# Question
Title: Does a person experience release of dopamine while doing something she/he enjoys?
I am wondering if a person would experience an increase in the level of dopamine while doing something she/he enjoys such as playing guitar or reading a book. And what are some other neurotransmitter that would be released?

# Answer
Like many topics in neuroscience, this is a controversial subject. While dopamine is very popular among the public as a mechanism for pleasure, recent research challenges that view and has started to tease apart pleasure from motivation, finding a distinction in dopamine.

John Salamone's opinion:

> Low levels of dopamine make people and other animals less likely to work for things, so it has more to do with motivation and cost/benefit analyses than pleasure itself.

and his peer reviewed research:

Salamone, John D. and Correa, Merc. (2012). The Mysterious Motivational Functions of Mesolimbic Dopamine. Neuron, 76:3, pp.470 - 485.

It's more likely that the experience of pleasure is a distributed circuit phenomena, not down to any one neurotransmitter:

Smith, Kyle S.; Mahler, Stephen V.; Peciña, Susana; Berridge, Kent C. Kringelbach, Morten L. (Ed); Berridge, Kent C. (Ed), (2010). Pleasures of the brain. , (pp. 27-49). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press, viii, 343 pp.
> 7 votes

# Answer
Yes it takes a basic level of dopamine to have thoughts and maintain a non-comatic rest structure.

There are four basic kinds of neurotransmitters:

* Monoamines (dopamine, norepinephrin, epinephrine, histamine and serotonin),
* Amino acids (glutamate, aspartate, D-serine, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), glycine)
* Peptides (somatostatin, substance P, opioid peptides)
* Others ( acetylcholine, adenosine, anandamide, nitric oxide)

The most widespread neurotransmitter is glutamate and so as one lives a daily life they experience excitation and stimulation to do what they desire by glutamate receptors. To control the excitation by glutamate the brain releases GABA which is enhanced in many sedatives. Likewise the brain excites and rewards you with dopamine throughout the day. Likewise when you are happy the inhibitor serotonin is lowered making you satisfied and something like good meal or sex happy. One can't forget the Opioid peptides which also make you feel pleasure.
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Is the price of higher intelligence and more complex behaviours more mental illness?
> "Our work shows that the price of higher intelligence and more complex behaviours is more mental illness."

***-Professor Seth Grant Professor of Molecular Neuroscience, University of Edinburgh***

Is this finding from this professor's work agreed upon in the scientific community?

Are there more dynamics, contexts or other aspects to this conclusion...or is this just a 1-to-1 correlation?

Any other evidence about these types of studies published, and what are their conclusions?

Thank You.

http://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2012/intelligence-031212

# Answer
Kazimierz Dabrowski had a great theory (the Theory of Positive Disintegration) about the relationship between psychoneuroses, the most common symptoms of mental illness, and the developmental trajectories of gifted people. In brief, gifted people are more likely to live out-of-sync with their social environments (too smart, too intense, too righteous, too sensitive). This causes conflict with individuals and the world at large. Because they live in a state of inner and outer conflict due to their essential differences, they develop psychoneuroses (anxiety, obsessions, existential depression etc). These neuroses are evidence for positive disintegration in the gifted, as the process of becoming one's own person in a world that isn't made for the 'Scary smart' is psychologically painful. Many never pass the disintegrative phase, and live with these symptoms perpetually. So I imagine that the correlation between smarts/creativity and mental illness arises from their characteristic unwillingness to abandon the parts of themselves that set them up to be at odds with 'normal' life. Those are the same intensities that make them exceptional. The upside is that unwanted symptoms of positive disintegration can be worked through and a 'personality ideal' - roughly analogous to a self-actualizing personality a la Maslow - can be achieved. I hope that gives some insight into the context and dynamics behind that common observation in folk psychology. It's not "smart people are all crazy" but more like "smart people face challenges that most others don't" and that can make them seem crazy while on their hard path of personality development.
> 6 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, intelligence
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# Question
Title: Does stopping hard tasks midway through negatively affect your chances of success?
When a person has embarked on an undertaking that is both unpleasant and important (a good example could be a 12 step drug treatment program), lets say they make progress, and then stall before completion.

Is the the person significantly less likely to be successful as a result of the break in their momentum?

# Answer
Here are some thoughts on potentially important moderating factors for any such basic effect:

* Whether stalling is voluntary
* Whether there are social or environmental reasons for stalling
* How long one stalls
* Whether one has made a complete break from the undertaking
    + Whether one turns in the meantime to related matters that might facilitate or conflict with it

I'm not implying you have to narrow your question down to get a general answer, but the general answer might not be a noticeably influential factor in specific subsets of the general question. For instance, going to sleep before trying to finish something one has been working on all day might replenish momentum the next day; this is a short, voluntary stall that probably addresses a particular reason for stalling (e.g., fatigue, or maybe needing daylight or businesses to be open to make progress), and people consolidate experiences and replenish energy resources during sleep, so sleep is a facilitating matter to turn to in the meantime.

In contrast, stalling for months because of setbacks in one's personal life might better represent the kind of scenario you have in mind that would more likely prove detrimental. For example, say you're working on a research project, but happen to be living in an apartment you share with a crazy roommate. If your roommate suddenly becomes so disruptive that you have to find new housing, negotiate a breach of your lease, move out, and settle in to your new spot before you can get back to work a couple months later, your new rate of progress might be slower at first than when you left off. This stall is essentially involuntary, due to disruptive social influences in one's environment, long enough to potentially result in forgetting some aspects of how you were doing your work (which could require refamiliarizing with even your own organizational structure! My former advisor warned me about keeping detailed notes for this reason), and it's a complex enough reason to stall in the meantime that you might stop thinking about your research entirely, and have to focus on something completely unrelated...Then again, the result still might facilitate your rate of progress if your research was being hampered by living with that crazy roommate, and your new roommates aren't equally crazy. (Based on a true story! :)

I suppose the implications for your question are that moderating factors like these may overwhelm any basic, duration-independent effect of stalling. Again, this is not to say the basic effect hasn't been studied, much less that it can't be...but my recent dissertation was on goal progress, and I haven't yet come across any sufficiently sophisticated research to address your basic issue, whereas there's plenty of research out there on relationships between progress and goal characteristics like environmental support and goal conflict, including a little bit of my own research. That being said, I'd love to see any research others might be able to contribute to this discussion, as I do find the basic issue interesting!
> 5 votes

# Answer
Psychotherapy and all other behavior modification programs work on a voluntary basis. Admittedly someone may initially not want to participate but after the initial period they should want to modify their behavior. If this key change does not occur then they will not benefit from slugging through hours and hours. Things like court imposed therapy do not have as great an impact as voluntary therapy. This same principle applies to many forms of rehab. In recent years the total number of days after detox from drug rehabilitation has dropped from a month to a couple of weeks because for most people it is equally effective.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Avoidance Learning occurs when someone faces an unpleasant stimulus (say, a 12-step), and is rewarded by the sense of relief they get from successfully getting away. Of all sorts of behavioral learning (eg learning behaviors via reward and punishment), avoidance learning can take exceptionally deep hold because there is never an opportunity to feel rewarded for successful completion or get a realistic sense of what the outcome would be if not (habitually) avoided. You can't easily unlearn the habit of avoiding. From that standpoint, quitting halfway through is avoiding the outcomes of continuing or finishing. Every time you avoid what you predict to be an unpleasant outcome, you become more likely to avoid in the future. So, all other things being equal, avoidance becomes a habit and if you are quitting something to avoid it, if you start again you'll be more likely to quit again, having already reinforced the avoidance habit.
> 0 votes

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Tags: motivation
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# Question
Title: Does intelligence cause greater alcohol consumption?
I just stumbled on a blog post that asserts that more intelligent people drink more than less intelligent people.

The author writes:

> Controlling for a large number of demographic variables, such as sex, race, ethnicity, religion, marital status, number of children, education, earnings, depression, satisfaction with life, frequency of socialization with friends, number of recent sex partners, childhood social class, mother's education, and father's education, more intelligent children grow up to drink more alcohol in the UK and the US.

The data presented reportedly comes from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) in the United Kingdom and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data in the United States. However, the author does not cite a particular reference where such analyses are reported.

Furthermore, I also wonder about what the meaning of any association between intelligence and alcohol consumption would be after controlling for so many factors. In particular, mother's education, father's education, social class, and education together should predict a lot of variance in intelligence.

### Questions

* What articles report the actual analyses mentioned in the blog post? Or what other articles summarise the relationship between intelligence and alcohol consumption?
* What is the relationship between intelligence and alcohol when you don't control for other factors?
* How does the relationship change between intelligence and alcohol consumption when you introduce some but not all of the covariates? In particular, which if any covariates modify the relationship between intelligence and alcohol consumption?
* Taken in totality is it reasonable to assume that intelligence has a causal effect on alcohol consumption?

# Answer
> 4 votes
*This is just the beginning of an answer, based on what I've read so far. I'm very keen to read other answers.*

### Resnick et al (1997)

@Yannis Rizos has pointed me to the article by Resnick et al (1997) based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The article reports data on 12118 adolescents drawn from grades 7 through 12.

