# Question
Title: What type of imagination is responsible for hallucinations?
What about the type of imagination which medicine calls hallucinations? Is it a great gift or a curse for those who sense extremely? Is imagination a mild form of hallucinating?

# Answer
There are certainly some anecdotal stories that hallucinations (as part of psychosis) occured in highly creative people e.g. van Gogh or in the families of some creative people, such as the story of James Joyce's daugher. But that's anecdotal evidence. I tried to find whether some (psychometric) measure of imagination correlates with hallucinations, but not much luck with that insofar. \[And that's not because such measures of imagination don't exist at all; some have been proposed. I'll update this part if I find something relating them to hallucinatons.\]

What I could find out is that hallucinations are correlated with a confusion between imagination and (actual) perception, both visually and auditory.

On a slightly more positive note, the propensity for hallucinations was also associated with a better pattern matching ability in some visual tests with highly confusing images, but this was only when exposed to the full image before, i.e. a form of bias toward prior knowledge.

Perhaps the above aren't so surprising given that a lot of normal people (about half it seems) hallucinate in sensory deprivation experiments. A somewhat similar situation was observed in people who experienced hallucinations as a side-effect of higher doses of tricyclic antidepressants, namely that their hallucinations occured when background noise was low. Charles Bonnet syndrome is anohter case of reduced stimuli; Oliver Sacks has a talk at TED about it. So if anything, hallucinations are associated with not enough perception.

Note however that there's a rich tradition in philosophy of discussing imagination and hallucinations together. E.g. there's a MIT Press book titled *Hallucination: Philosophy and Psychology* with quite a few hits inside for "imagination" So it's quite possible I've missed some relevant issue. Do note as a caveat that one of the papers (by K. Farkas) in that book mentioned early on that

> The notion of hallucination most commonly discussed in philosophy is somewhat different from the notion used in psychology or psychiatry.

Likewise there's a *Humanities* paper that discusses them together. (Despite the dubious venue in which it was published, it is cited by papers in more reputable journals, so perhaps worth a read--but it's 50 pages, so don't expect me to do it.)
> 2 votes

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Tags: hallucinations
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# Question
Title: Does psychology have a name for emotions that a person can feel but cannot name?
This is sort of an inverse of this other question.

To explain what I am looking for, I had this experience when I was a teenager that a much older friend (who wanted me to feel as part of a group of people my age) took me to a party with quite a few other teenagers.

People at the party seemed nice and friendly but after being there just a minute or so I got an uncomfortable feeling and wanted to leave. It could be that this feeling surfaced when that friend told me that he was going to leave me and pick me up later.

He was not very happy about me wanting to leave as well but at that time I was not able to articulate to him how I felt. Also because I had not felt that feeling in earlier situations (likely because I had not had much social interaction in groups like that before) that feeling just seemed weird to me.

Many years later when I was pondering on that memory and realized that the uncomfortable feeling I had was simply a feeling of being intimidated (most likely about the social situation). I did also realize that this probably could have been minimized by some preparation (he had not told me in advance that there was this party going on where he wanted to drop me off).

Anyway, my question is about this aspect of feeling something but not being able to articulate what it was. Is there a formal name for this phenomenon in psychology?

# Answer
The term used for recognizing emotions is affect labeling (also know as emotions labelling). The act of labelling an emotion requires similar cognitive mechanisms used for labelling a cat or a dog (Concept). Like any other concept learning, affect labeling requires training and experience.

Labelling emotions is very importand beacuse it can help regulate emotions effectively.

> This impoverished emotional labeling is, in turn, associated with deficits regulating those emotions (see Vine & Aldao, 2014). In other words, the less aware we are of our emotions, the less likely we are to figure out how to best regulate them.

In this article you can find some practical advice how to better understand your emotions.
> 6 votes

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Tags: emotion, terminology
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title: How is hypnosis not mind control?

text:
# Question
Title: How is hypnosis not mind control?
OK, you might have to bare with me on this one.

The concept that someone might influence another, even through suggestions, has never once sat comfortably with me.

Across the internet people seem to be in two camps about hypnosis – those who have no idea what hypnosis is and portray it as blatant mind control, and those that reckon they understand what it is, saying that people under hypnosis have complete control and can reject suggestions if they do not agree with them – if this were entirely true, you wouldn’t be able to induce hypnosis on unsuspecting victims in the first place.

However, I feel that the truth lies somewhere in between.

While it is true that people can reject suggestions in hypnosis, it appears to me that this can be simply bypassed through a correct strategy of wording suggestions.

By wording suggestions that avoid evoking conflict with the subject’s belief system, a hypnotist can make the subject feel like the hypnotist’s interests are enjoyable and relaxing, even if the subject wouldn’t ordinarily consent.

For example, the suggestion “The deeper you go, the better you feel, the better you feel, the deeper you go” followed by “every step deeper you go, you feel 10x more comfortable with the words I say” - helps the subject to believe that following the hypnotist’s instructions is the right thing to do, even if it doesn’t follow their moral code (and why should they care, they feel really really good because they are following the instructions). The first suggestion focuses on going deeper, and the second uses that deepening loop as a lever to strengthen the suggestibility of the subject. After extended suggestion and deepening, does this not allow for more ‘edgy’ suggestions because the subject is more comfortable with the words that the hypnotist says?

It’s often commented by hypnotists that a patient can wake up at any point if they do not feel comfortable with the suggestions, but the whole key to hypnosis is creating comfort and using that comfort to embed suggestions. Most people are looking to relax and enjoy themselves. If a hypnotist associates doing something illicit with relaxation and joy, I foresee the patient being easily manipulated, which in laymen terms, is brainwashing.

This was demonstrated by Derren brown, whereby he uses hypnosis to compel a man to shoot a target on command (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90xfZJQzAhc). (the patient meanwhile completely oblivious to the fact that he is being trained to assassinate someone, only believing that he is shooting an inanimate target) Furthermore, cases such as (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/15/ohio-lawyer-hypnotized-six-female-clients-then-he-molested-them/?utm\_term=.aadcde7accb1) show that men have taken advantage of women under hypnosis, leaving the women memory less and confused only to find out they were under hypnosis from a lucky police investigation. Essentially, is this not the definition of mind control?

Even if hypnosis is not as simple as: “you are now hypnotised, now kill this person/have sex with me”, is this principle not still the same through carefully worded suggestions, manipulation and making the person believe what they are doing is desirable? (as Darren Brown proves can be done)

If such manipulation is possible, then HOW is this not discussed with more criticism? And, probably more importantly, HOW can anyone trust a hypnotherapist if they have the ability to slowly word their way around your belief system one suggestion at a time?

After-all, what are we but animals without a personalised belief system?

Given the above, how close is hypnosis truly to the infamous 'mind control' that it is depicted as in pop culture? And why is this always overlooked by hypnotherapists when discussing hypnosis? Have I missed something? Is Derren Brown, the world famous hypnotist a fraud?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Since I vaguely remember a similar question not that long ago, let me use this one to quote from one the few peer-reviewed papers (doi link; preprint pdf). that discusses the notion of "mind control":

> Mind control is a common plot device in many genres of fiction. Its ubiquity is perhaps unsurprising: the prospect of the explicit, full control of the mind evokes alluring and startling possibilities. Fictional mind control often takes implausible forms: telepathy, magical interventions, and nefarious schemes of authoritarian organizations. In more biologically inspired plot lines, mind control is delivered by devices implanted in the subject’s brain, as depicted in The Matrix: these devices manipulate neurophysiological processes resulting in a change of mental state.
>
> In reality, mind control encompasses numerous means for influencing the mind. These include effects mediated through the senses. Sense-mediated effects can include positive influences, such as updating one’s beliefs based on presented evidence, or nudging someone to make healthy decisions via environmental manipulation. They can also be more insidious, as in the case of propaganda or brainwashing. Beyond social and environmental means, mind control can also result from direct neural stimulation. Neural stimulation can include subtle modulation via pharmacological agents or more direct manipulations with brain stimulation that result in neural discharges. The last few decades have seen a steady increase in the use of implanted devices to assist individuals with major mental disorders. The ubiquitous nature of social forms of control and increasing prevalence of neural devices motivates important questions about the control of brain processes and, by extension, mental functions.

So as you can see other things qualify as (partial) mind control just as well, deep brain stimulation, rRTMs etc., as well less invasive ones, propaganda etc.

\[-much later, the paper talks about ethics-\]

> Insofar as mind control has been and will be undertaken in experimental and clinical contexts, four basic principles of medical and research ethics apply: non-maleficence, beneficence, justice, and autonomy. Adhering to these principles is a first step toward ensuring that efforts to guide the mind enhance human welfare without violating human rights.

So it's less of matter of means than of context and motives what is unacceptable mind control. Think for a sec how is indoctrination different from psychotherapy, for instance. And regarding "HOW can anyone trust a hypnotherapist if they have the ability to slowly word their way around your belief system one suggestion at a time?" The latter doesn't require hypnosis. You can ask exactly the same question about psychotherapy. That's why stuff like sex with patients is prohibited by codes of ethics.

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And since I've not talked at all about hypnosis above let me say that traditionally the literature about hypnosis (at least the one with therapeutic bend), emphasizes that people cannot be made to do anything they don't want to under hypnosis. Typical of this is the *Sci Am Mind* magazine article "The Truth and the Hype of Hypnosis", which has been quoted in some textbooks for the received wisdom that:

> "(if you think) People who are hypnotized lose control of themselves. (the reality is) Subjects are perfectly capable of saying no or terminating hypnosis.

