# Question
Title: What are the effects of negative self image on cognition and brain function?
All other things considered equal, what are the effects of a negative self image, on cognition and brain function?

Are there any studies that would have specific data supporting cognitive outcomes (concentration times, memory, mind body awareness) rather than just pointing to self-esteem?

In addition, what cognitive effect does positive self image have on cognition and brain function? Are there qualities in either of them that are *not* inverses of the other?

# Answer
Some information that partly answers your questions.

There have been some studies based on these questions, a significant article related to this type of study is Self-esteem, locus of control, hippocampal volume, and cortisol regulation in young and old adulthood (Pruessner et al. 2005).

This article makes the link between self image and the individual's 'locus of control', they found that:

> our results clearly demonstrate that self-esteem and locus of control are significantly linked to the volume of the hippocampus in healthy young and elderly subjects. Further, we found evidence that these two factors are also related to the acute and chronic regulation of the major stress hormone in humans, cortisol.

(Note: the authors of the article acknowledge that their data does not allow them to make firm conclusions).

Cortisol affects, amongst other things, memory, learning and concentration. A specific study about this is in the article "Cortisol differentially affects memory in young and elderly men." (Wolf et al. 2001) and "Impaired memory retrieval correlates with individual differences in cortisol response but not autonomic response" (Buchanan et al. 2006). From the second article/study:

> \[This study\] suggest that individual differences in cortisol reactivity affect memory retrieval performance, and help to explain the differential effects of stress on memory.

I will say that this is not the complete picture, but the link between self image and cortisol levels seem to be a major factor about how self image affects cognitive abilities such as learning, memory etc.
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, intelligence, personality, well-being, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Why do prices ending in 99, e.g., 0.99, 199 or 1999.9 convince consumers to buy?
Why are people more likely to buy articles with a price of \\$199, rather than the same (or let's say a slightly better) article for \\$200?

On which human brain centre is this advertising focused? Is this some kind of manipulation?

# Answer
An interesting article relating to your first question is the "Analyzing the Psychology of Pricing", where they suggest that consumers don't really notice any change in units of 10, e.g. \\$54 vs \\$59.99 etc.

In answer to the 2nd of your queries about what part of the brain is affected, here is some research that I found.

According to the article "Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness" (Plassman et al. 2007), very little is known about the neural responses to marketing. However, they tested the hypothesis that

> marketing actions, such as changes in the price of a product, can affect neural representations of experienced pleasantness.

In another of that author's papers "Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook" (which includes diagrams of the parts of the brain affected), he bases the process on the parts of the brain that control

> (1) representation and attention, (2) predicted value, (3) experienced value, and (4) remembered value and learning.

This is also something that many in marketing are actively pursuing, according to "Neuroeconomics: Studying Brain Responses Gives Marketers Increased Ability to Predict How People Make Decisions".
> 9 votes

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Tags: consumer-psychology, neuromarketing
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# Question
Title: Can people alleviate a negative halo effect about them?
According to Wikipedia:

> "The halo effect or halo error is a cognitive bias in which one's judgments of a person’s character can be influenced by one's overall impression of him or her."

Imagine a situation in which there is a nearly "perfect" person, where he/she would in most cases evoke a *negative* halo effect. Is there some way how he/she can deal with it? (Change his/her behavior? Look? Image? The first impression?)

# Answer
A halo effect suggests that the overall impression of a rated object (e.g., a person) excessively influences the impression of facets of a person. This leads to correlations between facet ratings higher than would be expected were facets rated accurately.

If someone is a nearly perfect person, then presumably the overall impression they create would be very positive. **The halo effect would not influence this overall very positive rating. It will merely increase ratings for facets that should be rated below the overall rating and decrease ratings for facets that should be rated above the overall rating..**

### Worked example:

Let's simplify it and assume that your person's true rating on all the facets that matter out of 10 are:

* Facet A = 6
* Facet B = 10
* Facet C = 10
* Facet D = 10

If we further simplify to say that overall impression is just the mean of the facets, we have overall impression of (6+10+10+10)/4 = 9. So, an example of a rater influenced by the halo effect would be one who gave rating such as:

* Facet A = 9
* Facet B = 9
* Facet C = 9
* Facet D = 9

or

* Facet A = 8
* Facet B = 9.33
* Facet C = 9.33
* Facet D = 9.33

### Conclusion:

**The point is that facets that are worse than the general impression are pulled up, and facets better than the general impression are pulled down.** The mean of the facets has not changed. It is just the accuracy of facet ratings has declined. While this is an idealised example, the question relates to a theoretical effect.

A classic examples of a halo effect is where a teacher is marking an assignment and each section of the assignment is graded. If the teacher is influenced by halo effect then the overall mark is not influenced, but the rating for each section will be less differentiated than it should be. So from a quality of student feedback perspective, this is worse, but from a grading perspective, it makes no difference. That said, we might hypothesise that raters that exhibit halo effect may also exhibit other rating problems.

Second guessing your question, perhaps you are interested in some other biases such as first impression bias, central tendency bias, or generally inaccurate ratings. Or perhaps you are, rightly or wrongly, assuming that the overall impression would involve an inaccurate implicit weighting of facets.
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, bias, halo-effect
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# Question
Title: What is the fastest language to think in?
If you think in any language you're never misstaken on what word you mean even if there are many words that are spelled/pronounced the same. This causes a language with only one word meaning every possible word there is to work, in theory, if used only while thinking. I don't think I'd be able to think clearly in such a language, though. The fastest language seems, for me, to be no language. It is however hard to not think in a language.

What is the fastest language to think in?

# Answer
> 3 votes
With your question you are limiting thinking to conscious and rational thought. But human information processing has so many more aspects, some of them faster and more efficient than cogitation.

If, for example, you sit in front of the computer and have forgotten that you have put water on the stove, and suddenly you hear the noodles cooking over, you'll jump up and run to the kitchen quicker than you can form the sentences that describe what is happening and what you need to do. It is not a reflex (like flinching away from being hit), but clearly a conscious understanding, a consideration, and a decision, only not verbal. For me, parts of that process are visual (I see what I need to clean away, when I hear the water hit the hot plate), others include a body-memory projection of me moving to the kitchen, a muscular plan of action that is forming while I jump up, see what is on my path, and "pre-feel" how I will navigate it at maximum speed.

Another example is what I have often experienced when I "sleep over" a decision; what has been exemplified in Einstein dreaming of relativity theory; and what I have read about again a few days ago in a book summarizing current research on intuition: that conscious rational thought is only able to make decisions in situations with a limited complexity (the level of complexity was the focus of some research), and that highly complex decisions, involving too many aspects to "juggle" in your (conscious) mind, are made on an unconscious level, with "you" (that is consciousness) only receiving the outcome (that is intuition) of that information processing.

Language is a very recent development in evolution, and consciousness is not much older, and it is my opinion that we are misled by our self-identification with the constant chatter in our minds to believe that we are this speech, while in truth language and consciousness are just tools that are as peripheral to our core selves as our arms are to our bodies. There is this famous experiment, conducted a few years ago, that showed that the muscular impulse for a movement happens *before* the conscious decision for that movement is made. It shows that what we perceive as decisions happens *after* a behaviour has already begun. The ego, as Freud said, is not master in its own house.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I wonder if Hungarian is particularly good in this way. It's agglutinative, like German, so the words can be unbearably long, but the grammar of Hungarian is interesting, in that word order is much more flexible than other languages. Sentences can be said in multiple word orders and still be "correct", while the emphasis required by word order gives nuance and helps to shape the precise meaning of the sentence. The Wikipedia entry gives some examples. I'd think that having that kind of flexibility available in a native language would be a benefit... I've heard that the grand history of science and mathematics in Hungary is credited to the kind of mental flexibility that speaking Hungarian offers. In some sense, math's commutative and transitive properties are built-in to the language itself.

Full disclosure: my knowledge of Hungarian consists of a few common words and phrases, and lots of food words... I do love the food in Budapest.

There are also many constructed languages that are specifically designed to facilitate thinking, but, of course, they're not in wide use. Ithkuil and Loglan are well-known examples.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I remember some empirical research showing that “wordy” languages were spoken faster than more information-dense languages, so that the “information rate” would be more or less constant across languages (sorry, no reference). Of course, this research was concerned with speech rather than silent thought but it could suggest that you would not expect any overall difference between cultures in this respect, which does make sense to me. Note that studying this sort of things requires a lot of care and preliminary ground work as common notions like “word” are not even meaningful units in many languages. Linguists therefore use precisely defined concepts like “phoneme” to measure this.

Also, I would dispute that thinking “in” a language (see my answer to Is it possible to think in a second language? for a discussion of this idea) means that one is never mistaken on how to express oneself. The “tip-of-tongue” experience would suggest otherwise. Some thinkers even object to the notion that speaking can generally be seen as merely expressing some previously formed thought.

# Answer
> -1 votes
Sign language I would imagine would be a great language to think with since it is physical and involves body language. Considering too that we all think different I know sign language, Spanish, and English and find my thoughts bouncing from language to language. Also what could be considered fast? How do you rate the speed of thoughts and inner conversations in your mind?

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Tags: language
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# Question
Title: Is neurolinguistic programming effective in influencing sales processes?
In my country neurolinguistic programming (NLP) has become very popular in sales departments. Therefore, I wonder if there are any experiments which examine the contribution of NLP to the sales process. I was especially curious when I heard that Bander sued Grinder.

* Are there any peer-reviewed validation studies of NLP?
* Particularly, has any peer-reviewed research examined the effect of NLP on sales?

