# Question
Title: What are the effects of hebephilia on victims?
Following the Milo Yiannopoulos shebang, I had a discussion with a friend over the effects on a sexually maturing teenager (14ish) engaging in sexual behavior with a significantly older adult (at least 23 years old). In the discussion, we both realized that in fact we were just spewing opinions at each other, and in reality couldn't point to a fair study showing either the negative or positive effects of such practice.

So, I am wondering: Are there any fair studies exploring the effects? (I expect that social attitudes might sway the victim's feelings toward the experience, but hope that studies can somehow control for that.)

# Answer
I thought I would edit to add a bit of information. First of all for those who don't know, (I didn't until I looked it up when I saw this question for the first time), the term hebephilia has been proposed to split pedophilia and denote the erotic preference for pubescent children (roughly, ages 11 or 12-14), but it has not become widely used. Along with hebephilia, there is also Pedohebephilia which is erotic preference on both pedophilic and hebephilic levels.

I would also like to address the issue of Milo Yiannopoulos who seems to have been a topic of discussion, which raised this question. In the Wikipedia page I linked here and in my edit of the OPs question, it says:

> Yiannopoulos stated that sexual relationships between 13-year-old boys and adults can be "perfectly consensual," because some 13-year-olds are, in his view, sexually and emotionally mature enough to consent to sex with adults; he spoke favourably both of gay 13-year-old boys having sex with adult men and straight 13-year-old boys having sex with adult women. (Source 1) (Source 2) He used his own experience as an example, saying he was mature enough to be capable of giving consent at a young age.

The page also states that

> Defending himself in a press conference, Yiannopoulos alleged that he had been the victim of child abuse, and that "his comments were a way to cope with it".

I am not going to enter into any debate or express any opinion on what Yiannopoulos said or didn't say — or even what he may have been trying to say — as this is not the forum to do this, but speaking from the standpoint of someone who has, over a period of over 17 years, supported many who have been sexually abused and raped, I can categorically say that different people use many different ways to "cope" with the effects of the past events. Was he using repression or projection as an ego-defence mechanism? It's difficult to say.

I have been drafting my answer and editing the draft many times in order to make sure I try not to add anything which might inflame the already heated debate over Yiannopoulos, so here goes.

The question raised here is

> Are there any fair studies exploring the effects of a sexually maturing teenager (14ish) engaging in sexual behavior with a significantly older adult (at least 23 years old)?

In *The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology* there is an article which examines behavioural scientific research on the subject (McCord, D. 1986).

> A researcher reviewing the literature on the subject, came to the conclusion that little had been learned about child sexual abuse during the preceding twenty-five years. He also noted that the literature dealing with the sexual abuse of minors, was "scant, unintegrated, and ambiguous. Books on the topic are rare. Articles are scattered and hidden among a wide range of journals, many in non-accessible medical and legal journals."
>
> One reason for the lack of solid research is simply that the subject is a very difficult one to study. Only a small percentage of cases is ever reported. In those cases that are reported, the participants are often reluctant to discuss the situation. As a result of problems like these there are methodological difficulties virtually built into most research projects in the area.

Comments from research state the following

* "Children can exhibit the entire gamut of behaviors in response to a sexual assault, ranging from the negative to the positive." (Burgess, et al., 1978)
* "Children's immediate reactions to an assault vary." (Leaman, 1980)
* "Incest victims show a wide variety of symptom complaints or may show none at all." (Stuart & Greer, 1984; Sgroi, 1975)
* "Even those professionals who have a clinical definition with which they are comfortable will still have problems in identifying sexually abused children." (Mrazek, 1987)

The reason that such a wide variety of symptoms has been noted is that child sexual abuse is very complex situation from the point of view of the victim. This can perhaps best be illustrated by comparing it with adult rape, which is, by contrast, very unambiguous from the victim's perspective. In adult rape the victim is **often but not always** coerced by physical force or threats of physical force to engage in sexual activity which he or she does not desire. Under these circumstances, even when there is no physical violence, or threat of physical violence, there is no possibility of the victim enjoying the activity or emerging from the situation with any positive psychological emotions, as consent has not been given. Accordingly, it is not surprising that the reactions of adult victims to forcible rape are remarkably similar to each other and are drastically negative. By contrast, a child sexual abuse victim's feelings may be, and often are, ambivalent. The victim's will is usually much more malleable than an adult's, particularly when the perpetrator may be assuring the child that the activity is normal and even possibly suggesting that it is teaching them what they need to know.

Another point of note which can cause problems for the child in later life is that, although not in all cases, the child may even feel physical pleasure during the activity. As one researcher put it:

> Contrary to the stereotype, most victims in our study readily acknowledged the positive as well as the negative elements of their experience. They talked about the times the physical sensations felt good, or they remembered how their sexual experience with an adult or family member satisfied a longing for affection and closeness that was rarely met at any other time. (Finkelhor, 1981)

While this researcher found that 60% of adult women who had been sexually abused as children remembered the experience as primarily negative, only 7% remembered it as primarily positive.

The effects of statutory rape, and childhood sexual abuse **is** complex and whether or not it may be perceived to be consensual, it is generally believed that **informed** consent cannot be given by someone under the legal age of consent. (Abel, et al., 1984).

## References

Abel, G. G., Becker, J. V., Cunningham-Rathner, J., 1984. *Complications, Consent, and Cognitions in Sex Between Children and Adults*. International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 7(1), pp. 69-103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0160-2527(84)90008-6

Burgess, A. W., Groth, N. A., Holmstrom, L. L., & Sgroi, S. M., 1978. *Sexual assault of children and adolescents*. Lexington, MA: D.C. Health.

Finkelhor, D., 1981. *Sexually victimized children*. New York, NY: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan.

Leaman, K. M., 1980. *Sexual abuse : the reactions of child and family* in U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, *Sexual Abuse of Children: Selected Readings*.

Mrazek, P. B., 1987. *Definition and recognition of sexual child abuse: historical and cultural perspectives* in Sexually abused children and their families. Oxford; New York: Pergamon Press.

McCord, D., 1985. *Expert Psychological Testimony about Child Complainants in Sexual Abuse Prosecutions: A Foray into the Admissibility of Novel Psychological Evidence*. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 77(1), pp. 1-68.
Available Free from: http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc/vol77/iss1/1/

Sgroi, S. M., 1975. *Sexual Molestation of Children: The Last Frontier in Child Abuse*, Children Today, 4(3) pp. 18-21.

Stuart, I. R., Greer, J. G, 1984. Victims of Sexual Aggression: Treatment of Children, Women, and Men. Publisher: Chapman & Hall.
> 8 votes

# Answer
Most recent reviews have been fairly decisive on the negative impact of child sexual abuse in general (though noting much variability in outcomes), but uncertain as to the specific effect of age of onset (hebephilia vs pedophilia):

Beitchman et al (1992):

> The existing literature on the long-term sequelae of child sexual abuse is reviewed. The evidence suggests that sexual abuse is an important problem with serious long-term sequelae; ... The relation between age of onset of abuse and outcome is still equivocal.

Kendall-Tackett et al (1993):

> A review of 45 studies clearly demonstrated that sexually abused children had more symptoms than nonabused children, with abuse accounting for 15-45% of the variance. ... Research is insufficient to permit any conclusions about whether early versus late age of onset is more likely to lead to greater symptomatology.

Paolucci et al (2001):

> A meta-analysis of the published research on the effects of child sexual abuse (CSA) was undertaken ... The analyses provide clear evidence confirming the link between CSA and subsequent negative short- and long-term effects on development. There were no statistically significant differences on ds when various potentially mediating variables such as ... age when abused ... were assessed.

Maniglio (2009):

> Fourteen reviews, including more than 270,000 subjects from 587 studies, were analyzed. There is evidence that survivors of childhood sexual abuse are significantly at risk of a wide range of medical, psychological, behavioral, and sexual disorders. ... the results of this systematic review do not confirm suspicions that ... age when abused ... influence the outcomes of child sexual abuse.

So at this time, there is no reason to believe that hebephilia is any different from pedophilia in terms of impact.

One notable exception is the Rind et al (1998) review, that pointed out some methodological problems with prior research, notably that subject populations are typically non-randomized - they rely on clinical and legal populations who expectedly report negative outcomes. However, more recent research has attempted to address this issue using population studies, and comes to the same conclusions, for example Nelson et al (2002):

> ... general population studies have confirmed findings from these samples including increased risk for psychiatric illness ... and other adverse outcomes ... associated with self-reported CSA.

Good survey techniques in such population studies attempt to control for factors such as stigma (as mentioned in the question), by asking independently about child sexual abuse and potential adverse outcomes, rather than asking victims to self-assess those outcomes. Nonetheless, there may be additional factors to consider, such as grooming method, cooperation level, perception of harm, etc.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, abnormal-psychology, developmental-psychology, sexuality, sexual-assault
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# Question
Title: Can individuals with schizophrenia be talked out of their delusions?
Are there any conversion tricks or strategies to talk an individual with schizophrenia out of their delusions?

Suppose one has a friend who is delusional, and the friend believes there is a conspiracy going on against him. Although the extent e.g. people and time required to orchestrate such a conspiracy would be impossible, this person does not think of it as such. Complicating matters is the fact that this person declines to take antipsychotics, precisely because he believes this is what his enemies would like him to do.

How might one talk this person out of their delusions?

# Answer
> 5 votes
You need to understand that their experience is highly **emotionally significant** for them. Not necessarily in a good way, but it is. For affected people it feels true - it "*is true*". What medications tend to do - they dampen the affective significance, among other things, and people in time become more able to be in touch with ordinary reality. By definition delusions are "unshakeable beliefs".