On the other hand, recent (2017) research by Lush et al. does indicate that thre's perhaps an objective measure of a "feeling of involuntariness" in hypnosis subjects.

> Using an established test designed to measure self-agency – the sense that our own actions are actually down to us – participants were shown to be more likely to feel their movements were involuntary after hypnosis.

The actual metric of self-agency relied on measuring intentional binding. Quoting *New Scientist's* description of the experiment (as the most concise I found):

> Lush’s team asked 18 people who were highly susceptible to hypnotism to sit in front of a very accurate clock and do a task repeatedly where they pressed a button, triggering a beep after 250 milliseconds, in three different circumstances.
>
> If their finger was pulled down involuntarily – by an attached string – they perceived the period before the beep as 176 milliseconds. If the string wasn’t pulled and they chose when to press the button, they experienced it as 91 milliseconds – showing intentional binding.
>
> But if they pressed the button due to a post-hypnotic command, they perceived it as 156 milliseconds – closer to the involuntary state than the voluntary one.
>
> “This feeling of involuntariness is a key element of the hypnotic experience,” says David Spiegel of Stanford University.

A somewhat similar (2017) study by another research team (published a few months later), but which has the advantage of using a control group (but the disadvantage of not doing actual hypnosis):

> Here we tested the proposal that distorted volition during response to suggestions arises from poor metacognition pertaining to the sources of one's control. Highly suggestible and control participants completed a motor task in which performance was reduced through surreptitious manipulations of cursor lag and stimuli speed. Highly suggestible participants did not differ from controls in performance or metacognition of performance, but their sense of agency was less sensitive to cursor lag manipulations, suggesting reduced awareness that their control was being manipulated.

Since these studies are too new to have been covered by a review, if I may inject my own interpretation here, it does look like hypnosis works as a "double whammy" in highly suggestible individuals: not only to do they start with a lower metacognition of self-agency, but this is further lowered by hypnosis itself.

Moreover, recent "revival" research in hypnosis has confirmed that LSD enhances hypnotic susceptibility, and a new finding is that rTMS can also do the same. You should be very worried now :0

Seriously, I mean to show by this that there's a continuum of "mind control" and while hypnosis surely is an interesting phenomenon in that regard, it's not *the* "OMG mind control"... especially because when hypnosis is used to boost some other psychotherapeutic intervention, it doesn't seem that impressive.

Furthermore, some (again) 2017 research found that hypnotic sugestibility correlated with some psychiatric disorders (lifetime diagnosis) as well as the subjects' current mood:

> The passing rate of the SHSS:C ‘Moving hands apart’ item was higher in bipolar I patients than in controls, whereas for ‘Mosquito hallucination’ the rate was lower. The passing rates of ‘Mosquito hallucination’ in controls, ‘Arm rigidity’ in bipolar I, and ‘Age regression’ in bipolar II predicted the respective MDQ \[Mood Disorder Questionnaire\] scores.

Although published in a reputable-enough journal (*BMC Psychiatry*), the study was conducted in a Chinese university hospital (although according to Wikipedia it's an "elite" medical shool), so perhaps more research is needed before drawing firm conclusion on associations between mental illness (or mood) and hypnotisability. While the paper did Bonferroni-correct their multiple comparisons, I could not find anything in it about the medication status of the subjects.

Thers's also a 2015 Australian study comparing some schizophrenic experiences with hypnosis:

> Passivity phenomena in schizophrenia are characterized by a sense of diminished agency. \[...\] Our aim was first to investigate sense of agency and clinical symptoms in schizophrenia, both classic passivity phenomena and more general positive symptoms; and second, to contrast the agentive experiences of patients with a previously tested sample of 370 nonclinical, hypnotized participants. Twenty-six patients with schizophrenia completed ratings of classic passivity phenomena and of involuntariness associated with a particular experience of agency alteration. \[...\] Patients reported considerable levels of involuntariness for both body-related and thought-related symptoms. Overall involuntariness ratings from patients were similar to those of high hypnotizable participants in hypnosis. These results indicate altered sense of agency is associated with a range of experiences in schizophrenia, not just classic passivity phenomena. Moreover, the experience of altered agency in schizophrenia was similar to that seen in hypnosis, suggesting that hypnotic analogues may be a useful way to test theories of passivity-like phenomena.

This probably fits with the theory that most psychiatric disorders lie on a spectrum, with subclinical features seen in the healthy population. The "spectrum of self-agency awareness" (if I may coin a term for this notion) is rarely talked about though... although a quick search found a paper discussing it in autism; no mention of hypnosis in that paper though.

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Tags: behavior, hypnosis, moral-psychology, persuasion
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title: Are emoji smiles also contagious?

text:
# Question
Title: Are emoji smiles also contagious?
It is fairly common knowledge that smiles are contagious is this also true when people are exposed to ascii/emoji smiles? ie. :) , ☺ ,

By contagious I mean making a person feel happier and more likely to smile themselves.

# Answer
> 5 votes
**Yes.** Emoji smiles are contagious just like real human smiles.

As this study suggest the brain activity observed when people look at emojis is the same when we look at real faces, and subsequently mimicry and emotion contagion follows.

> We presented 20 participants with images of upright and inverted faces, emoticons and meaningless strings of characters. Emoticons showed a large amplitude N170 when upright and a decrease in amplitude when inverted, the opposite pattern to that shown by faces. This indicates that when upright, emoticons are processed in occipitotemporal sites similarly to faces due to their familiar configuration.

Also, a more general study for on-line expressed emotions demostrated emotion contagion similar to face to face comunication.

> We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion, empathy
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# Question
Title: Why does a higher post-synaptic cell resistance lead to a higher voltage change when current is applied?
In the "Principles of Neural Science" 5th edition in the discussion about electrical synapses it says:

> During excitatory synaptic transmission at an electrical synapse, voltage-gated ion channels in the presynaptic cell generate the current that depolarizes the postsynaptic cell. Thus these channels not only depolarize the presynaptic cell above the threshold for an action potential but also generate sufficient ionic current to produce a change in potential in the postsynaptic cell.
>
> To generate such a large current, the presynaptic terminal must be big enough for its membrane to contain many ion channels. At the same time, the postsynaptic cell must be relatively small. This is because a small cell has a higher input resistance (Rin) than a large cell and, according to Ohm's law (V = I x Rin), undergoes a greater voltage change in response to a given presynaptic current (I).

I get that Ohm's law states this, but what is really going on? Why should the resistance encountered by charge as it is moving through gap-junctions from the presynaptic to the postsynaptic cell affect the voltage (electrical potential) across the membrane of the postsynaptic cell with its environment. Once the charge gets to the postsynaptic cell, it seems like it should no longer be affected by the resistance it encountered along the way.

# Answer
> 1 votes
If you consider the electrical synapse a simple series RC circuit, with the resistance in the synapse and the capacitor as the postsynaptic cell, then you are correct that the value of R only changes the charge time for the capacitor (from a DC source, but not it's final voltage (at t = infinity).

($\tau = RC$)

On the other hand, this model is too simplistic for the electrical synapse because you also have losses (discharge) to the outside of the cells. Image from the book:

And a more realistic circuit is created with extra (parallel) resistors below for the extracellular discharge. Note what happens when the 2nd resistor (discharge of postsynaptic cell to inter-cellular space) is introduced in the circuit (switch closed): the voltage charge on capacitor drops significantly.

You basically have to "beat" or minimize this voltage drop, and one way to do this is to have a lower series resistor (another is of course a higher isolation \[i.e. resistor\] from the intercellular space). When the synapse resistance is 10 times lower than in the previous circuit, the voltage drop on the synapse is much lower, and so the voltage on the capacitor is higher, even with the switch closed:

You can play with the circuit here; it's set for the first set of resistor values; you need to right-click on a resistor and pick "edit" to change it's value; I could have added another switch and resistor to achieve that change for the synapse... but I didn't want to complicate the circuit conceptually.

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: Do men, on average, have a higher general intelligence score?
I'm aware of this study that was linked during an argument: "Sex differences in brain size and general intelligence (g)" and this question Gender differences in IQ among undergraduate psychology students.

So, do men, on average, have a higher general intelligence score? And if yes, why?

# Answer
There's a Wikipedia page with a lot of related studies. Among other things we find out there that:

> A 2004 meta-analysis by Richard Lynn and Paul Irwing published in 2005 found that the mean IQ of men exceeded that of women by up to 5 points on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test.\[...\] Lynn's findings were debated in a series of articles for Nature.\[...\]

This new (2017) study you ask about was conducted by a group whose fist author has recently co-authored papers with Lynn. And not surprisingly, the way they construct their *g* in the 2017 paper is quite similar to Lynn's, i.e. fairly substantially loaded the progressive matrices test.

So perhaps their ultimate result is not surprising in this respect, i.e. it seems a replication of older research in a newer sample. On the other hand, the 2017 reports statistically significant differences on practically on all factors (some in the opposite direction)

As far as I can tell, this is quite unprecedented... so we'll see what reactions it triggers from other researchers in the field.

In previous work Lynn has been accused of basing his conclusions on convenience (and thus non-representative) samples.