# Answer
> 14 votes
Section "Scientific Evaluation" in the Wikipedia article on NLP sums up current research nicely:

**None of the claimed effects have been validated.**

Scientists consider NLP a pseudoscience with aggressive marketing and a name and jargon that deludes people seeking help by "\[giving\] the impression of scientific respectability" (quoted from that section).

# Answer
> 5 votes
Here are a number of references for you:

The article "The effect of neurolinguistic programming on organisational and individual performance: a case study" (Thompson et al. 2002), is primarily a case study of the effect of NLP training on managers and workers of the hospitality industry.

The article "Neuro-linguistic programming and learning theory: a response" (Tosey and Mathison, 2003), looks at the research in NLP as a whole.

This article, though a bit dated (1984), "NLP techniques for salespeople" (Stanley, 1984), looks at the NLP techniques of salespeople and the ideas are revisiting in "NLP revisited: nonverbal communications and signals of trustworthiness" (Wood, 2006).

Whether NLP can help or harm a business is discussed in "Can NLP help or harm your business?" (Yemm, 2006).

Hope this helps.

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Tags: neuro-linguistic-prog, neuromarketing, validation
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# Question
Title: Is the "fear of death" the most powerful impulse of the spirit?
Here is an iconic dialogue from The Dark Knight Rises:

```
Blind Prisoner: You do not fear death.
                You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak.
Bruce Wayne:    Why?
Blind Prisoner: How can you move faster than possible, fight longer
                than possible without the most powerful impulse of the
                spirit: the fear of death.
Bruce Wayne:    I do fear death. I fear dying in here, while my city burns,
                and there's no one there to save it.
Blind Prisoner: Then make the climb.
Bruce Wayne:    How?
Blind Prisoner: As the child did. Without the rope.
                Then fear will find you again.

```

### Questions:

* How can this dialogue be interpreted in scientific terms?
* Is there any scientific support and explanation for this or is it just literary freedom for dramatic effect?

# Answer
First off, there is no "spirit" in psychological theory. "Spirit" is a philosophical term denoting a non-corporeal substance emanated from a God.

Also, fear is not an impulse. Fear *causes* an impulse. Fear is an emotion, and an emotion can serve as a motivator.

Therefore I understand your question to ask:

**Is 'fear of death' the most powerful motivator?**

Since literary tropes and devices often avail themselves of psychoanalytic theories, I believe it is adequate to attempt a preliminary answer with Freud.

**Freud** believed that there is no native fear of death. He wrote (1908, p. 167) that the fear of death of a people increases as libido is suppressed and accumulates in the unconscious.

For Freud the libido (the drive towards life) is the strongest drive. Only in his later theories it is balanced in a healthy individual with the death drive (the drive towards dissolution, annihilation and the cessation of all activity). Therefore fear of death would have to exceed libido, to be the strongest motivator.

Psychological theory is rarely psychological in nature, but rather derives its models from contemporary high tech. In the first half of the twentieth century quantum physics gave psychology its probabilistic foundation, during the second half of the 20th century psychology was dominated by the brain-as-computer metaphor, today quantum physics and neuroimaging drive psychological theories. Since Freudian theory derives its basic model from the pneumatics of the steam engine, it is probably save to hypothesize that in Freuds theory fear of death would be as large as the suppressed libido, with its theoretical maximum being the total size of libido. If more than half of the libido were repressed, then fear of death would be greater than libido and therefore the most powerful motivator.

* The level and motivating force of Bruce Wayne's fear of death would depend on his and his society's volume of suppressed libido and the pressure generated by it.

For developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst **Erik Erikson**, fear of death signified the absence of integrity (1965, p. 260) and a result of the despair of having lead a life experienced as meaningless. From this theory, fear of death would most probably not serve as a motivator, rather it is a symptom of a subjectively failed life.

* The loner Bruce Wayne, leading a life of compulsive-obsessive crime hunting, might well despair at the lack of generativity and intimacy in his life, and fear death more than a beloved father of several adult children.

Leaving psychoanalysis behind, fear of death has been the subject of empirical psychology predominantly in two contexts: as an ailment of the sick (e.g. cancer patients) and old that palliative psychology attempts to alleviate; and as a cause (or correlate) of religiosity. Both fields yield no results concerning the relation between fear of death and motivation. The dearth of experimental studies on the effects of fear of death are probably due to the impossibility to induce this emotion in an ethical way.

But there is a vast amount of research into fear as a motivator, mostly from the perspective of persuasion in education (stop smoking) or advertisement (buy this or else). **Motivation psychology** postulates a variety of basic motivators: physiological needs such as hunger, sleep, and sex; social desires such as belonging and appreciation; changing goals and spontaneous emotions; etc. And it has been found that different personalities are motivated more strongly by different motivators. I would suspect that there are people for whom fear of death is "the strongest motivator", and others for whom it isn't, because they are more motivated by positive goals (approach motivation, which correlates with extroversion, positive emotionality, and behavioral activation) than negative goals (avoidance motivation, which correlates with neuroticism, negative emotionality, and behavioral inhibition).

* Bruce Wayne being introverted, neurotic, and emotionally negative (but active), is a good candidate for being motivated by avoidance and fear in his social life (but an aggressive desire to succeed in his career as a crime hunter). I would guess that fear of death would drive him strongly, if the Blind Prisoner managed to associate (or prime) climbing without a rope with Batman's lack of a social life (e.g. show him visions of the women that loved him but he did not love back), but that he would be rather unafraid, if the rope was withheld in the context of Batman battling crime.

---

Sources:

* Freud, Sigmund (1908). Die "kulturelle" Sexualmoral und die moderne Nervosität. GW VII, 143-167. \[english Translation: "Civilized" sexual morality and modern nervous illness. SE 9, 177-204; online available as "Civilized" sexual morality and modern nervousness, quote from p. 40\]
* Erikson, Erik H. (1965 \[1950\]) Childhood and Society, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
> 7 votes

# Answer
In short, no.

In psychoanalysis you analyze two drives death and pleasure, both are in permanent conflict, so they must be equally strong producing jouissance which is the reason for existence itself.

The function of the pleasure principle is to maintain life, It's opposite, or what it fears, if you like is death. Not fearing it would make your psyche not only weak, but inexistant.

The movie is a good subject for psychoanalytical film criticism.

This is a cool text about the links between fear of death, jouissance, Lacanian psychoanalysis and more philosophy:

http://www.amazon.com/Derrida-Vis-%C3%A0-vis-Lacan-Deconstruction-Psychoanalysis/dp/0823228754/ref=cm\_cr\_pr\_product\_top
> 0 votes

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Tags: emotion, motivation
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# Question
Title: Transsexuality in animals other than humans?
In some research papers, transsexuality is correlated with measurable differences in brain structure. For example:

* Zhou et al. (1995) inspected the central subdivision of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BSTc), and found female-sized BSTc's in male-to-female transsexuals.
* Berglund et al. (2008) found female-like hypothalamus activation in male-to-female transsexuals in response to smelling odorous steroids.

If there is a neurobiological basis for transsexuality, it seems reasonable to expect to see transsexuality in non-human animals. This leads me to my question:

**Has transsexuality been observed in animals other than humans, and how was it observed?**

**References:**

* Zhou et al., A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality, Nature 378 (1995), 68-70.
* Berglund et al., Male-to-Female Transsexuals Show Sex-Atypical Hypothalamus Activation When Smelling Odorous Steroids, Cereb. Cortex 18 (2008), 1900-1908.

# Answer
Transexuality is a very social (and human) phenomena that's directly a consequence of how we define it as a society and indirectly a consequence of having distinct male/female ideologies.

Humans can be born as an ambiguous sex. We have a wide spectrum of hermaphrodites from androgen insensitivity syndrom (i.e. genetically "male" but can be legally "female" and can have varying degrees of both sex organs). So our definitions of male/female aren't exactly robust in the first place.

Most (probably all) animals do not have language and are unlikely to have social symbols that are meaningful to them. Most plants can change sex under stress, oysters can, too. Many organisms don't have a defined sex role (all of them are hermaphrodites). C. elegans are mostly hermaphrodites but can have the rare male. Often, the gender changes here are a direct biological response, rather than a social response, whereas with humans, it's more about responding to a social label.

There's some small chance that some other species have developed some sort of social sex expectations (I.e., gender) and have somehow had members challenge it, but it would be really hard to tell without sharing brain architecture, facial expressions, or language with them.
> 5 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, animal-cognition, sexuality
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# Question
Title: Introductory material on psychophysics with a focus on visual stimuli
Is there any introductory-level material available on psychophysics that you can recommend to someone without a background in cognitive sciences? Visual stimuli is the main area of interest.

*Edit*: Question has been narrowed down in response to comments

# Answer
To help get you started on the topic of visual stimuli in psychophysics:

This webpage, "Psychophysics of Vision" goes right back to basics and explains the background knowledge associated with psychophysics of visual stimuli. They also seem to suggest some simple experiments to try.

There is also "Software for visual psychophysics", with an extensive explanation (and further links) as you read the page.

Hopefully, these are a good start for you.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I never read any English textbooks on psychophysics, so I cannot help you there. If I wanted to find a good one, I would look at the curricula at some universities and see which books they use or recommend. Such information is often available online.

Beyond a textbook, like user1406647 (+1), I find it enlightening to read classic experiments by the inventors of psychophysics. Their texts are easy to understand without much previous knowledge, and the experiments are simple and foundational for the understanding of the principles of psychophysics. Also, I believe that textbooks only ever give a vague and superficial idea of a field, while confrontation with original texts provides a deeper insight. This is especially true for the presentation of theories: in textbooks they are always abbreviated beyond recognition. Textbooks are good in that they provide a possible structure (e.g. they group authors and theories), delineate historical development, and summarize critique. They are like maps: you'll have to do the walking yourself, but you know where you might find the most spectacular sights.