The results suggested that "individual characteristics explained 7% of the variability in frequency of alcohol use". The only variable mentioned related to intelligence was lower grade point average. Specifically, lower grade point average was related to more frequent alcohol use. If anything, this suggests that the relationship between intelligence and alcohol use is negative. This result is obtained as part of a regression model controlling for some demographic factors. The bivariate relationship without covariates is not reported.

Of course, there are many limitations. First, this study concerns adolescent drinking, which may be a quite different phenomena to adult drinking. Second, while GPA correlates highly with intelligence, it is not intelligence.

### References

* Resnick, M.D., Bearman, P.S., Blum, R.W., Bauman, K.E., Harris, K.M., Jones, J., Tabor, J., Beuhring, T., Sieving, R.E., Shew, M. & others (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm. JAMA: the journal of the American Medical Association, 278, 823-832. PDF

# Answer
> 1 votes
I'm not sure the article really covers the economic aspects. Drinking is an expensive hobby, enjoyed by many in well paid jobs who are able to fund it. It's not just the social aspect it may be drinking at home but I would say this could also be impacted by the type of jobs that are better paid or require more intelligence.

Many people in higher-end jobs find it hard to switch off, you can't just stop at 5pm and not think about work again until 9am the next morning whereas a regular factory/office worker could forget instantly about work tasks.

I've been in the position of getting through 1+ bottles of wine a night as a rapid wind down, working late then have a bottle in an hour or two before bed, repeated at least 5-6 nights a week.

At the other end of the scale the alcoholics give up everything to fund drink and I would dispute any argument that suggests these were the brightest kids in lower school. From what I've seen they tend to be come from generations of low self-esteem and intelligence.

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Tags: intelligence, alcohol
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# Question
Title: How is attention involved with the performance drop associated with multi-tasking?
Multi-tasking lowers productivity.

**What influences on attention cause the productivity of a multi-tasking person to be low?**

An example of multi-tasking is that a person is working on his assignment while trying to memorize unfamilar Spanish words.

# Answer
> 2 votes
One important factor to consider is whether the separate tasks involve the same kind of mental process. For instance, among these multi-tasking scenarios:

1. `listen to someone` and `read something at the same time`
2. `listen to someone` and `walk`
3. `walk` and `read something at the same time`

$\\#1$ is generally harder than $\\#2$, partly because both of its tasks involve linguistic processing, whereas walking does not.

$\\#2$ might be a somewhat unfair example at first glance, because walking is also more self-contained and automatic on flat ground. On uneven ground, however, $\\#3$ would be much harder than $\\#2$, because both walking and reading require visual processing in such circumstances. This point implicates automaticity and difficulty as (probably related) influential factors as well. I'm sure there are others, and I hope others will help fill in other ideas.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, performance, attention
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# Question
Title: Is there any (free) program that allows the recording of text input and the speed of input?
I am planning to run a study where participants will been shown questions on a computer monitor and their task is to type their responses in a text box as quickly as they can. Their input and input speed will be recorded. So any recommendation of preferably free programs is welcome. Thanks!

# Answer
I imagine most software designed for creating psychological experiments will be able to do this. (e.g., EPrime, Direct RT, MediaLab, SuperLab, etc.). I've mainly used Inquisit to record responses and response times. These are all proprietary options.

You could also readily implement a trial interface with a textbox and response times in standard programming languages. For example, I've used visual basic on occasion to record data in textboxes.

Finally, as @Dan M mentions there is psychopy which is free. I have not personally used it.
> 4 votes

# Answer
There's a new program called "Paradigm" that has direct support for typed responses. It will measure the input speed, time to first key press and record the typed response. It's very easy to use and has a number of other great features.

Check it out:

Paradigm http://www.paradigmexperiments.com
> 2 votes

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Tags: methodology, experimental-psychology, software, reaction-time
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# Question
Title: How does syntax highlighting affect the learning of a new programming language?
What impact does syntax highlighting have on students' progress in learning a new programming language?

I'm looking for studies along the lines of the following hypothetical experiment, which involves two groups of students: one group would code in an editor performing poor to no syntax highlighting of the language in question...

...while the other group would code in an editor performing comparatively richer syntax highlighting.

Do you know of any such studies? Do you have otherwise relevant references? A quick Google search hasn't returned much...

# Answer
> 5 votes
Human-computer interaction describes the creation of programs that use colors effectively. Here we are not discussing how effective the implementation of the HCI colors are, but instead are focusing on the learned pair association and repetition of color training in the psychology of learning programming.

Learned pair association is a way of memorizing information by associating it with another set of information. In the United States and many other countries, when driving, there is an association between red traffic signals and "stop." When people see the color red in a light or at a sign for a distance, they know to stop.

Repetition is the process of repeating the same association with and without exposure time delay until it becomes memorized.

Association with color reinforcements take advantage of the Stroop effect. After sufficient training the brain sees the color green and thinks "comment" or the color purple and thinks "text string":

> Such interference was explained by the automation of reading, where the mind automatically determines the semantic meaning of the word (it reads the word "red" and thinks of the color "red"), and then must intentionally check itself and identify instead the color of the word (the ink is a color other than red), a process that is not automatized.

-wikipedia

Other research has been done with more alternations of text type. Consistency seems to reinforce learning.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Charles Fletcher, one of my professors as an undergraduate, studies reading comprehension. He once mentioned a program **called** LiveInk, which he **researches**. This program **is intended** to improve comprehension for ordinary English, not programming language, but I **don't see** why it **wouldn't work** for programming language as well, to some extent at least. It sometimes **introduces** color (especially with verbs, apparently), but mostly breaks sentences into separate lines with varying indentation, which **could be** a problem for programming I **suppose**, but if not, indentation **could** also **be** another useful trick. I **tried** using LiveInk to format my answer and give you a sense of how it works on a decent-sized batch of text. It used one color (maroon) on the words I **have** bolded here, but I **couldn't preserve** the indentation (at least, I'm not that good with HTML).

Check it out! LiveInk's research page might **give** you some better things to read than Google, depending on what search terms you **choose** with Google, of course.

**Edit:** This question may also be relevant: Effect of words highlighting on reading comprehension

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Tags: learning, language, reading, hci, color
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# Question
Title: Is there a causal connection between repressive sexual morality and antisocial behavior?
Wilhelm Reich believed that certain forms of deviant behavior result mostly or in part from the repressive sexual morality of a society (Reich, 1930). Reich believes that the majority of antisocial impulses are caused by the repression and dissatisfaction of basic sexual needs from childhood onwards.

In Bronisław Malinowski's *The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia* (1929), Reich finds evidence for a connection between a sex-positive morality and the reduction of deviant behavior:

> Children in the Trobriand Islands know no sex repression and no sexual secrecy. Their sex life is allowed to develop naturally, freely, and unhampered *through every stage of life, with full satisfaction*. The children engage freely in the sexual activities which correspond to their age. Nonetheless, or rather just for this reason, the society of the Trobrianders knew, in the third decade of our century, no sexual perversions, no functional psychoses, no psychoneuroses, no sex murder; they have no word for theft; homosexuality and masturbation, to them, mean nothing but an unnatural and imperfect means of sexual gratification, a sing of a disturbed capacity to reach normal satisfaction. To the children of the Trobrianders, the strict, obsessional training for excremental control which undermines the civilization of the white race is unknown. The Trobrianders, therefore, are *spontaneously* clean, orderly, social without compulsion, intelligent, and industrious. The socially accepted form of sexual life is spontaneous monogamy without compulsion, a relationship which can be dissolved without difficulities; thus, there is no promiscuity. (Reich, 1942; italics in the original)

Reich's views have long since been shown to be naively optimistic, but what I am interested in is not a refutation of his theory, but recent research in the matter:

**What do current empirical psychology and cognitive sciences say to a hypothesised connection between unrepressed sexuality and the absence of anti-social deviant behavior?**

---

Sources:

* Reich, W. (1930). *Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf*. Vienna: Münsterverlag. \[Translated as Reich, W. (1945) *The Sexual Revolution.* Orgone Institute Press.\]
* Reich, W. (1942). *The Function of the Orgasm.* Orgone Institute Press.

# Answer
Alfred Kinsey's studies show a noteworthy occurrence of bisexual/homosexual behavior and multiple partners in the population, despite the fixture of heterosexual monogamy in our culture. EDIT: This first statement is intended to demonstrate that non-heterosexual behavior does naturally occur in the population. I am rewriting the rest to be much less ambiguous.

James A. Haught wrote that Western religion has always been a haven for the sexually repressed. One could argue strongly against sexual repression in light of the Catholic church abuse scandals. The next logical step is that sexual repression creates pathology, and thus anti-social behavior.
> 4 votes

# Answer
According to several studies in Sex Differences in Antisocial Behaviour: Conduct Disorder, Delinquency, and Violence in the Dunedin Longitudinal Study (Cambridge Studies in Criminology) page 50 and 109. Unrepressed sexuality in teens especially amoung females from risk groups correlates to antisocial behavior. The research only shows a correlation due to social factors rather than a causation. The relationship is more likely to be reverse causality from a underlying biological or social structure than sexuality itself.
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, sexuality
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# Question
Title: How to make diagnosis of these symptoms using Pet scan, fMRI, and EEG?
The symptoms are muscle weakness, slow reaction time, visual perception issues, seizures, hearing loss, weight gain, general sense of pain and delusions. Using the above scanning techniques, a doctor concluded that there are problems in emission of neurotransmitters and secretion of hormones as well as myelin sheath of some neurons, occipital lobe, and temporal lobe. Could you tell me how the doctor used the scanning tools to reach to his conclusion? I totally have no idea how the doctor learned that there's problem in emission of neurotransmitter by using scanning techniques.