Having said that - it is known that there are possibilities of treatment without medications, or at least minimising their use. They tend to involve group and community based psychological interventions over long time. Scandinavian countries (e.g. Norway) do a lot of work in that regard. From my colleagues I have also heard that medication use is less in India - but the family ties and family member availability seem greater hence it becomes more of a group intervention. The model is that many family members in a loving way provide information that conflicts with the delusional content.

Then there is http://www.isps.org/ \- a reputable organisation for psychological and social approaches to psychosis.

I hope this shows you to not expect a solution that you might be able to effect on your own. The psychotic experience can be very disturbing and you may be in for something that you do not expect when trying "to talk this person out of their delusions". Often you can become a part of the delusion - which then lessens credibility of what you say in the person's eyes.

Good luck

P.S. Of course - we can have a different picture in illicit drug induced psychosis - by definition psychosis should abate soon after drugs are out of the system. It happens however that with recurrent drug use people develop psychosis that does not abate.

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Tags: schizophrenia
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# Question
Title: Does data support Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreams?
A friend described consistent feelings and themes during a dream. It is my understanding that the contents of our dreams are our subconscious/unconscious/preconscious processing stimuli from the day or our general state of mind. Most of which research I've found relates back to Freud and his off incorrect psychoanalysis.

I can more easily relate to Domhoff's research into dreams as a reflection of schemas. It seems scientifically valid.

**What is the overall view of the reliability of dream interpretation as described by Domhoff?**

### References

# Answer
The question body emphasizes the question whether Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreams is *reliable*.

**Reliability** is *the "consistency" or repeatability of research measures*. So, a theory cannot be reliable.

I think OP (since offsite) meant to ask for the theory's **validity**, being the *extent to which a concept, conclusion or measurement is well-founded and corresponds accurately to the real world*. This interpretation also matches the question title better.

Domhoff (2001) bases his theory on findings in patients with brain injuries, showing that lesions in different areas have differential effects on dreaming. In addition, only 20–30% of REM period awakenings in children aged up to 9 years lead to dream reports and dreams of children under age 5 yrs are bland and static in content. Thirdly, Domhoff showed that dream content is repetitive and continuous with waking conceptions and emotional preoccupations. Based on these findings, Domhoff says that dreaming is best understood as a **developmental cognitive achievement** that depends upon the maturation and maintenance of a specific network of forebrain structures.

Domhoff's theory opposed the **activation-synthesis theory** theory, which was coined by Hobson & McCarley. They showed that the brain stem was activated during REM sleep. Their theory suggests that during REM sleep, random brain activation produces dreams. The theory has since been developed, as more and more is understood about REM sleep. Hobson has explicitly argued against Domhoff's theory, stating that Domhoff bases his theory on a '*misreading of the neurobiological literature and an individualistic view of dream psychology*' (Hobson, 2005).

In the end, theories try to explain observations, and at this point, as far as I can see, both theories may have value. *Personally*, the activation-synthesis theory seems more plausible and **less complicated**, and hence the most **parsimonious** of the two. But admittedly, I'm not a dream expert.

Fig. 1. Activation-synthesis theory of dreaming. source: MacAlister College

**References**
**-** Domhoff. *Dreaming* (2001); **11**(1), 13-33
**-** Hobson, *Dreaming* (2005); **15**(1), 21-29
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, dreams
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# Question
Title: What is the meaning of the brain scan of borderline patients?
Starting from mark 21:50 in the lecture BPD-related cognitive-perceptual difficulties and challenges in their diagnosis and treatment, there is an image of brain scan in borderline patients:

What does this image say? The speaker says that it's something about uncontrollable manipulation of borderline patients, but I'm not really sure.

# Answer
This picture in her talk (which is very good, by the way) refers to the study about **amygdala hyperreactivity** \- see below. Essentially the picture shows `fMRI` scan differences between controls and borderline patients when looking at `neutral`, `happy`, `sad` and `fearful` faces. Neutral faces and fixation point were used to transition between the exposure blocks to the emotional faces. Authors state the study points towards the role of greater amygdala activation in borderline patients being a key component to their emotional vulnerability in context of disturbed interpersonal relationships. To put it very simply - borderline patients' amygdala response (i.e. mostly - fear) is more sensitive. The speaker does not talk about the above picture in particular; it rather serves as a general illustration for her presentation.

Donegan, N. H., Sanislow, C. A., Blumberg, H. P., Fulbright, R. K., Lacadie, C., Skudlarski, P., … Wexler, B. E. (2003). Amygdala hyperreactivity in borderline personality disorder: implications for emotional dysregulation. Biological Psychiatry, 54(11), 1284–1293. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3223(03)00636-X

In addition I found a good overview article on neuroimaging in borderline patients:

Lis, E., Greenfield, B., Henry, M., Guilé, J. M., & Dougherty, G. (2007). Neuroimaging and genetics of borderline personality disorder: a review. Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 32(3), 162–173.
> 4 votes

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Tags: brain, personality-disorder
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# Question
Title: How do humans perceive height or vertical drop?
I'm looking at this video: Neil Burgess: How your brain tells you where you are, which discusses neurons within the brain that help people remember where stuff is in relation to other objects.

I'm interested if there are similar kinds of neurons or areas of the brain that are specifically involved in recognizing heights. For example, I can be looking at a flat suface across horizontal distance and I feel fine (for example looking at a distant building). But if I'm looking at another flat surface, of the same distance, but straight down, I may feel uneasy. This feeling of unease tells me that an additional mechanism may be involved in perceiving heights.

The question is - **what part of the brain can differentiate horizontal distance from vertical drop?**

# Answer
The answer that I recently discovered is that humans have a number of mental adaptations to environmental challenges, as described by Evolutionary Psychology.

For example, This TED talk on beauty describes how most "beautiful" landscape paintings share common traits, like looking down a valley with wildlife, a water source AND gravitational advantage (as if looking down from a tree).

The explanation given is that gravitational advantage (being higher) helps evade predators and spot them as they approach.

From looking at these adaptations, it appears that there's neural circuits in the human brain which can recognize height and prefer it in some amount (as in sitting in a tree), but feel aversion towards it in greater amounts (staring down a cliff).
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What is the diagnosis when someone suffers only from negative symptoms of schizophrenia?
If someone has almost all of the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and no positive symptoms of schizophrenia whatsoever, is that enough to be diagnosed with a mental disorder?

I understand that a diagnosis of schizophrenia is not possible with only negative symptoms.

# Answer
**Short answer**
Many people in the general populace suffer one or more negative symptoms that are associated with schizophrenia, but are not diagnosed with a mental illness whatsoever.

**Background**
Indeed, for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, negative symptoms alone are not enough. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (DSM-5), to meet the criteria for diagnosis of schizophrenia, the patient must have experienced at least 2 of the following symptoms:

* Delusions
* Hallucinations
* Disorganized speech
* Disorganized or catatonic behavior
* Negative symptoms

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

<sub>**Reference**
**-** Werbeloff *et al*., *PLoS One* (2015); **10**(3): e0119852</sub>
> 2 votes

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Tags: schizophrenia, diagnosis
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# Question
Title: Diagnosis for consistently preceiving mild displeasure as personal threats?
I'm aware the site does not accept self-help questions, but I think this one can be answered in a situation-independent way. So

1. Is it possible for someone to exaggerate mild displeasure (justfiable or unjustifiable through social norm) as personal threats?
2. And what does it mean?

# Answer
> 2 votes
**Short answer**
Paranoid personality disorder and social anxiety disorder come to mind.

**Background**
Perhaps you are after **paranoia**, which is thinking and feeling as if you are under threat even though there is no (or very little) evidence that you are. Paranoid thoughts can also be described as delusions. Paranoid thoughts can be exaggerated suspicions, *e.g.*., someone made a negative comment about you once, and one inflates that rather irrelevant remark to a full-blown hate campaign. Thanks to r0berts' commentary below, I wish to add that, according to the DSM-IV-TR, paranoia in itself is *not* a diagnosis. Instead, it is diagnosed in the form of paranoid personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia (a subtype of schizophrenia), or the persecutory type of delusional disorder. paranoid personality disorder may be what you are after in specific:

* > **Paranoid personality disorder** is generally characterized by a pervasive distrust and suspiciousness of others. Sufferers often believe that other people’s motives are suspect or even malevolent.
* Paranoid schizophrenia is characterized by predominantly positive symptoms of schizophrenia, including delusions and hallucinations. Without going into detail, schizophrenia is probably not what you are after.
* People with persecutory type of delusional disorder believe that they (or someone close to them) are being mistreated, or that someone is spying on them or planning to harm them. Likely also not what you are after.

Another disorder that comes to mind is anxiety disorder, and specifically

> **social anxiety disorder**, or social phobia. This is characterized by overwhelming worry and self-consciousness about everyday social situations. You fixate about others judging you or on being embarrassed or ridiculed.

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Tags: anxiety, fear, diagnosis
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# Question
Title: Are Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development supported by empirical evidence?
I've just come across a (very basic) description of Kohlberg's stages of moral development, and I found the section on the Pre-conventional level of moral reasoning rather suprising.