That said, I want to give some few examples that I found especially basic. Any one of these or similar articles will give you an understanding of what psychophysics is about. A good textbook should give you some references to more such experiments.

* **Charpentier on the Size-Weight-Illusion**:
Charpentier, M. A. (1891). Analyse expérimentale de quelques éléments de la sensation de poids. *Archives de Physiologie Normale et Pathologique. Cinquième Série, 3*, 122-135. Available online at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k4327622/f125.image
An English translation by David J. Murray and Robert R. Ellis has fortunately been archived at http://www.oocities.org/robertellis600/charp.htm
Background information on Charpentier's article is provided in:
Murray, D. J., Ellis, R. R, Bandomir, C. A., & Ross, H. E. (1999). Charpentier (1891) on the size-weight illusion. *Perception & Psychophysics, 61*, 1681-1685. doi:10.3758/BF03213127
* **Plateau on Averaging of Achromatic Colors**:
Plateau, J. (1872). Sur la mesure des sensations physiques, et sur la loi qui lie l'intensité de ces sensations à l'intensité de la cause excitante. *Bulletins de L'Academie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 2me Sér., 33*, 376-388.
An English translation by Janet and Donald Laming has been published as:
Laming, J., & Laming, D. (1996). J. Plateau: On the measurement of physical sensations and on the law which links the intensity of these sensations to the intensity of the source. *Psychological Research, 59*, 134-144. doi:10.1007/BF01792434
The experiment has been replicated and discussed in:
Heller, J. (2001). Mittenbildung bei achromatischen Farben: Das klassische Experiment von Plateau. *Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie, 48*, 259-271. doi:10.1026//0949-3946.48.4.259
* *I'll update this answer with more examples when I have the time.*
> 3 votes

# Answer
Research articles by Igor Dolgov (NMSU) and Mike McBeath (ASU) are good research-grade articles on this topic. They are both active scientists with well-referenced papers. I chose to work around them because of the quality of their ideas.

Dolgov is more focused on Ecological perceptual models. McBeath is an illusion 'junkie'. Bother have done much work related to sports phenomenon, including perceptual motion biases.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Try to find following authors and researches: Fechner, S.S. Stevens and Weber.

Those experiments are easily to reproduce... New psychophysic is melted with neuroscience in some way.

a/ it is easy to reproduce if you don't have expensive equipment; b/ it shows how physics and psychology shows outer and inner world respectively ie. on physics side you can measure intensity of light and on psychology side you can measure if participant saw this intensity of light, after that you can check hypotheses with simple statistical procedures like chi-square or student t-test and c/historical reasons
> 2 votes

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Tags: reference-request, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: How to create a course that will give you synesthesia?
I'm thinking of creating a Memrise course that will include numbers and letters with corresponding colors, personality and sounds with aim of trying to develop some synesthesia in myself and anyone who's interested.

**Is it possible to induce synesthesia by doing such a course?**

If so, how can it best be done:

* Should I use sound, light spectrum, some other gradients, pick by random or look up some statistics in order to color the numbers? Should composite numbers include colors of their factors or digits?
* Should letters be colored as they appear in the alphabet or by it's frequency in the language?
* Are there some other ways?

# Answer
**You can induce *weak/artificial* synesthesia on yourself, you cannot induce *strong* synesthesia on yourself.**

The type of synesthesia you describe is the same type that Ramachandran mentions when hypothesizing that synesthesia is not a legitimate sensory experience:

"Could we be absolutely sure that this wasn't happening because early in kindergarten she had repeatedly seen a red seven on her refrigerator door?"

This is simply an association, like remembering the qualities of bacon when it is smelled. True, strong synesthesia is not something that can be induced by association. It is not an association within how they think of something, but a secondary modal experience that is triggered automatically when they experience the first modal experience.

The modern test for synesthesia, the stroop test, perhaps demonstrates this best. In a normal stroop test, participants are asked to recognize a color word that is in a different color (the word "blue" on a red font). The meaning of the word and the color of the word cause a temporary automatic conflict in your brain, and your results are slower than if they matched or were all black. If you ask a grapheme-visual synesthese to recognize numbers that disagree with the colors they see it as, their responses will slow. If you were to undergo this memorization training, your responses would not slow, the association you have is memory based and would occur after recognition processing.

**To expand on the differences between weak synesthesia and strong synesthesia**

Weak synesthesia is association or metaphor. You do not experience the secondary meaning, you simply think of it. It can sometimes seem very close to experiencing it, but it is still separate. If you are thinking of red after seeing a 7, someone could distract you or you could willingly think of another color equally.

Strong synesthesia is an *automatic inappropriate modal response*. A modal response is the response of one distinct sense to an input. For most people, this is the normal things, sound and hearing, scent and smell... For a synesthese the color they see on a number or while listening to music is exactly as real as the number or music itself. Someone attempting to emulate this may imagine the number they see in their mind and then think of a color. To the synesthese, not only is the synesthetic color on the number, but so is the actual color of the number. It does not overwrite the actual input, it is simply additional input. It is 'inappropriate' because it is a response that is not supposed to happen for that input. It is automatic in the sense that it cannot be ignored, blocked out, distracted from, changed in any way, or otherwise consciously altered. Trying to do so would be equivalent to trying to convince yourself you do not see a cup. It won't work, your automatic senses will still tell you there is a cup.

For more information, I would recommend any of the following:

* The Man Who Tasted Shapes by Dr. Cytowic is the original modern research on synesthesia, though the hypothesis Cytowic puts forth is not held very highly anymore.
* The Tell-Tale Brain by V.S. Ramachandran has a section on Synesthesia incorporating both real-world examples and the most up-to-date research on the matter in a very readable way.
* Varieties of Anomalous Experience is not as up-to-date as Ramachandran but cites specific studies and research in more detail.
> 6 votes

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Tags: learning, synesthesia
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# Question
Title: Why do we become bored of stimuli after multiple exposures to it?
Why do we become bored of songs, films, stories, jokes, food after being exposed to them or experiencing them multiple times?

Why is it when our cortex becomes adequate at predicting the outcomes of a song, film, joke it seems to be less enjoyable, is this the case? And if so what is the neuroscience behind this phenomena that stops our pleasure center being activated? I get the evolutionary aspect of why this maybe the case but I wanted more detail on the neuroscience side.

# Answer
This will probably only answer part of your query.

I think that this is an example of 'habituation', which is a decrease in response to stimuli. There has been some research in this field, a particularly good reference is "Habituation: the difference between familiar and unfamiliar stimuli", where the authors contend that the underlying cause goes beyond 'sensory adaptation' and 'muscle fatigue', and that the reasons and neurological responses are quite unique for each situation.

An important point from the reference above is:

> There is in fact a wealth of examples from a wide range of human and animal behaviour where isolated responses wane as the stimulus which provokes them recurs, without the intervention of muscular fatigue or sensory adaption (Hinde, 1970). However, the scope of habituation is so comprehensive, embracing almost every type of behaviour, that as Hinde says the \`underlying processes' must vary enormously.

I hope this helps.
> 2 votes

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Tags: learning, habituation
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# Question
Title: Why neural architecture is not hardwired for N-dimensional vision but hardwired for abstract math?
In The Theoretical Minimum, in lecture 1, Leonard Susskind says that you can only visualize 3 dimentional images. (see yourself). Therefore, he says, in order to deal with N dimensions, you need to deal with abstract algebra. I wonder why the brain is hardwired for abstract algebra.

It might be worth to note that mnemotechnicians remind us that your mind thinks in pictures, and remembers pictures, not words or abstract thoughts?

# Answer
Abstract algebra and n-dimensional space are constructs of the human mind. Since they are constructs of the human mind, it is of course possible for the human mind to grasp them.

N-dimensional space is a mathematical construct. That human mathematics allows for the construction of something, does not mean that it exists in reality.

For example, in mathematics, there are `3 apples`. In reality, there are no 3 apples, because all apples are different (in size, color, ripeness, taste etc.), and the equation `1 apple = 1 apple` is always false.

Mathematics is an abstraction from reality, and the fact that it is an abstraction means that relevant information is lost in mathematical representation. If you turn this around, it means that a mathematical model has an unkown relation to reality, because you don't know which information is not present in the model.

Even more basic, it is unknown if anything relating to that model even exists. For example, the equation `3 - 4 = -1` has no relation in reality. There are no negative objects or lengths. (All scales that include negatives, such as temperature, have an arbitrary zero point and can be transformed to a scale without negatives, e.g. Kelvin.) Even simple mathematics is fictional. The existence of a mathematical object or model, such as n-dimensional space, does not prove, nor even imply, the existence of a related reality.
> 2 votes

# Answer
One could say that brain is not hardwired for abstract ideas... why? There are exhaustive work by Piaget in which he claimed about stages of thinking. Modern researches argue that only 25-35% of High-school students dont entry Formal operational stage which is approximately abstract thinking. So average Joe is hardwired for 3 dimensional vision and concrete thinking.

update1: From theoretical perspective of evolutionary psychologist or biologist, it could be assumed that in one moment on earth it was more important for organism how to organize themselves, or how to find food etc then how to see in more dimensions. There is obvious difference in various species and vision, we can assume that it was developed chronologically or at once. but if it was chronologically the adaptation motive was the main motive. In that manner one of definition of inteligence is ability to adapt.

update2: i watched this video lecture and there are several errors in his statements: 1)time is perception of human, it is question if it is something which is universaly acknowledged. 2) 1, 2, 3 are not numbers - they are Plato representation of numbers which we adopt 3) this is more important 3 dimensional visionary system is like time, something we belive exists, but n-dimensional system and 3 dimensional system have only word 'dimension' in common. they are not same 'dimensions' you think it is the same because the name is same. Simmilar mistake is between Jungian word Extraversion and Eysenck or B5 term. Do you understand now? So people want to put in coordinate system something what does not belong there.
> 1 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neural-network, cognitive-neuroscience
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title: How to conduct surveys using facebook?

text:
# Question
Title: How to conduct surveys using facebook?
More and more often I read in papers, that an online survey has been conducted through Facebook. What I have yet to understand is how this can best be done. I understand that Facebook allows the creation of a survey app that allows surveys to be embedded in fan pages or timelines. Thus, I have many little questions:

1. How and where do the existing Facebook survey apps (like https://de-de.facebook.com/simple.surveys) store their data? How does this comply with scientific privacy and data security concerns?
2. Which apps are best, and why?
3. I would like to run the actual survey on my own website. Is it possible to embed an external website in a Facebook app?
4. How can I implement a survey that does not need the test subject to allow the app access to profile data?
5. Since there is no way to advertise a survey on Facebook, except by having someone use it and let his friends know that he uses it, how do you, who have conducted surveys through Facebook, find a large enough and random enough sample? Or: How do you advertise your survey?

