatän*
* Scrambled German composition: *Daonudhiahscfmffatrpsglhcselefastskipatän*
* Original English per lexeme: *Danube-steamship-company-captain*
* Scrambled English per lexeme: *Dnbaue-stahmseip-camonpy-citapan*
* Scrambled English composition: *Dnbauestahmseipcamonpycitapan*

The composition being nearly just as readable as per lexeme!

Feel free to try another here.

Now let's take an example in **Mandarin**.

Script:

* 研究表明
* 漢字的順序並不一定能影響閱讀
* 比如當你看完這句話後
* 才發現這裡的字全都是亂的

Pinyin:

* Yánjiū biǎomíng
* Hànzì de shùnxù bìng bù yīdìng néng yǐngxiǎng yuèdú.
* Bǐrú dāng nǐ kàn wán zhè jù huà hòu
* cái fāxiàn zhèlǐ de zì quándōu shì luàn de.

Now let's invert 6 disyllabic characters.

Script:

* 研表究明
* 漢字的序順並不定一能影閱響讀
* 比如當你看完這句話後
* 才發這現裡的字全是都亂的

Pinyin:

* Yán biǎo jiū míng
* Hànzì de xù shùn bìng bù dìng yī néng yǐng yuè xiǎng dú.
* Bǐrú dāng nǐ kàn wán zhè jù huà hòu
* cái fā zhè xiàn lǐ de zì quán shì dōu luàn de.

This rather tame example now makes little sense, but does not quite appear completely disordered (with the exception of the preserved third line).

Further materials:
> 8 votes

# Answer
The ‘**jumbled word effect**’ is due to the special way in which the **human brain encodes the positions of letters in printed words**.

Psycholinguists investigate this effect with a procedure called masked-priming where a target word is primed with a briefly presented stimulus (usually a mix of target's letters). This lead to a model of word recognition that includes several consecutive steps from letter feature extraction by the occipital cortex to the word activation in the visual word form area. Within this model, all letters are individually recognised in their actual printed positions (position-dependant phenomenon) and are further combined in groups of letters. These groups of letters are not encoded with their absolute positions but their relative positions to each other. It is formalised in a model as:

* letters of *other* are coded as 'o', 't', 'h', 'e', 'r' in this particular order,
* but groups of letters are coded as 'er', 'he', 'ot', 'th' where the order of the groups is not important.

When we read, we automatically switch from an absolute-position code to a relative-position code, and this is where the jumbled word effect arises. **The scrambled word activates the same groups of letters**.

> Does this phenomenon relate to the language structure, i.e. is specific to English?

This phenomenon has been observed in languages that use an alphabetic script, English included. There is an on-going debate on the locus of such effect (purely visual attention or related to literacy).

> Would trick works for languages with longer words, like German?

Yes, to some extent as discussed by @David Holden

> Does the same phenomenon exist for Asian, non-Latin alphabet based type languages \>like Mandarin?

It has been observed in Thai.

Ref:

* On the Flexibility of Letter Position Coding During Lexical Processing: The Case of Thai. Perea et al. (2012)
* Modeling letter position coding in printed word perception. Grainger & van Heuven (2003).
> 7 votes

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Tags: language, language-processing
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# Question
Title: How are humans able to read scrambled text/characters (e.g., CAPTCHA)?
So I'm doing a research on developing a new text-based CAPTCHA system. I've devised a scheme where characters in a text are broken/split individually and randomly, making it difficult for OCR machines to decode it. (See figure for example) This CAPTCHA is still under development, but it gives a rough idea of what I'm talking here.

My main aim here is to understand how the brain reads scrambled characters, as shown in the figure. I was looking up and a term called "filling-in" phenomena of vision came up. I'm not sure if that term is right in this context.

**I want to know the terminology and basic understanding of how humans are able to read scrambled text/characters easily.**

# Answer
> 5 votes
**A human brain recognises letters by their constituent features** (sub-letter parts). It is modelized by a pandemonium model where printed information is extracted locally then globally. In the letter recognition literature, this type of feature-based hierarchical model competes with template matching theories (with an advantage to the pandemonium-like models such as deep-learning networks).

Scrambled characters are recognised the same way, with the difference that only part of the visual information is available. It relates to the theory of geons developed by Biedermann (Recognition by components, 1987). He wrote

> if an arrangement of two or three sub-components can be recovered from the input, objects can be quickly recognized even when they are occluded or extensively degraded.

Could you identify the following object? Left is the unrecoverable version.