In this 2017 paper, the authors state:

> Although the HCP data still have a somewhat restricted age-range (22 to 37 years), the sample is demographically diverse and can be considered a more population-representative sample compared to that of Burgaleta et al. (2012).

"More representative" is not necessarily representative.

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They also mention that another recent study published in the same journal, Illiescu et al. 2016 who claim nationally representative samples for Romania found for instance much fewer differences on the progressive matrices test... limited to a small age window which interestingly overlapped substantially with the HCP sample age group:

It's not too clear if this is due to not enough power for the other sub-samples or there's a small age effect that appears and then vanishes... or it could be just spurious (these tests are non-corrected for multiple comparisons). Iliescu et al. do say that:

> The p-values reported in Tables 1–6 are not corrected for multiple comparisons. When using Bonferroni adjustments none of the comparisons are significant. The interpretations therefore focused on effect sizes. \[...\]
>
> Given that diversity and volume of the data, and the fact that some of the compared samples (age × sex) are small, we have conducted a meta-analysis for each category of scores, for each of the 6 tests. Table 7 presents these results. **The only two scores with a significant (though small) effect are the Raven (d=0.11, p \< 0.01), and the Performance subscore of the SON-R (d=0.12, p \< 0.01), both in favor of males.** In the case of the SON-R, medium heterogeneity is signaled by the data: Q(5)=10.01, p \< 0.10, I2=50.04, i.e. 50% of the total variability in this set of effect sizes are due to between-subsamples variability (true heterogeneity). In the case of the Raven scores, heterogeneity is not present: Q(22) = 21.34, ns., I2 = 0.00; i.e. all variability in effect size estimates is due to sampling error within subsamples.

So Iliescu et al. also found an overall difference in progressive matrices which doesn't seem to vary with age, but not much else. I'm too sure about SON but it looks somewhat similar with progressive matrices in some respects (it's a non-verbal test).

And researchers have tried to pinpoint what type of questions on the progressive matrices test cause the sex differences typilcally reported, with some hypoteses failing replication. A 2008 review-ish paper said

> In conclusion, the identification of APM performance dimensions based on information processing continues to be an open question and is likely to remain intractable without experimental manipulations of important variables related to the construction of the items and to the test as a whole.

There's another 2017 study which found that

> Visuospatial ability was found to significantly contribute to performance on the RPM, over and above fluid ability, supporting the contention that visuospatial ability is involved in RPM performance. No sex differences were found in this relationship, although sex differences in visuospatial ability may explain sex differences in RPM scores.

Time will tell if this can be replicated or not.

Likewise there's a 2014 study in a Chinese university students sample which found no sex difference in a progressive matrices test

> The mean CRT scores were (66.13±3.13) for males and (66.40±3.05) for females. No significant gender difference (P\>0.05) in CRT scores was found between females and males.

But nonetheless using neuroimaging proposed that men and women have different brain activation patterns on such tests:

> Despite a large number of behavioral studies that demonstrated gender differences in Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability, no neural evidence supported this difference. In this study, voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used in an attempt to uncover the gender-specific neural basis of Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability as measured by the combined Raven’s Matrices test (CRT) in 370 healthy young adults. The behavioral results showed no difference between males and females. However, the VBM results showed that the relationship between reasoning ability and regional gray matter volume (rGMV) differed between sexes. The association between CRT scores and rGMV in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (associated with visuospatial ability) was significantly greater in males than in females, whereas the reverse was true for the inferior frontal cortex (relating to verbal reasoning ability) and the medial frontal cortex (engaged in information binding) where the association was greater in females. These findings suggest that males and females use differently structured brains in different ways to achieve similar levels of overall Raven’s Matrices reasoning ability.

So I think this question is pretty much in the air still.

Another 2017 study I find interesting did not report sex differences (either way) but did propose that participants (of both sexes) use two different enough brain regions to solve the varying problems on the progressive matrices test, namely that there might be different visuospatial and verbal-analytic intelligences (possibly correlated, of course):

> Recent studies revealed spontaneous neural activity to be associated with fluid intelligence (gF) which is commonly assessed by Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices, and embeds two types of reasoning: visuospatial and verbal-analytic reasoning. With resting-state fMRI data, using global brain connectivity (GBC) analysis which averages functional connectivity of a voxel in relation to all other voxels in the brain, distinct neural correlates of these two reasoning types were found. For visuospatial reasoning, negative correlations were observed in both the primary visual cortex (PVC) and the precuneus, and positive correlations were observed in the temporal lobe. For verbal-analytic reasoning, negative correlations were observed in the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG), dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and temporoparietal junction, and positive correlations were observed in the angular gyrus. Furthermore, an interaction between GBC value and type of reasoning was found in the PVC, rIFG and the temporal lobe. These findings suggest that visuospatial reasoning benefits more from elaborate perception to stimulus features, whereas verbal-analytic reasoning benefits more from feature integration and hypothesis testing. In sum, the present study offers, for different types of reasoning in gF, first empirical evidence of separate neural substrates in the resting brain.

For more on this latter issue see my answer to a related question here.
> 4 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, intelligence, gender
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title: Memorization of incorrect math facts

text:
# Question
Title: Memorization of incorrect math facts
Today I had a talk with a friend who told me that according to him, it is possible to "destroy" someone's ability to do math for his entire life by taking the person at age 5, telling him something totally wrong (for instance that the digits used in the decimal enumeration system are in order something like 8, 5, 4, 9, 2, 3, 0, 6, 1, 7 and calling them respectively "three", "seven", "one", "six" and so on) so that once the wrong information has been assimilated in the long-term memory it would be impossible for the person to correct and "overwrite" something that has been learned by heart.

Of course this example is an exaggeration, but I was wondering whether this would explain some difficulties people have who write hundreds of times the same mathematical errors like (a+b)2=a2+b2, and other stuff like this, even after many mathematical teachers explain to them that they are wrong. My assumption here is that the "correct" way had not yet reached the long term memory, so it would have done less harm than in the first situation.

Do you agree with this idea or has it been challenged by cognitive studies? Is there something specific to mathematics here? I'd be very happy with more readings.

# Answer
The idea that long term memory cannot be ever changes is absolutely wrong, for sure some thing that is learnt and practice for a long time while being a child has a difficulty to change after while, but it is not impossible.

About learning you have to know that we have different kind of learning disabilities.

> Specific learning disorder is a developmental disorder that begins by school-age, although it may not be recognized until later. It involves ongoing problems learning key academic skills, including reading, writing and math.

These patient usually can learn about everything but for specific type they have a difficulty learning. Based on what their difficulty is, they might get different treatment. Diagnoses is not also easy in some cases, for example patient who has difficulty learning math might be because of his difficulty reading text so if you try teaching math only by images and art and symbols he can learn.

reference here.
> 2 votes

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Tags: long-term-memory, mathematical-ability
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title: Are there bidirectional neurons?

text:
# Question
Title: Are there bidirectional neurons?
Neurons are mostly unidirectional, *i.e.* electrical impulses enter from one end and leave through the other. Are there bidirectional neurons as well, *i.e.*, neurons that have a receiving end and a transmitting end that are not mutually exclusive?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Chemical synapses can be bidirectional, especially in invertebrates:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2984356

https://elifesciences.org/articles/16962

# Answer
> 3 votes
The classical, **chemical synapse** offers only one-way traffic. Under physiological conditions, the presynaptic neuron releases vesicles at its axon terminal and the postsynaptic neuron expresses the corresponding receptor proteins in the dendritic region. Conversely, the presynaptic neuron lacks the receptor molecules and the postsynaptic neuron lacks the secretory machinery to release neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft (Purves *et al*., 2001).

Note, however, that the presynaptic neuron may express regulatory neurotransmitter receptors that bind its own released neurotransmitter, but these do not generate action potentials. And note that the postsynaptic neuron may release neuromodulators in the synaptic cleft. However, these compounds do not initiate action potentials, but have only a regulatory role.

There is, however, also the **electrical synapse**, mediated by gap junctions. These gap junctions are protein pores that electrically and chemically connect adjacent neurons directly. In this case, potential changes generated in one cell may freely spread like a wave to other neighboring cells. Note that this mode of electric coupling does not induce action potentials, but it represents the passive spread of voltage differences, called **electrotonic coupling** (Mylvaganam *et al*., 2014). Which cell initiates the wave is irrelevant, as the wave can spread to each cell as long as it is connection via gap junctions. Although these gap junctions are referred to as *electrical synapses*, the terminology *presynaptic* and *postsynaptic* applies in a much looser sense, as any neuron in the tissue can act as either one (Sheriar, 2004).

**References**
**-** Mylvaganam *et al*., *Front Physiol* (2014); **5**: 172 **-** Purves *et al*. (eds.), *Neuroscience*. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001)
**-** Sherair *BBA* (2004); **1662**(1–2): 113–37

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Tags: neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: Does the perception of odors change over time?
Is it normal for the perception of odors to change over time? I mean the same odors, like the smell of a snack with the same formula as before.

# Answer
An interesting question.

It depends how you interpret "perception". Using its most common definition, following cognitive information processing theories, then yes. The perception of odors changes of over time.

This reference is comprehensive about the issue. Specifically about external factors and internal factors (e.g. individual's earlier experiences) on perception (Shiffrin and Schneider, 1977).