# Answer
> 1 votes
You would have to ask your doctor to be certain but it seems to me that the PET could have identified the myelin sheath problems by the MeDAS binding and certainly could identify the neurotransmitters which were out of balance. The neurotransmitters are found by using a radiotracer which makes them measurable on the PET. The fMRI would have confirmed or identified the myelin sheath problems in a more localized way. The EEG was also given to rule out certain kinds of seizures and possibly identify the correct type.

PET

> PET scanning is also used for diagnosis of brain disease, most notably because brain tumors, strokes, and neuron-damaging diseases which cause dementia (such as Alzheimer's disease) all cause great changes in brain metabolism, which in turn causes easily detectable changes in PET scans. PET is probably most useful in early cases of certain dementias (with classic examples being Alzheimer's disease and Pick's disease) where the early damage is too diffuse and makes too little difference in brain volume and gross structure to change CT and standard MRI images enough to be able to reliably differentiate it from the "normal" range of cortical atrophy which occurs with aging (in many but not all) persons, and which does not cause clinical dementia.

-wikipedia

fMRI

> The primary form of fMRI uses the Blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) contrast, discovered by Seiji Ogawa. This is a type of specialized brain and body scan used to map neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals by imaging the change in blood flow (hemodynamic response) related to energy use by brain cells. Since the early 1990s, fMRI has come to dominate brain mapping research because it does not require people to undergo shots, surgery, or to ingest substances, or be exposed to radiation. Other methods of obtaining contrast are arterial spin labeling and diffusion MRI.
>
> The procedure is similar to MRI but uses the change in magnetization between oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood as its basic measure. This measure is frequently corrupted by noise from various sources and hence statistical procedures are used to extract the underlying signal. The resulting brain activation can be presented graphically by color-coding the strength of activation across the brain or the specific region studied. The technique can localize activity to within millimeters but, using standard techniques, no better than within a window of a few seconds.

-wikipedia

EEG

> In neurology, the main diagnostic application of EEG is in the case of epilepsy, as epileptic activity can create clear abnormalities on a standard EEG study.

-wikipedia

# Answer
> 3 votes
T2 weighted MRI scans can reveal white matter lesions, so that may explain the detection of demyelination.

Of course, that's not fMRI...

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Tags: neuroscience, neuroimaging
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# Question
Title: How to create an effective and efficient team - with the same or different cognitive style?
We've all participated in *team building* activities, where the goal is to get the team working better together in an environment very different from their usual occupation situation. As a team member you are supposed to build trust among other team players, and that they will trust you. This should have a positive impact on the teams effectiveness and efficiency.

I've been told that a diverse team is better than a team less diverse. Of course it depends on the project to be executed, but nevertheless this is what I hear and read about all the time. There are little opposition to this position, maybe because it's politically incorrect?!

However, on Wikipedias article Cognitive style one can read that:

> ... team members with similar cognitive styles likely feel more positive about their participation with the team. While matching cognitive styles may make participants feel more comfortable when working with one another, this alone cannot guarantee the success of the outcome.

But if the team already find trust in each other based on their similar cognitive style, they would most probably start to be more effective than an unequal team. I'm not mixing cognitive style with diversity, but I feel there is more to it than just that. What would form the ultimate team? One with the same cognitive style, or one with different cognitive style?

**How to create an effective and efficient team - with the same or different cognitive style?**

# Answer
> 4 votes
Let me say first off that I don't know anything about cognitive style. However, I have recently read an interesting article by van Knippenberg and van Ginkel (2010) about diversity in work teams which might be relevant here.

**Demographic Diversity.** To explain the sometimes contradicting effects of diversity on work teams, the authors propose a model that differenciates between two types of diversity, *demographic* and *functional* diversity. According to the authors, these two forms of diversity have opposing effects. According to *Self-Categorization Theory*, demographic diversity (age, gender, country of origin, etc.) is likely to initiate categorization processes (see this post for more information) through which people perceive themselves as belonging to different groups. These perceptions of ingroup and outgroup might lead to conflict and thereby negatively impact team performance.

**Functional Diversity.** Functional diversity on the other hand refers to different areas of knowledge and expertise, that members of a team might have and is seen as an informational ressource. A team with experts from different fields has a potential benefit (at least with regard to some tasks). This might also cling to cognitive style. This kind of diversity, then, can potentially increase a team's performance. However, it is not sufficient for a team to be functinally diverse. Rather, the members have to put this diversity to use by elaborating together on the task at hand. This Elaboration process is not automatic and involves the exchange, discussion and integration of information.

**The Categorization-Elaboration Model of Work Group Diversity**

It is important to note that according to van Knippenberg & van Ginkel (2010), it is not the question, which one of these two approaches is the correct one. Instead, both kinds of diversity might be present at the same time and interact, leading to the often mixed results from studies on diversity. There are a couple of moderators in the model, as well. Task complexity is thought to be a factor with regard to funtional diversity: the more complex the task, the more schould the team benefit diversity. The two other moderators are motivation and ability, which are, as I would argue, not specific to the discussion of diversity.

**Team Design and Management**

What can one learn from this with regard to the design of work teams? The first thing that comes to mind is that teams should be functionally diverse. In addition, the importance of the elaboration process needs to be acknowledged, because otherwise informational ressources will not be put to good use. As to demographic diversity, the suggestion cannnot be to have teams not be diverse (to prevent categorization as ingroup and outgroup). Rather, the authors suggest to foster the importance of group members beliefs in the value of diversity. van Knippenberg & van Ginkel also prevent evidence that leaders can be trained in order to do so.

**Reference:**

Van Knippenberg, D., & van Ginkel, W. P. (2010). The categorization-elaboration model of work group diversity: Wielding the double-edged sword. In R. J. Crisp (Hrsg.), *The psychology of social and cultural diversity* (S. 257–280). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

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Tags: io-psychology
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title: Definitions of consciousness

text:
# Question
Title: Definitions of consciousness
It seems to me that many people know for themselves some extraordinary things about consciousness but rare are the people that can provide a definition of it. I have never met two people providing the same definition of consciousness (I never talked with specialist of the field though but only to general and evolutionary biologists).

Is there any, globally accepting definition of consciousness in cognitive science? What is it? If not, can you please provide a little review of the definitions that are most often used in scientific research. Critics for each definitions are welcome.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Consciousness is what makes us what we are; however it is very difficult to examine our internal workings and form an external definition for something everyone uses everyday. This is mainly because the mechanisms of consciousness are still a mystery.

Here are two well accepted definitions.

> Consciousness is the quality or state of being aware of an external object or something within oneself. It has been defined as: sentience, awareness, subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Despite the difficulty in definition, many philosophers believe that there is a broadly shared underlying intuition about what consciousness is. As Max Velmans and Susan Schneider wrote in The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."
>
> Philosophers since the time of Descartes and Locke have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness and pin down its essential properties. Issues of concern in the philosophy of consciousness include whether the concept is fundamentally valid; whether consciousness can ever be explained mechanistically; whether non-human consciousness exists and if so how it can be recognized; how consciousness relates to language; whether consciousness can be understood in a way that does not require a dualistic distinction between mental and physical states or properties; and whether it may ever be possible for computing machines like computers or robots to be conscious.

-wikipedia

> In 1994 David Chalmers published a paper explaining why consciousness is such a challenging phenomenon to understand. Although he wasn’t the first to discuss these challenges, he was the first to categorize them into two types of problems: “easy” problems and the “hard” problem. Easy problems involve the explanation of how the mind integrates information, focuses attention and allows us to report on mental states. Though not a piece of cake, such problems are easy because solving them only requires that we determine the mechanisms that explain these behaviors. Easy problems are physical by nature, falling within the empirical domains of psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience. Given the current trend in science of the mind, we’re confident that one day we will solve these problems.
>
> The hard problem, by contrast, may never be solved. Specifically, the hard problem is determining why or how consciousness occurs given the right arrangement of brain matter. What makes it hard is that we cannot just point to some physical mechanism to solve it, for that would be the solution to the easy problem. Instead, our goal is to explain why certain physical mechanism gives rise to consciousness instead of something else or nothing at all. Consider an analogy from physics: knowing every equation predicting how mass and gravity interact does not tell us why they interact in the way they do. To understand why mass and gravity interact, we must appeal to highly esoteric explanations involving relativity, quantum mechanics or string theory.

-What is Consciousness?

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Tags: consciousness
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# Question
Title: What is it about our brain that breaks when we hear ourselves with a delay?
If you've ever heard an echo of yourself on phone or video chat, you've probably noticed the phenomenon that you completely forget what you were talking about when you hear yourself talking.

**Have there been any studies that explain *why* this happens?**

I think there was an XKCD comic about it but I can't find it right now.