REF:

# Answer
> -1 votes
The cumulative number of versions of a single character that the human brain can recognize is nearly infinite, whereas computers have to be programmed to recognize every single variation. Humans also recognize 'context' in a word, whereas a computer does not recognize context because it does not have an intuitive understanding of language. From wikipedia:

> For example, when an individual understands that the first letter of a CAPTCHA is an “a”, that individual also understands where the contours of that “a” are, and also where it melds with the contours of the next letter. Additionally, the human brain is capable of dynamic thinking based upon context. It is able to keep multiple explanations alive and then pick the one that is the best explanation for the whole input based upon contextual clues. This also means it will not be fooled by variations in letters.

Essentially it boils down to two factors: one, humans are preprogrammed with 'object recognition' abilities. Two, humans are able to parse a string of symbols in a way that conforms to the rules of a formal grammar.

Object recognition is the ability to find and recognize and identify human objects in a sequence. Humans naturally have this ability, whereas computers do not. It appears to be a genetic quality, and can be replicated in computers by genetic algorithms that mimic the process of natural selection.

Humans also build up sentences incrementally, and as they do so, they make constant unconscious predictions about what the word or sentence is going to say. This is the explanation behind garden path sentences. We can use event-related potentials to study this phenomenon in the human brain. Certain potentials are activated during specific situations when parsing. From the wikipedia page on garden-path sentences:

> Within ERPs, P600 is the most important component. Its activation occurs when the parser comes across a syntactic violation such as The broker persuaded to sell the stock or when parses synthesizes an unsatisfactory disambiguation on an ambiguous string of words such as The Doctor Charged the patient was lying. Hence the activation of P600 marks the parser's attempt to revise the sentence's structural mis-match or ambiguity.
>
> It also appears that the presence of a disfluency in a sentence—caused by filled and long silent parses—does not elicit the P600. Instead, it elicits another ERP component, N400, which gets activated when people try to integrate a new word into the preceding sentence's context.

Based on the above, it appears that the brain has specific event-related potentials that intuitively activate during specific situations while parsing. In other words, a human can recognize familiar sentences and words intuitively, and when it comes across an unrecognized word, it attempts to integrate it based on context. Since computers do not currently have a similar intuitive ability, CAPTCHAs are harder for them to decode.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, cognitive-neuroscience, vision, artificial-intelligence
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# Question
Title: Would administering oxytocin in games of deception improve performance?
As well as facilitating parturition, the hormone oxytocin is thought to mediate "prosocial behaviour" in mammals. It’s been a while since I have read the literature, but I am aware there is robust evidence that oxytocin mediates social bonding and pair bond formation. Acute administration of oxytocin can also increase social cognition such as facial recognition and trustfulness in games of cooperation between strangers

Games of deception could be an interesting paradigm under which to study the effects of oxytocin. in poker, one's ability to bluff is a core skill. I am always amused by the percentage of pro-poker players i see on late night TV wearing sunglasses-- either photophobia is greatly over-represented in this cohort, or more likely, facial expressions and in particular, the eyes, are important cues for the detection of deception.

This has got me wondering: **Would acute administration of intranasal oxytocin have beneficial or deleterious effects upon performance in games of deception such as poker?**

Moreover, might one expect differential effects of oxytocin among poker players with Asperger’s syndrome, such as the irreverent Tony G?

On one hand, oxytocin could improve one's ability to recognise facial expressions, particularly eye expressions indicative of deception. Conversely, oxytocin might evoke some sort of "miscalibration of social meta-cognition", leading a misplaced sense of trust in the intentions of opponents.

Alternatively, I think that oxytocin's role in social cognition is far more nuanced than how I understand it to be. *actually, I have no doubt about that.*

For instance, aside from inconsistencies in the literature, the papers I’ve read tend to highlight a "pro-affiliative" skew towards oxytocin maintaining cohesion amongst those with whom we're already familiar, the in-group. With regards to the out-group, I have this impression that it's geared towards "not throwing the first punch."

Any thoughts on the possible effect of oxytocin upon poker and other games of deception, or more broadly, how to more accurately frame my understanding of the social milieu within which oxytocin functions?

**REFERENCES**

# Answer
> 5 votes
One of the very recently published studies linked to in the question, on the relationship between exogenous oxytocin administration and ability to accurately detect deception, instructed participants to self-administer oxytocin by nasal injection before evaluating contestants' decisions in videos of the *Friend or Foe* game show (Israel, Hart and Winter 2014). They reported that:

> Rather than improving subjects’ inferences about others’ mental states, oxytocin impeded accurate assessments of trustworthiness in risky social exchanges. Oxytocin decreased prediction accuracy but did not increase predictions of cooperative behavior in general.