In particular, stage one, obedience and punishment orientation:

> The pre-conventional level of moral reasoning is especially common in children, although adults can also exhibit this level of reasoning. Reasoners at this level judge the morality of an action by its direct consequences. The pre-conventional level consists of the first and second stages of moral development, and is solely concerned with the self in an egocentric manner. A child with preconventional morality has not yet adopted or internalized society's conventions regarding what is right or wrong, but instead focuses largely on external consequences that certain actions may bring.
>
> In **Stage one** (obedience and punishment driven), individuals focus on the direct consequences of their actions on themselves. For example, an action is perceived as morally wrong because the perpetrator is punished. "The last time I did that I got spanked so I will not do it again." The worse the punishment for the act is, the more "bad" the act is perceived to be. This can give rise to an inference that even innocent victims are guilty in proportion to their suffering. It is "egocentric", lacking recognition that others' points of view are different from one's own.There is "deference to superior power or prestige"

What surprised me is the example of moral perception in relation to degree of punishment.

While there does seem to be support for the idea (please feel free to chime in on that question with more authoritative answers!) that spanking *can* be an effective means of eliminating undesireable behavior, there is a significant amount of evidence citing the general levels of negative impact corporal punishment can have.

Anecdotally, lower levels of punishment seem to have no correlation with Kohlberg's Stage One model. My son does not seem to equate punishment as indication that an action is 'morally wrong'. He does understand that if he repeats the behavior, he will likely have to repeat the punishment, but given the experimentations with defiance and self-assertion common to three year olds, he does tend to repeat the behavior at least a few times, in an attempt to push boundaries and see what he can get away with.

Additionally, the one time my son has been exposed to corporal punishment (another child's grandmother decided to spank her son in daycare, right in front of my son, much to my anger and frustration), my son showed no indication that he felt that the boy had done anything wrong, but rather was obsessively concerned as to whether he was okay, and why she would do that to him.

This seems counter to the idea that the punishment instills the idea that the actions which precipitate the punishments are "morally wrong", as Kohlberg seems to be asserting.

Am I misunderstanding Kohlberg's Stage One? Is his theory generally considered reputable? Most importantly, is there observational data upon which his theory is based, which supports the conclusions he draws?

# Answer
Kohlberg constucted his stages of moral development using a sample consisting of 72 boys from Chicago. The sample consisted of three age groups: 10, 13 and 16 years. This was also the start for a 30-year long lasting longitudinal study to test his theory (Colby, Kohlberg, Gibbs & Lieberman, 1983). The results generally support the theory. Younger children are classified as belonging to the lower stages, older children as belonging to the higher stages of moral development. Differences between stages become smaller as one goes up the hierarchy. Also, age differences between stages become smaller with higher stages.

But there also appears to be some criticism. First, there were only few subjects in some of the age groups of the study. Second, apparently Kohlberg has quite often revised his theory and reformulated the descriptions for the stages, and it is not always clear which version was used for testing. Some critics have therefore argued that Kohlberg has "immunized" his theory against falsification. This point also has to do with criticism regarding the assesment of the moral stage, which was done using the *Standard Issue Moral Judgement Test*, an interview developed by Kohlberg.

Everything I have said so far is taken from Heidbrink (1991), who has tested the theory using a different test, the *Morals Judgment Test* by Lind. His study supports Kohlbergs's stages. Among over 1000 subjects between ages 14-29, only two showed a pattern that is not consistent with the theory.

In a re-analysis of a study from 1913 – 45 years before Kohlberg's first relevant publication and thus free of the suspicion of having jumped on the "Kohlberg bandwagon" –, Heidbrink (1989) finds that the results conform to those of Colby & Kohlberg's longitudinal study (1987). He concludes that the fact that American adolescents of the 1950s and 60s show the same moral development as pupils from Berlin before the First World War supports Kohlberg's hypothesis of the universal validity of his stages of moral development.

If you want to go further, the Wikipedia article on Kohlberg's stages has a long list of references that you can look at. Probably some of those review the relevant research. Also try to input Kohlberg's own articles or books into Google Scholar and click the "Cited by" link to see which other articles deal with this theory, there will be empirical studies among those.

After collecting all the information to answer your question, I have to say that I am also a bit surprised about the example chosen to describe stage one. The example caters to very young children, while youngest boys in Kohlberg's study were 10 years old. Maybe we shouldn't focus too much on this example. Right off the bat I don't have a better example, but I could imagine there is one.

References:

*I used German publications. If someone has English references, please help me out here.*

* Colby, A., Kohlberg, L., Gibbs, J., & Lieberman, M. (1983). A longitudinal study of moral judgment. *Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 48* (Serial No. 200), 1-124. University of Chicago Press.
* Heidbrink, H. (1989). Moralpsychologie: Die Reanalyse einer Untersuchung von 1913. *Geschichte der Psychologie, 6*, 4-9. Available online at http://journals.zpid.de/index.php/GdP/article/view/424/459
* Heidbrink, H., & Lück, H. E. (1991). *Stufen der Moral: Zur Gültigkeit der kognitiven Entwicklungstheorie Lawrence Kohlbergs.* Quintessenz-Verl.
> 5 votes

# Answer
what about

Kay, S. R.: 1982, ‘Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development: Critical Analysis of Validation Studies with the Defining Issues Test’, International Journal of Psychology 17, 27–42.

Abstract This paper evaluates studies that have used the Defining Issues Test for validating Kohlberg's theory of moral stage development. Although this test was introduced to overcome inadequacies with Kohlberg's procedure, it too encounters serious methodological and conceptual difficulties. Its limitations include truncation of the stages and age range assessed. The validation studies, both cross‐sectional and longitudinal, have used a correlational design and confounded age with other variables. Threats to internal and external validity obviate support claimed for Kohlberg; moral reasoning thus measured seems a function of education, IQ, direct moral training, and cultural values rather than maturation. Nor is the stage model upheld by longitudinal data, which fail to reveal sequential stepwise change and belie occasional regression. Attempted redefinition of the stage concept to salvage these data has not rescued Kohlberg's proposal, which remains to be validated empirically.
> 2 votes

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Tags: developmental-psychology, parenting, moral-psychology
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# Question
Title: How does TD-learning explain trace conditioning?
I'm reading Reinforcement learning and causal models by Sam Gershman, which states that TD-learning provides an account of second-order conditioning that provides an explanation for the phenomenon occurred in trace learning (pg. 7, 3rd paragraph). The idea is as follows:

In trace conditioning, a reward is presented after some cue A with some relatively large time delay. If a second cue, B, is presented during this gap, this facilitates the learning of a conditional response to A. He says that this is because B receives a large positive value which generates a large positive prediction error at the offset of A. I do not see why this is true. If you look at TD-learning, the values of A and B should strictly be a function of their temporal distance from the reward, i.e. $$\gamma^{T-t} r\_T$$, where $t$ is the current time and $T$ is the time of the reward. He goes on to say that this is related to how the prediction error is changed with the presence of B. Could somebody explain to me why having B increases the prediction error?

# Answer
See my comment above, but it is possible to assume that B acquires the same reward value as the original reward, so B can then be treated as a reward, which in turn brings A closer to the reward event (now at time B). Does that make sense? In other words, the addition of B allows the reward value to accrue to B and thus brings A closer to reward.
> 1 votes

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Tags: mathematical-psychology, reinforcement-learning
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# Question
Title: Why is conditioned taste aversion an example of classical conditioning (rather than operant)?
The internet seems to be in complete agreement that conditioned taste aversion is an example of classical (Pavlovian) conditioning. My (admittedly limited) understanding of classical conditioning is that it's a process in which two stimuli are paired in such a way that the response to one of the stimuli changes. I'm having trouble spotting what those stimuli are in this case. This seems more like operant conditioning, in which unpleasant consequences (the symptoms) mold behavior by causing us to associate the taste of that food with those symptoms.

Am I misunderstanding operant/classical conditioning? Am I overcomplicating things?

# Answer
> 2 votes
This is an excellent question. The difference between Classical conditioning (also called Pavlovian conditioning) and operant (instrumental) conditioning is subtle for the new student, but can be quite profound when fully appreciated.

Pavlovian conditioning is learning a response that you have no control over. In this context, a conditioned taste aversion (CTA) might be produced by mildly poisoning a rat after it eats watermelon for the first time. Or you might suffer food poisoning after eating a watermelon. The CS is the watermelon. The usual response to watermelon is licking lips and paws, and savouring the sweet flavour - any rat version of yum you can think of. However after poisoning (where the US is usually denoted by the poisoning method, e.g. weak lithium chloride injections), the new response is gaping, retching and avoiding the now yucky flavour. In people who get food poisoning, we know the actual flavour of the food changes from pleasant to revolting, and can even elicit retching and vomiting. This response won't change even if you tell the person the next watermelon is fresh and sweet. In other words, the subject of the CTA cannot change their response (yucky flavour/retching) to the CS at will. This obviously creates a problem when a CTA is produced as a side-effect of medical treatment such as chemotherapy. Which is why people on chemo will often only be fed very bland and boring foods (to reduce the chance of a CTA). Even telling the person the chemo is causing the nausea is not sufficient to change their opinion of the foods they ate shortly before they felt sick.

By contrast, instrumental conditioning is learning a response you have control over. E.g., training a rat to press a lever for watermelon (or a person buying watermelon from the grocer). In this case you or the rat has control over the action (lever pressing or shopping at the grocer). So after a rat is convinced to press a lever for sweet juicy watermelon, if the rat gets poisoned by the watermelon then it will simply stop pressing the lever. Here the instrumental response to a CTA is 'avoidance'. Just as you would stop shopping at a grocer who previously sold you a bad watermelon. If however the owner of the grocery changed, you might be happy to resume shopping for watermelon there. Note that while you may no longer avoid shopping for watermelon, your Pavlovian response to the bad watermelon might still be intact - i.e., you might retch when you first bite into the fresh watermelon you just bought. This can obviously create odd situations where animals will work for food they do not want.

