# Question
Title: Terminology for introvert's frustration after excessive social exposure
Does anyone know if there is a phrase or term that describes the frustration an introvert experiences when they have had too much social exposure and need to be alone?

As an analogy, I recently heard the phrase "hangry" used to describe the state of anger/irritability that some people suffer when they are hungry, and find it infinitely useful to instantly convey that state of emotion with a single phrase.

Having a similar phrase so that others know that a person isn't upset with them, but just needs to be alone would save me, and probably many other people, a lot of frustration.

# Answer
> 2 votes
This does not constitute a definitive answer, so I invite criticism and feedback.

I don't believe there is a specific term for this state, as energy management and the introversion/extroversion scale seem to be a somewhat recent area of focus. However, it seems reasonable to think that the feelings experienced by an over socialized introvert may be similar to experience of decision fatigue, which is when the quality of ones decisions worsen the more decisions they need to make.

Since socialization for introverts often requires more deliberate internal calculations than extroverts, decision fatigue and the experience you're seeking a name for might be cousins. As such, perhaps 'social fatigue' is a useful term.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I think of it as "over-stimulated" when I find myself in that situation. I haven't needed to use it with others but it strikes me as a positive expression - too much of a good thing.

---
Tags: social-psychology, emotion, personality, introversion
---


# Question
Title: How can I dream things that are impossible?
I remember having dreams whose contents were physically impossible, to the point that when I thought about them afterwards, I couldn't reconcile them with reality in a meaningful way, although when I dreamed them, they seemed to be logical and coherent with reality. The only example I can recall: I was climbing a set of stairs, and there was a large gap in the middle where there were no stairs, and logically I shouldn't have been able to cross from the bottom step to the top, and yet I did. When I think about it afterwards, I can only visualise this as some sort of cheap visual effect, by either teleporting between the two steps, or unnaturally distorting my limbs; but I remember that while dreaming, there was no such effect. It just worked.

How is it that I could dream something that is completely incoherent with reality, or completely impossible, that I can't fully reproduce in my head while awake?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Dreams aren't logical. Your mind is in a relaxed state when you dream. Thoughts become super-imposed and intertwined with each other.

Ideas and imagination is never directly related to interpretation. When you say you imagined stairs, it's actually your idea of stairs. It has no correlation to the real world at all. Your idea of stairs or empty space by themselves have no information related to how objects can physically move from one place to another. Therefore when your mind is being lazy and not focusing, concepts like logical physical movement can be ignored entirely.

We still don't know much about dreams that isn't still speculated about. These are some pretty good places to check out; How Stuff Works - Dreams, Wikipeia - Theories, The Scientific Study of Dreams

# Answer
> 1 votes
We do not know. Simply put, we do not understand the function and mechanism of dreams enough. Much talk about dreams are hypotheses based on our extremely limited understanding (see references in Josh's answer).

You think that you have dreamt of something that is impossible, therefore I think you are not asking "is it possible to dream of something that is impossible" but more asking, "what procedure/what things/drugs can I do/take before I go to sleep to have a dream that is impossible". As I said above, from a scientific point of view, we do not understand dreams enough to answer such a question.

However, many people may suggest that certain things/drugs make changes to dreams, abut these are anecdotal.

---
Tags: dreams
---


title: The psychology of nymphomania

text:
# Question
Title: The psychology of nymphomania
So this is a question that requires maturity and discretion. I present it as an authentic point of research for a class I am taking. I understand the basic principles of mania, psychomania, and manic episodes. However one thing that pops into question are possible explanations for nymphomania. To the scientific community I ask:

* Is the condition of nymphomania coupled as a symptom of mania?
* Or is it some kind of hormonal/biochemical imbalance that presents itself as it's own issue?
* Or is it just some addiction to the hormones released via copulation?

I am not referring to women or men with high sex drive, clearly nymphomania is in it's own class. I personally have postulated to my class that it is something that is coupled together with mania, or as a symptom of bipolar/mood disorder in patients that are not well controlled on their medications. My professor then instructed me to post it up here to gather knowledge and present it to my class at some point. Any thoughts and/or opinions must be clean and professional, any nasty/vulgar language will be reported.

# Answer
> 1 votes
::: It seems like you're trying to get to the root cause as either organic or functional? Maybe a bit of both. They jury will forever be out thus we have the stress-diathesis model for comfort. Here is some interesting discussion on the norm-referencing in assessment of manic behavior such as hypersexuality and the implications of various factors like gender. OOhh - this is a good one too actually- a very large study on the whole range of abnormal sexual activity.

In working with individuals who are hypersexualized, i've found that it's learned, it's reactive attachment gone awry...co-occurring borderline meets cyclic dysthmia.... it's never just hormone or just addiction. I have not looked at extreme cases really, though...

# Answer
> 1 votes
Mania and nymphomania are related in the same way that nut and donut are. In other words: don't let a partial homophony or possible common etymology fool you.

A mania is a psychiatric disorder that appears to be caused by overactivity of certain brain processes.

Nymphomania is currently not a recognized disorder in the DSM. It is, in the ICD-10 ("Hypersexuality"), and its inclusion in a future edition of the DSM is being discussed. This shows that there is disagreement about the status of nymphomania and hypersexuality and that scholars have not yet reached a clear understanding of the phenomenon.

One possible perspective is that hypersexuality is nothing but a possible symptom of certain different disorders, such as neurodegenerative diseases, autism, or bipolar disorder. It can be one symptom of a manic episode.

In this it is similar to coughing, which can be caused by a wide variety of causes, from particles in the healthy lung, to an infection, to psychological causes such as simple nervousness or a tic disorder. A cough is not a disease, and nymphomania is maybe not a disorder. It is a behavior which may by symptomatic for a disorder, but it may also be caused by a person's attitude, upbringing, life circumstances, and so on.

It may acutally be, by itself, just an extreme form of a completely healthy behavior, similar to people who need only four hours of sleep.

---
Tags: neuroscience, abnormal-psychology, sexuality
---


# Question
Title: About the Turing test and a Robot's psychology
If an A.I. system ( 'housed' in a Robotic exterior) actually passed the Turing test and was therefore 'functionally similar to the human 'mind-brain' would it also have the potential for information processing instability analogous to 'mental' problems in the mind-brain. ( Where the instabilities are not just because of information or important-definitions mismanagement but are also from info.-processing mismanagement.) Could one A.I system test another with the Turing Test and regard the other as an 'unstable', human , if the responses were sufficiently 'unstable' sounding? Could an A.I. system pretend through the Turing Test to be 'stupid' to another A.I. system?

# Answer
> 0 votes
Mental disorders, which are fundamentally undesirable phenomena, can be both environmentally and innately caused. There are both neurological components as well as environmental components almost exclusively sourcing from childhood.

In the same way, a "thinking machine" can have the same undesirable problems. I imagine the "neurological problems" would be tantamount to bugs in the original software and hardware malfunctions. Much more common would be the environmental causes, similarly in the AI's "childhood".

Human childhood is a very impressionable time. Love and proper care leads to healthy growth, proper perspectives of safety and danger, proper priorities leading to healthy adult human lives. Abuse and neglect lead to psychological malformations such as unhealthy concepts of danger, of self, of the meaning of love and family, etc.

Similarly, AI "childhood" will be the beginning period of discovery and learning (which may happen in R&D labs, rather than the real world, depending on the circumstances). While it's difficult to say what might cause malformations, it's safe to assume that improper training of the AI, just like improper raising of a human child, will result in odd, unpredictable, and undesired behavior.