The evidence reported in Israel, Hart and Winter (2014) clearly implies that exogenous oxytocin would have deleterious effects in games of deception such as poker. However, it may not be as simple as that.

Another study proposed that oxytocin may exert its apparent effects by increasing the attentional salience of social information, and that the effect may thus be mediated by interpersonal factors like perceived group membership (Ten Velden et al., 2014). They reported a complex set of results broadly consistent with this hypothesis based on a simplified poker game task:

> Results permit three conclusions. First, intranasal oxytocin does not increase indiscriminate benevolence in humans. This conclusion follows from the observation that in competitive interactions, humans given oxytocin reduce competitive approach only when their protagonist is an in-group member, and do not show an increased preference for settlement when protagonists are from a rivaling out-group. Second, and relatedly, intranasal oxytocin promotes cooperative conflict resolution in within but not between group competitions. This conclusion follows from the observation that, compared to placebo, oxytocin increased a preference for settlement with in-group protagonists, but not with out-group protagonists. Third, and finally, in competitive interactions, intranasal oxytocin does not influence preferences for withdrawal. This conclusion follows from the observation that regardless of competitive strength, and regardless of the protagonist's group membership, oxytocin exerted no influence whatsoever on the tendency to “fold” in the competitive poker-game studied here.

Note that while the Ten Velden (2014) study used a poker-like task, it did not report on differences in ability to detect deception.

### References

* Israel, S., Hart, E., & Winter, E. (2014). Oxytocin Decreases Accuracy in the Perception of Social Deception. Psychological science, 25(1), 293-295.
* Ten Velden, F. S., Baas, M., Shalvi, S., Kret, M. E., & De Dreu, C. K. (2014). Oxytocin differentially modulates compromise and competitive approach but not withdrawal to antagonists from own vs. rivaling other groups. Brain research, 1580, 172-179.

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Tags: social-psychology, psychopharmacology, social-neuroscience, oxytocin
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# Question
Title: Why is it easier to fall asleep in the dark?
I'm curious if there is any neurological mechanism that explains why falling asleep is easier in the dark.

I recognize that this isn't true universally -- a phobia of darkness might make it easier to sleep with the lights on -- but it seems to be true for most people.

I'm particularly curious if there is a *general* explanation that might explain why it is easier to fall asleep in the absence of much sensory stimulation (i.e., a quiet environment versus a noisy one, or if darkness is a special case due to our circadian rhythms).

# Answer
> 3 votes
It's probably more accurate to say that **it's more difficult to fall asleep in the light** because the circadian rhythm is *directly* regulated by ambient light. Our retinas contain a small amount of cells specialized for detecting ambient light levels, and these are directly connected to the brain center which controls the circadian rhythm. As our eyelids don't completely block out ambient light, and the light which passes through and hits these specialized cells begins tampering with our circadian rhythm, it becomes more difficult to fall asleep.

# Background

## The Suprachiasmatic Nucleus

The reason is a small nucleus above the optic chiasm in the hypothalamus called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), found across many different species. Comprising only approximately 20,000 neurons, the human SCN is nonetheless responsible for regulating a vast number of circadian functions over the entire body. The SCN is, for all intents and purposes, the pacemaker of the brain, and it runs on light: if ambient light is detected, then it must be because it is time to be awake, and the circadian rhythm is slowly adjusted accordingly.

(Suprachiasmatic nucleus. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

## The Retinohypothalamic Tract

In mammals, the SCN receives input through the retinohypothalamic tract, which originates at a set of special photosensitive ganglion cells on the retina. They contribute to regulating the circadian rhythm by expressing melanopsin (Berson, Dunn and Takao, 2002). These highly specialized, sensitive and non-image-forming retinal neurons evolved to detect an environment's ambient light levels. They are most sensitive to blue light wavelengths of 488 nanometers (al Enazi et al., 2011), which may in part explain why users of electronic monitors sometimes report difficulties falling asleep.