Whenever experimental psychologists are faced with a learned response they don't understand, one of the first things they will do is ask whether the response is Pavlovian or instrumental. The classic way to test this is with an omission schedule. Under an omission schedule, the reward is removed if the animal makes the response. If the animal continues to make the response, then the response is clearly not under instrumental control. If you look up some of Anthony Dickinson's work on this subject, you will discover many weird and wondrous examples of this distinction, especially in his incentive learning research. A lot of behaviour we think of as instrumental, is probably Pavlovian - e.g., a dog approaching a food bowl when he hears the can opener. One place to start is Dickinson, 1981, Conditioning and associative learning, British Medical Journal, 37 (2), 165-168

# Answer
> 2 votes
The conditioning of aversion to taste is part of learning studies in which there is an association between food and flavors with positive reactions such as food preferences or satiety and negative reactions such as lack of appetite, gastric discomfort, etc.

For example, it has been shown that patients with gastric discomfort acquire aversion to food, or patients (who have received prior chemotherapy) are averse to food when going to receive new sessions (chemotherapy usually causes nausea).

It is usually considered a **classic conditioning learning**. For example, foods that are neutral or independent stimuli before learning, produce conditioned responses (after the learning process), for example nausea, so foods are conditioned stimuli that produce conditioned responses (conditioned responses never they are exactly the same as the responses of the absolute stimulus).

Not only stimuli (foods or flavors) can produce a conditioned response but also events (such as being close to another session of chemotherapy).

Stimuli \> CR

Events \> CR

This is why in general it is considered classic conditioning, since the person (or animal) can not control the consequences with their behavior as it occurs in instrumental learning.

If for example you are thinking about the learning process of a person who tastes a food (with control over being able to try that food for the first time) and the food does not like it, in that case it is evidently **instrumental learning**. Of course, in relation to food learning, not everything is classical conditioning. **The fundamental thing is to handle the concepts of analysis of the types of conditioning**.

It is essential to read the section on Learning to taste aversion in the book by **Michael Domjan. Principles of learning and behavior.** Pages 72 to 74 in the 3 edition. It is interesting to review the studies indicated in this section.

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Tags: learning, conditioning, reinforcement-learning
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title: Conditioning and Contingency

text:
# Question
Title: Conditioning and Contingency
I've learned, that spatiotemporal neighborhood among the conditioned and the unconditioned stimuli is a presupposition of conditioning (classical or operant). A second presupposition is called "contingency" in my notes. The explanation is, that the CS has to predict the US with certainty. But in my opinion the meaning of the word "contingency" is quite the opposite of predictability with certainty (necessity). Why is the second presupposition called "contingency"?

# Answer
> 2 votes
"Contingent" means "dependent upon".

See the first definition of http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/contingent?s=t

The reason the second definition there (which is the one you are thinking of) has the same word is because if B is contingent on A, then B is not for sure going to happen. B will only happen if A does.

# Answer
> 0 votes
The contingency of an event (A) can be expressed as the probability of A given another event (B) less the probability of A in the absence of B. So if the probability of A given B is 100%, then A is certain, given B. i.e., P(A|B) = 1. However if the probability of A given the absence of B (~B) is also 100%, then A is also certain without B. i.e., P(A|~B) = 1. In this case, B would have no detectable impact on the overall probability of A.

Thus the contingency of A is given by P(A|B) – P(A|~B) = ∆P

In the above example, ∆P = 0, since P(A|B) = 1 and P(A|~B) = 1. Zero represents the fact that B has no detectable impact on the occurrence of A.

If however P(A|B) \> P(A|~B) then the contingency (∆P) will be positive, that is greater than 0. In this case, A is considered (somewhat) contingent on B. I say somewhat because P(A|B) could be 1 and P(A|~B) could be 0.99 so ∆P = .01, or P(A|~B) could be as low as 0 so ∆P = 1. These cases where ∆P \> 0 represent the fact that B has some positive impact on the occurrence of A. That is, B makes A more likely to happen, and even certain when ∆P = 1.

The contingency could also be negative if P(A|B) \< P(A|~B). When this happens, ∆P \< 0 (i.e., negative) and this represents the case when B lowers (or prevents) the occurrence of A.

Rescorla (1968) Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 66, p4 was the first to make this connection to animal learning and Pavlovian condiitoning. He found that rats will be afraid of a light if it has a positive contingency with shock (i.e., it predicts that shock is more likely to occur), while rats will feel safe if a light has a negative contingency with shock (i.e., the light predicts that shock is less likely to occur). The implications have been discussed at length for how we (and animals) learn about the causal structure of our environment - see Maier & Seligman (1976) Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 105, p3-46 for implications for instrumental conditioning, and Rescorla (1988) American Psychologist, 43, p151-160 for a good overview.

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Tags: behaviorism, conditioning
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title: What is a "norming experiment"?

text:
# Question
Title: What is a "norming experiment"?
I am a non-psychologist reading some papers from psychology. I keep seeing the term "norming experiment" (e.g. "Normative Representation of Objects: Evidence for an Ecological Bias in Object Perception an d Memory" by Konkle and Oliva). What do psychologists or neuroscientists mean by a "norming experiment"? It seems like the idea is to see which presentations of a stimulus are preferred to others?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Yes, a norming experiment is an experiment looking to establish what (if any) is the perceptual norm for a given stimulus, i.e. the level of the stimulus that appears neutral. In the paper you referenced, the stimuli are the size(s) of various objects, and the subjects were instructed to pick for each object a size that appeared neither too big nor too small, thus psychologically "just right" or neutral.

More generally, quoting from another paper:

> Many sensory dimensions are thought to be represented relative to a norm, which itself appears psychologically neutral or unbiased. In vision, classic examples of these norms include “white” in the perception of color, or “static” in the perception of motion. Norms have also been implicated in the representation of higher-level stimulus attributes. Thus current models of face perception assume that faces are represented by their “identity trajectories” relative to a prototype or average face \[...\]. Such diverse examples suggest that norms may in fact be central to most perceptual judgments.

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Tags: experimental-psychology, experiment-design
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# Question
Title: Can an axon connect to dendrites of multiple other neurons?
In a typical multi-polar neuron, an axon has multiple axon terminals that can connect to another neuron's dendrites.

Are there cases where an axon connects to dendrites of **multiple** neurons?

# Answer
Sure, look at the connectome of *C. elegans* for example: URB (circled in red) has synaptic connections to IL1, RIC and also to CEP (which also synapses back to URB, showing that cycles in the connectome are possible). Likewise RIS (circled in blue) has synaptic connections to at least 4 different neurons (in this map) and a couple more off-map.

(click to enlarge)
> 4 votes

# Answer
In the central nervous system, I think it would be safe to say that most neurons make connections (through their axons) with the dendtrites of multiple downstream neurons.

Some examples:

1. In the cerebellum, the parallel fibers pass through and makes connections with many Purkinje neurons.
2. This was recently very beautifully demonstrated in a paper where they filled individual axons in V1 and traced their connections to multiple cortical areas. Science Daily Nature Article
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: What is a effective and interactive exercise to demonstrate cognition to a class
I'm new to this site so I may mess up here and there with the question process.

I need to come up with an interactive exercise for a class to demonstrate cognition. The problem is, I find cognition to be very complex and I have trouble thinking of one.

Some ideas I currently have in mind are:

1) Telling the class some false facts or showing them some fake news and having them debate which is real.

2) Something along the lines of a slot machine where extravagant sounds and lights play when you win something, however, nothing happens when you lose. Showing how we are more likely to remember the extravagant sounds/lights.

3) Asking the class to describe to me an object. Then ask the class to describe the same object to me without the use of certain words and concepts.

I am very clueless on this matter (cognition) so any help would be appreciated.

# Answer
I would recommend something like the Invisible Gorilla! This is a classic demonstration from Simons & Chabris (1999) that demonstrates the selectivity of attention. Demonstrating "cognition" is a bit broad, but this is a famous example of the ways in which cognitive processes select, omit, and process information.

Video of the illusion (with instructions) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&feature=youtu.be

NPR story discussing the experiment/illusion in simple terms: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126977945
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, cognitive-modeling, bias, metacognition
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# Question
Title: From a neuroscientific standpoint, what are the most effective ways to develop empathy, love and compassion for others?
From a neuroscientific standpoint, what are the most effective ways to develop empathy, love and compassion for others? For example, in the Buddhist lore there are some meditations targeted at cultivating these emotions, such as metta (loving-kindness) and karuna (compassion), but I admit my complete ignorance regarding the current position of Neuroscience with respect to these techniques (or any other techniques for that matter).

# Answer
> 11 votes
I'm including some relevant papers below, but one important thing to note abot this whole compassion/Buddhism/neuroscience discussion is that *neuroscience may not necessarily have the most to say about developing empathy/love/compassion (ELC),* especially as compared to "real-world," social psychological, or behavioral measures linking prosocial behavior to certain practices like mindfulness/metta/etc.

What do I mean by that? Consider: let's say we throw people in an fMRI and demonstrate, quasi-experimentally, that increased BOLD response in area *K* of the brain predicts increased ELC.

Let's then say that we then have a sample group engage in metta practices for six months, and afterward they demonstrate increased ELC (as measured, perhaps, by scales, charity donations, patience--whatever!). If we then threw those people in an fMRI and they *didn't* demonstrate increased BOLD response in area *K*, we wouldn't really be able to say that they don't have increased ELC, just because the "neuroscience" doesn't suggest so. All of our applied measures of ELC--sending money to charity, being more patient with their kids, etc.--would still suggest that they effectively built ELC.

So, neuroscience can *support* existing associations between certain practices and ELC, but it would be difficult to use neuroscience as the independent arbiter of any causal links between ELC and certain practices.