As a note, this is all technically true for AI less sophisticated than "thinking", but the simpler it is, the easier it is to properly train and prevent hardware and fundamental software errors. For example, an AI that identifies pictures would show unpredictable and undesirable behavior if, for some reason, it was trained randomly (say, by using crowd-sourced training and being the victim of trolling). A 'thinking' AI would likewise have undesirable results if it were "abused" or never taught the value of, say, life. One, in that case, might easily end up with a "sociopathic" AI.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-modeling
---


# Question
Title: How cognitive science explain the stylistic convention in text writing?
Some researchers and writers published books about this topic: how the psychology influence the taste of the readers.

It's very intuitive that the word choice matters when we want to be persuasive, capture the listener's attention or simply avoid to hurt him. The importance of the presentation is clear to the human kind since thousand of years, but only with the psychological studies we have clearer some influences of a speech which are counterintuitive.

To better clarify the topic: trying to help someone may hurt his self-esteem if he interpret our attempt like a statement of superiority.

Now I was looking at this revision, which I put also here for easyness: https://academia.stackexchange.com/posts/29363/revisions

The last part which was deleted contained an opinion which was slightly critical. Another user deleted it. We may some reasons to agree with his behavior but this is the point. Why do we agree on his revision? Why human being living in different countries developed the same beliefs about focusing the discussion on xxx and rejecting yyy.

Pscychology somehow teached us that beliefs are not absolute as everyone would think of his one. So, if every convention was caused by something. The convention related to the definition of rethoric and dialectic should be deep into the human brain structure.

NLP is not a science, however are there serious books to study about communication seen in a scientific way?

**Why are that kind of sentences (the one expressing polemical opinions) rejected by most of people?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
I don't think there is a stylistic convention in text writing that prevent the expression of an opinion. There are countless texts expressing a subjective view or controversial points. The example you picked up is somehow very specific to academia.stackexchange.com.

The website explicitly tries to prevent the expression of an opinion - see https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask about the possible reasons for a question to be flagged (and removed) as `primarily opinion-based` \- e.g. a rant in disguise. This rule echoes the way science is made of - facts and interpretation -, especially in its formal way of communication. Researchers sometimes express an opinion in an article but it is usually advertised as such - see the specific section called "opinions" in the journal Trends in Cognitive Science for example.

In the case of the removed sentence, I guess that the reviewer relied on "I would prefer" and "my opinion" to build his/her opinion.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology
---


# Question
Title: What's the major difference between mind and brain?
I am preparing a presentation on "Mind Reading Computer", and all articles that I came across were focused on reading interpretations from brain through sensors. Articles like this clearly show a distinction between them, but from an engineering perspective, I need scientific facts. Does "mind reading computer" imply "brain reading computer", or does the term "mind" have totally a different meaning in the context? Any help and facts relating to the topic will be highly appreciated!

# Answer
Sure, to some extent mind reading implies brain reading. For instance, if you were reading someone's mind by their behavior or their heart rate, it would be through their brain's effect on those organs. We largely do this through inference. Without a heart monitor or perspiration monitor, we have whole sections of brain dedicated to recognizing human faces and interpreting emotions and we tend to automatically assume things that look like us think and feel like us. This can be helpful for mind reading, but it can also lead to misconceptions, because not everyone responds the same way to stimuli. Some people laugh to cope with tragedy, some people cry. Additionally, some people use deceitful facial expressions to hide their feelings.

But the brain is a physical object, whereas the concept of the mind is more obfuscated. Some people emphasize the experiential aspects of the mind (phenomenology or subjective experience), while others emphasize the functional aspect of the mind (function, cognition). There is still a lot of arguing left to do over what "mind" means, whereas we can pretty much all agree what a brain is. So they're not the same thing.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Wikipedia is often a good place to start for basic questions like these. Wikipedia has separate pages devoted to the mind, the brain, and even the mind–body problem, which is one example of the many theoretical challenges implied by the distinctions between "mind" and "brain". Simply stated:

* The brain is a physical organ. It's entirely possible that much of its structure has relatively little bearing on the nature of the mind. For instance, glial cells are more numerous than neuronal cells. Glial cells play a relatively more supportive function than neurons, the direct functions of which may be more closely related than glial cells' to the functions of what we consider to constitute the mind.
* Wikipedia describes the mind as, "The set of cognitive faculties that enables consciousness, perception, thinking, judgement, and memory." Google offers this primary definition: "The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought." Neither of these definitions directly necessitate a physical substrate such as the brain. However, The Free Dictionary's primary definition includes the phrase, "Originates in the brain." These differences belie the controversiality of the term itself, as does @KeeganKeplinger's helpful answer.
* Wikipedia's mind page has a section dedicated to its relation to the brain. This section mentions the mind–brain problem, as well as three philosophical stances on the problem:
    + Materialism: briefly, that there is no valid distinction, and all mental activities have neural bases
    + Idealism: essentially that all physical objects and processes are truly mental in nature
    + Dualism: that the mind exists somewhat independently of the brain and body, possibly as an aspect or property of the spirit or soul

Thus a simple answer would be that "mind" does imply "brain" for many if not most audiences, but some may opine that these are different (though probably not *totally* different) entities. Arguably the best approach would be to tailor your word choice to suit whichever entity your computer concept proposes to read most directly.
> 5 votes

# Answer
In many languages, there is no word similar in meaning to the English word *mind*. In my opinion that fact illustrates an inherent problem with the scientific use of that word: that *mind* does not even denote a unified concept at all.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the following current meanings of *mind*, among others (http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/118732):

```
I. Senses relating to memory.
    1. The state of being remembered; remembrance, recollection.
    3. That which is remembered, a memory.

II. Senses relating to thought.
    * The action of thinking or the occurrence of a thought, idea, or intuition.
    ** Intention or wish.
    *** Inclination.
    **** Opinion or judgement.

IV. Mental or psychic faculty.
    19.
        a.
            (a) The seat of awareness, thought, volition, feeling,
                and memory; cognitive and emotional phenomena and
                powers considered as constituting a presiding influence;
                the mental faculty of a human being (esp. as regarded
                as being separate from the physical); (occas.) this
                whole system as constituting a person's character or
                individuality.
        c. Freq. in theistic (esp. Christian) contexts: transcendent
           intelligence, rationality, or being, esp. that seen as
           initiating or controlling the universe.
    21.
        a. A person's cognitive, rational, or intellectual powers;
           the intellect; esp. as distinguished from the emotions,
           and freq. opposed to heart

```

As you can see, ***mind* can take on almost any meaning relating to mental processes, from memory, to feeling, to thought, to attention.**

## *Mind* is not a useful scientific term and should be avoided in research literature.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Modern neuroscience has left behind the notion of mind-brain separation. Neuroscientists typically accept that everything from our breathing to our emotions and the complex sense of "self" that we have is a product of our brains. We have yet to discover exactly how/when/why the "mind" emerged from the brain, but we do know that most of our mental processing happens unconsciously.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Short answer: Mind and brain are the same system, and reading the mind is just a matter of a) knowing which brain states represent the (more abstract) 'mind' information you are trying to read, and b) being able to monitor these states with appropirate technology.