# Answer
> 6 votes
This phenomenon is called delayed auditory feedback. *Why* is still an open question, but two theories are:

* Servomotor hypothesis: delayed auditory feedback creates an error signal, which the motor systems uses to attempt to correct the motor output.
* Distruptive rhythm hypothesis: Speech is too fast for error correcting feedback (*i.e.* speech is feedforward), delayed auditory feedback disrupts the rhythm of motor output.

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Tags: neuroscience, brain
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# Question
Title: Why does a person get obsessive for those who don't take interest in him?
Why does a person get obsessive, Specially towards those who don't accept his love or attraction towards them?

Self esteem has such an impact on human life that he wants to preserve his esteem in any way possible. Then why does one get obsessive towards those who have broken the trust he put into them? Why does he try to reason with those who have told him that they don't love him?

Where does his drive to consolidate his self esteem go in such situations?

# Answer
There are in many cases certain attachments that are natural to the human condition. It is normal and natural to want your immediate family and sometimes extended family to love you. As humans we form long lasting relationships where we hope that our spouses and friends will become family as well and love us. However this is not always possible. Some fathers, mothers, siblings, lovers and friends cannot show or do not have the natural love or care. A normal person grieves for the loss of a close relationship. Part of the process of grieving typically involves denial and bargaining.

Sometimes this lack of love is caused by a legitimate mental illness like Borderline personality disorder or versions of Bipolar. In some cases of BPD the loved one may swing between I love you and I absolutely hate you. The smallest or largest of offenses can cause the switch and sometimes it lasts for long periods of times Hours, Months or Years. Its difficult to deal with. You always hold out hope that the intensity of the relationship will swing back in your favor.

People who grow up with mentally ill parents or experience such relationship with those they are close too have learned behaviors of dealing with rejection in a way that is not healthy for their self-esteem. It can result in any number of illnesses including pathological and nonpathological OCD, Dependant Personality Disorder or Codependency as you some what describe.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Another component, which relies less on situations from one's past, are the effects of perceived scarcity. A paradigm in behavioral psychology which has become almost universally accepted is that the more scarce and hard to come by something is (be it a certain model of car, or the affection of another individual), the more valuable we perceive it to be. This is why a common sales tactic is to tell a potential customer that the item they are prospecting is one of the last in stock.

If you expand this principle into human interaction, its easy to understand why not reciprocating someone's interest can often lead them to double down and perhaps even desire attention and affection more than they originally had.
> 6 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, abnormal-psychology, emotion, love
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title: Sensitivity of human eye to luminance

text:
# Question
Title: Sensitivity of human eye to luminance
I heard once that the human eye has a logarithmic scale for luminance, e.g. to "feel" that a surface is three times as luminous compared to another, the former emits a light 8 times more powerful than the latter. Definitions are indeed vague as my memory doesn't serve me well.

Is this based on anything scientific?

# Answer
> 6 votes
From Stevens & Galanter (1957)

> Although an extensive investigation of the subjective scale of brightness is still in progress in this laboratory, enough has been learned to show that, for patches of white light viewed in a dark room, **subjective brightness is a power function of luminance**. Moreover, **the exponent is of the order of one-third** which is in reasonable agreement with results obtained by Hanes.

* Stevens, S. S., & Galanter, E. H. (1957). Ratio scales and category scales for a dozen perceptual continua. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54(6), 377.

and the related study that is mentioned:

* Hanes, R. M. (1949). The construction of subjective brightness scales from fractionation data: a validation. Journal of experimental psychology, 39(5), 719.

# Answer
> 2 votes
This logarithmic increase in order to produce a just noticeable difference between stimuli of two different intensities is in fact a general property or the sensory system. It is known as (Weber-) Fechner's law:

> Weber's law states that the just-noticeable difference between two stimuli is proportional to the magnitude of the stimuli. Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), a scholar of Weber, later used Weber's findings to construct a psychophysical scale in which he described the relationship between the physical magnitude of a stimulus and its (subjectively) perceived intensity. **Fechner's law (better referred to as Fechner's scale) states that subjective sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus intensity**.

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Tags: neuroscience, vision, color
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# Question
Title: Does not consistently providing a reward strengthen operant conditioning?
When learning about Operant Conditioning, I remember being taught that not consistently rewarding the desired behavior could (seemingly counterintuitively) actually *increase* the strength of learning the conditioned behavior. Is this correct?

If this is correct, is it more effective to begin providing a reward at or near 100% of the time the conditioned behavior is performed, and then slowly reduce the amount to a lower percentage? Or is it more effective to simply start with a lower percentage?

# Answer
What you're thinking of is called an **Intermittent Reinforcement Schedule**. Different Reinforcement schedules have different effects, **variable ratio** in particular seems to be what you're getting at:

> a reinforcement schedule in which the number of responses necessary to produce reinforcement varies from trial to trial

What's important is the behavior is reinforced intermittently but regularly enough to be "worth" it. This produces a powerful effect; I don't immediately have any sources but I do believe B.F. Skinner ran a number of such trials. where the subject will repeatedly perform the behavior in an attempt to get more rewards.

An explanation I've heard is that with a predictable reward schedule (fixed ratio) your participant knows they can except a reward, so there's no reason to mindlessly perform the task over and over; compare a Slot Machine (variable ratio) to a machine that gives out money on a fixed number of tries (fixed ratio). A subject knows with the fixed ratio machine they can *always* get their reward at any time. With the slot machine you have to keep playing and playing to get that big next reward.

Remember that for proper Shaping you should start with a high percentage (100%) initially to condition the response otherwise the participant might not be conditioned **at all**. Going back to the gambling example, it's much more effective if you give your participant a taste of winning when they play the slots or they'll quickly quit as it seems there's no reward to be had at all.

Shaping involves immediate rewarding behaviors *approaching* the desired behavior, it's certainly more important to start with a high % of rewarding, especially with non-human subjects when getting them to perform the wanted task can be problematic to begin with.
> 9 votes

# Answer
'Reinforcement' is anything that increases the chances that an organism with repeat a behavior. When you are teaching a behavior, in the beginning, eliciting behavior takes a lot of reinforcement. So, for example, if you want to teach you dog to come to you every time you go to the back door, you feed him a cookie when you go to the back door. After a while this behavior becomes REALLY strong. He expects a cookie. Now you can work on another principle of operant conditioning called 'extinction'. It works like this. If you stop reinforcing a behavior, the dog in this case, gets frustrated, and trys really hard to get that reinforcement to continue. There are two possible outcomes. Either A: extinction, where the behavior that was being reinforced vanishes, or B: The behavior escalates until you reinforce it, and you get a new level of behavior. (this is how bad habits get worse, and good habits get better)

So, if you want to get a really strong behavior you need both kinds of reinforcement schedules. First you start off with a fixed reinforcement schedule to build the expectation of reinforcement, then you switch to a reinforcement schedule that causes some level of frustration to elicit the extinction response, and you intentionally 'fail' extinction to get a stronger behavior.

A completely random reinforcement schedule is not nearly as effective as a trainer that is tuned into the emotions of the animal that is being trained. A really good trainer can cause just enough frustration to get a little more behavior, without causing so much that the animal just gives up.
> 2 votes

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Tags: learning, conditioning
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# Question
Title: How does cognitive science explain the origins of intuition and intelligence, that accurately describes the laws of nature?
What is the origin of non-incremental, revolutionary intuition and intelligence?

For example, a human mind like Albert Einstein's can "come up" with revolutionary ideas and theories that correctly adhere to the law of physics. On the other hand, another mind can't even understand this theory, let alone "create" or come up with one.

Where does this initial intelligence and intuition (accurately proven) come from? Or what are the means by which modern humans achieve "origins of" intelligent intuition that adhere to science or nature? (Not talking about prophecy.)

# Answer
> 4 votes
A couple of other interrelated perspectives are presented below.

The first perspective comes from the article Artificial Intelligence, Logic of Discovery and Scientific Realism (Alai), where they state, using scientific discovery as an example (as per the example in the question), that

> if the process of discovery is rational, mustn’t it therefore follow rational criteria and rules, hence a logic? On the other hand, it is well known that chance, luck, and insight often play an important role in discovery.

Effectively, almost like a case of someone 'tripping over' the final piece of their theorem. The author goes further, contending that if their were a rational set of steps, thus

> if discovery were just a matter of rule following, why couldn’t anyone learn the necessary rules and become a great scientist? Or why couldn’t the scientists themselves just follow the logic of discovery and program in advance new discoveries, and rapidly achieve such results as a cure for cancer, or the cold fusion of atom, which while sorely needed still elude the efforts of researchers?

Meaning, according to this article's perspective, that luck, chance and insight play a major role.

The final factor, **insight**, is alluded to in the website Einstein's Pathway to Special Relativity (Norton), taking the example scientist from the question, Albert Einstein and how he developed, for example, the Theory of Special Relativity, which started when

> he began to think about ether, electricity, magnetism and motion.

Essentially, he had insight by

> pondering these developments that led Einstein to discover the special theory of relativity in 1905.

A key point made is that

> The discovery was not momentary.

This is crucial, the ideas didn't just 'pop' into his head, the theory was the outcome of having learned and developed an insight in the background information, latest developments in relevant disciplines and of course,

> in Einstein's own reckoning, seven and more years of work.