But, to your question: you may find these papers and discussions helpful:

Klimecki et al., *Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training*; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040103/

* From the abstract: "In response to videos depicting human suffering, empathy training, but not memory training (control group), increased negative affect and brain activations in anterior insula and anterior midcingulate cortex—brain regions previously associated with empathy for pain. In contrast, subsequent compassion training could reverse the increase in negative effect ... We conclude that training compassion may reflect a new coping strategy to overcome empathic distress and strengthen resilience."
* Note that one implication of the distinction between empathy/compassion training is that empathy training may incline us to feel *self-concern* in the presence of others suffering, which is distinct from the *other-directed* concern associated with compassion training. I could, from a theoretical perspective, feel complete empathy for your pain but have no motivation to alleviate it; in contrast, to feel compassion is, in some ways, to be concerned with or care about alleviating your suffering. The Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard has explored this distinction: http://www.matthieuricard.org/en/blog/posts/empathy-and-the-cultivation-of-compassion

-

A discussion of recent findings on the neuroscience of compassion from UCB's Greater Good research center: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/three\_insights\_from\_the\_frontiers\_of\_the\_mind

* In sum: yes, meditation training can augment activity in brain areas associated with a whole host of positive traits/emotions--compassion, connectedness, etc. Note again though that demonstrating increased activity in a brain area previously associated with a positive thing is not necessarily the same as causing an increase in that positive thing. Neuroscience has a far ways to go before we can off-the-cuff describe all geographic brain activity in terms of its real-world and experiential consequences.

-

Also, here's the "recommended reading" all in one PDF from a 2016 seminar at Harvard Med School on meditation practice and neuroscience. Not all of it is directly related to compassion, but the sum takeaway (for me, at least), is that yes, mindfulness can cause (not just predict) reductions in stress, increases in positive affect, and increases in compassion. (The inter-correlations between some of those measures--like self-compassion and how we treat others--can make exact causal chains hard to suss out, but I believe the overall pattern of results is strong). https://hms.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/assets/Harvard%20Now%20and%20Zen%20Reading%20Materials.pdf

-

Stevens and Woodruff's book, *The Neuroscience of Empathy, Compassion, and Self-Compassion*; https://www.elsevier.com/books/the-neuroscience-of-empathy-compassion-and-self-compassion/stevens/978-0-12-809837-0

* To be honest, I haven't read this, but it's a recent edition of their book, and they're both respected psychologists at Northern Arizona State University. If you're looking for a longer exploration of all the recent literature on compassion and neuroscience, this may be up your alley.

///

Additional papers on compassion training:

Weng et al. (https://centerhealthyminds.org/assets/files-publications/WengCompassionAssociationForPsychologicalScience.pdf)

* "Compassion trainees were instructed to evoke feelings of compassion while silently repeating compassion-generating phrases." (NOTE: these trainees also engaged in a version of metta practice, so that clouds the non-meditative results).
* Results: more altruistic behavior post-compassion training, more activation in brain areas associated with compassion (that's a broad way to put that, apologies--I'm not a neuroscience specialist).

Jazaieri et al. (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10902-012-9373-z.pdf)

* Participants did "Compassion Cultivation Training," described as such: "Each class includes: (a) pedagogical instruction with active group discussion, (b) a guided group meditation, (c) interactive practical exercises related to the specific step of the week...and (d) exercises designed to prime feelings of open-heartedness or connection to others, either through reading poetry or through reflecting on inspiring stories.
* So, unfortunately, the CCT does involve some metta/meditative practices and thus doesn't serve as a perfect comparison to meditative practice--but it includes other exercises as well, perhaps suggesting that even the non-meditative activities contribute to the cultivation of ELC.
* Results: "...CCT resulted in significant improvement in \[compassion\]. Specifically, CCT completers reported reductions in fear of compassion (for others, from others, and for self) and an increase in self-compassion. These findings suggest that not only is the absence of compassion worth investigating but also one’s fear of compassion..."

Again, both of those papers utilize some meditative practices as part of their compassion training, rendering it difficult to parse out exactly what features of the training best served to increase compassion. However, it seems reasonable to assume that, at a minimum, the non-meditative aspects of the compassion training in each case at least did not *hurt* participants' compassion, and probably enhanced it.

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Tags: neuroscience, love, empathy
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# Question
Title: Chunking Patterns and Enjoyment of Applying Patterns
I've been reading a book "The Theory of Fun in Game Design" it talks about two concepts of psychology that I wanted to confirm are true. The writer the book isn't a psychologist.

The two concepts are Chunking Patterns and Enjoyment of Applying Patterns.

So, according to the book he says we are pattern matching all the time. That's one of the things our brain does best. Once we recognize a pattern enough we chunk it. So when we drive to work every morning we don't sometimes remember the details because we do it so often we chunk those details.

Art, Movies, Music, Games, etc... that interest us are because they are introducing new patterns that we can either learn or combine with previous patterns.

This has been essential to our survival so ***our body rewards us for processing these new patterns by releasing endorphin's***.

So, basically is this a bunch of hogwash or is there some truth behind the "theory" that pattern recognition is rewarded with a release of endorphins?

Also if this is true, is there somewhere I can read more about this?

# Answer
> 1 votes
This is an interesting question and when you said:

> when we drive to work every morning we don't sometimes remember the details because we do it so often we chunk those details.

you are talking about two different phenomena. They are **chunking** and **autopilot**. As for the theory that:

> pattern recognition is rewarded with a release of endorphins

I haven't been able to find anything to confirm this, however I may have found a possible source to the theory that pattern recognition can lead to the release of other reward chemicals in the brain, which can only be **very loosely** linked with the other two phenomena.

## Chunking

Within psychology, **Chunking is a method used for remembering things** rather than "switching into autopilot" to carry out learned tasks automatically without conscious awareness. Rather than chunking a recognised pattern, we are employing chunking **by producing** recognised patterns which can be used later on to remember something needed in the future. We are breaking the item to be remembered into chunks and remembering the chunks with the patterns created.

> The phenomenon of chunking as a memory mechanism can be observed in the way individuals group numbers and information in the day-to-day life. For example, when recalling a number such as 12101946, if numbers are grouped as 12, 10 and 1946, a mnemonic is created for this number as a day, month and year. Similarly, another illustration of the limited capacity of working memory as suggested by George Miller (1956) can be seen from the following example: While recalling a mobile phone number such as 9849523450, we might break this into 98 495 234 50. Thus, instead of remembering 10 separate digits that is beyond the "seven plus-or-minus two" memory span, we are remembering four groups of numbers.

## Autopilot

This has been studied quite extensively and one study on this (Hyman Jr, et al. 2014) talked about how it is possible to drive home and have no conscious awareness during or after the trip. See also, Ira Hyman (2014)

In the introduction it was highlighted that:

> There are two broad categories of possible explanations. One possible explanation is that people were aware of the road and obstacles during the drive, but immediately forgot those features. Alternatively, driving without awareness may represent a form of inattentional blindness, in which objects that pass through the focal point of vision do not enter awareness (Neisser and Becklen, 1975; Becklen and Cervone, 1983; Mack and Rock, 1998; Simons and Chabris, 1999; Simons, 2000). People may use visual information to guide the control of actions, but may not devote attention to objects. Without attention, people may fail to bind features into objects (Treisman and Gelade, 1980; Wolfe, 2007) and thus may fail to become aware of the things they pass when driving or walking. This second possible explanation would be consistent with the theoretical claim that visual information follows two pathways after low level visual processing (Goodale and Milner, 1992; Jeannerod and Jacob, 2005; Westwood and Goodale, 2011). One pathway is the dorsal pathway which uses visual information to guide action, enabling someone to grab an object or navigate around obstacles. The other pathway is the ventral pathway leading to object recognition and conscious awareness.

## Pattern recognition and release of endorphins

There is a book called *Your Money and Your Brain* by Jason Zweig (2008) and Michael Angelucci (2011) provided some insights from the book, including:

> Dopamine is a chemical that sends energy throughout the brain and turns motivation into actions. Dopamine is so powerful that a rat will starve to death rather than turn away from dopamine. Lay an MRI scan of a cocaine addict about to get a fix next to that of a person who thinks he is about to win money and they are virtually the same. We also know this about dopamine and rewards: dopamine is strongest when a reward is unexpected. That getting what you expected does not produce dopamine, and if the expected reward does not show up then the dopamine dries up. We also know that if the reward is big enough, dopamine seems to have a memory. This last point is huge. Investors who have received a large reward will experience a dopamine release if a pattern similar to the winning pattern is observed. This may result in the investor taking actions that are not sound.

What is being said here is that with addictions comes patterns of behaviour which has rewards. Your remember how you was rewarded by certain behaviour patterns and so you strive to gain those rewards again by repeating that behaviour.

You might see patterns within stock markets or within casino games (see Gambler's Fallacy within my answer to another question). You might get lucky one or two times and win using the pattern, increasing dopamine levels (a reward chemical within the brain) and this enforces the fallacy that the pattern exists and you commit it to memory for later use. But the pattern does not actually exist and therefore when employed later on it fails.

Conversely to the endorphin effect proposed in your question, in this situation, the pain of losing and the stress of trying to find out how this could have happened, will increase endorphin levels and the principal function of endorphins is to inhibit the transmission of pain signals.