Long answer: what is to some extent right when he/she says that "mind" is not a scientifically useful term - it adds no explanatory value to our conceptions of mental function. However, since the brain is a complex biological system that can be described on many levels, it can be useful to make a distinction between the higher ones and the lower ones - the brain sciences (neuroscience, neurology, biology, biological psychology, etc.) are different enough from the mind sciences (psychology, cognitive science, etc.). The main way in which they are different is that they describe cognition on a more abstract level - the properties that psychology describes emerge from the underlying biological structure. So, in a practical sense, it may be useful to keep the term "mind" to describe these higher-level sciences. Furthermore, one could argue the so-called "dual-aspect monism" position - mind and brain are (obviously) the exact same system, but one can view them from two different perspectives - objectively and subjectively. Scientists who study the brains of bats, for example, will never *feel* what it is like to be a bat. This is the reason some researchers say we should correlate objective data with subjective data for a complete pictures of how the brain works. For a theoretical overview of how such a position fits into brain science, see http://www.igpp.de/english/tda/pdf/dualaspect.pdf.
> 0 votes

# Answer
The brain is a physical object whereas the mind is an abstract entity consisting of thoughts. There is a mapping between the two which works bilaterally,each one can influence the other. A mind reading computer would receive its inputs in physical form and would then map out the mind by using the corelations between the two. These corelations would be complex sensory inputs to the brain can influence the mind but the mind also receives inputs of a non sensory kind which can influence the brain. If it is hardware and software analogy then we are dealing with a software which changes the hardware.
> 0 votes

# Answer
I would like to equate the brain with computer hardware while equating the mind with the software. Interestingly the brain executes the steps or the perceptional aspects of human thinking while the mind interacts with the world and changes, alters and re-configures ones perceptions and operational brain functions. For example when one is interacting with the outside world the same scene or stimuli may have different brain response under the depressed state of mind while it may be totally opposite when in an elated state. So the plasticity of the brain can change by the operations of the mind. So how do we define mind, simply said it is the collective contribution of ones memory of past experiences, current state of being and the relationship between the two, while resolving the current perception.
> -1 votes

# Answer
I think hardware and software are both brain-the matter and function. Mind decides what you use it for, and is based on your learning based on experiences. The learning is not only over one life but continues and is updated. I think the gist of learning is in the soul and is updated based on new experiences. I think soul is software for learning with Data/information (learning) and has also a java like program that enables updating of the laerning. It also has rules - soul can only be in a living organism, hence leaves at death. the program also calculates the frequency ( to define how much you have learned and zero frequency means you have learnt the Truth). At death, the soul leaves the body and keeps wandering, until it finds a body being born that has a matching frequency in it's previous life and the other soul lodges in it. The soul when it leaves one body goes just like a wireless cell phone. my hypothesis- not proven but scientifically plausible. Kul razdan
> -1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, consciousness
---


# Question
Title: does getting top marks and ranks in school or college make one intelligent?
Please do not discuses about IQ tests that have problems like: 2,4,8,16,... what is the next number? having the answer as 32, because one can relate any number of random numbers mathematically! Whenever I ask this question to someone they would just say: yes! getting top marks and ranks in school or college does make one intelligent because they could just score a top rank in IQ tests!

This paradox about such IQ tests not being correct can obviously be reasoned, but are top rank holders in proper subjects at school or college more intelligent than the rest of the students?

I agree upon the fact that there can be diverse definitions for the word "intelligent". The definition I use for the term intelligent is: a person who has the ability to learn any kind of subject that involves reasoning and extend his abilities to be able to develop that subject\**; time frame is not a problem in my definition. To be elegant, I believe that one who has the ability to learn and research on any subject is intelligent. I do not consider people who could do stuff any computer program can do, as the existence of an algorithm to solve that task makes that task less imaginative but could involve high calculation ability (a weight lifter is different from a martial artist) . Scientists haven't achieved human level intelligence in machines and that makes me set machines as my reference point for intelligence.

please provide references enough to convince me and others on your answer.

\*lets imagine relating a series 2,4,8,16,111; to do this we would first have to define a 5th degree polynomial with unknown coefficient values. equate: $f(1) = 2, f(2) = 4,...f(5) =111$. Its obviously possible to solve and get 4 values for each coefficients and the rest 2 coefficients end up being linearly related to each other (substitute any value other than zero for one and get the other). So hence you have a polynomial relating 2,4,8,16,111!

\**when I say "develop that subject" I do not mean writing books and teaching, but I refer to the method of using one's creativity to enlighten themselves on the deepest regions of that subject.

P.S. also please suggest the best possible ways to measure one's intelligence.

# update:

could you also please explain why we rely on tests that do not have defined answers to its questions *for measuring one's IQ*? Whenever I see a question that first gives a series like 2, 4, 6, 8. ? and ask for the missing number, I would be tempted to write 15356346546434 instead of 10 and form a polynomial relation that expresses the term in the series given its term number (like $f(n)$ would express the $n^{th}$ term).

I have also seen IQ question papers with questions that has a star drawn on with random numbers displayed within each blank loop we find within the star and a question mark in one of the blank loops which asks for the answer. Even they have arbitrary answers.

# Answer
> 5 votes
I think you have three core questions:

1. What is true intelligence and how can it be measured?
2. To what extent does school performance correlate with true intelligence?
3. To what extent does school performance cause true intelligence to change?

Intelligence tests provide the best known means to measure general cognitive ability. There is a huge literature on intelligence tests. Good intelligence tests will generally sample from a wide range of cognitive domains (e.g., verbal, spatial, numerical, etc.). The literature on intelligence tests shows them to be a strong predictor of a wide range of important life outcomes.

So in essence, I reject your assumption that seems to dismiss the validity of intelligence tests. Over a hundred years of research and thousands of studies tell a rich story about the inter-correlation of different ability tests and their correlations with variables like educational performance, work performance, and many other variables. The review by Neisser et al (1996) is an excellent introduction to this literature.

I think this existing question on the correlation between GPA and IQ provides a reasonable answer to your question about the association between school performance and intelligence. In short, there is a very strong correlation between the two variables.

The final question is actually very interesting. I.e., what is the causal effect of education on intelligence? and what is the effect of a student applying additional effort to their education on intelligence?

I'm not as familiar with literature evaluating the causal question. The default assumption given the stability of intelligence and the plausible causal mechanisms is that intelligence causes school performance.

That said, education must on some level cause forms of intelligence to develop. My sense is that interventions targeted at increasing intelligence have generally not had sustained success. Also, twin studies generally show a negligible correlation between adopting parent intelligence and child intelligence, which also reinforces the strong role of genetics. There may also be differences between education increasing domain specific knowledge as opposed to increasing general intelligence.

## References

* Neisser, Ulrich; Boodoo, Gwyneth; Bouchard, Thomas J.; Boykin, A. Wade; Brody, Nathan; Ceci, Stephen J.; Halpern, Diane F.; Loehlin, John C.; Perloff, Robert; Sternberg, Robert J.; Urbina, Susana (1996). "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns". American Psychologist. 51:77–101.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Your definition of intelligence ("...the ability to learn and research on any subject...") is exactly what IQ tests measures; general abstraction and reasoning ability. A nice article about the validity of IQ and the flimsy scientific basis of multiple intelligences. **That is surely the best way to measure intelligence.** However, IQ tests aren't completely fair - studies have shown that education can influence IQ. That's why most IQ tests use people of comparable education as your reference group. Furthermore, not all IQ tests are created equal - some emphasize memory (recall) more, for instance. Someone with eidetic memory would obviously have an advantage in these cases that shouldn't be attributed to the ability to abstract or reason. There are also abilities that can arguably be dissociated from IQ which matter in academic pursuits (i.e. "enlightening oneself in the deepest region of a subject"). One of these is rationality. Another is personal motivation - lazy people generally achieve less.

---
Tags: social-psychology, learning, measurement, reference-request
---


title: Brain after (electrical) blackout

text:
# Question
Title: Brain after (electrical) blackout
I was wondering what happens if we lose all electrical impulses in our nervous system for a minimum amount of time. So first of all it is obvious that we will break together, as we are dead while we are in black out state, but I am interesting in the "afterwards". I could also put it this way: Is our brain like a RAM or a Harddrive? So, if we have a complete elec. blackout, is our memory erased? Or is our consciousness based soly on the synapsis in our brain and does not care about the electrical state?