As an independent researcher, (and I am **not** comparing myself to Albert Einstein), the discoveries that I have found, have had successfully peer reviewed and have been published come from having some specific insight, through background reading, training, education etc, to topics and skills required relevant to the discovery, as well as a lot of work to bring these insights together with new observations to make a discovery.

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Tags: intelligence, philosophy-of-mind, creativity, intuition
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# Question
Title: Why do humans/primates laugh/smile when they are happy, and not cry?
This might sound funny. But I have been wondering why do humans/primates *laugh* or *smile* when they are happy or find something funny?

Why don't they *cry* when they are happy and *laugh*/\*smile\* when they are sad?

# Answer
Subcortical unconscious programming originating in distance evolutionary relatives cause humans to smile when they feel happy.

-Consciousness, Volition, and the Neuropsychology of Facial Expressions of Emotion

There are disorders like the Pseudobulbar affect which cause people to express a different emotion than what is typical like crying instead of smiling. With PBA the emotions displayed are sudden, frequent, extreme and uncontrollable.
> 2 votes

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Tags: emotion
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# Question
Title: What is the current state of knowledge on the roles and mechanisms of top-down information flow in the brain?
I have heard that "90% of information flow in the brain (or maybe it was just the visual cortex) is top-down". I'm not sure if this claim is substantiated, but I do get the impression that there is strong evidence that at least most of the information flow is top-down. I'd like to know as specifically as possible what current theories in neuroscience say is going on here. I'd appreciate details and reputable academic works.

# Answer
> 1 votes
No the brain doesn't in practice work in a single flow. It takes a combination of top-down and bottom-up at various frequencies to perform any task. Outside a laboratory the amount of time you spend going top-down or bottom-up will depend on what kind of life you lead.

> Hippocampal movement-related low-frequency oscillations are one of the most well-characterized and replicated findings across species. Previous literature has demonstrated that movement-related oscillations are distinct phenomenon from memory-related low-frequency oscillations. We suggest that movement-related oscillations arise, in part, due to entrainment from sensorimotor information inherited from upstream cortical areas and thus may represent largely bottom-up input. We also discuss memory-related low-frequency oscillations and their emergence when rodents retrieve information about which part of a maze to explore. These memory-related oscillations often appear coordinated between hippocampus and cortex and may reflect top-down, or rule based processing. The presence of both bottom-up and top-down low-frequency oscillations may be yet another example of spectral fingerprinting, in which different cognitive operations manifest in the same brain networks via different frequencies of synchronization. While many aspects of this idea remains to be tested, particularly in the context of navigation, we believe that these ideas represent one step in bringing some synchrony to an often desynchronized field on the study of neural oscillations.

-Multifaceted roles for low-frequency oscillations in bottom-up and top-down processing during navigation and memory

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Tags: reproducible-research
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# Question
Title: Licensing when using the NEO-FFI instrument
I would like to use the NEO-FFI instrument to measure the Big 5 psychological traits. Is a license needed? Are there any open, free, or public domain Big 5 tests that can be used for no (or minimal) cost?

# Answer
Yes, a license is needed for most uses of the NEO-FFI. Here's a quote from PAR's Permissions & Licensing page:

> Tests, test protocols, test items, normative data, score reports, and other related materials are copyrighted and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from PAR. The reproduction of any part of PAR’s copyrighted tests and related materials in any way, without permission, whether the reproductions are sold or provided free for use, is a violation of federal copyright law.
>
> If you plan to use a test in its entirety, please purchase the published version of the test...
>
> If you plan to modify or use only part of a test, written permission is required prior to using any PAR proprietary material. Written permission is required prior to:
>
> * Using a translation. All of our translations have been approved. Back-translations have been conducted by an individual unfamiliar with the English version of the test and the back-translation has been forwarded to the author/PAR for review and approval.
> * Using any part of a test;
> * Using a modified format of a test;
> * Translating a test into a language for which it is not currently available;
> * Including a few sample items or other materials (i.e., tables, charts, graphs) in a publication or appendix of a dissertation or thesis. PAR will not grant permission to include an entire test or scale in any publication, including dissertations and theses.

Anyway, yes, there are plenty of free tests! One such resource my former advisor (Dan Ozer, personality assessor extraordinaire) has always seemed to favor is the International Personality Item Pool. It might give you a headache to see how many options you actually have just through this source, just for measuring broad personality traits akin to the Big Five. In our work, we've generally used the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991), which is also freely available for non-commercial use, but is somewhat basic (44 items, 5 factors, no facets). If that's not basic *enough* for you, you may also want to consider Saucier's (1994) Mini-Markers, which has 40 items and one fewer Likert scale option. Even shorter is Rammstedt and John's (2007) 10-item short version of the BFI!

I should add that this question is a partial duplicate: @JeromyAnglim already asked (and answered!) the question about free alternatives here: What free scientific measures of Big 5 personality are available? His list is more comprehensive, and I'm about to go add Rammstedt and John's over there, so this post won't have anything unique from that thread once I do (except the bit about the NEO-FFI licensing).

One might almost be inclined to say there are too many options! As for me, I'm with Martha Stewart on this one: "It's a good thing."

**References**

John, O. P., Donahue, E. M., & Kentle, R. L. (1991). The big five inventory—versions 4a and 54. *Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, Institute of Personality and Social Research*.

Rammstedt, B., & John, O. P. (2007). Measuring personality in one minute or less: A 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory in English and German. *Journal of Research in Personality, 41*(1), 203–212. Available online, URL: http://www.westmont.edu/\_academics/departments/psychology/documents/Rammstedt\_and\_John.pdf.

Saucier, G. (1994). Mini-markers: A brief version of Goldberg's unipolar Big-Five markers. *Journal of Personality Assessment, 63*(3), 506–516. Available online, URL: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~prsnlty/SAUCIER/Saucier.Minimarkers.Full.pdf.
> 2 votes

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Tags: measurement, personality
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# Question
Title: What free scientific measures of Big 5 personality are available?
I'm aware of a few freely available scientific measures of Big 5 personality.

### Questions:

* What other free scientific Big 5 personality tests are available?
* In particular, I'd be interested in any free measures of the Big 5 that are framed so that introversion, neuroticism, disagreeableness, etc. are slightly more positive.

Specifically, all items need to be available and it needs to be published in the scientific literature with reasonable reliability and validity data.

# Answer
### IPIP

It should be noted that the IPIP has a range of multi-construct versions that are designed to align with some existing measures.

### The Big Five Inventory (BFI)

The BFI is available here in the Appendix of John and Srivastava (1999). Sanjay Srivastava has a page discussing the measure here. (Note the page also directed me to other options I mention below). It is not public domain but it appears to be free for research.

It is a 44 item measure of the Big 5. Each item involves short sentences.

### Big 5 Aspects Scale

As Sanjay Srivastava writes:

> Colin DeYoung and colleagues have published a 100-item measure, called the Big Five Aspect Scales (BFAS), which scores not only the Big Five factors, but also two "aspects" of each. The BFAS is in the public domain as well.

### 100 Unipolar Markers

Sanjay Srivastava notes that there is "Lew Goldberg's set of 100 trait-descriptive adjectives" (Goldberg, 1992).

### Big 5 Mini Markers

> Gerard Saucier reduced \[Goldberg's\] set to 40 Big Five mini-markers that have excellent reliability and validity (Saucier, 1994). More recently, Saucier has developed new trait marker sets that maximize the orthogonality of the factors (Saucier, 2002). Saucier's mini-markers are in the public domain.

### HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised

While the HEXACO is actually based on a six factor model of personality, it does share similarities to the Big 5. Specifically, five of the six dimensions map on to the Big 5, and HEXACO adds honesty-humility. 60 and 100 item versions of the test are available on the website (and 200 item version is available by request).

### References

* Goldberg, L. R. (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological assessment, 4(1), 26. PDF
* John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. Handbook of personality: Theory and research, 2, 102-138. PDF
* Saucier, G. (1994). Mini-markers: A brief version of Goldberg's unipolar Big-Five markers. Journal of personality assessment, 63(3), 506-516. PDF
* Saucier,G. (2002). Orthogonal markers for orthogonal factors: The case of the Big Five. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(1), 1-31. PDF
> 5 votes

# Answer
The **BFI-10** is another short version, a pared-down-to-ten-items variant of the Big Five Inventory...

Rammstedt, B., & John, O. P. (2007). Measuring personality in one minute or less: A 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory in English and German. *Journal of Research in Personality, 41*(1), 203–212. Available online, URL: http://www.westmont.edu/\_academics/departments/psychology/documents/Rammstedt\_and\_John.pdf.
> 3 votes

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Tags: measurement, personality
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# Question
Title: Have IQ-type measures been tried for other animals?
Despite the obvious difficulties pertaining to definition and measurement, and the various controversies surrounding the use of IQ-type scores in human beings, it seems unquestionable that there are significant intraspecies individual differences in some general component of learning ability.

Have any such measures in fact been defined and investigated for any non-human species?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Like any simple-seeming cognitive sciences question, it is important to start with a series of disclaimers. It might seem like human intelligence or intelligence more generally is an intuitive concept, but once you start to explore your intuition or look at historic definitions of intelligence, you see that intelligence is a very ill-defined and slippery concept. You could, of course, take the behaviorist view, and define intelligence as performance on IQ-tests, and then your question has a simple answer: no, we can't measure that in most animals.