## References

Angelucci, M. (2011). *Dopamine and Pattern Seeking and Your Investments* \[Online\]
http://awmfinancial.com/uncategorized/dopamine-and-pattern-seeking-and-your-investments/

Becklen, R., and Cervone, D. (1983). Selective looking and the noticing of unexpected events. *Memory & Cognition* 11(6), 601–608.
DOI: 10.3758/BF03198284 PMID: 6669028

Goodale, M. A., and Milner, A. D. (1992). Separate visual pathways for perception and action. *Trends in Neurosciences* 15(1), pp 20–25.
DOI: 10.1016/0166-2236(92)90344-8 PMID: 1374953

Hyman, I. (2014). The Dangers of Going on Autopilot. *Psychology Today* \[Online\]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mental-mishaps/201404/the-dangers-going-autopilot

Hyman Jr, I. E., Sarb, B. A., & Wise-Swanson, B. M. (2014). Failure to see money on a tree: inattentional blindness for objects that guided behavior. *Frontiers in psychology*, 5(1), 356.
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00356

Jeannerod, M., and Jacob, P. (2005). Visual cognition: a new look at the two-visual systems model. *Neuropsychologia* 43(2), pp 301–312.
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.11.016 PMID: 15707914

Mack, A., and Rock, I. (1998). *Inattentional Blindness*. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. *Psychological Review*, 63(2), pp 81-97.
DOI: 10.1037/h0043158
**Reproduced in webpage format with author's permission at: http://cogprints.org/730/1/miller.html**

Neisser, U., and Becklen, R. (1975). Selective looking: attending to visually specified events. *Cognitive Psychology* 7(4), pp 480–494.
DOI: 10.1016/0010-0285(75)90019-5

Simons, D. J., and Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. *Perception* 28(9), pp 1059–1074.
DOI: 10.1068/p281059 PMID: 10694957

Simons, D. J. (2000). Attentional capture and inattentional blindness. *Trends in Cognitive Sciences* 4(4), pp 147–155.
DOI: 10.1016/S1364-6613(00)01455-8 PMID: 10740279

Treisman, A. M., and Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. *Cognitive Psychology* 12(1), pp 97–136.
DOI: 10.1016/0010-0285(80)90005-5 PMID: 7351125

Westwood, D. A., and Goodale, M. A. (2011). Converging evidence for diverging pathways: neuropsychology and psychophysics tell the same story. *Vision Research* 51(8), pp 804–811.
DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2010.10.014 PMID: 20951156

Wolfe, J. M. (2007). Guided search 4.0: current progress with a model of visual search. In: *Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems, ed. W. Gray* (New York: Oxford University Press), pp 99–119.

Zweig, J. (2008). *Your Money and Your Brain: How the New Science of Neuroeconomics Can Help Make You Rich.* New York, NY: Simon & Schuster

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, memory
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title: How to measure your stress levels?

text:
# Question
Title: How to measure your stress levels?
If someone has eutress it supports his/her mental development and learning of new skills. It is so called optimal level of stress as illustrated in the figure below.

Are there any ways to measure that you are within these limits of eutress in that curve? For my experience it is quite difficult to detect that you don't go to the distress side of that curve.

Only things that I know to measure it is resting heart rate and sleep quality, but I would like to know if there are some other ways to do it also.

# Answer
> 3 votes
The term **eustress** was coined by endocrinologist Hans Selye, consisting of the Greek prefix *eu-* meaning "good", and *stress*, literally meaning "good stress".

There is also the **Yerkes–Dodson law** which is an empirical relationship between arousal and performance dictating that performance increases with physiological or mental arousal, but only up to a point.

The curve diagram you provided in your question is a rehashing of the Yerkes–Dodson law curve (Yerkes & Dodson, 1908) — See also Diamond, et al. (2007).

This version is the most common version and often incorrectly cited in text books (Source).

## Your question

**Are there any ways to measure that you are within these limits of eutress in that curve?**

Well detection of peak eustress levels would be practically impossible and one person's eustress levels can be very different to another person.

Le Fevre, et al's (2003) revised version of Spector’s (1998) model which incorporates all three tenets drawn from the literature on occupational stress

> Selye's concept of eustress or “good stress” appears to be largely ignored in the literature, while the Yerkes Dodson Law is illustrated as a model for management practice. We suggest that the meaning assigned to the word stress has shifted from Selye's original formulation, and that this shift, in conjunction with the use of the Yerkes Dodson Law leads to inappropriate management of stress in organizations. We conclude that the concept that some stress is good and enhances performance should be rejected in favour of more useful and accurate concepts (Le Fevre, et al. 2003).

Le Fevre et al. (2003) also says:

> From the point of view of the individual, it is only they themselves who can manage, through perception and interpretation, to what degree they experience their organisational environment, including its demands and resources, as distress or eustress. They are themselves responsible for their eustress or distress. As such, it is the individuals’ responsibility and choice to reflect on, and manage their interpretation of the stressors inherent in their occupation, and to endeavour to make interpretations that increase eustress and decrease distress.
>
> From the management standpoint, it seems to us that a key contribution of management lies in assisting employees to experience the stressors of the workplace as eustress. First, when employees can be supported to make positive interpretations of their environment, support should be given. This may necessitate investment in coaching and a variety of related personal development interventions. Second, when demand and resources can be modified to reduce stressors identified by employees as distress, then management should seek to address these stressors. Management should not assume that any particular stressor is experienced as eustress or distress but should rather engage in understanding the employees’ experience of the stressor.

## References

Diamond, D. M., Campbell, A. M., Park, C. R., Halonen, J., & Zoladz, P. R. (2007). The temporal dynamics model of emotional memory processing: a synthesis on the neurobiological basis of stress-induced amnesia, flashbulb and traumatic memories, and the Yerkes-Dodson law. *Neural plasticity*, Vol. 2007.
DOI: 10.1155/2007/60803

Le Fevre, M., Matheny, J., & Kolt, G. S. (2003). Eustress, distress, and interpretation in occupational stress. *Journal of Managerial Psychology*, 18(7), pp 726-744.
DOI: 10.1108/02683940310502412

Spector, P.E. (1998), A control theory of the job stress process. In: *Cooper, C.L. (Ed.), Theories of Organizational Stress*. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, pp 153-169.

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit‐formation. *Journal of comparative neurology*, 18(5), pp 459-482.
DOI: 10.1002/cne.920180503

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Tags: well-being, stress
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# Question
Title: Is getting trapped in an asylum a realistic scenario?
In various movies, most recently Unsane (2018), a scenario is painted in which a healthy person gets committed and trapped in an insane asylum and the caretakers there are more or less indifferent to whether she is actually sane or not.

In the movie she "voluntarily" commits herself by signing a form, so presumably she will not be afforded the protections some states give to involuntarily committed people.

Is this scenario realistic in the United States? Can a person who "voluntarily" commits themself, be turned into a medicated prisoner with no recourse for freeing themself?

# Answer
> 4 votes
# It all boils down to the Duty of Care

## Duty of Care

The duty of care is the responsibility of a mental health professional to protect patients and others from foreseeable harm. If a client makes statements that suggest suicidal or homicidal ideation, the clinician has the responsibility to take steps to prevent harm where reasonably practicable, and if necessary, initiate involuntary commitment.

The same goes when a person has been assessed as suffering from one or more severe mental health conditions which has a high chance of resulting in any other physical harm to the individual or others.

## Voluntary Commitment

Getting committed either voluntarily or involuntarily is not straight forward. In both the US and here in the UK, you can't just go into a hospital, sign a form and then be taken in as a mental health patient. You can go into a hospital and ask to be committed, but you need to be assessed in order for the committal to be accepted.

## Involuntary Commitment

With voluntary committal, you are free to discharge yourself by signing a discharge form and leave at any time, however, if **at any time** it is deemed that you would be a danger to yourself or others, the voluntary committal **can** change to involuntary committal.

**Aside from an unscrupulous group of psychiatrists** it is practically impossible to trap a mentally healthy person in a psychiatric unit against their will. For a person to be held against their will, it needs the co-ordinated efforts of more than one psychiatrist. Where it happens that a mentally healthy individual is held against their will, there is possible legal redress and the psychiatrists involved could have their practice licenses removed.

## In the US

### Voluntary Committal

As pointed out by psychiatrist, Scott Alexander, in his Slate Star Codex post, you are not guaranteed admission to a psychiatric unit on a voluntary basis just because you want it. You might be turned down if the psychiatrist thinks you aren’t sick enough to need it, or if your insurance refuses to pay for it. Insurance companies are very reluctant to pay for hospitalisations unless there is a clear risk involved.

### Involuntary Committal

The laws governing this seems to differ depending on which state you are in.

For example:

1. **In California**
According to the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (Section 5150 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code)
> When a person, as a result of a mental health disorder, is a danger to others, or to himself or herself, or gravely disabled, a peace officer, professional person in charge of a facility designated by the county for evaluation and treatment, member of the attending staff, as defined by regulation, of a facility designated by the county for evaluation and treatment, designated members of a mobile crisis team, or professional person designated by the county may, upon probable cause, take, or cause to be taken, the person into custody for a period of up to 72 hours for assessment, evaluation, and crisis intervention, or placement for evaluation and treatment in a facility designated by the county for evaluation and treatment and approved by the State Department of Health Care Services.
2. **In Florida**
According to the Florida Mental Health Act
> A person may be placed in involuntary inpatient placement for treatment upon a finding of the court by clear and convincing evidence that:
>
> (a) He or she is mentally ill and because of his or her mental illness:
>
> 1.a. He or she has refused voluntary placement for treatment after sufficient and conscientious explanation and disclosure of the purpose of placement for treatment; or
>
> b. He or she is unable to determine for himself or herself whether placement is necessary; and
>
> 2.a. He or she is manifestly incapable of surviving alone or with the help of willing and responsible family or friends, including available alternative services, and, without treatment, is likely to suffer from neglect or refuse to care for himself or herself, and such neglect or refusal poses a real and present threat of substantial harm to his or her well-being; or
>
> b. There is substantial likelihood that in the near future he or she will inflict serious bodily harm on himself or herself or another person, as evidenced by recent behavior causing, attempting, or threatening such harm; and
>
> (b) All available less restrictive treatment alternatives which would offer an opportunity for improvement of his or her condition have been judged to be inappropriate.