# Answer
> I was wondering what happens if **we** lose all electrical impulses in our nervous system for a minimum amount of time... if we have a complete elec. blackout, is our memory erased? Or is our consciousness based soly on the synapsis in our brain and does not care about the electrical state?

If "we" includes other animals down to frogs, then the answer may be that the structure could survive. springer.com/article

> Preparations with chronically implanted electrodes showed that there are periods during which no electrical activity is present in the brain of intact, non-anesthetized frogs sitting unconstrained in water in a jar. The activity appeared immediately upon stimulation.
>
> The results obtained confirm the suggestion of I. M. Sechenov that the electrical activity of the brain occurs either reflexly, or is due to direct effects on the brain. Without such effects, there is no electrical activity.

As in a flash drive, there should be a distinction between "electrical potential" and "electrical activity"

An "older" part of our brain is named **reptilian** and extrapolation from the frog would be tempting. I have no background in biology, but since animal models are generally accepted, would say that we may well be the same unless evidence shows us to be different.

To support this intuitively: an instant view of electrical state of our brain would contain many fewer bits of information than the topology of its whole network. paul\_wi11iams
> 2 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, memory, consciousness
---


# Question
Title: What background is required to understand the book "Principles of Neural Science"?
What is the necessary background to read this book and comprehend it? I've taken Calc I-II, Chem 1A and Bio 1A. Is this enough?

# Answer
I think you should reverse your approach. Rather than trying to find every prerequisite, start reading sections of PNS and as you encounter something you don't understand, look up the background information. It's an exhaustive work (and well worth reading!) but you're going to find different sections require different levels of background. For example, the section on ion channels requires a bit of E&M physics, and the section(s) on neurotransmitters will make more sense with some basic organic chem.

If you get through some of it and feel like you need more of the basics, a book like Bear's is a bit more accessible.

There's another version of Kandel (it's probably older than you are, but your library might be able to get it) that takes a slower approach.
> 5 votes

# Answer
Basic concepts of biochemistry and some knowledge of general biology (mainly, general cytology) are sufficient (Chem1A and Bio1A would be fine); some specific chapter requires a little more advanced knowledge of molecular biology and human physiology, but nothing "over the top".
> 1 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience
---


# Question
Title: Is cortisol an effective measure of stress for pre and post task performance?
I have a teleoperation system and I want to see how much stress a person is under before during and after operating it. I thought cortisol would be a correlate of stress. Can I measure levels rapidly, say over minutes, and detect an appreciable difference?

Is there a better way? How?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I don't think measuring serum cortisol levels would be a great method of testing for stress. It is expensive, painful, and the results are difficult to interpret. Salivary levels might be better, but this would also be expensive.

To actually determine the effect of stress on cortisol levels, you would need to control for variables including (but not limited to): age, gender, sex steroid levels, pregnancy, lactation, smoking, coffee and alcohol use, diet, level of exercise, genetic factors and habituation to repeated psychosocial stress exposures.\[1\]

An easier and less costly method would be before and after blood pressure and heart rate measurements.

\[1\] Why do we respond so differently? Reviewing determinants of human salivary cortisol responses to challenge? Psychoneuroendocrinology Volume 34, Issue 1, January 2009, Pages 2-18

---
Tags: neuroscience
---


# Question
Title: What is the best short (i.e., roughly 20 item) measure of Big Five personality?
What is the best short set of 20 questions that can give meaningful information about a person's big five personality? In case that's not possible with 20 questions, what's the minimum and where do I find such a set of questions?

# Answer
In most cases, increasing the number of items on a personality test will increase the reliability of measurement (see the Spearman-Brown formula). Thus, there is a trade-off between test length and reliability.

There are several 10 item measures of the Big 5. Notably, the TIPI and BFI-10 (Rammstedt et al, 2007). However, I would strongly discourage anyone from using a 10 item measure unless you are severely limited in time.

My feeling is that around 10 items per measure (i.e., 50 items in total) starts to give you quite good reliability and allows for breadth in item measurement. Many standard measures of the Big 5 that are not trying to measures facets within the Big 5 are around this length (e.g., NEO-FFI, IPIP 50 item, etc.), although 100 items will of course have benefits for reliability. See this answer for suggestions of additional scales.

So in some respects 20 to 25 items is a middle ground between too short and a good length. I would only use such a scale if time constraints were a major factor. You might want to have a look at the Mini-IPIP (Donnelan et al 2006). It's a 20 item measure based on the IPIP.

### References

* Donnellan, M.B., Oswald, F.L., Baird, B.M., & Lucas, R.E. (2006). The mini-IPIP scales: Tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality. Psychological Assessment, 18, 192-203.
* Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the big-five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37(6), 504-528. doi: 10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1
* 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

---
Tags: measurement, personality, test
---


# Question
Title: Pupillometry: how long needs the pupil to respond towards an cognitive stimuli?
I would like to know if somebody could give me some references on the latency of the pupil response after a cognitive stimulus.

I know that the light reflex is quite fast compared to cognitive stimulation, but I could not find more information than this. Does anyone know how long it takes the pupil to react toward a cognitive task? Or a good reference where I could read it on my own?

# Answer
> 1 votes
What are you trying to do? If you're trying to leverage pupil-dilation data from an eye-tracker, there are ways to deconvolute the timeseries if you can make a strong inference as to exactly when the stimulus of interest took place.

I think you'll find everything you're looking for here.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, vision, eye-movement
---


# Question
Title: What is an example of a learning machine that achieves zero variance?
I'm attempting to find an example of a learning machine/neural network that achieves zero variance, but I am having a hard time finding an example anywhere.

**Variance** is defined as the generalization error for a neural network or in other words the difference between the learning function derived from a specific sample and the function derived from all training samples.

Does anyone know an example that they can share? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

# Answer
First, a definition, which is basically what you said but refers to elements in the domain of the function: "A learning algorithm has high variance for a particular input x if it predicts different output values when trained on different training sets." So, in order to have zero variance, the machine/NN must output the exact same value for x across training sets. The only way to achieve zero variance with respect to all possible x is if you have a constant (non-learning) machine/NN (because then it will trivially maintain its output/function), or if you have training samples perfectly sampled from the same (computable in your machine/NN!) function without noise. An example of such training data would be samples consisting of elements (x,y) all sampled from the same linear function. However, in most real world applications this won't be the case. Furthermore, it isn't necessarily advisable to minimise variance because you will overgeneralize (assume a function for the underlying distribution that is too simple).

Source:

S. Geman, E. Bienenstock, and R. Doursat (1992). Neural networks and the bias/variance dilemma. Neural Computation 4, 1–58.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network
---


# Question
Title: Which equation is Ebbinghaus's forgetting curve and what do the constants represent?
First off, I've come across two different forgetting curve equations.

$$R = e^{-\large \frac{t}{s}}$$ where $R$ is retention, $t$ is time and $s$ is strength can be found on Wikipedia. And $$b = \frac{100k}{c\log(t) +k}$$ where $b$ is retention, $t$ is time, $k = 1.48$ and $c = 1.25$, can be found in Ebbinghaus's study chapter 7. I've also seen it here and here also.

My first question is which forgetting curve is correct? And if both or the latter is, where did the constants $k$ or $c$ come from? What do they represent?

# Answer
The question *which of these two descriptions is correct?* is perhaps natural in the context of, say, someone studying for an examination. Epistemologists might suggest that a better formulation would be is *either* of these correct?

However, as stated here there are clear reasons for preferring the first formulation to the second. I shall first explain why, and then attempt to reconstruct a more useful form for the second approach.