Alternatively, you might try to look at general behaviors that you usually associate with intelligence, then you can often come up with tests for animals. However, this might challenge some of your preconceptions. I want to provide two example tests (but many many more exist) to illustrate my point.

When we usually think of 'intelligence' we are eager to associate things like behavioral flexibility and innovation with it. Both of these can be tested.

### Serial discrimination reversal learning

Serial discrimination reversal learning is a relatively standard procedure for studying animal cognition. The first reference I can find to this specific methodology is from 1966 in the sea lion (Schusterman, 1966), but the basic ideas of using similar tests in animals was already common practice before WW2 (Spence, 1936).

The task is usually given in the form of a choice between two actions (say pushing a button). At first whenever the animal clicks the left button, it is given a treat, and nothing for the right button. This training phase is continued until the animal learns that left button gives food. At this point, the reversal phase is enacted, and suddenly the left button stops giving food, and the right button does, and the animal is trained to associate the right button with food.

These learning, reversal, learning cycles are repeated several times and the rate of change from one button to the other after reversal, and consistency of picking the correct button during learning are tracked to give a measure of the animals behavioral flexibility. There is great inter-species variation on this, but also a lot of intra-species variation.

### Innovation tasks

Innovation tasks are popular in the context of social learning, where the animal (and the species) has to balance between innovating and copying behavior (Reader & Laland, 2003). The classic example of this is English greats tits learning to break the foil caps of home-delivered milk bottles to eat the cream at the top (Hawkins, 1950).

An example I want to highlight is from Griffin et al. (2013), where myna birds where tested with a *novel extractive foraging task*. In this task, birds faced difficult foraging tasks like having to pull out a piece of paper from a champagne flute before getting food, or by having to open a dish with a lid that could only be lifted by a hook in the middle and not from the side. Birds show great interspecies and intraspecies diversity on these sort of innovation tasks.

### Challenging preconceptions

Naively, one might expect both reversal learning and innovation to be important components of intelligence, and 'smarter' animals to do better on both. This intuition would be well supported if you looked at the inter-species level, you would find an increase in innovation and behavioral flexibility with relative brain size. However, at the intra-species level, Griffin et al. (2013) show that this is not necessarily the case. Among myna birds, those that do better on the innovation task, tend to perform worse on the reversal learning, and those that do worse on the innovation task, tend to perform better on the reversal learning. This means that if you are looking for variation within a species, then you have to be careful with your tests. Two tests that both correspond to an intuitive notion of "intelligence" in humans, might in fact correspond to opposite ends of the spectrum in the non-human animal.

### References

Griffin, A. S., Guez, D., Lermite, F., & Patience, M. (2013). Tracking Changing Environments: Innovators Are Fast, but Not Flexible Learners. *PloS One*, 8(12), e84907.

Hawkins, T. (1950). Opening of Milk Bottles By Birds. *Nature* 165(4194): 435–436.

Lefebvre, L. (2011). Taxonomic counts of cognition in the wild. *Biol. Lett.* 7: 631–633.

Reader, S.M. & Laland, K.N. (2003). Animal Innovation. *Oxford: Oxford University Press*.

Schusterman, R.J. (1966) Serial discrimination-reversal learning with and without errors by the California sea lion. *J. Exp. Anal. Behav.* 9: 593–600.

Spence, K. W. (1936). The nature of discrimination learning in animals. *Psych. Rev,*, 43(5): 427.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Animal cognition and Plant Intelligence are active areas of research in the psychology of intelligence. Comparing abilities of memory, numerical concepts and language are possible but no standard IQ test has been developed at this time. Its difficult because every test must be crafted considering the abilities and psychology of the individual species. Comparisons made inside a species are easy but those between species are difficult. Many types of animals are less generalized thinking machines (designed specifically for a series of tasks).

This history of animal cognition is controversial as it includes malformed examples of intelligence like Clever Hans. Hans was a horse who learned to watch for ques from his owners in order to tap a certain amount of times. It gave the appearance of intelligence.

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Tags: learning, measurement, intelligence, animal-cognition
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# Question
Title: What is the effect of Social Media consumption on self-esteem?
I have been seeing many conflicting studies saying that facebook usage increases or decreases self-esteem.

* What is the current consensus regarding the effect of facebook usage on self-esteem?
* Has there been a meta-analysis?

I can see that looking at facebook would make one compare himself to another (upward comparison). This could induce jealousy. Likewise, seeing your own facebook profile reaffirms who you are. This would increase self esteem.

# Answer
In general social media is a positive inlet for self-esteem development. As people "like" the things you like your identity is reaffirmed. However if someone friend's the wrong people or uses it as a comparison engine it can become degrading to self-esteem. It should be noted that teenagers are trending away from traditional social networking moving to things like SnapChat.

> The aim of this study was to investigate the consequences of friend networking sites (e.g., Friendster, MySpace) for adolescents' self-esteem and well-being. We conducted a survey among 881 adolescents (10–19-year-olds) who had an online profile on a Dutch friend networking site. Using structural equation modeling, we found that the frequency with which adolescents used the site had an indirect effect on their social self-esteem and well-being. The use of the friend networking site stimulated the number of relationships formed on the site, the frequency with which adolescents received feedback on their profiles, and the tone (i.e., positive vs. negative) of this feedback. Positive feedback on the profiles enhanced adolescents' social self-esteem and well-being, whereas negative feedback decreased their selfesteem and well-being.

-Friend Networking Sites and Their Relationship to Adolescents' Well-Being and Social Self-Esteem

> This study assessed motives for social network site (SNS) use, group belonging, collective self-esteem, and gender effects among older adolescents. Communication with peer group members was the most important motivation for SNS use. Participants high in positive collective self-esteem were strongly motivated to communicate with peer group via SNS. Females were more likely to report high positive collective self-esteem, greater overall use, and SNS use to communicate with peers. Females also posted higher means for group-in-self, passing time, and entertainment. Negative collective self-esteem correlated with social compensation, suggesting that those who felt negatively about their social group used SNS as an alternative to communicating with other group members. Males were more likely than females to report negative collective self-esteem and SNS use for social compensation and social identity gratifications.

-Older Adolescents' Motivations for Social Network Site Use: The Influence of Gender, Group Identity, and Collective Self-Esteem
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, well-being, internet, social-networks
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# Question
Title: Extending a 5 point ordinal scale to 9 points while maintaining comparability
We have a lot of data regarding a 5 point ordinal scale with descriptors for each point like 'very little' to 'very much'. I am worried that this scale will show insufficient variance in a further study I am designing, and would like to extend it in some way which a) captures meaningful information but b) maintains maximum comparability to the previous data.

Options under consideration: 1 - add blank items in between each of the old items on the horizontal row, rely on individuals to interpolate. 2 - invent new labels which somehow fit in between the old. This may be linguistically challenging. 3 - convert to a numeric scale with comparably labeled beginning, mid, and endpoints 4- convert to a numeric scale using the old labels at every appropriate point, and blanks otherwise.

Adding additional questions to capture the variance is not an option, but I'm interested in any others I haven't thought of, and for and against arguments.

# Answer
See this question on comparing scales with different response scales. In short, you have to do it with care. A good option for ensuring comparability is to get a sample of participants to provide responses on both response scales in order to see how they relate. This could then be used to create a conversion scale.

More generally, there is a large debate about the optimal number of response options on traditional survey items. In particular, if you are more interested in means of groups rather than individual-level measurement or if you have multiple items that are aggregated, then the move from a 5 to a 7 or 9-point scale is not going result in much more differentiation. It can be good to think about how well and how consistently your participants interpret the meaning of the scale. Adding points would increase the variance, but a question remains about whether it reflects variance in the true score of interest, or whether it reflects rating bias or something else.

Personally, if comparison with previous research is important, I'd generally leave the rating options as they were.
> 3 votes

# Answer
I just wrote three big comments on @JeromyAnglim's answer, but I'm opting to move them all to this answer instead. This isn't an attempt to answer the OP completely, but hopefully they'll be of some use for part of the question.

From a mainly statistical and psychometric standpoint, I've heard (from an expert whose opinion I could mention confidently in a manuscript I'd intend to publish) that adding point options to extend a Likert scale tends to increase the size of the general factor (in principal components / factor analysis). This could be due in part to bias of the sort Jeromy mentions. Thought that might be useful to add.

Another consideration is how one anchors those extra points. Being ordinal, a Likert scale can deliberately deviate from symmetry and even spacing between options in potentially useful ways. E.g., ratings from -1 to 5, or adding more extreme ratings like, "0 - Absolutely not at all whatsoever," or "6/max - As much as I could ever imagine for anyone ever in the history of humanity and within the laws of physics as we know them." These are slightly absurd wordings that I wouldn't recommend verbatim; slightly terser and more meaningful wordings might be more useful. In general, extreme wordings may serve to reduce ceiling/floor effects somewhat. On that topic, see also: Reducing ceiling effect with a Likert scale measure.