### My overall question is

Regardless of the little questions above, I'm interested in:

* **What is an effective way to conduct surveys using Facebook?**
* **Are there any existing tutorials that describe best practice?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
*This is just a few thoughts.*

I agree with @adb that an obvious way to use facebook for conducting surveys is just to provide a link to an external website that runs the survey.

There is an interesting article by Tan and colleagues where they talk about using paid advertisements to get targeted participants on Facebook. I thought the following statistics were interesting in highlighting the sheer scale required in order to convert an ad into completed surveys: 1.1 million ad impressions resulted in 280 clicks on the advertisement of which 59 responded to the survey of which 39 completed the survey.

### References

* Tan, H., Forgasz, H., Leder, G., & McLeod, A. SURVEY RECRUITMENT USING FACEBOOK: THREE STUDIES. FULL TEXT

# Answer
> 1 votes
You could try third party suppliers. There is currently a company offering free facebook surveys. Basically, create an account, create a survey, enter in a bit of information and presto, you have a survey. Try www.hiprewards.com. Building your own survey app for facebook is not a trivial undertaking.

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Tags: methodology, survey, social-networks
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title: Heart rate monitor for scientific study

text:
# Question
Title: Heart rate monitor for scientific study
I want to measure heart rate as part of a controlled experiment I am setting up. I've been trying to find information on which heart rate monitor to buy, but it's unclear to me which heart rate monitors allow exporting data to PC, and how open the data is. Can I only analyse the data through the software provided by the vendor, or is it common practice to be able to export it as e.g. CSV?

* Are there any 'common' heartrate sensors used in the community?
* Should I look for monitors which support a certain protocol/format?
* Are there any vendors which I should avoid, e.g. when they have closed file formats?

# Answer
I recently completed a study involving physical ergonomics of rifles. We monitored heart rate and respiration using the Zephyr BioHarness. It seemed to work pretty well.

It also monitors movement of the user, if that is of interest to you.

To get data out, it is possible to compile a report and export it to CSV, which works well if you need to do analysis on the data using other programs.
> 6 votes

# Answer
A few years ago we had very good luck using OEM pulse oximetry equipment from Nonin. Their OEM products are typically intended for other manufacturers to use in their own products. The downside is that it might take a little bit of work to configure the device at first, but the upside is that the products are eminently hackable and provide lots of information. We had a Python script that would read the heart rate data from an Xpod alongside a set of external triggers from our stimulus presentation software and then save it as a CSV file at the end of each run. Very slick!

Nonin Xpod Page: http://www.nonin.com/OEMSolutions/Xpod
> 2 votes

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Tags: experimental-psychology, physiology
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title: Which are the multisensory brain areas?

text:
# Question
Title: Which are the multisensory brain areas?
What would be an example of a multisensory brain area, where multiple senses (e.g. smell and taste) are combined to decode the corresponding stimuli from more than one sensory organ?

I was thinking of association areas, but it doesn't really seem plausible that they would primarily be multisensory areas.

# Answer
> 8 votes
Much of the answer will depend on how you define multisensory. Are you most interested in areas of the brain where multiple primary sensory streams converge together to form secondary representations, or are you interested in areas of the brain that simply have access to that kind of information?

I will throw in for consideration one of my favorite multisensory brain areas: the insula. It is the primary sensory cortex for gustatory and interoceptive sensory information (Craig et al., 2000) and seems to play an important role in temporal coincidence of crossmodal stimuli (Calvert, 2001). This includes tactile-auditory association (Renier et al., 2009), tactile-visual association (Gentile et al., 2010), auditory-visual association (Bushara et al., 2001) to name a few.

With regard to the example in your question, De Araujo et al. (2003) found that the anterior orbitofrontal cortex was one of the few regions that didn't respond to taste, didn't respond to smell, but did respond when taste and smell were simultaneously presented. Orbitofrontal cortex might be my second favorite multisensory brain area...

* Bushara KO, Grafman J, Hallett M. (2001) Neural Correlates of Auditory–Visual Stimulus Onset Asynchrony Detection. Journal of Neuroscience, 21(1), 300-304.
* Calvert GA. (2001) Crossmodal Processing in the Human Brain: Insights from Functional Neuroimaging Studies. Cerebral Cortex, 11(12), 1110-1123.
* Craig AD, Chen K, Bandy D, and Reiman EM. (2000) Thermosensory activation of insular cortex. Nature Neuroscience, 3(2), 184-190.
* De Araujo IET, Rolls ET, Kringlebach ML, McGlone F, and Phillips N. (2009) Taste-olfactory convergence, and the representation of the pleasantness of flavour, in the human brain. European Journal of Neuroscience, 18(7), 2059-2068.
* Gentile G, Petkova VI, and Ehrsson HH. (2010) Integration of Visual and Tactile Signals From the Hand in the Human Brain: An fMRI Study. Journal of Neurophysiology, 105(2), 910-922.
* Renier LA, Anurova I, De Volder AG, Carlson S, VanMeter J, Rauschecker JP. (2009) Multisensory Integration of Sounds and Vibrotactile Stimuli in Processing Streams for “What” and “Where”. Journal of Neuroscience, 29(35), 10950-10960.

# Answer
> 9 votes
Association areas are exactly what you are looking for, actually.

For example, the ventral intraparietal (VIP) cortex, located in the inferior parietal lobe (along the right border of the yellow area in the image below), just on the border of the occipital lobe, integrates somatosensory (tactile) and visual information.

Image via Wikipedia

For an extensive look at the single electrode studies which illustrated this convergence, see the following article:

Duhamel, J. R., Colby, C. L., & Goldberg, M. E. (1998). Ventral intraparietal area of the macaque: congruent visual and somatic response properties. Journal of Neurophysiology, 79(1), 126-136. FREE PDF

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, sensation, neuroanatomy, cross-modal
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# Question
Title: How many sparring partners should I choose for the most effective motivation in the gym?
Question is simple.

Will I be more motivated with one good friend or with a group of the same interested people during group exercise?

**Does group size affect our internal motivation?** (starting by size of 2 people up to X)

Where are bounds for the worst motivation, average motivation and the best motivation for physical workout? (or we can discuss other activities as well)

My input: I'm just thinking about competition feelings in bigger group of people when my brain is saying something like this: "*I have to be better than everyone else.*"

*This question doesn't need to be exclusively bound to the gym workout.*

# Answer
The Ringelmann effect may be useful to you in this question; he found that "the addition of co-workers in a rope-pulling task leads to a linear decrement in the individual group member's average performance." It has been examined experimentally here, and was found to occur with the addition of second and third group members, but adding members beyond that didn't have a significant effect. There was a second experiment that tried to control for the possibility of intermember coordination, but it found the same thing.

(Of course, this leaves out entirely the possibility of differing group dynamics across groups of the same size but with different members. It also does not speak to individual differences--that some people may do better with a larger group, or with varied activity partners, while others do better with smaller groups or more consistent activity partners.)

Alan G Ingham, George Levinger, James Graves, Vaughn Peckham The Ringelmann effect: Studies of group size and group performance Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 10, Issue 4, July 1974, Pages 371–384
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, motivation
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# Question
Title: To what extent does culture affect emotion perception?
In a globalized world, in spite of cultural differences, we share, at least at the symbolic level (language level), lots of things. Considering pictures that display emotions (affect), such as those offered by the International Affective Picture System, could we speak of their 'international' character without affecting the specific and local cultural influence that might influence us in rating them?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Long story short: at least in facial affect perception/expression, there is not a definitive answer to this. The field is only just beginning to get a handle on the fact that what have been long thought of as "universal" expressions of emotion don't seem to be, so there is considerably less work on how exactly culture affects these expressions. However, current consensus is that between-group affective judgments have lower agreement rates than within-group affective judgments.

There is longstanding work from Paul Ekman suggesting that perception of six basic emotions in faces is universal (he wrote an argument for this point of view here and, more recently, here). This was based on quite a lot of work showing that participants agreed at very high rates on the emotion displayed in a set of pictures of emotionally expressive faces. However, there are methodological weaknesses in this work (there is fulltext of an excellent review on it available here). Basically, these can be summed up as a preference for forced-choice (making participants choose from a limited list of answers about the emotion on display), within-subject designs, and stimuli from Ekman's original set; when different experimental design choices are made, the agreement largely disappears.