By substituting the value $t=0$, a time value (however the time variable is scaled) at which we would expect retention to be a maximum, we obtain: $$ R\_0 = 1 \\ b\_0 = 0 $$ Another peculiarity of the second equation is that if $T=0.4297...$ we have: $$ b\_T = \pm \infty $$ The latter is shorthand for the fact that as $t$ approaches $T$ from below then $b\_t \rightarrow -\infty$, whilst $b$ then flips to $+\infty$ as soon as $t \gt T$ and thereafter decreases.

The factor of $100$ in the numerator of the fraction in equation $2$ suggests this was intended to be adapted to percentage correct, and should be dropped to make the two formulations more easily comparable.

The least changed version of eq. $2$ which makes some kind of sense would be: $$ R\_t = \frac1{1 + a \\; ln(1+ \lambda t)}$$

This yields $R\_0 = 1$, whilst $R\_t$ is now a convex, strictly decreasing function of $t$. Surely both of these features are desiderata for *any* expression for retention.

Note that now (what we may term) model $1$ ($M1$) is a 1-parameter model, whereas $M2$ has two parameters, which might be preferred for an empirical data-fitting exercise. Both models have a linear approximation for small values of the time variable, namely:

$$ (M1) \\; \\; \\; R\_t = 1 -\frac{t}{s} $$

$$(M2) \\; \\; \\; R\_t = 1 - a \lambda t $$

So that we require $ \frac1s = a \lambda$ for compatibility. This suggests that a more useful form of $M2$, retaining the *strength* factor from the first model, is: $$ R\_t = \frac1{1 + \frac1{\lambda s} ln(1 + \lambda t)}$$

Where now $\lambda$ is clearly seen to be a *scaling factor* which must be applied to both variables, time and strength. This is perhaps a slight conceptual clarification, since the intervening variable *strength* is shown to be *dimensionally equivalent to time*. A strong memory is one that lasts for years, whereas, with the possible exception of the type of mnemonist studied by Professor Luria, few of Ebbinghaus' experimental subjects would retain any memory of his deliberately unmemorable nonsense syllables after the passage of more than a few weeks.

This observation also has a bearing on experimental methodology. Some nonsense syllables might be more memorable for a given subject - for example if, by chance, the syllable happened to match the subject's own initials etc. Such effects should, however, merely contribute a small addition of random noise to the experimental data.
> 10 votes

# Answer
Here is the illustrate of both equation

To make them visible at same time, I changed 100 to 1 and set memory strength as 1. They look alike.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: memory, cognitive-modeling, mathematical-psychology
---


# Question
Title: How are these review-forgetting curve calculated?
I saw quite some illustration about how reviewing helps remembering. Like:

SOURCE: http://www.mentormegate.com/wordpress/2014/06/10/mentor-me-gate-the-forgetting-curve/

I wonder how are these calculated? Are there reliable sources of the data?

# Answer
While I can't speak about the specific graph in question, I can explain the process of obtaining an empirical estimate of a forgetting curve.

The basic process is (1) collect data; (2) model and graph data.

### Collecting data

A standard design would involve a set of participants completing an initial learning exercise (e.g., a word list; a set foreign language words with meanings; a set of facts; etc.). Participants would then be given a recognition task to measure proportion of facts remembered (e.g., a recall task; a recognition task, etc.). The recognition task would then be repeated at various intervals (e.g., after a few minutes, a day, a week, a month).

### Model and graphing

You could then graph mean performance (i.e., proportion correct) on the recognition task at each time point (i.e., baseline and various follow-up time points).

A typical forgetting curve involves a monotonic reduction in recall over time where the rate of forgetting slows and recall approaches an asymptote. See for example Averell and Heathcote (2011) for discussion of power and exponential functions of forgetting.

You could then use the lines of best fit to interpolate points between the measured time points.

### Comments on review and forgetting curves

There is research that looks at the combination of practice and forgetting and the resulting memory consolidation that occurs through spaced practice. See for example Pavlik and Anderson (2005). The general finding is that (a) people forget over time; (b) revision restores recall; (c) forgetting is less after second and subsequent revisions.

Thus, the basic idea implied by the graph that spaced revision improves longer term recall is supported by research.

The smooth increase shown in the plot is incorrect. Presumably revision would be a relatively short and discrete event (i.e., perhaps 20 minutes) which leads to an abrupt increase in recall. Furthermore, the size of the gains achieved by repeated practice would depend on a range of other factors and may not be as great as implied by the graph.

### References

* Averell, L., & Heathcote, A. (2011). The form of the forgetting curve and the fate of memories. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 55(1), 25-35.
* Pavlik, P. I., & Anderson, J. R. (2005). Practice and Forgetting Effects on Vocabulary Memory: An Activation‐Based Model of the Spacing Effect. Cognitive Science, 29(4), 559-586.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: memory
---


# Question
Title: Why do we see unknown people and places in dreams?
People often see unknown things, places, and people in their dreams.

How is it possible to have such perceptions in our dreams that go beyond our actual experiences and memories?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The mind/brain imagines things in a very uncontrolled way when we're asleep, and it basically does this by using various stimuli (sights/sounds/etc.) we've experienced before and combining them in expected or unexpected ways. By "expected" I mean that we may recall a known/real person in our dreams from memory, and by "unexpected" I mean that we may randomly piece together an imaginary person from various memories. As far as I know, there is very little conclusive research about why we dream what we dream (which is often unrealistic) - however, there are a few theories. The most popular (experimentally tested!) one is that we dream to consolidate memories. Accordingly, our dreams are often about the day's events - but reimagined by the brain in often very weird ways. So, for example, if one plays Tetris for a few hours before sleeping, one might have dreams with block-like shapes and falling-like movement. In general, it is very hard to predict what a person will dream, and it seems to be a relatively random reactivation of various connections between stimuli we've experienced previously. Some research suggests that we recombine 'pieces' of memories in creative ways during sleep because it might help inductive thinking/insight. A tentative suggestion is that dreams somehow help the brain predict things it hasn't experienced yet.

---
Tags: dreams, philosophy-of-mind
---


# Question
Title: Is there anything in Freudian psychoanalytic theory that is scientifically sound?
I guess this question is quite context dependent, and here in Sweden there is a general movement for more evidence-based psychology. I *think* one of our biggest medical universities recently abandoned psychodynamics in favour of a more empirical approach to the field. In this general context it feels like it often happens that Freud and his work gets ridiculed and seen as pseudo-science by a lot of people.

I have only a basic knowledge and overview in the field, but I have to confess that I currently subscribe to the pseudo-science view of Freud's work as well. Is there anything he proposed or accomplished that actually has a sound scientific basis? Have there been any studies providing empirical support for freudian psychoanalytic concepts that I can use to form a critical view of his work which is more balanced and fact-dependent?

# Answer
> 13 votes
Freudian psychology (and it's derivatives) are indeed pseudoscience, by and large. That said, Freud was arguably the first to systematically theorize and study human behavior and cognition, and in so doing laid the foundation for the scientific study of psychology. It's generally useful for the purpose of such discussions to distinguish between Freudian *psychoanalysis* and Freudian *psychodynamics*. The latter is generally sound though embryonic to the point of near-uselessness to contemporary students (except of course, from a historical perspective). As such, there are concepts in Freud's work that have been scientifically validated.

The basic premise that we're unaware of the majority of our mental processes, for example, is perfectly valid. More generally, the idea that behavior is the sum of concrete biological forces (what Freud called *psychic energy*) has been substantiated by quantitative evidence time and time again. Once again, the problem is that it's very superficial and hand-wavy by modern standards, not to mention its propensity to be severely abused.