However, including anchors that are worded even as absurdly extreme as those I mentioned above might actually help for discriminating between useful, meaningful responses, and inattentive or biased responding, as where a person pays more attention to the number than the meaning you intend to assign to it with the anchor. This is one way of addressing the methodological problem of interpreting Likert scale responses and identifying response bias in general (though it's an untested idea of my own invention as far as I know).
> 3 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology
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title: Neural Microfilaments for Computation?

text:
# Question
Title: Neural Microfilaments for Computation?
I just watched an interesting TED talk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d5RetvkkuQ) where a Stuart Hameroff proposes that a **neuron's microtubules are responsible for computations**, and that they are able to do so on a **quantum level**. He goes as far as to suggest that this ability to perform quantum computations is in fact the "ghost in the machine", or the connection of our mortal body to the spiritual ethers.

I assumed that our computations were performed by action potentials, EPSPs, IPSPs, etc. Then we store memories and possibly reinforce processing pathways by strengthening synapses.

While certainly interesting in a religious sense, **what validity is there to the notion that microtubules are performing calculations / how do they play into this neuro-computational model?**

# Answer
I think Keegan provides a great set of references, but I just wanted to expand on his answer in a little bit more detail. Penrose and Hameroff's ideas are mentioned a lot on the internet and although they are often debunked, you can never do it enough. I want to discuss (1) what microtubules are and (2) are there quantum effects in them? And, more importantly, (3) does that even matter? and (4) is any of this new?

### What are microtubules?

Microtubules are a structure in the cytoskeleton that are **found in all dividing eukaryotic cells and in most differentiated cell types** (Desai & Mitchison, 1997). They are by no means exclusive to neurons, so if you think they bestow consciousness then you have to grant consciousness to all eukaryotes (something that most philosophers would find strange), or you are back at the same difficulty as before in trying to explain how networks of microtubules give rise to consciousness and thus postulating them as your basic units instead of neurons gives you no explanatory power.

*Related discussions:*

Which organisms have the neuroanatomy Roger Penrose supposes play a role in consciousness?.

### Are there quantum effects in microtubules?

In the video, Hameroff describes quantum and classic effects as a ying-and-yang. This is a very misleading picture, for a physicist the world is fundamentally quantum but at large sizes, and high temperatures (i.e. a lot of interaction with an external environment) is well described by our more intuitive laws of classical physics. Thus, the question isn't are there quantum effects, but are the **quantum effects significant enough to cause non-classical consequences**? Note, that most of chemistry can't be properly explained by classical physics, so every chemical reaction needs quantum effects to make sense, but we don't suggest that this makes every chemical reaction conscious.

The exciting part is that **quantum effects do matter in (a non-trivial way) in some biological systems**; most notably in photosynthesis (Engel et al, 2007). In particular, a certain energy perturbation after a photon is absorbed follows a quantum random walk, and one could speculate that this can be used for quantum computing, but there is no reason to expect it.

Microtubules are small enough to not completely rule out quantum effects. They are rope like polymers that grow to a length of about 25 micrometers (25000 nm), and have an outer-diameter of around 25 nm or about 200 atoms across. Researchers commonly use quantum dots to play with quantum effects, and these are typically spheres on the order of 10 to 50 atoms in diameter. Note, that we don't know how to couple 5000 quantum dots in one coherent chain (how many you would need to get the length of a microtubule).

However, the issue physicists usually raise, is not one of size but of the time that the microtubule would need to maintain coherence (i.e. a pure quantum state). The reason photosynthesis uses a quantum random walk, is because a classical one would not be fast enough to find a binding site. Thus, in that case the timescales involved are miniscule. The **timescales involved in the function of microtubules are much longer, and physicists believe that their state is not coherence for that length of time** (Tegmark, 2000).

### Even if microtubules are quantum, so what?

This is the real clincher, suppose quantum effects *are* important to microtubules. Suppose that whole networks of microtubules are able to keep coherent entanglement between. Heck, suppose that the brain is a giant quantum computer. So what?

For a lot of people (like Hameroff), there is this misconception that classical physics does not allow for free well but quantum mechanics does because of wave function collapse. Thankfully, we have Conway & Kochen's (2006) free will theorem which says (more or less), **any free will you give to an observer/experimenter in your philosophy of quantum mechanics, you will also have to give that some amount of agency to electrons and other subatomic particles.** In other words, if your interpretation of quantum mechanics somehow gives you free-will then it is a trivial kind of free will that every particle in the universe has. Of course, this argument can be explored in much more depth, but I suggest reading someone that is familiar with quantum computing (Aaronson, 2013) instead of Hameroff.

For Penrose (see *The Emperor's New Mind*) consciousness is non-algorithmic and he suggests that a magical quantum computer could do these non-algorithmic tasks. The reason I use 'magical' is because a real quantum computer is Turing-complete, **if a classical computer cannot solve a problem then neither can a quantum one** (of course, if a classical computer can solve a problem, then quantum one can as well and might be able to do it qualitatively faster). For a nice computer science debunking of this part of Penrose's argument take a look a Scott Aaronson's lecture notes.

### Is any of this even new?

For me, the most disappointing part of this pseudoscience is its lack of novelty. The basic philosophical urge underlying Hameroff's speculation is an over-application of reductionism: consciousness can't be something emergent, there has to be a basic essence to it. Since he can't take the dualist stance of Descartes, he instead postulates that it is"quantum magic". Even this use of quantum magic isn't original—it was an extremely popular type of hokum in the 70s that has been called quantum mysticism.

*Related discussion:*

What makes people easily subscribe to pseudoscientific theories?

### References

Aaronson, S. (2013). The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine. *arXiv preprint* arXiv:1306.0159.

Conway, J., & Kochen, S. (2006). The Free Will Theorem. *Foundations of Physics, 36*(10): 1441–1473.

Desai, A., & Mitchison, T. J. (1997). Microtubule polymerization dynamics. *Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology, 13*(1): 83–117.

Engel GS, Calhoun TR, Read EL, Ahn TK, Mancal T, Cheng YC et al. (2007). Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems. *Nature, 446*(7137): 782–6.

Tegmark, M. (2000). Importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes. *Physical Review E*, 61(4): 4194–4206.
> 16 votes

# Answer
This is a continuation of Penrose's Quantum Mind. It's not taken seriously by the majority of the neuroscience or quantum community. Here are some references to get you started:
> 7 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Does the structure of consciousness mimic that of the visual process?
It seems to me that the structure of the conscious mind has some strong similarities to the way our visual field functions. The visual field has a strong and detailed focus at the center, and this is what generally commands our attention, while at the same time the visual resolution decreases outward from that center and its content occupies less of our attention, to the point that our peripheral vision will alert us to movements but has little to do with what we are recognizing consciously.

This is similar to the way we think. We have a central focus, which is the conscious thought, but that object of thought has many associations or links to other thought objects, and they form a ring around the focus, just out of view (ie. in the immediate unconscious zone). Those primary associations also have their own associations that form a secondary ring, deeper into the unconscious, with further rings extending outward representing decreasing levels of action potential.

It makes sense to me that the conscious mind would be patterned on the functional model of the visual field which is much older and more fundamental.

Thus, my question: **Does the structure of consciousness mimic that of the visual process?**

# Answer
You are describing an observation as old as Freud, where he divided human's experience into three levels, roughly along the same lines as you. The *conscious* as that clear and ill-defined concept that gives you the feeling of attention, awareness, and self. The *preconscious* as the level just outside of your current awareness but that could easily spring to your consciousness. Finally, the *unconscious*, which is a level that doesn't have an analogy in vision: it corresponds to experiences that cannot come to your consciousness but that still affect your behavior.

Unfortunately, this correspondence does not extend beyond analogy, for several reasons. From the point of view of introspection -- the oldest and arguably still only reliable method for studying consciousness -- it is not clear how you would distinguish the visual sensation of attending stimuli from the conscious. In particular, it is not at all clear that the experience you describe as visual is an artefact of the visual system and not consciousness itself. The reason to believe that this is a feature of consciousness and not the visual system is because you experience the same things for hearing, touch, and to-a-lesser-extent smell.

Moving onto the scientific basis is much more difficult, in particular, you write:

> It makes sense to me that the conscious mind would be patterned on the functional model of the visual field which is much older and more fundamental.

This to me seems like an unjustified assertion. Although we have some neurological models of consciousness, none of them are at the level where where we can start to date them on an evolutionary scale.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, vision, consciousness
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# Question
Title: What percentage of systematic data starts to be considered random
There is a set of 100 different objects in a box. I pull out 99 of them randomly and place them on a table and ask a person to take a look, then I put all objects back into the box. After a short (5 minutes) interval I pull out another 99 random objects from the same box. The person is asked to say whenever an object is the same as it was before. If the missing object did not stand out from all others on the first go, then the person will answer that the objects are all the same.

How many objects should there be in the box and how many should be placed on a table, assuming there is an equal chance for every object to be pulled out, in order to trick the average person into thinking that all or almost all of the objects are different? What if the process is repeated 6 times, every 5 minutes, would it have any noticeable effect on the results?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Tests of randomness like (my favorite) Kolmogorov complexity will tell you how random those objects seem scientifically. (I'm not certain but I think your describing chaotic behavior rather than random behavior because the random objects can only be rearranged rather than replaced.)