This opens the field for suggestions that most or all affective expression is in fact culturally influenced; a more recent study here found less agreement between groups than within groups, and more agreement between groups that had more exposure to eachother than groups that had less exposure to eachother. **This paper is a highly detailed answer to your question, at least as currently understood.**

References:

1) Universals and cultural differences in facial expressions of emotion. Ekman, Paul. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol 19, 1971, 207-283.

2) An argument for basic emotions. Ekman , Paul. Cognition & Emotion : Vol. 6, Iss. 3-4, 1992.

3) Is There Universal Recognition of Emotion From Facial Expression? A Review of the Cross-Cultural Studies. Psychological Bulletin 1994, Vol. 115, No. 1, 102-141.

4) On the universality and cultural specificity of emotion recognition: A meta-analysis. Elfenbein, Hillary Anger; Ambady, Nalini. Psychological Bulletin, Vol 128(2), Mar 2002, 203-235.

# Answer
> 0 votes
If "we" - as global citizens - speak of their international quality it does not affect how they affect our ratings of them. Perhaps one could study responses to "International APS" versus "National APS" while presenting the IAPS in both conditions post "priming". This would determine differences in ratings, but *the IAPS is first and foremost designed for emotion elicitation*, that is: responses and not ratings. Those responses are species-dependent, but universal among humans.

UPDATE: In psychology "rating" and "response" have specific meanings. A response is a reaction to a stimulus, an event in the environment. For example, a stop sign makes a person stop their car. The sign is the stimulus and braking is the response. In psychological testing of humans, a field called psychometry, ratings are gathered through questionnaires. For example: "On a scale from 1 to 7, are you experiencing fear when seeing this image?". Ratings require evaluations. As such, ratings require deliberate tought. In contrast, responses can be automatic. For example, a person seeing the barrel of a gun pointed at him in an image might respond with sudden fear: the eyes open wide. In some situations we have a choice to respond with a smile if we appraise that a person should be greeted with a smile. However, sometimes we meet a friend and smile back immediately without any deliberate thought. Responses are tightly linked to the stimulus and are sometimes automatic, while ratings require deliberate judgement, sometimes through verbalization.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, emotion, cross-cultural-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there a Dot-Probe Paradigm / visual-probe task available online?
Is there an online resource to take the Dot-probe paradigm test\>

When I searched I could only find a guide to set up a server for such a test. However, I don't have the ability to do that.

I'm specifically interested in a test that measures negativity/pessimism bias and tells you the results.

# Answer
There appears to be an Inquisit implementation of the dot probe task that will run both online and in a lab. Such scripts can presumably be customised to your purposes.

If you want to use this for research purposes, you would need to have access to a licence to Inquisit.

There is also a trial version of the software. You could download the trial of Inquisit and the script and run the script on your computer.
> 1 votes

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Tags: experimental-psychology, methodology
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# Question
Title: What introductory material is available linking complexity theory to cognitive science?
* Does complexity theory speak to cognitive science?
* If yes, where can I find some material to explore that is suitable for undergraduate level understanding?
* In particular, is there any audio contennt on this?

# Answer
> 8 votes
*In general, there are two types of 'complexity' that are studied. Usually, when people talk about 'complexity', especially on the internet, they mean Santa Fe Institute style complexity. This is a vague and poorly defined concept that has struggled for a number of years without making significant progress. It uses pretty words, but has yet to deliver on any real results. I will not discuss it more in this answer.*

The other type of complexity is computational complexity theory as studied by theoretical computer science. In general, this field is too mathematical and too rigorous to engage with most of cognitive science and psychology, but there are a few connections. I recommend looking at the cstheory question: What is the complexity class most closely associated with what the human mind can accomplish quickly?

In that question, the author is curious to know which complexity class most closely resembles what humans can achieve. My favourite answer discusses the **Tractable Cognition thesis**. For reference, see these papers:

A specialized part of computational complexity known as computational learning theory has been particularily notable in trying to make connections to cognitive science, in particular linguists. Gold's theorem on the non-learnability of certain families of formal languages was especially relevant in the early days of the poverty of the stimulus debate. You can learn more about it in these two questions:

Keep in mind, that computational complexity is advanced material and requires a decent mathematical sophistication. However, with difficulty comes insights.

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Tags: reference-request, cognitive-modeling, philosophy-of-mind, mathematical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Can motivation for sex be transformed into productive motivation?
Sex seems to be a fundamental drive. To satisfy sexual desire, a person will often masturbate or have sex.

* What happens if a person abstains from anything sexual?
* Can this drive be "transferred" to other areas of an individual's life?
* That is, can sexual energy be transformed into productive energy?

# Answer
In Freudian Psychoanalysis, *sublimation* is the transformation of unacceptable sexual desires into mental achievements or culturally accepted behaviors. Sublimation is one of the mature defense mechanisms of the Ego. Freud believed that human culture as a whole is a result of sublimation. He sees especially in artistic expression and scientific research the conversion of base desires to a higher realm.

In their review of recent studies in social psychology for evidence relevant to seven Freudian defense mechanisms, Baumeister, Dale and Sommer (1998)

> have found nothing at all to suggest that people can defend themselves against unacceptable feelings or desires by transforming them into socially desirable activities, thereby producing superior achiement in those activities. The best available data concern education and sex, and those findings consitently fail to support sublimation theory (and in some cases are in the opposite direction). At present, our best educated guess is that sublimation is not a genuine or effective defense mechanism, and it seems doubtful that anything resembling sublimation occurs at all.

The question "What is the effect of sexual abstinence on intellectual and artistic achievment?" has specifically been answered by studies on celibacy, which show either no or a negative effect (Baumeister, Dale, & Sommer, 1998).

---

Sources
> 3 votes

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Tags: motivation, sexuality
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# Question
Title: How is light processed by the human brain when awake and in dreams?
I've recently seen this great video: How your brain tells you where you are. The video discusses how certain cells within the brain fire based on proximity to objects. There are great examples of experiments with brain cells and location.

**I'm wondering if there's similar insight about how the brain processes light.** I'm particularly interested in **how light is processed in dreams**, when no light stimulus is coming from the eyes.

It is possible to have dreams that are dark or light, but changing the level of ambient light is generally difficult in dreams. In fact, a common test for dreaming involves flipping a light switch. If the effect is unexpected, the person may be dreaming.

How do our brains actually process light?

# Answer
There is a range of evidence to suggest that our brain processes self-generated visual information in much the same way that we process visual information from the environment.

There is a really great review article by Kosslyn, Ganis, and Thompson (2001) that goes over evidence for activity in modality-specific brain areas during visual, auditory, and motor visualization. One interesting effect is that damage to areas of the brain that process object properties yields the inability to visualize shape, and damage to areas of the brain that process spatial properties yields the inability to visualize location in space. Similar deficits have been observed in imagery deficits for color and faces following specific types of brain damage.

One question that is still debated is whether the very early visual processing areas (V1, Brodmann areas 17 and 18) are involved in visual imagery. These are areas that receive input from the eyes, provide the first cortical processing of light properties, and have a spatial layout similar to the retina. From the review, 34/50 neuroimaging studies have shown evidence of activity in the early visual cortex during visualization. More evidence has emerged since the Kosslyn review supporting the role of early visual areas during mental imagery (e.g. Slotnick et al., 2005).

Because early visual areas are thought to be active during self-generated imagery, it sets the stage for being able to "read out" what you are visualizing. Horikawa et al. (2013) trained a set of machine learning classifiers on awake subjects, and were then able to create crude reconstructions of what the subjects were visualizing while they were dreaming. No joke!

* Horikawa T, Tamaki M, Miyawaki Y, Kamitani T. (2103) Neural decoding of visual imagery during sleep. Science, 340(6132), 639-642.
* Kosslyn SM, Ganis G, and Thomson WL. (2001) Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 635-642.
* Sotnick SD, Thompson WL, and Kosslyn SM. (2005) Visual mental imagery induces retinotopically organized activation of early visual areas. Cerebral Cortex, 15(10), 1570-1583.
> 5 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, vision, dreams
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# Question
Title: Why a person may have a temptation to do something unrelated when doing especially important thing?
I would like to know, why a person may have a temptation to do something unrelated (or slightly related to his current task) when doing particularly important job?

Like, when preparing for an important math test under a time pressure, to spend time on consulting grammar book on why some sentence were constructed in that particular way and what are the rules for constructing the sentences of this kind, then finding some question while studying this and switch to stydying the new question and so on. As a result spending much more time on "unrelated" things rather than on the important one?

What mechanisms lie behind this behaviour? Is there a scientific description of this phenomenon?

I'll rephrase the initial question: Why a person may have a strong subconscious temptation to distract oneself from doing very important job?

# Answer
This is a partial answer to your question.

It is something that I do frequently - often it is a case of having several tasks that must be done in varying degrees of important and urgency. What seems to happen is that the main, most urgent, task is 'deferred' whilst performing the less urgent and less important smaller tasks - effectively shrinking the 'to do' list.

A phenomena that seems to relate to what you are asking is known as 'mind-wandering', in the article "Tracking the train of thought from the laboratory into everyday life: An experience-sampling study of mind wandering across controlled and ecological contexts", (McVay et al. 2009), asserts that mind wandering is symptomatic of people being unaware of conscious activity. That mind-wandering

> increasing with stress, boredom, sleepiness, or chaotic environments, and decreasing with concentration, effort, successful performance, enjoyable tasks, or happiness.

Also, according to the article "The Importance of Mind-Wandering", (Lehrer, 2011), assert that,

> Activation in medial prefrontal default network regions was observed both in association with subjective self-reports of mind wandering and an independent behavioral measure (performance errors on the concurrent task).

In the article, there is a suggestion that normally opposing neural systems ('executive' and 'default') work cooperatively.