(Effects of light exposure on the mammalian retinohypothalamic tract. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

## A critical note

These fairly recent discoveries, while published in top-tier journals and widely hailed, have generated some controversy. Due to the ethical difficulties in deploying a methodology consisting mostly of disabling cones and rods in human samples, most of the evidence has come from animal models. At least one study, however, managed to discover patients naturally lacking cones and rods due to a rare illness, and they **did** report support for the SCN account in humans (Zaidi et al., 2007):

> We examined the spectral sensitivity of non-image-forming responses in two profoundly blind subjects lacking functional rods and cones (one male, 56 yr old; one female, 87 yr old). In the male subject, we found that short-wavelength light preferentially suppressed melatonin, reset the circadian pacemaker, and directly enhanced alertness compared to 555 nm exposure, which is the peak sensitivity of the photopic visual system. In an action spectrum for pupillary constriction, the female subject exhibited a peak spectral sensitivity (λmax) of 480 nm, matching that of the pRGCs but not that of the rods and cones. This subject was also able to correctly report a threshold short-wavelength stimulus (∼480 nm) but not other wavelengths. Collectively these data show that pRGCs contribute to both circadian physiology and rudimentary visual awareness in humans and challenge the assumption that rod- and cone-based photoreception mediate all “visual” responses to light.

## References

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, sleep, physiology
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# Question
Title: What is the relationship between psychological entitlement and locus of control or other personal characteristics?
I'm studying psychology and I have the assignment to write an experimental study I'm still collecting the scientific information on the topic so I would really appreciate some help. I'm interested to know:

* What is the relationship between psychological entitlement and locus of control?
* What scientific studies have been conducted on the relation between psychological entitlement and locus of control or some other personal characteristic?

# Answer
**Psychological entitlement (the belief that one should get preferential treatment) is positively related to an external locus of control (the belief that personal outcomes are due to chance or powerful others).**

For example, Anderson et al. (2013), report that the Personal Entitlement Scale (Campbell et al., 2004) is correlated with r=.43 to more external answers on the Locus of Control Scale by Rotter (1954). Similarly, for entitlement beliefs in the academic realm, Kopp et al. report positive correlations of entitlement beliefs with the Locus of Control - Chance and Locus of Control - Powerful Others subscales of the Levenson (1973) scale.

The last part of the question (what are other correlates of entitlement?) is very broad. Campbell et al.'s (2004) scale is frequently cited in research on entitlement, this should be a good starting point into this research field.

**References**

Anderson, D., Halberstadt, J., & Aitken, R. (2013). Entitlement Attitudes Predict Students’ Poor Performance in Challenging Academic Conditions. International Journal of Higher Education, 2. doi:10.5430/ijhe.v2n2p151

Campbell, W. K., Bonacci, A. M., Shelton, J., Exline, J. J., & Bushman, B. J. (2004). Psychological Entitlement: Interpersonal Consequences and Validation of a Self-Report Measure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 83, 29–45. doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa8301\_04

Kopp, J. P., Zinn, T. E., Finney, S. J., & Jurich, D. P. (2011). The Development and Evaluation of the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 44, 105–129. doi:10.1177/0748175611400292

Levenson, H. (1973). Multidimensional locus of control in psychiatric patients. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 41, 397–404

Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. New York, NY: Prentice Hall. doi:10.1037/10788-000
> 4 votes

# Answer
Very interesting!

on a very basic level, you'd want to start in exploring reward mechanisms- according to the stimuli, there would be a planned reaction associated to the stimuli conditioned over time. i don't see locus of control as a perrsonal characteristic inherent to the inner-workings of one's thought on selfhood, but rather as a trained pattern which becomes structurally hard-wired. a google scholar search on this looks at locus of control and attribution in relation to access to academia here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11218-012-9184-4#page-1

the article seems to look at an ok sample-size - all from 1 u.s. southern university :/

i wonder if by entitlement you are referring to class??
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, personality, study-cognitive-sciences
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title: What is general fluid intelligence?

text:
# Question
Title: What is general fluid intelligence?
I'm currently reading about executive control, a lot of papers (e.g. Kane and Engle 2002) discuss general fluid intelligence but don't explain it. **What is general fluid intelligence?**

# Answer
Just did some more reading, going to answer my own question:

> Fluid intelligence (Gf) refers to mental operations that an individual uses when faced with a relatively novel task that cannot be performed automatically. Inductive and deductive reasoning are generally thought to be the hallmark narrow-ability indicators of Gf. Examples of Gf abilities are: Induction, Pigatian Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning and Speed of Reasoning.

By comparison Crystallized Intelligence (Gc):

> Gc refers to the breadth and depth of a persons acquired knowledge, and the application of this knowledge. Examples of Gc abilities are: Language Development, Lexical Knowledge, General Information, Information about Culture, General Science Information, Communication Abilities etc..

Reference: Reynolds, C. R., & Fletcher-Janzen, E. (2007). Encyclopedia of Special Education (Vol. 1). Wiley.

If anyone has anything better or more to add, please do.
> 4 votes

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Tags: intelligence, working-memory
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