Aside from mathematics this is an active area of psychological research. Those with disillusion illnesses like schizo typical often have the trouble identifying when a pattern is random. The sick brain seeking to bring the universe into order or create a new reality to match its broken perceptions deludes itself into believing that random events happen as per a control. This is called Pareidolia (when there is something which might vaguely resemble a pattern) and Apophenia (when the data is obviously random).

Your test would be measuring Pareidolia, Apophenia as well as Pattern recognition.

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Tags: measurement, memory, short-term-memory
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# Question
Title: Can we enter data at the speed of thought?
I have the subjective personal experience that the speed at which I can enter information in a computer through a keyboard is so slow and my thoughts "run" so fast, that I find it an especially frustrating experience to compose a text on a computer or do a translation.

Is there any research studying the effects of computer keyboard data entry speed compared to the speed at which thinking happens (or the speed of speech, the latter measurable) or just some paper elaborating on a correlation between the speed of data input and the subjective feeling of smooth mind work?

Maybe research with stenographers (supposed to be able to write at the speed of speech) would be a good direction? An article suggesting such correlation: (Plover, the Open Source Steno Program: Writing and Coding With Steno).

# Answer
> 2 votes
I am unfamiliar with such research. However, considering this from a User Interface design perspective, as well as from a cognitive perspective, I would add one bit of clarification to the question.

Can we enter data at the speed of organized thought?

If the limitations in user interface technology are overcome to the point where the input gate is no longer the limitation, it is quite possible that we would discover that our thought processes are so chaotic as to render the new technology virtually useless.

As support for this I would point out that sitting and typing a message, while slow, is already a method by which thoughts evolve into lucid communication.

# Answer
> 2 votes
You could compare with other kinds of communication limitations, or bottlenecks if you wish.

For example, one could have problems keeping up with his thoughts while speaking. This would causes some lacks of information and create a gap in the representations of the subject between the two interlocutors.

I think it's like the "lost idea" phenomenon, too much new information comes into consciousness and one cannot communicate efficiently enough to follow his "flow of ideas" while sharing.

Who knows, maybe you are faster with a pencil, or a paintbrush.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, io-psychology, motor
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# Question
Title: Correlation between anxiety/calmness and innovation development?
Is there any research or clues about whether anxious/calm people are more/less likely to be inventive / creative / develop innovations?

I am interested about this both on an individual and cultural (peoples) level.

# Answer
> 3 votes
*"Mr. Scott? We need more POWER!"* is the common call made to engineering from the bridge of the fictional Starship Enterprise. It seems common in science fiction for engineers to flourish under high amounts of pressure and overcome all odds. However this does not reflect reality.

For this answer I think it best to turn to Individual Psychology as the creative process is more about a person's preference and comfort than a series of predefined conditions or mental states. Creativity flourishes in certain environments. High gain/high anxiety reward based systems do not encourage creativity. Creative people can be taught to cope with the existence of a reward and overcome the pressure. Extrinsic motivation fosters competition and dependence on rewards which leads to performance anxiety. Intrinsic motivation leads to performance for one's own betterment at ones own pace and while it produces less results.

Depression, Bipolar and Schizophrenia are thought to be caused by stress and anxiety acting on a biological vulnerability. So creativity may be a response and outlet to the anxiety the illness or life causes for these individuals.

By themselves, artistic and creative people tend to experience higher anxiety and depression. However there are no conclusive causal relationships between depression and creativity. There have been stronger relationships between more serious mental illness like schizo typical and bipolar.

> A study looking at 300,000 persons with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or unipolar depression, and their relatives, found overrepresentation in creative professions for those with bipolar disorder as well as for undiagnosed siblings of those with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

-Creativity and mental disorder: family study of 300,000 people with severe mental disorder

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Tags: personality, anxiety, creativity
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# Question
Title: Structural descriptions of neuronal networks are important for understanding brain dysfunctions; which dysfunctions, in particular?
In a recent paper, we find this quote:

> The brain contains vast numbers of interconnected neurons that constitute anatomical and functional networks. **Structural descriptions of neuronal network elements and connections** make up the “connectome” of the brain (Hagmann, 2005; Sporns et al., 2005; Sporns, 2011), and **are important for understanding normal brain function and disease-related dysfunction**.

This quote is from the first paragraph in: T. B. Leergaard, C. C. Hilgetag and O. Sporns, *Mapping the connectome: multi-level analysis of brain connectivity*, Front. Neuroinform., 2012.

> **Question**: Understanding which dysfunctions, in particular, is aided by structural descriptions of neuronal networks?

# Answer
Stam et al. have carried out a functional connectivity study in patients with Alzheimer's Disease. I don't know if that answers your question at all. Connectomics is just starting to kick off. It's far from certain that they it will end up being a key player in functional neuropathology in the coming decades, but it's one out of many promising new avenues of research.
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neural-network, neurology
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# Question
Title: How can you gamify the recruitment of new employees?
We recently had a user on our site ask if they could add game mechanics to their employee recruitment. To be honest, I'm having a little trouble finding solutions for this. I'd really appreciate any insight you guys might have.

I guess my first question is, who would you incentivize for this, and how? Are there any case studies that cover a scenario like this?

# Answer
I would try to work on stimulating rejected candidates to become referrals.

Every candidate who has been rejected is already quite well into what the job is all about. S/he should be very good at explaining the job requirements. (The pitfall of the majority of job ads, IMHO is that they bitterly fail at explaining what the job is about.)

At the same time rejected candidates must be likely to know colleagues good for that job. And it is in their self-interest to promote those colleagues, because they would have less competition for all the other vacancies.
> 1 votes

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Tags: io-psychology, gamification
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# Question
Title: Do humans only dream of things they have actually witnessed/seen?
Is it necessary for humans to have dreams that only contain things they have witnessed/seen in their consciousness?

# Answer
> 4 votes
People often report dreaming about things that they have not experienced in the real world (e.g., monsters, flying, falling off a building).

With our own imagination while awake most people can visualise many things that they have never actually seen. It seems likely that dreams would be at least as flexible as our own imagination.

Videos, stories, images, and other media might inform this imagination. Likewise, in general, daily thoughts, emotions, and experiences are often weaved into dreams.

This is just a basic common sense answer. It takes for granted an information processing model of cognition that denies the existence of true psychic power in dreams. That said, a weak form of what might be labelled "psychic" or "premonitions" in dreams is still possible in the form of insight that was only first achieved in a dream. More deeply, it would be interesting to see another answer that compared the kinds of creative imagination exhibited in dreams relative to creative imagination while awake.

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Tags: dreams
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# Question
Title: Why do people get syllables mixed up when trying to recall words?
This question is related to this question. It could be a dupe, but I am more interested in whether this is a form of "dyslexic" thinking (for want of a better expression)?

I posted this question on SE English:

Antonym for ameliorate

Where I could not recall the word *deleterious* and was remembering it as: *detiliorate* (a non-existent word). I was miss remembering the order of the syllables. plus some other confusion.

* I was confusing the *de-le-terious* with *de-ti-liorate*, that is, I had inverted the "L" and "T" sounds in the syllables.

Why do people tend to get sounds mixed up in this way?
What is the process behind this?

# Answer
One way of thinking about speech production is using a spreading activation architecture. Say I want to produce the word "rooster." I have a meaning to be expressed (feathery avian animal loud...etc). These semantic representations send activation down to various matching words (bird, rooster, chicken...etc). As these words collect evidence for themselves, they send activation down to their corresponding sounds (bird sends activation to the sounds /b/, /r/, and /d/; rooster sends activation to /r/, /u/, /s/, /t/ ..etc). Once any node (word, sound..etc) receives enough evidence for itself, it is selected. There are nuances about how and when nodes become selected and how activation is passed, but this is the gist. In addition, there is noise in the system based on words that were previously said, upcoming words, words that are semantically related and so on. This noise introduces the possibility for speech errors. Some errors are more likely than others depending on the amount of evidence they have collected. For example, in the example I presented here, the /r/ sound got more activation than the other sounds because it is collecting activation because it appears once in the word 'bird' and twice in the word 'rooster.' This sound might be more or less likely to be produced erroneously compared to sounds like /s/. These error probabilities explain why we are more likely to make real word errors, and why tongue twisters are so tricky. See the following article for more information.

Dell, G. S. (1986). A spreading-activation theory of retrieval in sentence production. Psychological review, 93(3), 283.
> 4 votes

# Answer
No this is not dyslexia and depending on the frequency it can be normal or abnormal. Its called aphasia and in adults it may be triggered by many different things. The primary explanation for chronic Aphasia is brain damage as per Neurolinguistics. However your limited example of aphasia was more likely caused by anxiety, lack of sleep, low blood pressure, hypoglycemia or any of the myriads of things which cause cognitive process anomalies.

Bellow is Figure 54-3 from Disorders of Languages: The Aphasia which represents the process of language formation. It is my contention that in addition to permanent brain lesions temporary disruptions of pathways caused by abnormal states of neurochemicals, nutrients and electrical signals trigger symptoms which can only be quantified as aphasia or aphasia like as well. Evidence based medicine reflects this by listing aphasia as some of the symptoms for hypoglycemia especially in diabetes, sleep deprivation, anxiety, low blood pressure. Of course I must mention Alogia in schizo typical patients showing the long and brief psychotic episodes cause temporary aphasia as well.
> 0 votes

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Tags: memory, language
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