A question to pursue could be if there are certain differences among odors that makes some of them more or less susceptible for *change in perception over time*.

You can further argue that, even if the odor has the same molecules (formula), a person's capabilities of detecting all the molecules will change over time (deterioration), hence changing the perception of the odor over time.

* Shiffrin, R. M., & Schneider, W. (1977). Controlled and automatic human information processing: II. Perceptual learning, automatic attending and a general theory. Psychological review, 84(2), 127.
> 2 votes

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Tags: perception, sensation
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# Question
Title: Bias in survey questions based on either positive or negative wording
I have this impression that if you ask respondents in a survey, questions such as "do you like the item X/ person X" or "which one of the two variations do you like more", or "what in particular would you like about the item X/ person X", etc, you would get a lot of bias and rationalizations. That is, "say vs think vs do" would be extremely disparate.

At the same time, I would expect negative questions such as "is there something you dislike about the item X" or "could you list top three shortcomings of the item X/ person X", etc, to render quite objective responses; I would expect strong consistency between what respondents would say compared to what they actually think or feel and then compared to what they would actually do.

(Of course, I exclude some extreme cases of social desirability.)

Given that I am speaking about my subjective impressions, based on my personal limited observations, I would like to ask, is there such a pattern indeed and if so, how could it be possibly explained?

# Answer
> 1 votes
I think your examples can be explained with the Anchoring bias (aslo know as focalism).

> Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and **there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor**.

A theory that explains anchoring is selective accessibility.

> selective accessibility proposes that when given an anchor, a judge (i.e. a person making some judgment) will evaluate the hypothesis that the anchor is a suitable answer. Assuming it is not, the judge moves on to another guess, but not before accessing all the relevant attributes of the anchor itself. Then, when evaluating the new answer, the judge looks for ways in which it is similar to the anchor, resulting in the anchoring effect.

The Anchoring is a type of priming. The following extract is from Brain Bugs by Dean Buonomano :

Below is the definition of priming :

> Priming is a technique whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD. Priming can be perceptual, semantic, or conceptual.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, bias, survey, consumer-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is a more specific breathing technique better than just slow, deep breathing for calming oneself?
We're told by a Big Think Mind Hack video (carried by some tabloids) that 1:2 inhale:exhale breathing technique is better than just slow, deep breathing for calming yourself. Is there systematic empirical evidence that one technique of slow/deep breathing (this 1:2 one or another) is superior to just less specific ways of slow/deep breathing for dealing with panic attacks or lesser versions thereof or more generally calming oneself?

# Answer
Any anxiety — and especially with Panic Attacks — can often **but not always** lead to Hyperventilation. Steady, slow breathing will prevent it, whilst also helping to relieve the anxiety.

Whilst looking into the answer to your question, there are a few resources out there discussing the best techniques for dealing with hyperventilation.

MedlinePlus.gov mentions that hyperventilation creates a low level of carbon dioxide in your blood.

The low levels of Carbon Dioxide is the basis of the paper bag technique which you may have heard about.

It is the traditional practice to treat acute hyperventilation (thought to be due to anxiety) by having patients rebreathe the carbon dioxide using a brown paper bag. However, there are reports that there are cases in which this treatment, incorrectly applied to patients who were hypoxemic or had myocardial ischemia, resulted in death. (Callaham, 1989)

This will be the reason why WebMD states, although the technique is useful, that you must not use a paper bag if:

> You have any heart or lung problems, such as coronary artery disease, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, emphysema), or a history of deep vein thrombosis, stroke, or pulmonary embolism.

or if you are at a high altitude \[above 6000 ft (1829 m)\].

Interestingly, MedlinePlus states in the same article linked above that the heart or lung problems mentioned by WebMD can be medical causes of hyperventilation and

> Emotional causes include:
>
> * Anxiety and nervousness
> * Panic attack
> * Situations where there is a psychological advantage in having a sudden, dramatic illness (for example, somatization disorder)
> * Stress

WebMD in another article states that breathing exercises help to deal with hyperventilation and suggests to

> * Breathe through pursed lips, as if you are whistling, or pinch one nostril and breathe through your nose. It is harder to hyperventilate when you breathe through your nose or pursed lips, because you can't move as much air.
> * Slow your breathing to 1 breath every 5 seconds, or slow enough that symptoms gradually go away.

MedlinePlus.gov also has a detailed explanation of Pursed Lip Breathing.

As for studies on effective long term treatments, Alicia Meuret of Southern Methodist University in Dallas led a study pitting Cognitive Therapy against CART (Capnometry-Assisted Respiratory Training). After some searching, I found the Meuret's manuscript on the National Institutes of Health website (Meuret, et al. 2010)

Apparently, according to the LiveScience article linked above, Meuret said,

> Panicking people are often told to calm down and "take a deep breath," Meuret said. But for someone hyperventilating during a panic attack, deep breathing is a bad idea. That's because hyperventilation happens when people breathe so quickly and deeply that they expel an unusually high amount of carbon dioxide, which in turn causes symptoms like dizziness and numbness. Those symptoms tend to make people feel like they're suffocating, so they breathe quicker and deeper, further exacerbating the problem.

CART, was developed to systematically change hypocapnia in patients with Panic Disorder through a brief, tightly controlled 4-week training program that uses immediate feedback via a portable capnometer. Here is a video showing the capnometer in use.

## References

Callaham, M. (1989) *Hypoxic hazards of traditional paper bag rebreathing in hyperventilating patients* Annals of Emergency Medicine 18(6): pp. 622—628
PMID: 2499228 DOI: 10.1016/S0196-0644(89)80515-3

Meuret, A. E., Rosenfield, D., Seidel, A., Bhaskara, L. and Hofmann, S. G. (2010) *Respiratory and Cognitive Mediators of Treatment Change in Panic Disorder: Evidence for Intervention Specificity* Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(5): pp. 691—704
PMCID: PMC3327286 DOI: 10.1037/a0019552
> 1 votes

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Tags: physiology, anxiety
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title: Research on improving long term focus

text:
# Question
Title: Research on improving long term focus
I have seen a lot of research on concentration or focus in the short term. But what about concentration and focus in the long term? For example, if I set a goal to write a novel over the course of 4 years, what factors go into predicting my ability, willingness, and interest in finishing that novel?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Duckworth's \[research on\] grit would probably qualify; she defined grit as perseverance/persistance combined with passion...

However as grit is currently measured, grit doesn't seem all that different from conscientiousness, which is a much more established measure. Duckworth herself admits we should probably go back to drawing board for measuring passion; see her closing remarks on NPR:

> She said she's currently thinking about revising her "grit scale," her basic experimental tool, specifically the questions about passion.

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Tags: behavior, concentration, goals
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# Question
Title: Psychological behavior of talking alone in front of mirror.
My child, 5 years old girl recently talked to herself about she just changed to new school in front of mirror. It was alone and she just talked to herself on mirror. Is it psychologically normal condition or what should parents do about it?

# Answer
> 0 votes
By itself, a single incident like this, or even a habit of talking to oneself in the mirror, doesn't qualify as a mental disorder, in the opinion of one psychiatrist.

For a bit more background on the research in this area, there's a NYT article. Alas it doesn't get into children... and children to have more behavior that few adults have, like imaginary friends.

So the contents of the external self-talk is probably more important than the mere fact she does it.

The introductory part of an article focused on self-talk in Down syndrome mentions that

> Self-talk or talking out loud to oneself (also referred to as 'private speech') is a common behavior in young children and plays an important role in the development of higher-level thinking and self-directional skills. Developmentally, children engage in self-talk to coordinate their actions and thoughts. During focused goal-directed activities, self-talk/private speech systematically becomes more selective in 4-year-old children than in 3 year olds\[1\]. By the age of 6 or 7 years, most children stop talking out loud to themselves and develop an internal dialogue when working out problems or challenging tasks\[2\].
>
> In certain situations, people engage in self-talk (either positive or negative) during periods of stress or conflict or to motivate themselves. Negative self-talk has been found to increase during levels of affective stress in children and adolescents with anxiety and depression\[3,4\]. Studies of the use of self-talk in people engaged in exercise and competitive sports have found that exercisers and athletes use self-talk as a positive, motivating behavior to enhance their performance\[5,6,7\]. Few studies have been conducted on self-talk behavior in people with intellectual disabilities. Self-talk has been a common observation by parents of children and adults with Down syndrome\[8,9\]. It was postulated that self-talk is an important aspect of the thought processes of people with Down syndrome when they are working out difficult situations, expressing feelings, and entertaining themselves\[10\]. No association was found between self-talk/private speech and behavior problems, communication difficulties, or social isolation. However, self-talk in adults with Down syndrome has sometimes been incorrectly considered to be hallucinatory behavior \[11,12\].

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Tags: developmental-psychology, behavior, self
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# Question
Title: Are the skills trained and learn from world memory championship transferable?
I recently learn something about world memory championship and I am considering to embark on some training. But I would like to know if the skills trained and learn from world memory championship are transferable? Like improving IQ, improving imagination capability, improving "innate memory power" (meaning that your memory improves even when not applying techniques)?