Modern attachment theory, that is, the idea that emotional bonds are an essential part of infant development, also very clearly originates with Freud.

Most interestingly, IMHO, is the concept of defense mechanisms. Indeed the study of psychology and cognitive science has been impeded for years because of an over-reliance on subjective self-report. Thanks to Freud, we recognize that people can be unaware of their own misrepresentations of fact.

It's actually quite difficult to find a nook of cognitive science that hasn't been positively influenced by Freudian psychology in some meaningful way. Freud got many things right, but wasn't very concerned with establishing the validity of his claims. In practical terms, this means that studying Freud from a historical perspective will be quite informative, but one will have a hard time applying his theories directly to modern research or therapy. And of course, there are a significant number of Freudian claims that have been positively disproven in all but the most metaphorical sense (the general "death wish" comes readily to mind).

Another way to look at this is as a modeling problem. Freudian psychology proposes a number of models of how the human psyche works, most notably the Id/Ego/Superego hierarchy. At the time, this was a very useful model, but it has since been supplanted by better models that better predict behavior. This having been said, Freud's groundwork is readily visible: everybody agrees that automatic non-conscious processing occurs and that it influences conscious perception. Similarly, it's well known that top-down influences of expectation, cultural bias or attention can affect conscious processing. In this sense, the Id/Ego/Superego model is alive and well... it's just been refined a **great** deal.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Hard question to answer. Some of his ideas appear to have found little in the way of experimental support, some of his ideas are at present untestable, some have been supported by experimental studies. The late psychometrician Paul Kline conducted a number of studies and found mixed results. I can recommend his book on Freudian theory and psychology. He breaks down Freud's theory into various hypotheses and examines each to see what is supported and what isn't.

Some of Kline's research:

One of his books on Freudian theory:

---
Tags: reference-request, psychoanalysis
---


# Question
Title: Does the heart play a role in the occurrence of emotions?
It is a common belief that the heart is somehow related to emotions. When we are nervous,our heartbeat is effected (increased heart rate) and when we are happy, another pattern in heart function can be observed.

My question is the following. Does the heart have a significant role in the occurence of emotions, or is it that the heart is just an organ that pumps blood and these physiological changes are merely a by-product of processes relevant to emotion?
Is the heart's function of interest to any cognitive scientific field of study?

# Answer
> 3 votes
As it has been pointed in the other answers and the comments, the heart is indeed only an organ that pumps blood and all the processes responsible for emotions are carried out by the brain. However, the heart and generally the autonomous nervous system is of critical importance to somatic theories of emotion. These theories propose that bodily responses in the presence of a certain stimulus, initiate emotional processing. However, it is not that the heart, for instance, creates an emotion. It is the brain that notices any significant physiological changes like the heart rate being increased and makes an interpretation of this internal state taking into account the available stimuli. This idea originates with William James' theory of emotion but it was also incorporated in more recent approaches like the somatic marker hypothesis by Antonio Damasio.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Emotions are attached to heart.

Eg. if you feel scared in dangerous situation, sympathetic part of autonomic nervous system is activated. It increases heart rate and then blood flow to brain is elevated. More blood transports more oxygen and then brain functions better.

---
Tags: emotion, physiology
---


# Question
Title: Reference request in Circuit and Signals for Computational Neuroscience
In the area of computational neuroscience, there are basic theories from electric circuits and signal processing to be applied. For background study, which reference will be more suitable ?

Personally, I don't have any background knowledge in circuit, or signals.

(Cited by Dayan's book in Theoretical Neuroscience)

"Circuits, Signals and Systems" , William M. Siebert

This book seems contains both electric circuits and signal processing, but maybe not from the ground.

Or combination or following two books

"Signals and System", Oppenheim

"Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits", Agarwal

These two are much heavier than Siebert's, they are good ones, but is it necessary to thoroughly read these two complete detailed books for computational neuroscience ?

# Answer
> 3 votes
*Signals and System* by Oppenheim (and others) was developed while he was teaching 6.003 at MIT. Similarly *Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits* by Agarwal (and others) was developed while he was teaching 6.002 at MIT. *Circuits, Signals and Systems* by Siebert was written while he was teaching at MIT. Siebert was before my time, but I believe 6.002 and 6.003 where separate even when he was teaching and that despite the name, there is not much circuits in the book. I would suggest the Oppenheim book over the Siebert book, purely because it is newer, but unless you have an EE background, there are probably better references.

# Answer
> 0 votes
If you don't have a strong background in circuits & signals, I highly recommend:

Circuits, Signals, and Systems for Bioengineers: A MATLAB-Based Introduction (Biomedical Engineering) by John Semmlow (Mar 21, 2005).

You can also grab some Schaum's Outlines along the way if you want added practice. And if you enjoy the circuits section, grab an electronics kit at Makershed or Pololu.

---
Tags: reference-request, theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network, signal-detection
---


title: Concept maps. What exactly they are?

text:
# Question
Title: Concept maps. What exactly they are?
I would like you to recommend me a definitive book about concept maps. I've been taking a look to a wide variety but none of them seemed clear to me.

# Answer
From wikipedia :

> A concept map or conceptual diagram is a diagram that depicts suggested relationships between concepts. It is a graphical tool that designers, engineers, technical writers, and others use to organize and structure knowledge.
>
> A concept map typically represents ideas and information as boxes or circles, which it connects with labeled arrows in a downward-branching hierarchical structure. The relationship between concepts can be articulated in linking phrases such as *causes, requires, or contributes to*.

The technique was first developed in 1970's by Joseph D. Novak. You can try one of his books e.g. Learning, Creating, and Using Knowledge: Concept Maps as Facilitative Tools in Schools and Corporations
> 1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology
---


# Question
Title: Cognitive bias - Confirming the attitudes of your peers
Is there a well-studied cognitive bias that describes a situation in which a person expresses a positive attitude towards something because his or her's friends have a positive attitude about that thing as well?

I am speaking mostly in the context of social networks - people pressing the "Like" button on Facebook because they saw that their friends have liked a certain something as well.

I've read about the Bandwagon effect but that doesn't quite seem to fit my description exactly - mostly because it seems to apply to how one's beliefs are influenced by one's peers.

What I am looking for is something that describes the situation in which a person likes something independently of what others tend to think, but the person's decision to actually share that liking attitude to the world is triggered by seeing that others have shared that positive attitude already.

Also, if you have a list of articles on this subject, I would be very grateful if you shared them.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I think what you are describing here is the balance theory by Fritz Heider.

The following extract is from Online Psychology Laboratory, social balance article :

> Heider's Balance Theory (Heider, 1946) primarily focused on perceptions of relationships in the form of a triad. This triad, typically involving two people (the perceiver and another person) and an object of their attitudes, included three relationships. Heider (1958) labeled these attitudes as "sentiments," personal evaluations of other entities that underlie people's actions. A triad of attitudinal relationships is considered balanced if all three relationships are positive, or if one is positive and two are negative.

---
Tags: bias
---


# Question
Title: What to call theory where next activity following a fun activity is also perceived as fun?
What is the name of the theory that states:

> "if someone is having fun beforehand, the next activity they do will also seem fun regardless of what the activity is."

so like continuing fun... Any similar theories is welcome. I heard about this theory from my lecturer but I can't remember the name of it.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The most related experiment that I can think, is the one that people were willing to drink more water after seeing a happy face, because they evaluated the water as more positive. See full article bellow :

Face Value: Hidden Smiles Influence Consumption And Judgment.