So, while it may seem as self-distraction or procrastination, it appears to happen often and is a normal function.
> 3 votes

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Tags: learning, concentration
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# Question
Title: Abstract idealized mental visualization improves motor task performance
I practice martial arts (Aikido), which involves a lot of rotation.

When practicing, I find that *holding an abstract image in my head, instead of thinking about the actual technique, improves my performance of the technique.*

For example, when rotation is required, my mental image is essentially a vertical spiral pulled tight in the middle (as if constrained by a belt), in that one comes in to the axis of rotation and must stay on it before moving off into the rest of the technique.

The question, then is:
**What explains why an abstract mental image can improve adherence to an ideal set of movements?**

**And, can this be explained neuro-biologically and, if yes, how?**

(I suspect that the two questions have similar, if not the same, answers - hence why I've included both instead of separating them)

If you prefer to not answer those questions, believe that I should be answering these myself, or believe that this is not high-enough quality for CogSci (I apologize for any improper terminology), please offer a direction in which I can start my research into this phenomena, as at the moment I am at a loss for where to begin.

# Answer
> 6 votes
I would hazard a guess that some type of motor system interference is taking place when you visualize the movement versus visualizing an abstract shape.

For example, Kilner et al. (2003) found that actions that are observed can interfere with incongruous executed actions. They had subjects make arm movements that were either similar or dissimilar to those of another human or a robot. Movements that were not similar caused a greater amount of error in the arm movement of the subject. Since motor visualization can recruit many of the same areas of cortex as actual observation and execution (Kosslyn et al., 2001), this could cause similar interference.

Other papers, such as Rémy et al. (2010), have shown that there is reduced motor learning when two movements were acquired at the same time. Their hypothesis was that the two movements both recruited similar areas of cortex, which caused a form of competitive interference. Visualizing a movement before execution could generate competition between similar, but not identical, movement representations.

Finally, there is evidence that varied practice, or learning a motor movement in several different ways, can cause a short-term degradation of motor learning, but can cause long term increases in retention and generalization of a motor movement. Magill and Hall (1990) had a nice review of this effect, called contextual interference. Visualizing the movement could be causing reduced performance now, but it could be argued that it may be beneficial in the long-term.

Wikipedia has some surprisingly good articles on motor learning and task interference if you are interested in learning more:
Motor learning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor\_learning
Interference theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference\_theory

*  Kilner JM, Paulignan Y, Blakemore SJ. (2003) An interference effect of observed biological movement on action. Current biology, 13(6), 522–525.
* Kosslyn SM, Ganis G, and Thomson WL. (2001) Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 635-642.
* Magill RA and Hall KG (1990) A review of the contextual interference effect in motor skill acquisition. Human Movement Science, 9, 241-289.

# Answer
> 3 votes
There was an interesting study that compared practice by imagining a movement to practice by executing ot and found an increase in strength of ~35% for imagining it, compared to ~55% for actually doing it; additionally, they found an increase in cortical potentials corresponding to the increase in strength. They concluded that mental imagery alone strengthened cortical representations for that movement.

Vinoth K. Ranganathan, Vlodek Siemionow, Jing Z. Liu, Vinod Sahgal, Guang H. Yue From mental power to muscle power—gaining strength by using the mind Neuropsychologia, Volume 42, Issue 7, 2004, Pages 944–956

# Answer
> 1 votes
Maybe this paper would shed some light on your question : 5-HT and motor control: a hypothesis. The author has done some experiments on Serotonin systems within a cat's brain (Raphe Nuclei), and argues that Serotonin system is primarily involved in locomotion and (voluntary?) movement.

Here's an interesting diagram from that paper: **the firing pattern of the raphe nuclei changes in the cat's brain, as the cat shifts attention** from grooming to observing and trying to figure out the source of noise in the room (door opening and closing). The author explores the connection between motor and sensory processes, but you'll have to read the paper to get a better hang of what he suggests.

The cat experiment was done invasively, and I don't know if there are experiments like this on humans, where a human can be asked to shift attention, while the firing pattern of Raphe Nuclei is observed. Still, **my best guess would be that by visualizing as you perform the rotation, you alter how your raphe nuclei is firing.**

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, motor, visualization
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# Question
Title: Why does repeating one word over and over again sound weird to us after some time?
This effect seems to be observed with almost any word. I would say this phenomenon 'works' for longer and complex words better.

When we repeat a word over and over again, it starts to sound very weird and become only a bunch of repeating sounds. You don't even need to repeat it quickly.

Why does a word repeated many times lose its meaning and the brain can't recognize it properly any more?

# Answer
> 14 votes
This is called semantic saturation, or semantic satiation; studies of event-related potentials (brain waves) suggest that it is negatively correlated with N400 amplitude (the subjective experience of satiation increases as the N400 amplitude decreases) without any change to upstream sensory components. As N400 amplitude indexes initial lexical integration--that is, understanding the word at hand in relation to the words that preceded it--this sugggests that semantic satiation is in fact due to some kind of habituation in the semantic processes, and not in upstream sensory processing.

Citations: Wikipedia on Semantic saturation

Kounios, J., Kotz, S. A., & Holcomb, P. J. (2000). On the locus of the semantic satiation effect: Evidence from event-related brain potentials. Memory & cognition, 28(8), 1366-1377.

# Answer
> 7 votes
The accepted answer by @krysta may not be the full story: it depends on the way words are repeated.

I understand from @tsykora's question that words are repeated without a separation (syllables are produced at a fixed pace). Kounios et al. used spoken words (mean length of 544 milliseconds) that were repeated several times at a fixed interval of 800 milliseconds. This means that blanks (no sound) separated each presentation of a word.

The blank period between words is of importance since repeated words in a blank context may not "sound very weird" (words are clearly, physically, separable) but only loose their meaning. In a no-blank context (continuous speech), both meaning and percept change. An auditory example can be found in the "ILLUSORY CHANGES OF REPEATED WORDS: THE VERBAL TRANSFORMATION EFFECT" section (http://www4.uwm.edu/APL/demonstrations.html). For instance, while listening to repetitions of the word "rest", listeners are likely to switch between perceiving it as a repetition of "rest" and "tress" or "stress" (Warren & Gregory, 1958).

The verbal transformation effect originates in a multistable representation of a speech form. Pitt and Shoaf (2002) argues that one possible cause is the perceptual regrouping of the acoustic elements that make up a word. It involves some top-down processes in the perceptual organization of speech. A visual analogue of such illusion is found in the Necker cube where the percept changes according to where the eyes land (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necker\_cube).

Such acoustic phenomenon makes me think of a statistical learning in language acquisition in children. It has been shown by Saffran and colleagues that a child can learn to segment a continuous speech into distinct words using transitional probabilities between syllables. In the context of repeated words, a word boundary is first placed between "ted-re" of "re-pea-ted-re-pea-ted" because "ted-re" is not frequent in English while the two other transitions are frequent. Going further in the auditory sequence, repetitive presentation of an utterance promotes alternative groupings of the acoustic elements because the elements occur at regular, predictable points in time (Bregman, 1990). Here, repeating a word at a fixed syllable pace abolishes the frequency of the syllable transitions (the frequencies are momentarily all equal) so that "pi-a-no-pi-a-no" is sometimes heard as "piano" and sometimes "anopi".

**Ref.**

Bregman, 1990. Auditory scene analysis: The perceptual organization of sound.

Kounios et al., 2000. Memory & Cognition ; http://www.psychonomic.org/pubmed/mc/mc-28-1366.pdf

Pitt and Shoaf, 2002. JEP:HPP ; http://lpl.psy.ohio-state.edu/documents/PittShoafVTE-17\_000.pdf

Warren & Gregory, 1958. An auditory analogue of the visual reversible ﬁgure, American Journal of Psychology.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, language
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# Question
Title: What are the psychological mechanisms behind arrogance?
According to this Wiktionary defintion, arrogance is

> 1.The act or habit of arrogating, or making undue claims in an overbearing manner; that species of pride which consists in exorbitant claims of rank, dignity, estimation, or power, or which exalts the worth or importance of the person to an undue degree; proud contempt of others; lordliness; haughtiness; self-assumption; presumption.

It is often something that many others in the vicinity find repulsive, sometimes without the person realising it, but, more often than not, they do realise it.

What are the psychological mechanisms that lead to arrogant thoughts, words and actions?

# Answer
Clinically, arrogance is often associated with narcissistic personality disorder.

> Narcissistic personality disorder is one of a group of conditions called dramatic personality disorders. People with these disorders have intense, unstable emotions, and a distorted self-image. Narcissistic personality disorder is further characterized by an abnormal love of self, an exaggerated sense of superiority and importance, and a preoccupation with success and power. However, these attitudes and behaviors do not reflect true self-confidence. Instead, the attitudes conceal a deep sense of insecurity and a fragile self-esteem. People with this personality disorder also tend to set unrealistic goals.

DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria include (reprinted here):

> Criteria for narcissistic personality disorder to be diagnosed include:
>
> * Having an exaggerated sense of self-importance
> * Being preoccupied with fantasies about success, power or beauty
> * Believing that you are special and can associate only with equally special people
> * Requiring constant admiration
> * Having a sense of entitlement
> * Taking advantage of others
> * Having an inability to recognize needs and feelings of others
> * Being envious of others
> * Behaving in an arrogant or haughty manner

From a scientific standpoint, these characteristics can be difficult to pin down, and clinically, NPD is an "Axis II" diagnosis, which means that most insurance (in the United States) won't cover treatment of the disorder in and of itself.

Consequently, the push to discovering its underlying mechanisms may be less strong, but from theory, they are largely believed to be based on environment.