# Answer
Improvements will be limited to likewise tasks (memorizing stuff). Quoting https://www.cambridgebrainsciences.com/blog/brain-training-only-makes-you-better-at-brain-training:

> A just-released meta-analysis (Melby-Lervag, Redick, & Hulme, 2016) reviewed the literature on transfer effects in working memory training. Working memory is a key aspect of cognition, because a reasonable assumption is that an improved ability to temporarily store and manipulate information in the brain would lead to wide-ranging cognitive benefits. In other words, if anything could lead to far transfer, it would be effective working memory training.
>
> The results, though, are disappointing for brain training fans.
>
> Working memory training demonstrated no far transfer effects. Important real-world skills like verbal ability, word decoding, and arithmetic were completely unaffected by training programs. There was, however, some “intermediate transfer,” where tasks that shared stimuli or methods with the training tasks improved slightly with training.
>
> \[...\]
>
> There is also a sort of meta-story to this meta-analysis, which points out that publication bias, methodological problems, and some sketchy control groups can explain individual studies that do find strong effects. So, even the near- and intermediate-transfer effects may be due to a number of factors that have nothing to do with genuine brain improvement.

In the figure, k = number of studies. "Treated controls" means the control group also received some kind of sham training, in order to minimize the gains from placebo effect on the actual treatment/training group. The observation form the last paragraph is based on p-curve analysis of the studies. Alas the studies with treated controls (group B in the figure below) are also those with a more anomalous p-curve, indicating potential publication bias etc., whereas the "A" group (untreated controls) doesn't show this anomaly, but these studies are weaker methodologically in a different (control-group related) way.

---

I should also mention that the people behind dual n-back training (Jaeggi's group) conducted their own meta-analysis, and they stick by their claim that memory training boosts fluid intelligence.

And here's a summary of meta-analyses in this area... till 2016 from yet another one by Soveri et al. (2017):

They also do their own meta-\[re\]analysis (but only of n-back)...

Note that they use a different (and perhaps more standard) terminology of active/passive control group but it has the same meaning as treated/untreated.

They ultimately conclude:

> In sum, in the present meta-analysis, the only notable transfer effect is seen to untrained n-back tasks. Despite the fact that the transfer effects to the other domains are also statistically significant, they can be considered very small. This is because an effect size of 0.2 means that only approximately 1% of the variance of the dependent variable (e.g., score on a Gf task) can be explained by which group (training or control group) the participant belongs to. The practical significance of such effects can thus be questioned (see also Melby-Lervåg & Hulme, 2016).
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Mental rotation test in a virtual environment
Parsons et al. (2004) found that the widely reported sex difference in performance in the pen-and-paper mental rotation test could not be reproduced in a virtual environment:

> The visuospatial ability referred to as mental rotation has been shown to produce one of the largest and most consistent sex differences, in favor of males, in the cognitive literature. The current study utilizes both a paper-and-pencil version of the mental rotations test (MRT) and a virtual environment for investigating rotational ability among 44 adult subjects. Results replicate sex differences traditionally seen on paper-and-pencil measures, while no sex effects were observed in the virtual environment. These findings are discussed in terms of task demands and motor involvement. Sex differences were also seen in the patterns of correlations between rotation tasks and other neuropsychological measures. Current results suggest men may rely more on left hemisphere processing than women when engaged in rotational tasks.

Since VR is much more prevalent now has this result been replicated? And/or is there more insight (say from neuroimaging) on the difference between pen-and-paper and the VR version?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I found a fairly recent redo of the "classic" mental rotation by Foroughi et al (2015) which also reproduced the "classic" results (unlike the study in my question):

> Many studies have found gender differences in mental rotation ability in young adults when completing mental rotation tests on paper and pencil (e.g., Peters et al., 1995; Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). Two previous studies have been unable to replicate these findings when testing mental rotation ability inside of a virtual environment (Parsons et al., 2004; Rizzo et al., 2001). We created a new virtual mental rotation test (VMRT) based on a full, validated test of mental rotation ability (MRT-A; Peters et al., 1995) that 128 participants (79 females) completed while wearing an Oculus Rift DK1. Our data replicate previous findings of paper and pencil tests of mental rotation ability: men scored approximately one standard deviation higher (d = .90) than women.

It's worth noting that the study of Parsons (and also Rizzo, which I didn't know about) both used ImmersaDesk 3D, but more importantly they differed in methodology from "classics" (pen-and-paper) in that in Parsons' or Rizzo's version wasn't a multiple-choice test, but just a speed of rotation test:

> Additionally, in both studies, a base stimuli was presented and then replaced with a working stimuli. The dependent variable in these studies was the time it took to successfully rotate the working stimuli to correctly match the base stimuli. However, most of the traditional mental rotation tasks showing the gender effect use a comparison based test where a base stimuli is presented simultaneously with multiple working stimuli that may or may not match the base stimuli.(e.g., Peters et al., 1995; Vandenberg & Kuse, 1978). In these studies, participants must then identify which stimuli are correct (i.e., accuracy).

After stating their result is in contrast to Parsons' they comment/repeat that

> there are many possible reasons for the differences in results. First, we replicated a full, validated test of mental rotation (i.e., MRT-A). Additionally, we scored our test for accuracy whereas Rizzo and colleagues (2001) and Parsons and colleagues (2004) measured the time to rotate a working stimulus to match a base stimuli. Second, we used a newer technology (i.e., Oculus Rift DK1) that may have had a higher quality or fidelity facilitating performance on the test. Third, the generation of participants in our study may be more familiar with technology (e.g., smart phones, tablets, etc.) as a whole now that technologies are ubiquitous. Future research should be directed at determining whether scores on the VMRT are predictive of performance on tasks inside of VE, namely tasks tapping spatial ability. For example, studies have shown new surgeons benefit from simulated VE training (e.g., Seymour, 2008; Seymour et al., 2002). Visuospatial skills are necessary to successfully interact and complete such tasks; thus, it would be interesting to determine whether scores on the VMRT predict performance on a simulated surgery task.

In other words, they reproduced the classic result by more faithfully sticking to the classic paradigm (multiple choice answer) in the virtual version. But it's also not clear how this impacts spatial skills the more usual ways they are used in a virtual environment.

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Tags: vision, sex-differences, spatial-cognition
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# Question
Title: Is talking to oneself loudly a very common sign of schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia.com states that

> Replaying or rehearsing conversations out loud- i.e. talking to yourself \[is a\] (very common sign) \[of schizophrenia\].

Looking at the site it's not clear who edits it (or what their credentials are)... so is this claim supported by research, i.e. is talking to oneself loudly a very common sign of schizophrenia?

And is it so irrespective of the content of the talk? E.g. talking to "oneself" as if having a conversation with an imaginary person \[different than oneself\] seem somewhat different to me (and indicative of hallucinations) in contrast with clearly self-directed self-talk, e.g. as described in the first paragraph of a NYT article of someone wondering out loud in a supermarket. Or is it simply the case that so few people talk to themselves loudly so that the group (of loud self-talkers) is dominated by those who have schizophrenia? (About 75% of people with schizophrenia experience auditory hallucinations.)

I also found that

> Self-talk \[and by this the article means loud\] and behavior rituals were found to be common behavioral features in adults with Down syndrome, and in most instances, were not a sign of a psychiatric disorder.

But then the number of people with Down syndrome is only about 1/12 of those with schizophrenia.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Before I answer this question, I would like to point out that at the bottom of Schizophrenia.com is a disclaimer, and part of it says

> No health information on Schizophrenia.com, including information about herbal therapies and other dietary supplements, is regulated or evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration and therefore the information should not be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease without the supervision of a medical doctor.

If you look at their write-up on the DSM diagnostic criteria, it seems that they are taking about the diagnosis criterion of **Disorganised Speech** within the Diagnostics and Statistics Manual (DSM).

The bit after the brackets:

> these are also called "word salads". Ongoing disjointed or rambling monologues - in which a person seems to talking to himself/herself or imagined people or voices.

is their own annotation to what is in DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)

The key point is the bit where they say that the talking is "ongoing disjointed or rambling monologues". Just talking to yourself is not necessarily disorganised speech.

WebMD describes disorganised speech in their schizophrenia page.

> They may act silly and giggle for no apparent reason. They often make up words and sentences that make no sense to other people. And they often don't show facial expressions.
>
> Examples of disorganized speech include:
>
> * Making up words (neologisms). For example: "I'm going to the park to ride the wallywhoop."
> * Rhyming words (clang speech). For example: "Deck the halls with boughs of holly, folly, polly, dolly, hello Dolly, want a lollipop?"
> * Saying sentences that make no sense to other people (word salad). For example: "Give paper floor me school hop bus."
> * Repeating exactly what someone else has said (echolalia).

Another point of note is that whether following DSM-IV or the latest edition — DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) — disorganised speech on its own is not enough to diagnose schizophrenia. It would have to accompany at least one more item from Criteria A, plus there are also Critera B through to F to meet.

## References

American Psychiatric Association, 1994. *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Fourth Edition)*. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

American Psychiatric Association, 2013. *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th Edition)*. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, behavior, schizophrenia
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# Question
Title: Can a hyperpolarized neuron fire action potentials?
Is there any chance that a neuron could fire when hyperpolarized? In that case, would the spike be different than usual?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Perhaps this is not what you asked, but there's a phenomenon called **rebound spiking** or **postinhibitory spiking** where a hyperpolarization causes spiking. This is due to the oscillatory property of membrane dynamics (certain subsets of type-II neurons). Spikes can be evoked after inhibitory current stops. Figure 7.29 from Izhikevich's book:

Here's a partial figure from Hasselmo 2014 (recordings from entorhinal cortex stellate cells).