## In the UK

The whole issue of committal, voluntary and involuntary, is governed by the Mental Health Act 1983 and the Mental Health Act 2007.

### Involuntary Committal in the UK

To be involuntarily committed (also known as sectioned), it needs to be founded on the written recommendations in the prescribed form of **two registered medical practitioners, including in each case a statement that in the opinion of the practitioner**:

1. The individual is suffering from mental disorder of a nature or degree which warrants the detention of the patient in a hospital for assessment (or for assessment followed by medical treatment) for at least a limited period; and
2. The individual ought to be so detained in the interests of his own health or safety or with a view to the protection of other persons. (See Sections 2 and 3 of the Mental Health Act 1983)

### For voluntary committal in the UK

It needs to appear to **the registered medical practitioner or approved clinician in charge of the treatment of the patient** that an application ought to be made under Section 5(2) of the Mental Health Act 1983, for the admission of the patient to hospital, he or she may furnish to the managers a report in writing to that effect; and in any such case the patient may be detained in the hospital for a period of 72 hours from the time when the report is furnished. By which time the patient should be assessed by the two registered practitioners prescribed in Section 2 of the Act.

# Answer
> 2 votes
I think in current times this is hardly possible.

It has happened in the late 1800's that a sane person gets themselves admitted purposefully in a New York mental institution in order to reveal the poor conditions in which the admitted people have to live.

More recent cases have been listed by popular sources such as this one on the internet. Given the questionable reputation of such sites, it is hard to say in as how far they reflect reality.

A cursory search on Google Scholar (*e.g.* "admission+of+healthy+individuals+in+mental+ institutions) yields no relevant hits, other than those pertaining to involuntary admissions, *i.e.*, admissions of folks against their own will. There the debate starts whether people should be admitted in institutions against their will, and when it is deemed necessary for their own good, or for the safety of others. That, however, is a discussion outside the scope of this question though.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Yes and no.

It depends a lot on the legislation of a country. For example, in Germany, if you are admitted *involuntarily* by social workers, the police or doctors, you must see a judge in the following 48 hours after your admission. Furthermore, you may not be treated or kept in mental care against your will if a judge has not ruled so. Meaning if you are admitted involuntarily, there must be pretty strong evidence suggesting that you actually need to be admitted.

However, it does look quite different if you admit yourself voluntarily: In the year 1973, Rosenhan conducted a experiment, investigating how voluntarily admitted pseudo patients are treated in closed mental care institutions. He wrote a paper about it, called "On being sane in Insane Places" Let me cite some passages from a summary of the study, published on dowellwebtools.com:

> \[Rosenhan\] put together a team of eight perfectly healthy and sane "pseudo patients" \[...\] to have themselves committed in one of several psychiatric hospitals across the United States. In order to make this experiment work, the pseudo patients had to lie about \[...\] the fact that they heard a voice in their heads.
>
> Immediately after admission, the pseudo patients acted normally \[...\] while discreetly taking notes for the experiment. They could not be released without staff corroboration of their sanity, which took from 7 to 52 days \[...\] to get.
>
> When the pseudo patients were eventually discharged, none of them were seen as normal, but all with "schizophrenia in remission."

Searching for it on Wikipedia reveals that there is a second part to Rosenhan's study which is even more interesting:

> The second part of his study involved an offended hospital administration challenging Rosenhan to send pseudopatients to its facility, whom its staff would then detect. Rosenhan agreed and in the following weeks out of 250 new patients the staff identified 41 as potential pseudopatients, with 2 of these receiving suspicion from at least one psychiatrist and one other staff member. In fact, Rosenhan had sent no pseudopatients to the hospital.

The core of your question can be answered with no: It's very unlikely for a person to be kept in mental care for a very long time without showing actual symptoms of a mental disorder. If you read Rosenhan's study carefully, you will find a passage that says that other patients got suspicious of the pseudo patients as they seemed "too normal".

> During the first three hospitalizations, when accurate counts were kept, 35 of a total of 118 patients on the admissions ward voiced their suspicions, some vigorously. "You're not crazy. You're a journalist, or a professor \[referring to the continual note-taking\]. You're checking up on the hospital."

So, sooner or later, someone would raise a concern.

Nevertheless, it is not unrealistic to be kept in mental healthcare for a shorter duration even though you show no symptoms or whatsoever. Rosenhan explains this as follows:

> The hospital itself imposes a special environment in which the meanings of behavior can easily be misunderstood.

But before storming off now, saying that mental healthcare institutions can't diagnose properly, it's important to note that I couldn't find any replication of Rosenhan's study in our time, nearly 50 years later, and that his pseudo patients wanted to be admitted. The fact that they stopped showing symptoms right after they were admitted would probably leave anyone wondering what is going on, meaning that most would make closer and longer observations. (Why did he stop showing symptoms? Maybe a new disorder appeared?)

Conclusion: His findings don't necessarily have to hold true nowadays (at least to the extent he found), but it may be helpful to take them into account.

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Tags: psychiatry
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# Question
Title: Why do brains prefer internal consistency?
I need to preface this by saying I know next to nothing about this topic, so if the question is built on wrong premises, feel free to address that in an answer.

From and related to: What is the psychological term for disregarding correct but unwanted information?

> (...) people strive for internal consistency even at the expense of truth.

My question is **why?**

Are there mechanisms on the neuron-level that resist the rewiring of the brain? By rewiring I mean avoiding a certain cost to changes in the thought-process or to the acquiring of new information.

And from an evolutionary perspective, how helpful is the 'internal consistency' if thought of as a built-in protection of sorts?

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Short answer**
Cognitive dissonance arises because people want to protect their world-view or self-concept. Even people well versed in science may deny the facts in favor of false beliefs.

**Background**
The question spans three levels of grossly different arenas of research:

* > \[Why so people strive for internal consistency \[\] at the expense of truth?

1. This is a matter of Psychology and perhaps even Philosophy

> * \[What are the\] mechanisms on the neuron-level that resist the rewiring of the brain?

2. This steps all the way down to cellular and molecular neurophysiology

> * \[What is the selective advantage\] from an evolutionary perspective?

3. This ramps the question to an evolutionary time scale

I'll take a bash at this question from a more Psychological approach, mainly because the other two angles do not seem fruitful to me as

1. Rewiring (Neurophysiology) is a term often used in terms of gross plastic changes in the brain, such as that occur during intensive training (*e.g.* when folks learn to juggle), or after a stroke.
2. Evolutionary reasons seem far-fetched. The development of higher cognitive processes may have aided in our rise to domination. For example, the forging of social structures and accompanying cultural development may have be the foundation to the cross-generational transfer of intelligent tool-making and so forth. Such complex behaviors spanning millions of years may have led to other behaviors like the denial of facts. Such behavior may not be evolutionary beneficial, but a collateral development. You have to realize not every feature is perfect. On the contrary. The regenerative power of many a cell in the body allows for wound healing, but also gives rise to cancer. Aggressive immune systems defends us during our life against countless enemies, including cancer cells, but when going haywire it leads to devastating auto-immune diseases like multiple sclerosis. Likewise, intelligent behaviors may result in aberrant thought processes, like believing and holding on to something as to be true it, while the facts challenge that idea. Now why does that happen?
3. The Psychological approach seems most feasible. Denial of scientific facts to support ones own aberrant world views has been in the news a lot of late, sadly - Trumping the truth! (Shermer, 2018). Shermer says

> \[A\]ntiscience attitudes are formed in very narrow cognitive windows—those in which science appears to oppose certain political or religious views.

and

> For Republicans, the more knowledge they have about climate science the less likely they are to accept the theory of anthropogenic global warming \[\]. People with more knowledge only accept science when it doesn't conflict with their preexisting beliefs and values \[\].

In another of his excellent columns, Shermer (2017) names a list of more examples:

* Creationists \[\] dispute the evidence for evolution in fossils and DNA because they are concerned about secular forces encroaching on religious faith.
* Antivaxxers distrust big pharma and think that money corrupts medicine, which leads them to believe that vaccines cause autism despite the inconvenient truth that the one and only study claiming such a link was retracted and its lead author accused of fraud.
* The 9/11 truthers focus on minutiae like the melting point of steel in the World Trade Center buildings that caused their collapse because they think the government lies and conducts “false flag” operations to create a New World Order.
* Climate deniers study tree rings, ice cores and the ppm of greenhouse gases because they are passionate about freedom, especially that of markets and industries to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations. Obama birthers desperately dissected the president's long-form birth certificate in search of fraud because they believe that the nation's first African-American president is a socialist bent on destroying the country.

The term here was launched after the description of a UFO cult that predicted the arrival of the mother ship Shermer (2017).

> When that failed to arrive at the appointed time, instead of admitting error, members of the group sought frantically to convince the world of their beliefs, and they made “a series of desperate attempts to erase their rankling dissonance by making prediction after prediction in the hope that one would come true.” Festinger called this **cognitive dissonance**, or the uncomfortable tension that comes from holding two conflicting thoughts simultaneously.

**Cognitive dissonance** is:

> \[T\]he mental conflict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by new information. The unease or tension that the conflict arouses in people is relieved by one of several defensive maneuvers: they reject, explain away, or avoid the new information; persuade themselves that no conflict really exists; reconcile the differences; or resort to any other defensive means of preserving stability or order in their conceptions of the world and of themselves.