Proponents of the diagnosis are attempting to adjust the diagnostic criteria a bit to make it more objective for the upcoming DSM-V release.
> 11 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Are there neurological conditions that can be worsened by B group vitamins?
I know that vitamins B6 and B12 are very important for the brain function, and both are involved in metabolism of homocysteine. Buildup of homocysteine has been associated with cognitive impairment. There may be dozens of other metabolic pathways that use these vitamins.

**I'm interested if there are any medical/psychiatric conditions for which B vitamin supplementation is actually harmful or not advised?** could such supplementation overload/deplete the intrinsic factors for these vitamins, making them temporarily unavailable to the brain?

# Answer
> 5 votes
People often fall under the spell of the "more is better" assumption when it comes to supplements, but, while B6 (pyridoxine) has many lifesaving applications (e.g., treating a specific type of seizure, or \[protecting the system from acute neurotoxicity of chemotherapeutic agents, B6 can be downright toxic in high concentrations.

Patients with abnormally elevated B6 levels were found to experience numbness and burning pain among other symptoms. A patient who ingested on the order of 10 grams per day over the long term was found to have muscle weakness and motor deficits in addition to sensory neuropathy.

The most famous anecdote of this was in Oliver Sacks "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" under the story entitled "The Disembodied Lady", where a prolonged megadose of B6 left a woman with no proprioceptive feedback about her body in space. Certainly, there is little or no data about her actual ingested amounts in the popular press account, but this effect was seen frequently as a result of bodybuilding fads in the 1970s and 1980s.

So, the very act of taking the supplement in excess can exacerbate an existing neuropathic condition, or potentially create a pathology where none was present beforehand.

B12 (often supplemented as cyanocobalamin) is a bit of a different animal. It requires a cofactor ("intrinsic factor") to be absorbed properly, so it's more difficult to inadvertently take in excess.

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Tags: neuroscience, psychiatry
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# Question
Title: What are new and exciting research areas or applications in systems neuroscience?
Like the title says, what are new and exciting research areas or applications in systems neuroscience? I know the question is a broad one, so let me narrow it down a bit:

I will get my master's degree in about year from now. Currently, I have published two papers related to fMRI data analysis. I'm also familiar with PET. So, I am actually looking for a topic for my PhD.

I have considered taking part in some existing research group at my university, but to be honest, I'm not really excited about what they are doing. It seems to me that they are reinventing things (which I think is also evident from their publications records - for example, my current advisor's publications have not received much citations expect from herself).

So, the problem is that I know the basic things in my field, but nothing that could be the next big thing.

I would like to have a PhD topic on something that is new, and has potential. Any suggestions?

# Answer
> 2 votes
As Chuck says in his comment, read, read, read - as you do, consider the following factors for your potential PhD:

* What topics are PhD projects in available at the universities that you are considering. Be sure to check not only the project availability, but also the research interests of academics.
* A PhD is quite a commitment, which topic would light that 'fire' in you to the extent that it could become a lifelong vocation.

As you read, read, read - ask questions of the academics in that field, download their papers and have a look at what directions that particular research is taking.

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, eeg, fmri
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title: Intro to EEG - Electroencephalography

text:
# Question
Title: Intro to EEG - Electroencephalography
Are there any introductory level text, researches or video for "How to learn EEG"?

Those material should include dictionary of terms, what waves mean, how to connect some activity in waves to brain activity... etc

There are lot of books which covered this subject, I am looking for something very basic and easy to comprehend.

# Answer
Practical approach to electroencephalography by Mark H. Libenson.
ISBN: 978-0-7506-7478-2

This should address your issues:

* dictionary of terms
* what waves mean
* how to connect some activity in waves to brain activity... etc

> Why consult encyclopedic references when you only need the essentials? Practical Approach to Electroencephalography, by Mark H. Libenson, MD, equips you with just the right amount of guidance you need for obtaining optimal EEG results! It presents a thorough but readable guide to EEGs, explaining what to do, what not to do, what to look for, and how to interpret the results. It also goes beyond the technical aspects of performing EEGs by providing case studies of the neurologic disorders and conditions in which EEGs are used, making this an excellent learning tool. Abundant EEG examples throughout help you to recognize normal and abnormal EEGs in all situations.
>
> Presents enough detail and answers to questions and problems encountered by the beginner and the non-expert. Uses abundant EEG examples to help you recognize normal and abnormal EEGs in all situations. Provides expert pearls from Dr. Libenson that guide you in best practices in EEG testing. Features a user-friendly writing style from a single author that makes learning easy. Examines the performance of EEGs—along with the disorders for which they’re performed—for a resource that considers the patient and not just the technical aspects of EEGs. Includes discussions of various disease entities, like epilepsy, in which EEGs are used, as well as other special issues, to equip you to handle more cases.

Another review here

> Practical Approach to Electroencephalography differs from other EEG texts of its level in that it takes the time to explain itself, resulting in a far more readable albeit less portable text than other condensed introductory texts.

Book Preview

This link will provide you with access to review the book yourself, before purchasing.
> 7 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, eeg
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title: Can we smell in dreams?

text:
# Question
Title: Can we smell in dreams?
I'm interested in whether people can smell in their dreams. Do people really experience smell in their dreams? For example, if I dream of smelling a flower, will I feel the smell, too?

**Is there any research on whether people can smell in dreams?**

# Answer
Antonio, Nielsen and Doneri (1998) provide one assessment of self-reported prevalence of smell in dreams. To quote the abstract (my bolding):

> Although numerous studies have investigated the content of laboratory and home dream reports, surprisingly little is known about the prevalence of various sensory modes in dreams. 49 men and 115 women completed a battery of questionnaires and kept a home dream diary for two to three consecutive weeks. Retrospective responses to the questionnaire indicate that **approximately 33 % of men and 40% of women recalled having experienced sensations of smell or taste in their dreams**. A total of 3372 dream reports were collected and scored for unambiguous references to auditory, olfactory, and gustatory experiences. Auditory experiences were reported in approximately 53% of all dream reports. **Olfactory and gustatory sensations occurred in approximatdy 1 % of all dream reports.** A significantly greater percentage of women than men reported one or more dreams containing references to olfactory sensations. The results lend support to previous studies which have shown that a variety of sensory experiences, although relatively rare, can occur in dreams.

There is still the question about whether self-reports are trustworthy, and how you define a smell experience in a dream that is most likely not generated by external stimuli. Antonio and colleagues go on to discuss some of these issues:

> That the more infrequent modalities of smell and taste occur at all in dream reports is an important indication of the representational capacities of dreaming-and probably of imagery more generally. The finding is consistent with recent research showing the existence of imagery in both olfactory (Carrasco & Ridout, 1997; Lyman & McDaniel, 1986) and gustatory (Drummond, 1995) modalities. Although some researchers take the position that olfactory imagery is not possible (Herz & Engen, 1996), the spontaneous occurrence of olfactory imagery in dreams may differ from "willful" olfactory imagery that may occur upon instruction during the waking state. For instance, limbic structures which might yield such spontaneous occurrences during dreams may not be operational during the waking state. Nevertheless, it is likely that the relatively rare occurrence of these modalities during dreaming is not because their representation is beyond imaginal capacity. Rather, either such sensations are not usually spontaneously generated during dreaming, i.e., are not a necessary component of dreaming's supposed memory/adaptational functions, or they depend upon external sensory stimuli to trigger them. However, sensory triggers may be selectively blocked at the thalamic level by the raised afferent thresholds of REM sleep (e.g., Steriade, 1994). Of course, both of these inhibiting conditions may be true, thereby seriously disfavoring appearance of gustatory or olfactory sensations during dreaming

### References

* ANTONIO, L.Z. and Nielsen, T.A. and Donderi, DC. (1998). Prevalence of auditory, olfactory, and gustatory experiences in home dreams. Perceptual and motor skills, 87, 3, 819-826.PDF
* Carrasco, M., & Ridout, J. B. (1997) Olfactory perception and olfactory imagery: a multidimensional analysis. Journal 0f Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 19,287-30l.
* Drummond, P. D. (1995) Effect of imagining and actually tasting a sour taste on one side of the tongue. Physiology & Behavior, 57, 373-376.
* Herz, R. S, & Engen, T. (1996) Odor memory: review and analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 3, 300-313
* Lyman, B. J., & McDaniel. M. A. (1986) Effects of encoding strategy on long-term memory for odours. Human memory. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: A-Human Experimental Psychology, 38(4-A), 753-765.
* Steriade, M. (1994) Brain electrical activity and sensory processing during waking and sleep states. In M. H. Kryger, T. Roth, & W. C. Dement (Eds.), Principles and practice of sleep medicine. (2nd ed.) Philadelphia, FA: Saunders. pp. 105-124.
> 13 votes

# Answer
Also, in Oliver Sack's *The Man Who Mistook His For His Wife*, the author and famous neurologist reports a case about a man who dreamed he had the olfactory powers of a dog; however, when he awoke, he still retained his heightened sense of smell and furthermore could prove it to the nurses.

Any experience that one has in waking life can be recapitulated during a dream. In addition, Anthony Wagner has a line of research investigating how rehearsal and learning mechanisms operate during sleep. It is unclear at this point how much novel learning can occur during sleep, as no paradigm has demonstrated this very successfully.
> 5 votes

# Answer
I had a novel dreaming experience last night that led me to this website. I was having a dream revolving around plastic waste! I think this was recapitulating a discussion my wife and I had recently had about the problems of coping with the changing rules and options for dealing with domestic recycling of plastic. The content of the dream seems trivial and disorganized now, but one component was vivid and unusual.

In the dream, I set fire to some plastic waste and smelled an acrid, unpleasant odor of burning plastic. The odor sensation was VERY vivid, almost overpowering. Immediately upon registering this odor sensation, I began to be aware of the rousing of my "conscious", rational mind, which was immediately gripped by the thought of "FIRE!".