References:

# Answer
> 4 votes
In principle, no. An **action potential** is initiated due to the activation of Na+ channels. These are so-called **voltage-gated channels**, meaning that they sense a **depolarization** and subsequently open their Na+ pore to allow Na+ to flow in, further depolarizing the cell. This is the depolarizing phase of an action potential.

**Voltage-gated K+ channels** open up also due to depolarization, but have slower kinetics and hence they kick in later than the Na+ channels. Influx of K+ opposes the effect of Na+ influx and brings the cell membrane potential back to its resting state (or even hyperpolarizes the cell). This ends the action potential (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Action potential and membrane conductances. source: Antranik

An action potential cannot be generated in a **hyperpolarized** state, because the Na+ channels are closed. A depolarization is necessary to open them.

If a neuron was able to fire when hyperpolarized, there would be no regulatory mechanism to inhibit the cell. This would mean it would keep on firing, regardless of its input - not very useful.

**Reference**
**-** Lodish , The Action Potential and Conduction of Electric Impulses. In: *Molecular Cell Biology*, 4th ed. New York: W. H. Freeman (2000)

# Answer
> 1 votes
So far, we're still missing some interesting cases in your answers. Izhikevich has developed a strikingly simple model that covers the following, including several inhibition-induced action potentials, and there are specific cells that have been discovered matching these behaviors:

(taken from: http://www.izhikevich.org/publications/whichmod.htm#izhikevich)

Notice:

* M) Rebound spike (as has been mentioned)
* N) Rebound bursting
* O) Threshold variability
* S) Inhibition-induced spiking
* T) Inhibition-induced bursting

Also Noteworthy:

* K) Resonators, if I recall, can be frequency responsive to inhibitory signals
* P) Bistable, again, if I recall, bistable neurons can be switched with inhibitory signals

His textbook *Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience* (and I'm sure several papers, or references) goes through the names of specific cells, for these, such as: Stellate Cells of Entorhinal Cortex exhibit rebound spikes and Spiny Projection Neurons of Neostriatum exhibit bistability.

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: What is the psychological term for reframing that uses false statements?
I want to know if there is an established psychology term for this pattern of behavior:

1. A person does something, an action
2. That something becomes known to one or more people, and the action is seen as negative
3. (Optional) The person verbally acknowledges doing the negative action
4. The person then denies ever doing the negative action (a falsehood)

For example:

1. Donald Trump makes a remark that indicates he grabs women by their genitalia nonconsensually
2. A recording of Trump making this remark is published
3. Trump acknowledges that it was him making this statement
4. Trump eventually denies that he ever said this, and that it was made up "fake news"

I'm looking for a succinct term that describes this pattern. Psychology has other terms to describe complex behavior such as "projection" and "codependency". So is there a known term for the above pattern?

My opinion is that these terms apply to elements of this pattern: gaslighting, lying, manipulation, and reframing. But these terms do not describe the behavior pattern overall. Something that strikes me about this pattern is how it erodes one's sense of reality, almost in an Orwellian sense.

# Answer
> 2 votes
**Short answer**
I think you are referring to '**self-deception**', or '**interpersonal deception**'.

**Background**
**Self-deception** is

> a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. Self-deception involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.

Self-deception is not simply an erroneous thought, as the acquisition and maintenance of the false belief is **intentional** not accidental. Self-deceivers apparently must (1) hold contradictory beliefs, and (2) intentionally get themselves to hold a belief they know or believe truly to be false. Therefore, it is related to **interpersonal deception**, where people intentionally let ***others*** to believe something, while knowing or believing truly that that is not true (source: Stanford University).

> Interpersonal deception theory (IDT) attempts to explain how individuals handle actual (or perceived) deception at the conscious or subconscious level while engaged in face-to-face communication.

# Answer
> 0 votes
The answer depends on the individuals mental status. If one is simply speaking without much thought or regard for being factual, well that can be labeled many different things. The psychological term for when one gets "triped" up in inaccurate statements and then tries to cover up by making further and most often equally false statements is; **confabulation**. Hope this helps. Walt

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Tags: terminology, behavior, deception
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# Question
Title: Is there any significant empirical evidence showing drawbacks of ACT therapy?
According to The Association for Contextual Behavioral Science, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) has a vast database of empirical evidence showing it's benefits. Based on this evidence, it seems that this type of therapy should be the primary option for people who struggle with any problems.

This is seemingly illogical to me. After all, if this therapy has no drawbacks, as it seems, I don't see why it wouldn't it be used for everything. Are there any empirically based claims showing the drawbacks of ACT therapy?

# Answer
> 2 votes
After significantly more research, with help from the comments I have found the following:

According to The University of York,

> "Acceptance and commitment therapy was more effective than control conditions across several disorders, but there was no evidence that it was more effective than established treatments."

More specifically, they state:

> "\[A\]cceptance and commitment therapy was of statistically significant benefit for depression (two RCTs), physical health (five RCTs), and other mental health conditions (seven RCTs), but not for distress conditions (four RCTs)." **and** "When all trials were combined (regardless of comparison or duration of follow-up), acceptance and commitment therapy was significantly more effective than control conditions"

This evidence points to ACT being equally as effective as established therapies, but ineffective on distress conditions. As Fizz pointed out in the comments, the biggest issue with ACT and other third-wave CBTs is that they are over hyped as miracle solutions despite little empirical evidence showing they are more effective than already established methodology.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there an innate human bias against admitting you are wrong or uncertain?
During interactions with people, I've noticed that it seems like certain people have a habit of admitting uncertainty and a willingness to admit error. There doesn't appear to be a clear group that I could bucket them into (like scientists, conservatives, etc.), but these people seem to be a minority.

After thinking about why people might bias against admitting they were wrong, I couldn't come up with a good reason. It would almost seem better for an organism to admit a mistake and learn from others, than stick to something that might actually be wrong.

Is there an innate human bias against admitting you are wrong/uncertain? If so, has any research been done on why?

# Answer
> 2 votes
It's surely a combination of self-serving bias and avoiding cognitive dissonance. I'm not sure it there's a more specific name for it that has wide acceptance. It's been variously called "certainty bias", "feeling of certainty", "illusion of certainty" etc.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Well, admitting that you are wrong can be extremely uncomfortable. Majority of the time. We, humans, project guilt onto others to maintain viable self-image.

Psychological Projection Wikipedia

You can think about your action/sentence as an independent sub-personality that is loosely connected to you. If you admit that you are wrong you are basically killing a part of yourself, which is, of course, uncomfortable process - it requires a lot of strength to actually do it.

Here is a wonderful quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:

> The strength of a person's spirit would then be measured by how much 'truth' he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.

Also, it is extremely uncomfortable for our psyche to simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values.

Cognitive Dissonance Wikipedia

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Tags: social-psychology, bias
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title: physical symptoms of anxiety

text:
# Question
Title: physical symptoms of anxiety
Are all the physical symptoms of anxiety caused by adrenaline. By physical symptoms I mean the muscle tension chest tightness and high blood pressure. I guess if thats true then anxiety and anger are the same at least physiologically well are they? If not what is the chemical responsible for the physical symptoms of anxiety

# Answer
> 4 votes
**Short answer**

Yes, they are actually similar, and they can be thought as two extremes of the same continuum. Many studies (here's a review by Lang and McTeague)suggest that the psychophysiological reactivity in the anxiety spectrum disorder is threat-related.

**Long Answer**

**Ohman** (2009) noted how predator-prey relationship is asymmetrical because there’s a larger pressure on prey than on predators.

Failure in defense against a predator determines the end of reproductive potential of prey animals. A hunting failure does not preclude future breeding.

This simple asymmetry implies that prey animals are evolutionarily shaped to *exaggerate caution* and avoidance of danger and this may provide a biological foundation for human anxiety disorders. In prey-predator race, prey arms became a strong capacity to associate subtle cues (smell, sounds) to the presence of a predator before its actual appearance. Learning to identify subtle signs is likely to be an evolutionary prepared ability, in the sense that very little environmental input is required. Therefore, from an evolutionary point of view, the organisms which learned to fear environmental threats faster had a survival and reproductive advantage.

**LeDoux** (2000) proposed a model according to which we have preferential pathways to encode emotional stimuli and particularly threat stimuli. The **Thalamo-Amygdala pathway** is a very fast road that brings the information to the amygdala (which extrapolates emotional contents from the stimuli) bypassing the cortex. It is a subcortical pathway which allows us to orient the attention toward the stimulus and to prepare our organism for responding (by sending of information from the amygdala to the brainstem which controls physiological responses). This "quick and dirty" pathway (dirty because it brings raw information that has to be integrated with the information from the cortices)is in common for fear and anxiety.

**References**

*Of snakes and faces: an evolutionary perspective on the psychology of fear.* Ohman (2009)

*The anxiety disorder spectrum* Lang and McTeague (2009).

LeDoux's model

# Answer
> 0 votes
I'd recommend reading about `fight or flight` response in human beings and animals. And also brain area called `Amygdala`.

Fight or Flight Wikipedia
Amygdala Wikipedia

It seems that fear and anger are very similar when it comes down to physiology.