Cognitive dissonance - why (Shermer, 2017)?

> Because \[the facts\] threaten\[\] their worldview or self-concept.

Science denial, for example is not typically rooted in blanket anti-science attitudes. Instead, people's denial of scientific evidence is based on motivations other than finding truth, such as protecting their social identity. It appears that the more science-literate people are, the more strongly they hold to their beliefs — even if those beliefs are incorrect. So it hasn't anything to do with education. It's about ones owns beliefs and holding on to them (source: Live Science).

<sub>**Referencess**
**-** Shermer, *Sci Am*, January 2017
**-** Shermer, *Sci Am*, January 2018</sub>

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, evolutionary-psychology
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title: Name of sound-induced-hunger condition

text:
# Question
Title: Name of sound-induced-hunger condition
When I was a student I used to notice that towards supper time, whenever I would go from my quiet study space to a place where people were talking, it people started to tell in my quiet space, i would get hungry.

Recently, I have tried the TalkBack feature on my Android device, and found, that whenever I am lying in bed, time with my stomach, and not feeling hungry, after turning TalkBack on and using it, my hunger level peaks to 100% excruciating hunger, after just five minutes of using TalkBack.

On average I can hear mild sounds in my room throughout the day and they don't bother me, (with just one or two mild exceptions, which might induce a very feather-light hunger feeling towards the evening).

I also have a generic form of misophonia whereby generic noises trigger distress, or even when pleasant, tend to alter it modify my thoughts, while some mild ones seem to pleasantly accompany or suggest or improve my thought performance in some respects in some situations.

However, I have never analyzed the hunger component before formally in a post (especially with relationship to this Android TalkBack feature).

My question is, is there a technical name for the form of extreme sound-induced-hunger I describe?

(Hunger can also be induced by medication, but that's another issue).

Thanks.

# Answer
Probably not. The closest thing I am aware of is Mayor et al (2016) \[The Effect of Chronic Dieting Goals on Auditory Perceptual Biases\] where they

> propose the existence of “wishful hearing,” which establishes that ambient product sounds can be perceived as more spatially proximal when more desirable and thus lead to increased purchase intentions and consumption.
> 3 votes

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Tags: experimental-psychology, psychiatry, conditioning, feeding, medication
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# Question
Title: What is meant by this line, "Much of Neisser’s critique of ﬁltering makes semantic rather than functional distinctions"?
I'm reading *The Neuropsychology of Attention* (2014) by Ronald A. Cohen, published by Springer. In Chapter 3 (*Cognitive Psychology of Attention: Foundations*), page 30-31, under the subheading *Removing the Bottleneck*, the book provides a short account of Neisser's attempt to remove role of the attention filters in filter theories and instead, replace it with the concept of "schema". The statement in question, appears in this paragraph:

> Schema models, as articulated by Neisser, emphasize the role of the perceiver in selecting information in the environment and deﬁne attentional focus as a function of schema. Much of Neisser’s critique of ﬁltering makes semantic rather than functional distinctions.

Would appreciate any and all help.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Filter theory (see this also), specified that we could only attend to one input at a time (serial processing of stimuli as opposed to parallel processing, whereby you can attend to many stimuli at the same time), and this was originally put forward by Broadbent in 1959. The theory suggested that stimuli can be filtered based upon physical attributes, prior to full processing by the perceptual system. The fact that there is the filter in place, in turn leads to some stimuli not raising attention. Plus, filter theory proposed that attention has a limited capacity due to the fact that you can only process one stimulus at a time. This is where the bottleneck is, as you will be bombarded with lots and lots of stimuli and you can only process one of them at a time.

Neisser (1967) outlined a two-process theory that explained how much the filter affects attention (and hence consciousness). According to Neisser's theory, both the properties of the stimuli as well as semantic factors (language or logic), play a role in attention. Neisser argues for a constructive view of cognition in which perception is shaped by existing knowledge and hence attention is influenced by experience.

So therefore, when Cohen states that:

> Much of Neisser’s critique of ﬁltering makes semantic rather than functional distinctions.

he is stating that Neisser is, in most of his theory, purely making logical distinctions within filter theory rather than functional ones.

I interpret this to mean that, Neisser added the function of logic (through knowledge and previous experience) along with language, to the function of the stimulus filter.

## References

Broadbent, D. (1958). *Perception and Communication*. London: Pergamon Press.

Neisser, U. (1967). *Cognitive Psychology*. New York: Appleton-Century-Croft.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, psychology, attention
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# Question
Title: Is there a robust method to prove the existence of reincarnation?
Is there a how-to to prove reincarnation?

And secondly, I would like to lessen bad action from the previous life. And how do I do that?

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Short answer**
You are confusing belief or faith with a hypothesis.

**Background**
Instead of a methodological answer, this question might, perhaps arguably, be tackled better from a slightly more philosophical angle. Let's go through the relevant terminologies.

**Belief** is

> An **acceptance** that something exists or is true, especially one **without proof**.

A related term is **faith**

> \[F\]irm **belief** in something \[often in a **religious** context\] for which there is **no proof**

Indeed **Reincarnation** is a

> Religious belief

And henceforth it cannot be (dis)proven. By contrast, scientific hypotheses can be disproven through **hypothesis testing**. A **hypothesis** being

> \[An\] idea that proposes a tentative explanation about a phenomenon or a narrow set of phenomena observed in the natural world.

Reincarnation has not been observed in the natural world. Instead, it is based on faith in religious belief.

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Tags: self, religion, prosocial-behavior, death
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# Question
Title: How does SPA relate to deep learning concepts?
I have just started reading about the SPA (semantic pointer architecture) and wondering how it relates to deep learning concepts.

# Answer
Deep Learning (which is now supposed to be called Differentiable Programming?) is a means of doing inference over a set of data.

SPA is a Vector Symbolic Architecture (VSA) implemented using Holographic Reduced Representations (HRR). That is to say, sparse vectors represent symbols and there is a set of operations that can be used to combine them.

Consequently, SPA can be used as a sort of prior for Deep Learning to provide constraints on the representation it's learning.

For example, SPA could be used to represent the output of a visual system, which would then be used by other symbolic systems. In the case of Spaun, Deep Learning is used in the vision system to map images onto known symbols. These known symbols can then be manipulated in ways that would be impossible for Deep Learning to perform. For example, Rapid Variable Creation used for solving Raven's Progressive Matrices is impossible for Deep Learning to perform without any structural priors.
> 2 votes

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Tags: spa
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# Question
Title: Does associative recognition retrieve target when given re-paired foil?
# Context

In "Tracking cognitive processing stages with MEG: A spatio-temporal model of associative recognition in the brain" by Borst et. al., MEG is used to show the existence of discrete stages during the test-phase of an associative recognition task, as shown in the figure below:

# Question

In the step labeled "Recollection", does an input of a Re-Paired Foil word pair cause the recollection of a Target?

# Explanation of task

During the study phase, a set of paired words are given. Such as (`A+B`, `C+D`, `E+F`). During the test phase, the subject must distinguish whether they have seen a pair before. A pair that has previously been studied, such as `A+B`, is referred to as a Target. Pairs that have not previously been studied, such as `B+F` and `A+Z` are called Foils. `A+Z` is a Novel Foil because it is composed of a word was not studied, while `B+F` is a Re-Paired Foil because it is composed of words seen during the study phase.

# Answer
What is being described in the original question is called Recall-to-Reject Processing. In "Associative recognition: a case of recall-to-reject processing" by Rotello and Heit provides evidence this retrieval of an older memory for comparison with the newer probe, rather than retrieving nothing, does indeed happen.

To show this, they ran three experiments. Experiment 1 dealt with word pairs similarly to the experiment cited in the original post. Experiment 2 test on both word pairs and individual pairs.

The results of Experiment 1 show accuracy was higher for newer pairs than for re-arranged pairs. Consequently, one can infer that Recall-to-Reject had a harder time with re-arranged pairs due to interference \[1\]. The same occurred in Experiment 2, but additionally showing interference with words similar to those studied.

They summarize the result in their conclusion:

> \[Recall-to-Reject Processing\] makes a distinctive prediction about the ability of subjects to discriminate completely new test stimuli from stimuli that are new but similar to studied materials. Specifically, the similar test foils should be increasingly rejected, relative to a baseline of completely new items, late in processing (i.e., after information from the recall component of recognition becomes available). The data from Experiments 1 and 2 are consistent with that prediction: We did find that rearranged pairs were increasingly rejected, relative to new pairs, after about 1,000 msec.

However, it should be noted this is quite an old paper and an updated reference would be helpful.

\[1\] There's also some sort of trend happening with lags, but this isn't really necessary to understand for this answer.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, memory
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title: Preconditioning before asking a favor

text:
# Question
Title: Preconditioning before asking a favor
Suppose I want to borrow an item, such as a phone charger from someone.

Instead of directly asking them, "Could I borrow a charger?"

I first ask this question: "Do you have a charger?"

The act of asking a question of fact (whether they have the item or not) will make them more willing to lend you the item.

Is there a term or explanation for this?

Is this related or similar to the Ben Franklin effect and Anchoring effect?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The effect you ask about could very well be seen as an example of the Ben Franklin effect, also known as the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. In your example, replying to the question "Do you have a charger?" would be interpreted as a small favor which is then followed by the bigger favor of lending the item.

Reference:

Beaman, A. L., Cole, C. M., Preston, M., Klentz, B., & Steblay, N. M. (1983). Fifteen Years of Foot-in-the Door Research. *Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin*, 9(2), 181-196.
DOI: 10.1177/0146167283092002

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Tags: decision-making
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