I awoke with a start and with the thought that something was burning in the house. However, after a breath two of air passed through my nose, I calmed down, as the air in my bedroom was clear and odor free. The sensation had been so vivid, however, that I could not get back to sleep until I had roused myself and walked around a bit to assure myself that nothing was burning, and that there was no lingering scent of burning plastic in my house.

I can't say that I can recall ever experiencing such a vivid odor, indeed ANY vivid odor, in a dream before this.
> 3 votes

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Tags: perception, sleep, dreams
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# Question
Title: What was the experiment where you pour liquid from a tall container to a short one and ask a child which has more?
From Developmental psychology 101 I remember an experiment where the person conducting the experiment would pour liquid from a tall, narrow container into a short, narrow container and ask a child if the volume of the liquid had changed... or something similar to that. I can't remember if it actually involved pouring the liquid or just showing two containers. I remember it was used to determine if the child had reached some critical threshold and learned a specific skill, but my memory is very hazy on the details.

* Who invented this experiment?
* How did it work? is my description accurate?
* What is the name of the skill it's testing for?

# Answer
> 18 votes
This effect is referred to as Piaget's Theory of Conservation.

Piaget constructed an experiement where children would be shown a tall, narrow glass of colored water (to make it clearly visible in a clear glass) and two shorter, wider glasses of the same exact size.

A single amount of water would be distributed in both small glasses. If a child is asked "which has more" they're likely to reply they have the same amout of water, as they look identical. However after pouring the water from one short glass into a tall glass, if you ask the child again they are likely to say the tall glass has more water because it *looks* bigger.

The interesting thing is not that the child assumes the taller glass holds more liquid but that they fail to understand **conservation**: the fact that the water from one glass is going to be the same amount after being poured into any other container. It's as if they did not realize the water came from the same glass.

Here is a video recreating Piaget's Conservation Experiment. It's common for developmental psychology courses to explain or show this experiment.

# Answer
> 2 votes
In Child Development battery(30years ago): testing of the concept of conservation was used diagnostically to indicate if a child had appropriate experiences that moved them from only concrete thinking to some abstract thinking. In science teaching method: activities are introduced to help develop the concept of conservation of volume as it is essential for successful manual experimentation or "wet lab" techniques and this is the basis for further development of concepts to conservation of mass and energy.

Some students miss out on these fundamental learning experiences in conservation which then can hamper the ability to build on them by the student and the teacher.

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Tags: terminology, developmental-psychology, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the consequence for the MBTI in not having a neuroticism factor?
This very interesting question: Do the Jungian Cognitive Functions/ Processes really exist? is dealing with neuroscientific attempts to show Jungian functions and preferences exists. In addition to that question can someone explain the following "Escher infinite staircase" situation.

1. MBTI is not exactly Jungian theory because they added judging perceiveing dimension. Also there is not neuroticism measured. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian\_cognitive\_functions
2. MBTI and Big Five is possible to link as same psychological test in research by Costa and McCrea: http://www.leadu-library.com/mj/2007/club/MBTI/MBTI-5factor.pdf

**Question:**

**How is the MBTI possible without neuroticism?**

# Answer
> 5 votes
**General observations:** As a general observation, I find that the MBTI is very popular in professional development contexts such as team building. In contrast, the Big 5 is very popular in research contexts. Several obvious reasons exist for this.

1. MBTI is typically interpreted in terms of types rather than position on a continuum, whereas Big 5 is interpreted as a position on a continuum. Continuous models of personality are a more accurate representation of reality. Types are easier for people to understand and talk about.
2. MBTI aims to have no "bad poles" and is based on a Jungian theory. The Big 5 aims to describe personality in a parsimonious way and has been empirically developed through large-scale factor analytic work. Thus, MBTI types are more acceptable to people, whereas the Big 5 has a degree of social loading on several factors, in particular this can be seen in neuroticism.

**Neuroticism in the MBTI**: The McCrae and Costa (1989) study that you cite suggests that neuroticism is poorly captured by the MBTI. Neuroticism is a very robust personality dimension capturing various tendencies to experience stress, anxiety, depression, and various other negative emotions. It is generally the best correlate of many well-being and life satisfaction measures. It correlates highly with many outcomes. Thus, I would find the absence of something like a neuroticism factor to be a major shortcoming of a personality test, particularly were it to be used for research purposes.

### References

* McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1989). Reinterpreting the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator From the Perspective of the Five‐Factor Model of Personality. Journal of personality, 57(1), 17-40.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, personality, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: How is sample size determined in animal research?
In human research, we define our universe and estimate the effect size we expect to observe, then we can draw the a sample of a given size.

How is sample size determined for experiments in the animal research field?

# Answer
Determining sample size for an animal experiment is no different than in research with human subjects. What you need to know is the effect size, the significance level and the power (which is the probability that the test detects a significant effect assuming that there is one). The tricky part is getting the effect size (for an interesting discussion have a look at this thread). The other two things are chosen by you as the experimenter. An overview paper on power analysis was written by Cohen (1992).

References

Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. *Psychological Bulletin*, 112(1), 155. PDF
> 6 votes

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Tags: statistics, animal-cognition, sampling
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# Question
Title: Neural basis of primitive (newborn) reflexes
The Wikipedia article on primitive reflexes, or newborn reflexes, states that they originate in the CNS. Here's the list of reflexes from the article:

* Moro
* Walking/stepping
* Rooting
* Sucking
* Tonic neck
* Palmar grasp
* Plantar
* Galant
* Swimming
* Babkin

**Precisely where in the CNS do they originate?**

# Answer
Primitive reflexes originate in the brainstem.

### References

> * Shewmon, D.A. (1988) Anencephaly: selected medical aspects. Hastings Cent. Rep. 18(5):11-19.
> * Stumpf, D.A., Cranford, R.E., Elias, S., Fost, N.C., McQuillen, M.P., Myer, E.C., Poland, R., Queenan, J.T. (1990) The Infant with Anencephaly. NEJM. 322:669-674.
> 0 votes

# Answer
It seems that there is not much research concerning the anatomical localization of primitive reflexes. For instance, Schott & Rossor (2003) state in the conclusion of their review

> The complexity of many of these responses makes it perhaps unsurprising that detailed anatomical localisation, despite the availability of structural and functional imaging, has in general not been possible.

However, at least for the grasp reflex, they discuss an involvement of frontal areas.

**References**
Schott, JM Rossor M (2003). The grasp and other primitive reflexes. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 74(5): 558–560. \[DOI\] \[PDF\]
> 8 votes

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What positive techniques can be used to motivate individuals resistant to common gamification techniques?
A previous question I asked dealt with Gamification techniques to encourage people to perform online workplace training.

We are hoping that we can introduce some game techniques to lift the completion rates.

However I am concerned that a certain percentage will be resistant to this. Perhaps actively resist participation. I want to make sure we capture and motivate a broader set.

Some may suggest a punishment or negative enforcement. I'd rather look for an alternative positive method.

What positive techniques can be used to motivate the individuals resistant to techniques such as badges, leaderboards, reputation points etc?

# Answer
I would argue that gamification is essentially a form of applied motivational psychology. As such, all findings from research on motivation could potentially be important for gamification. In the other thread that you mention, *Self-Determination Theory* (Gagne & Deci, 2005) has already been brought up. I would like to make a couple of very general suggestions regarding your problem that stem from SDT.

**Self-Determination Theory**

In terms of SDT, motivation can be either *externally controlled* or *autonomous*. Someone seems to have suggested punishment, which would be a form of externally controlled (a.k.a. *extrinsic*) motivation. Another obvious way of extrinsically motivating people would be to reward them. Maybe this is an option for you, but since you already mention that reputation points, badges and the like don't work, this might not be a good route.

You are probably looking for a way to motivate people in such a way, that they participate in your games because they are *autonomously* motivated. In SDT there are 3 different forms of autonomous motivation: *intrinsic*, *identified* and *integrated* motivation. You don't have to worry about those that are intrinsically motivated, because they already like to participate in games and do so. Also, you can't control intrinsic motivation externally, it must come from the individual.

**Internalization**

However, integrated and identified motivation which are both forms of autonomous motivation (the latter is a weaker form) can be influenced. SDT states that it is possible that a process of *internalization* occurs, in which a certain behaviour becomes part of the identity of a person, which in turn fosters (autonomous) motivation for this behaviour. In other words, if you manage to somehow influence people's values and attitudes towards your game, they will be more likely to participate in it. As the other thread already mentioned, internalization occurs when the 3 basic psychological needs (need for competency, relatedness and autonomy) are met. SDT puts a special focus on the need for autonomy. Only when this need is met is the behaviour expected to become integrated. So as a very general answer to your question, you might want to look into ways to satisfy those needs. It also seems to work better to satisfy at least 2 of those needs instead of only one (Gagne & Deci, 2005).

Deci et al. (1994) performed a laboratoy experiment to explore ways, in which internalization can be promoted. They found three factors: giving a meaningful rationale, acknowledging that people might not find the task interesting and emphasizing choice rather than control. I must admit though, that I have not read this paper but only the very brief summary that Gagne & Deci (2005) give. It might be interesting for you to read it. Also, there is probably more research on SDT that has be done, so a literature search might yield interesting results.

References:

Deci, E. L., Eghrari, H., Patrick, B. C., & Leone, D. R. (1994). Facilitating internalization: the self-determination theory perspective. *Journal of Personality*, 62, 119–142.

Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self‐determination theory and work motivation. *Journal of Organizational behavior*, 26(4), 331-362. PDF
> 3 votes

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Tags: learning, io-psychology, motivation, gamification
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