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Tags: anxiety
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# Question
Title: What, exactly, is the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy?
I am writing a report on the similarities and differences between sociopathy and psychopathy. I have looked up a bit of information on the topic, but I would still like to know some of the opinions of people on this site. I do know that both have to do with a lack of empathy. Also, how do these disorders work? Is there a certain part of the brain that doesn't function correctly, thus not allowing them to feel empathy, or something of that nature? Thanks in advance to anyone who might come across my question and decide to answer it!

# Answer
I believe there are some minor differences, for example, WebMD Article states:

> A key difference between a psychopath and a sociopath is whether he has a conscience, the little voice inside that lets us know when we’re doing something wrong, says L. Michael Tompkins, EdD. He's a psychologist at the Sacramento County Mental Health Treatment Center.
>
> A psychopath doesn’t have a conscience. If he lies to you so he can steal your money, he won’t feel any moral qualms, though he may pretend to. He may observe others and then act the way they do so he’s not “found out,” Tompkins says.
>
> A sociopath typically has a conscience, but it’s weak. He may know that taking your money is wrong, and he might feel some guilt or remorse, but that won’t stop his behavior.

Also, I've read somewhere (I believe it was Theodore Millon's book) that psychopathy is more about nature and sociopathy is more about nurture. In other words, psychopaths are born the way they are, while sociopaths acquire severe trauma that makes them the way they are.

This also goes along nicely with psychopaths being more calm and able to manipulate, while sociopaths are more impulsive and irritable.
> 4 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, personality-disorder
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title: Is Behaviorism a type of Functionalism?

text:
# Question
Title: Is Behaviorism a type of Functionalism?
Behaviorism separates itself from other psychological views in that it doesn't care about the psyche. Rather, it focuses on how the mind behaves, how outside factors can manipulate it, and so on.

Given this, I'm led to believe it is a form of functionalism. Both don't seem to care about what the mind really is deep down, and they focus more on the practical results that can be achieved. Is this correct?

# Answer
> 1 votes
If take a look at the Wikipedia article @Fizz provided in the comments, it does say that Functionalism is different to Behaviourism

> because it is only concerned with the effective functions of the brain, through its organization or its "software programs".

The full explanation of why it is different is that Behaviourism is

> a systematic approach to understanding the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that all behaviors are either **reflexes produced by a response to certain stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history**, including especially reinforcement and punishment, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli.

In other words it looks at how people's current and past experiences affect the person's mood and behaviours.

Functionalism states that

> mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, etc.) are constituted solely by their functional role – that is, they have causal relations to other mental states, numerous sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs.

Comparing the human brain to the computer whilst trying to explain this philosophy, the Wikipedia article points out that

> brains are physical devices with neural substrate that perform computations on inputs which produce behaviors.

Where Behaviourism just looks at the initial stimuli and resulting behaviours, Functionalism looks at the brain functions and tries to explain **how** behaviours manifest themselves in reaction to the information the brain receives.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, philosophy-of-mind, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: What is the consensus on the Golden Rectangle?
What is the concensus (if there is one) in modern psychology regarding the well-known dubious belief that the Golden Rectangle is the rectangle that is most aesthetically pleasing to any given individual (as opposed to other rectangles - say ones with simple side ratios such as 1:2)?

I have only been able to find a few papers on this topic, but all of them were from the 19th and 20th centuries. I would like to know what *modern psychology* has to say about this topic.

# Answer
> 3 votes
A quick search found a 2015 paper titled "Time to let go? No automatic aesthetic preference for the golden ratio in art pictures."

> The golden ratio is a frequently studied topic in many scientific disciplines, and, in psychology, it has been proposed as being a (universal) law governing aesthetic preferences. Empirical evidence for the golden ratio is equivocal and typically demonstrated through explicit (i.e., conscious, deliberate) evaluations using direct measurement methods (e.g., surveys). Here, we examined whether the golden ratio reflects an automatically elicited preference using the Implicit Association Test. We used real art images, with the foreground object presented in the golden ratio as well as either in the center (Studies 1 and 2) or ¾ ratio (Study 3). Both explicit and implicit evaluations did not reveal a clear preference for the golden ratio over other ratios. A possible preference for the golden ratio does not seem to be automatically elicited and may, rather, be driven by art expertise. This again calls into dispute the universality of a preference for the golden ratio.

So based on this it's disputable, at the very least, that the golden ratio is as pleasing as the received wisdom claims. I could not find something like a meta-analysis.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, aesthetics
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to raise the complexity of what you can mentally process?
I know that I can solve some simple systems of linear equations in my head by visualizing the terms and moving them. But if I don't concentrate enough, it gets blurry quite fast. In the same way, I can remember some structure of an algorithm, a mathematical proof or a speech, but not with details. In the same way, I tend to forget the first elements if I add new ones.

I feel that, by saying that, I mix at least two things:

* what I have heard as a "mind limit", around 3 or 4 elements anyone can process at the sale time, or recognize visually without counting them
* memory, which you can theoretically train to store large amounts of elements

What can be trained, and how, to be able to process more elements at the same time? Even if there's a hard mind limit, is it possible to make playing mentally with N elements much clearer, and how?

# Answer
I think the answer you are looking for is chunking.

> A chunk is defined as a familiar collection of more elementary units that have been inter-associated and stored in memory repeatedly and act as a coherent, integrated group when retrieved (Tulving & Craik, 2000). It is believed that individuals create higher order cognitive representations of the items on the list that are more easily remembered as a group than as individual items themselves.

The repeated exposure unconsiously creates chunks of many elements that are stored in long term memory, which are retreived as whole units in the working memory. In this case the limit is 3-4 chunks, each composed of many elements.

It is sometimes possible though, if needed, to consiously decompose the chunk into its elements in working memory, but in this case only 3-4 items of the decomposed chunk can be active in the working memory.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Deep mastery of concepts improves intuition, which may improve the speed at which information is processed or manipulated, and increase the complexity of the information which can be manipulated.
> 0 votes

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Tags: brain-training
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# Question
Title: What are the best known causes and treatments for apathy?
Has any extensive research been done into what the most common causes of apathy are and are there any treatments with a highly reported success rate? If so, what are these?

For clarification of what apathy is, it is **a state of desensitization**, where subjects seem to strongly lack any observable moods, and have severely dampened feelings and/or emotions. One well known side effect is that apathetic people often struggle to motivate themselves to perform tasks.

(From wikipedia)

> Apathy is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, and concern. Apathy is a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation, and/or passion. An apathetic individual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, and/or physical life and the world.

Other questions specifically about apathy: What are the cognitive and neurological bases for apathy?

Some research about pathological apathy I was able to find: https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/26/2/807/2367142/Individual-Differences-in-Premotor-Brain-Systems (here's also an article)

# Answer
## Main causes of Apathy

There are 2 main ways that Apathy can manifest itself, and that is either through a mental health condition, or a physical medical condition. (APA, 2013 p. 682) (IDC-10 Code: F07)

I will list some mental health causes and physical causes below, but the main way of dealing with the apathy would depend on the cause.

## Treatment for apathy

The way to treat apathy would be to treat the **root cause**, where possible, through psychotherapy, psychiatric help and/or other agency support.

I emphasised **root cause** because where the initial cause found may be substance abuse for example, the substance abuse can be attributed to a different cause (the root cause) which could be a parent-child relationship problem or trauma.

## Where apathy persists after treatment

If apathy remains after successful treatment of the root cause(s), then the problem will most likely lie with motivation.

You could look at the question on here about Theories of Human Motivation for information, or just look at various motivational courses, exercises and activities such as these activities.

## Breakdown of Main Causes of Apathy

### Mental health causes

This is not a full list, but includes,

* **Separation Axiety Disorder**

> When separated from major attachment figures, children with separation anxiety disorder may exhibit social withdrawal, **apathy**, sadness, or difficulty concentrating on work or play.
> (APA, 2013 p. 192)
* **Major Depressive Disorder**

> In major depressive disorder, the individual may avoid leaving home **because of apathy**, loss of energy, low self-esteem, and anhedonia. (APA, 2013 p. 221)
* **Neurocognitive Disorders (NCDs) such as Delirium**

> Delirium is often associated with a disturbance in the sleep-wake cycle....The individual with delirium may exhibit emotional disturbances, such as anxiety, fear, depression, irritability, anger, euphoria, and **apathy**. (APA, 2013 p. 600)
* **Behavioral-Variant Major or Mild Frontotemporal NCD**

> present with **varying degrees of apathy or disinhibition**. They may lose interest in socialization, selfcare, and personal responsibilities, or display socially inappropriate behaviors. (APA, 2013 p. 615)

### Physical Problems Causing Mental Health Problems

This is not a full list, but includes,

* **Inhalant Intoxication**
This can create

> Clinically significant problematic behavioral or psychological changes (e.g., belligerence, assaultiveness, **apathy**, impaired judgment) (APA, 2013 p. 538)
* **Opioid Intoxication**
This can create

> Clinically significant problematic behavioral or psychological changes (e.g., initial euphoria **followed by apathy**, dysphoria, psychomotor agitation or retardation, impaired judgment) that developed during, or shortly after, opioid use. (APA, 2013 p. 546)
* **Other toxic, metabolic, traumatic, neoplastic, or infectious disorders that impair brain function and cognition**