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, emotion, mood
---


# Question
Title: Do measures of Big 5 personality have a positive bias towards extraverted, conscientious, emotionally stable, ageeable and open individuals?
### Background:

One free measures of the Big 5 is the IPIP. I have noticed that IPIP items seem to have a positive bias towards items loading on the extraversion (EX), emotional stability (ES), conscientiousness (C), agreeableness (A), and openness/intellectance (O) pole of the scale.

For example, for agreeableness, you have items "I am interested in people" (positive) and "I insult people" (negative), or for conscientiousness you have items "I pay attention to details" (positive) or "I make a mess of things" (negative).

However, at the level of a construct there are positive aspects to all the other poles of the Big 5. Being disagreeable could mean that you are comfortable confronting people when you believe they have done something wrong or that you are comfortable pointing out social injustice. Being lower on conscientiousness may mean that you don't feel the need to do everything perfectly in life or that you believe that sometimes it's better to be a little messy so that you can focus on more important things.

### Questions

Thus, I'm interested in the **positive bias** in measures of the Big 5 towards conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, emotional stability, and openness.

* Is there any research that quantifies the degree to which different measures of the Big 5 display this positive bias?
* Are there any Big 5 measures that specifically try to avoid this positive bias?
* To what extent is this positive bias inherent to the concepts of the Big 5?

# Answer
> 7 votes
Backstrom et al (2009) have a paper devoted to the question of whether the intercorrelations between the Big 5 scales is due to social desirability bias or substantive factors. In Study 2 they re-wrote each item on a 100 item IPIP scale so that each item had reduced positive bias. They then administered the original and neutrally worded items to a sample of participants. They found that when IPIP items were worded in a more evaluatively neutral fashion, the correlations between the Big 5 were substantially reduced. Specifically, they state that:

> The first component accounted for 19.3% of the variance in the IPIP items as compared with the variance of the first component from the analysis of the neutral items of 10.5%. The mean correlation between the first principal component and the items was .40 for the IPIP items and .12 for the neutral items.

Their first paragraph in the discussion captures several interesting conclusions:

> Taken together, the two studies presented here support a model that still appears to be controversial. The model can be described as follows: when we use self-ratings for the measurement of personality traits, some items tend to activate social desirability concerns. In the scores, the participants’ tendency to respond in a socially desirable way is mixed with the descriptive aspect of the items, which is supposed to measure the FFM. The result is a common factor related to all of the other factors in the inventory (Edwards and Edwards, 1991 and Peabody and Goldberg, 1989). It has been shown several times that this factor can be reduced, and that when this is done the items’ descriptive quality stands out more clearly. In previous studies the social desirability of the items has been reduced by simply selecting items that correlate weakly with social desirability inventories (e.g. Jackson et al., 1996). In the present study, the focus was on the semantic content of the items. By systematically making the items from the IPIP-100 less attractive, without changing their meaning in any crucial way, we could get rid of almost all common variation between the factors, i.e. variation related to social desirability. These new items appeared to measure the same thing as the original items in the IPIP-100, except social desirability. This shows that it is relatively easy to create personality inventory items that measure FFM traits with less influence of social desirability. We therefore encourage inventory constructors to henceforth strive for making inventories where descriptive scales are less confounded with social desirability.

### References

* Bäckström, M., Björklund, F., & Larsson, M. R. (2009). Five-factor inventories have a major general factor related to social desirability which can be reduced by framing items neutrally. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(3), 335-344. PDF

# Answer
> 5 votes
In a previous post on the global personality factor, you provided examples to describe how self-report items indicating higher trait levels are phrased in more socially desirable terms, hence the positive bias.

I think it's important to distinguish between two (or three) kinds of biases here: one is related to the wording/content of the items (the positive bias your refer to) and the other stems from trait desirability, i.e. the extent to which individuals find a trait desirable for personal reasons (e.g. their own standing on the trait) and for socio-cultural reasons (e.g. the extent to which a trait is valued by society or his/her culture).

To use your own examples, one could perhaps mitigate the positive bias by including items that make the lower ends of each trait seem less undesirable (.e.g., "I enjoy being in my own company most of the time" for low extraversion) and the higher ends less desirable (e.g. "I like to dominate in social situations" for high extraversion), but you would still have the effects of the trait desirability biases. It's not to say that the task of improving the wording or content of the items to reflect less bias isn't important, and to what extent there is bias is itself arguable.

Has the purported positive bias been documented or described in any articles? Perhaps that should be the main question at this point.

I'm only aware of approaches to dealing with the desirability biases mentioned. One is to obtain reports from multiple informants in addition to self-reports. Another is to use ipsative (i.e. forced-choice) measures of the Big Five (e.g., Hirsh & Peterson, 2008).

References

Hirsh, J. B., & Peterson, J. B. (2008). Predicting creativity and academic success with a “fake-proof” measure of the Big Five. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(5), 1323-1333.

Ludeke, S. G., Weisberg, Y. J., & Deyoung, C. G. (2013). Idiographically Desirable Responding: Individual Differences in Perceived Trait Desirability Predict Overclaiming. European Journal of Personality.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Here is a work about IPIP 50 in New Zeeland but there are also some references to USA findings: http://www.psychology.org.nz/cms\_show\_download.php?id=617

---
Tags: social-psychology, personality, deception, social-desirability
---


# Question
Title: Is there a standardised test about emotion perception?
I'm looking for a standardised psychological test to measure how people react to positive and negative emotions. More precisely I want to use such tests to investigate whether an individual is very tolerant against positive and negative emotions and does not perceive and shows them as intensively as other individuals.

I have seen that there are frustration tolerance tests, but I'm not interested in this specific emotion but more on general positive and negative emotions. I have also seen that there are tests to measure the emotional intelligence, and part of the emotional intelligence is the ability to assess one's own emotions. This would be okay for me, but I'm looking for a dedicated test into this direction.

I've also found tests (NEO FFI) to measure the big five personality traits and one could argue that some of these traits are linked to more openness towards emotions, but still, it's not a dedicated test.

So my question is, if there is a dedicated test for that?

# Answer
Your question is pretty broad at the moment. But a few starting points:

The PANAS is a commonly used measure of mood or well-being that asks respondents to rate how frequently they have experienced a set of positive and negative emotions.

Many broad-based personality measures such as those based on the Big 5 will have have factors or facets that relate to emotional experience.

There are also a range of common emotional intelligence measures.

* The Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT) is a popular ability based measure of emotional intelligence.
* There are also several self report (personality-style) measures of emotional intelligence: e.g., EQ-i, the Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test (SUEIT), and the Schutte EI model
> 3 votes

---
Tags: emotion, test
---


# Question
Title: Are recent affordable EEG devices any good?
I'm looking to do some research about flow and optimal experience with EEG. I don't have access to a lab and I was wondering if the new devices that are available to the public (i.e. Melon, Muse, iFocust,...) are any good to conduct research? Is it all just a marketing gimmick?

# Answer
The Emotiv system has been evaluated in a research setting. Badcock et al. (2013) recorded EEG activity with the Emotiv EPOC and a more conventional laboratory system simultaneously, and found that both systems produced similar results for ERPs with a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio, but it was harder to detect less reliable signals with the EPOC than with the standard lab setup they used.

Reference:

Badcock, N. A., Mousikou, P., Mahajan, Y., de Lissa, P., Thie, J., & McArthur, G. (2013). Validation of the Emotiv EPOC® EEG gaming system for measuring research quality auditory ERPs. *PeerJ, 1*, e38. fulltext
> 6 votes

---
Tags: eeg, positive-psychology, devices
---


# Question
Title: Name for compulsive need to mimic another's symptoms of illness?
I'm trying to research a particular issue that arises as a side effect of anxiety and depression. I'm finding it tricky to get information, mostly because I'm not sure what it's technically called (if it has a term, or if it is documented at all).