> Numerous neurological and other medical conditions may produce the clinically significant behavioral or psychological changes (e.g., belligerence, assaultiveness, **apathy**, impaired judgment) that also characterize inhalant intoxication. (APA, 2013 p. 540)
* **Major or Mild NCD due to Traumatic Brain Injury**

> may be accompanied by disturbances in emotional function (e.g., irritability, easy frustration, tension and anxiety, affective lability); personality changes (e.g., disinhibition, **apathy**, suspiciousness, aggression); physical disturbances (e.g., headache, fatigue, sleep disorders, vertigo or dizziness, tinnitus or hyperacusis, photosensitivity, anosmia, reduced tolerance to psychotropic medications); and, particularly in more severe TBI, neurological symptoms and signs (e.g., seizures, hemiparesis, visual disturbances, cranial nerve deficits) and evidence of orthopedic injuries. (APA, 2013 p. 625)

## References

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). *Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders* (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Perception: thinking a minority behavior in a minority group is the majority of said group
I once heard that we tend to have some perception bias : we tend to think that a behavior by a minority of a minority group is in fact the representation of the majority of this minirity group. Classical example would be that we tend to think that people from another state drive badly. This would come due to the fact that when we see a car driver behaving badly on the road, we will see the license plate from another state and that would ´stick’ better in our memories. And from there, we would generalize that people from that region are bad drivers as we don’t check the license plate of good drivers. Is there such a thing? If so, is there a term/denomination for such perception bias? I hope that I was clear enough as English is not my primary language

# Answer
I think the term you are looking is out-group homogeneity.

> The out-group homogeneity effect is one's perception of out-group members as more similar to one another than are in-group members, e.g. "they are alike; we are diverse". ... Perceivers tend to have impressions about the diversity or variability of group members around those central tendencies or typical attributes of those group members. Thus, outgroup stereotypicality judgments are overestimated, supporting the view that out-group stereotypes are overgeneralizations.
> 2 votes

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Tags: perception
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title: Informative texts on psychoanalysis?

text:
# Question
Title: Informative texts on psychoanalysis?
I'm not looking for anything all-inclusive, as I am aware that such a list would be impossible. Perhaps some introductory books on psychoanalysis (such as works by Freud) would be good, as well as any compilation of case studies, etc.

# Answer
I believe you're looking for this:

https://www.valas.fr/IMG/pdf/Freud\_Complete\_Works.pdf
> 1 votes

# Answer
If you are new to Psychoanalysis, you cannot go far wrong with starting by having a look at the 4-part YouTube Video Series put together by the Freud Museum of London along with their article which gives an outline on Freud's Theories (Are Freud's Theories All About Sex?)

Reading Freud's Complete Works as suggested by @GogaVachnadze could be heavy going if you are just starting off but will give a complete understanding.

There is also the excellent book of articles edited by Dr. Joseph Reppen, PhD. called Beyond Freud: A Study of Modern Psychoanalytic Theorists. It was published by the IPI (International Psychotherapy Institute) and is available free from their website at https://freepsychotherapybooks.org/psychoanalysis/product/40-beyond-freud-a-study-of-modern-psychoanalytic-theorists/category\_pathway-17
> 0 votes

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Tags: psychoanalysis
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# Question
Title: What's the relationship between priming and availability heuristic?
As I have understood, availability heuristic means that things that are "available" in one's cognition (one has thought recently) are prone to influence one's perception.

Priming has been explained as that the word 'doctor' is recognized more frequently than 'bread' after a word 'nurse'.

I find that in this sense priming would be a subcategory of availability or vice versa. ('doctor' is recognized more frequently when 'nurse' is available in one's cognition)

Why did Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduce availability instead of sticking with priming?

<sub> Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases. science, 185(4157), 1124-1131. </sub>

# Answer
Psychological Priming and Availability Heuritic are both concepts within Social Psychology and Behavioural Psychology. Although I can see where you are trying to make a link here, and there could be times where both are at play, **Psychological Priming is different to Availability Heuristic**.

## Psychological Priming

> Priming is a nonconscious form of human memory concerned with perceptual identification of words and objects. It refers to activating particular representations or associations in memory just before carrying out an action or task. For example, a person who sees the word "yellow" will be slightly faster to recognize the word "banana." This happens because yellow and banana are closely associated in memory. Additionally, priming can also refer to a technique in psychology used to train a person's memory in both positive and negative ways.
> (Psychology Today, n.d.)

Doing some research on the history, the idea first took hold in 1932 with a book called *Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology* (Bartlett, 1932) and the first demonstration of Priming was in 1971 within experiments by E. F. Loftus, J. F. Juola and R. C. Atkinson's (Colins & Loftus, 1975) \[See also - The History of Priming (Vogel, 2014)\]

A couple of other good examples of Psychological Priming, different to the yellow banana above, was provided in an article by Jesse Marczyk Ph.D. in Psychology Today (Marczyk, 2013)

### Priming can affect perceptions about the world

> \[H\]olding a warm drink (instead of a cold one) can lead you judge other people as more caring and generous; a finding that falls under the umbrella of embodied cognition. Why would such a finding arise? If I understand correctly, the line of thought is that holding a warm drink activates some part of your brain that holds the concept "warm;" as that concept is tied indirectly to personality (e.g., "He's a really warm and friendly person"), you end up thinking the person is nicer than you otherwise would. Warm drinks prime the concept of emotional warmth.

\[See also: This article in Johnny Holland for more examples\]

### Priming on a behavioural level instead of a perceptual one

> \[R\]esearch on stereotype threat suggests that if you remind women of their gender before a math test (in other words, you're priming gender), they will tend to perform worse than women who were not primed because the concept of "woman" is related to stereotypes of "being worse at math."

\[See also: Power Poses and Elderly Prime Effects on Walking Speed\]

## Availability Heuristic

This is a cognitive bias

> The tendency to overestimate the likelihood of events with greater "availability" in memory, which can be influenced by how recent the memories are or how unusual or emotionally charged they may be

One good example for this can be found in an article by Jamie Madigan Ph.D. in Psychology Today (Madigan, 2013)

In this example, with people who have always lived in areas where their internet connection is reliable, the availability heuristic influences their decision-making, belief, and behavioral bias with regard to internet connection in other areas.

> Orthy's estimation of the number of people who have stable Internet connections and who should thus "#dealwithit" is probably influenced by the availability heuristic. Or rather, the UNavailability heuristic.

Madigan went on to say,

> The availability heuristic is an old mental foible that I've written about before, and the short version is that the easier it is to remember of examples of something, the more prevalent, frequent, or large we think it is. But interestingly, the opposite is also true: will tend to think something is less prevalent or less frequent when it's harder to remember examples of it. Various things make an event or a condition easier to remember, but they often include experiencing it ourselves, having seen it recently, or knowing someone who has.
>
> My favorite example of this (un)availability heuristic is a hack created by University of California Los Angeles professor Craig Fox (2006) to boost his student class evaluations. Before completing the evaluation forms, Fox asked half the students to suggest 2 ways to improve the class (an easy task), then asked the other half to suggest 10 ways to improve it (a much harder task). Those who go quickly got stumped on the road to coming up with 10 improvements gave Fox higher course evaluation ratings than the others. Why? Because they misinterpreted the difficulty of recalling so many flaws as evidence that there were few flaws at all.

## References

Bartlett, F. C. (1935). *Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology* Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

Collins, A. M., & Loftus, E. F. (1975). A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing. *Psychological Review*, 82(6), pp. 407—428.
DOI: 10.1037/0033-295X.82.6.407

Fox, C. (2006). The availability heuristic in the classroom: How soliciting more criticism can boost your course ratings. *Judgment and Decision Making*, 1(1), pp. 86—90.
Free PDF available at:
Society for Judgment and Decision Making and
ResearchGate
**Cannot find DOI**

Madigan, J. (2013). *The Availability Heuristic Is Always On* \[Online\]
Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-games/201304/the-availability-heuristic-is-always

Marczyk, J. (2017). *The Adaptive Significance of Priming* \[Online\]
Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pop-psych/201701/the-adaptive-significance-priming

Psychology Today (n.d.). *Priming* \[Online\]
Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/priming

Vogel, R. (2014). *The History of Priming* \[Online\]
Available at: https://prezi.com/ep5dwcwbq2dl/the-history-of-priming
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, decision-making, bias, psychology, priming
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# Question
Title: Is it true that old people loose the ability think creatively/ formulate new ideas
My friend said something about that people get older than 50 loose the ability to think creatively and formulate new ideas.

There is also a saying like “stuck in his ways” and people say the “older you get the harder it is to change”

Is this a thing? If it is there a scientific name for it?

# Answer
The question of whether it is true (or not) that

> old\[er\] people \[in general\] loose the ability think creatively or formulate new ideas

would lead to a very opinion based answer and therefore it is not a fit for this site. Not everyone behaves or thinks in the same way. However, where this is true of those who **are** in this situation, there are several possible names for it and they tend to be **cognitive biases**. There is

**Declinism**

> The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favourably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.

**Rosy Retrospection**

> The remembering of the past as having been better than it really was.

**System justification**

> The tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest.

**Status Quo Bias**

> An emotional bias; a preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.

**Choice-supportive bias**

> In a self-justifying manner retroactively ascribing one's choices to be more informed than they were when they were made.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience
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