The subject has a compulsive need to appear to be experiencing the same symptoms of illness of an important loved one, in particular symptoms that are difficult to disprove (e.g. pain, soreness). For example if the subject's partner has a cold and complains of a sore throat, the subject will immediately claim to also have a sore throat. The subject will also have a compulsive need to take the same medication or treatments as the loved one. The subject will claim all of this fiercely, and will take great to offence to mistrust.

It seems strikes a similar chord with Münchausen syndrome, but the subject does not specifically want care from medical professionals and it only occurs to mirror a key loved one's symptoms. I'm not entirely sure if it is issue of attention seeking, due to attention being cast on their loved one instead; or if it's fear of severe illness and death of another, and by both being ill makes it easier to cope somehow?

The overall cause is not especially relevant, and probably impossible to reckon without further counselling. But the overall compulsion to mimic symptoms of illness - is this a documented disorder? This is a fact finding mission, so any information would be greatly appreciated.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Siblings as children do this alot. Most people grow out of it. I would think these symptoms reflect a kind of hypochondriasis which is a factitious disorder with an underlying dependant (or inverse dependence) disorder. It could also be an incorrect empathic response due to a narcissistic disorder. The aggressive features as a response to others doubts definitely is a little paranoia and tends me to lean to some kind of narcissistic attention getting type thing. In rare cases it could be a full blown extreme factitious disorder. Faking tests and everything. They had an entire episode of house (s5e18) dedicate to the lady who publically urinated green and faked a seizure to get House interested in her fake illness.

---
Tags: depression, anxiety
---


# Question
Title: Clarification on the definition of sublimation?
I'm reading the wikipedia article on sublimation. The article says:

> In psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defense mechanism where socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse.

But it's not clear to me how these impulses are transformed. Are these impulses transformed inside the mind of the one who do them or are they transformed in a social level (via persuasion)?

Rephrasing the question: Does him argue with himself and make himself believe that the unacceptable behavior is actually a good thing or succeeds to persuade others to believe that behavior is a good thing?

# Answer
Sublimation is a term from psychoanalytic theory. In short, the internatlized norms - the so-called Super-Ego - directs the drives to outlets that are free of guilt or shame. The whole process takes place inside the individual, and in fact the norms that individual has internalized (in his childhood) need not be identical to the norms that the adult person is surrounded by.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Awh I've used that word before to describe the state of my illness. Sublimation in my case would mean mostly subsyndromal but still under treatment. That is to say the probability that something bad could happen like symptom recurrence or new disease emergence is not 0 due to the nature of the illness being lifelong but treatment continues and as issues of the mind present themself they are resolved through psychological and psychiatric techniques.

So its impossible to answer your rephrased question without knowing the exact person and their intention. I would imagine that is your interpretation rather than theirs. Should someone experience such an internal battle and deciding abnormality is normality they should seek immediate medical treatment as its not necessary and potentially harmful.

If this word was again used as I used it by someone like minded I would suggest instead that this individual seeks not to justify his abnormality but seeks to acknowledge his rationality about his abnormality and his potential greater than normal sanity due to constant correction which is lacking in most sick but untreated and yet labeled sane individuals. As I think everyone knows and freud so intended the war for a long, healthy, rational life is not won by the idle but those who actively engage in the treatment of their individual brand of abnormal physical or mental humanity.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology
---


# Question
Title: How well are neurotransmitters used in SPA?
How much does the SPAUN and the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) that was used to build it take neurotransmitters into account? In the book How to Build a Brain, various inhibitory and excitatory connections are mentioned as supplying a biological foundation for implementing the Basal Ganglia. Additionally, it's mentioned that the learning rule that the SPA uses, hPES, uses dopamine to modulate learning. However, I'm still a bit confused on the details of all this. How do neurotransmitters fit into Nengo? How much detail does Nengo go into in regards to neurotransmitters? Does it take into account the neurotransmitter distribution and consumption as observed in the brain?

Note: For more information on the relation between Nengo, SPA and SPAUN, please see my previous question.

# Answer
At this point in time, the difference in neurotransmitter types affect the synaptic time constant (i.e. the filter on the incoming spike train) between neurons in Nengo. See Neural Engineering p.112 and these notes (see the section called "Biologically plausible filter") from a course covering the book.

Neurotransmitters are also leveraged more theoretically. For example, in connection between neurons that involve learning, dopamine is often said to modulate this learning. For example, see Dan Rasmussen's neural hierarchical reinfrocement learning implementation (PHD link pending).

Hypothetically, it would be possible to implement a back-end to Nengo using a more biologically detailed software such as Neuron to take into account neurotransmitter generation, concentration and consumption. Although I can attest anecdotally that this has been attempted with mixed success, there has been no formal release or publication of this approach.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, computational-modeling, nef
---


# Question
Title: How well does the NEF capture neuronal heterogeneity?
From what I understand of the Neurogical Engineering Framework (NEF), groups of neurons are used to compute functions. However, I'm not clear if these calculations take into account neurons of different shapes/sizes and their attributes/uses in the brain. How well does the NEF capture heterogeneity and how is it used?

# Answer
To review how neurons encode information, please check out these class notes review encoding.

In those notes, you'll notice the intercept $J\_{bias}$ and the maximum firing rate $\alpha$ are randomly selected when encoding functions in large populations of neurons. These variations can account for heterogeneity in attributes of neurons.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, computational-modeling, nef
---


title: reading an EEG dataset using EEGLAB

text:
# Question
Title: reading an EEG dataset using EEGLAB
When I'm reading the documentation of importing events in EEGLAB from a file here I have noticed that when we used a stimulus , we must know which time we will apply it , since in the dataset file , you have to identify of what times stimulus happen .
I don't know if my understanding is right or not , since i didn't deal with EEG data practically (but in 2 weeks I will), but I was reading a theoretical topics and papers on that.
thanks in advance.

# Answer
> 4 votes
If I understand your question correctly, yes, since ERP involves averaging over similar events, very accurate time-locking to stimulus onset is critical. The idea of an ERP is that activity relevant to the stimulus will happen at a similar timepoint after similar stimuli--if you don't have an accurate time stamp (usually to the level of single milliseconds if not better), then the activity will be "smeared" across the time course. For a good overview of ERPs, see the article Event-related Potentials: An Overview

---
Tags: eeg, signal-detection
---


title: How is memory accounted for in the NEF?

text:
# Question
Title: How is memory accounted for in the NEF?
The Neurological Engineering Framework can be used to create systems that use memory in interesting ways. One system (Spaun) is able to memorize (and forget) lists much in the same way as humans do. Another system can learn tasks and apply the knowledge to subtasks using hierarchical reinforcement learning. Both of these tasks involve memory, but how is memory contained within the Neurological Engineering Framework?

# Answer
The Neurological Engineering Framework does not explicitly state a mechanism for memory. There is no "hard-drive" in the brain for easy retrieval and access. Rather, memory is captured in the connection weights between neural populations and the dynamics of the network.

In the Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning example, linked to in the previous question, the "memory" of the map for the navigation task is saved by modifying the connections weights of the neurons representing the environment.

In the serial list memorisation task, the working memory for saving the semantic pointer list items is preserved in an integrator, which is essentially a neuron population that feeds back on itself.

These are examples of working memory, in other words, the memory that allows you to drive a car without really remembering how exactly you drove it. Long term memory modeling requires quite a few more mechanisms (memory reconsolidation) and structures (hippocampus, amygdala) that haven't been captured in any system built with the NEF yet.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, cognitive-modeling, computational-modeling, nef
---


# Question
Title: Do Jewish people have better cognitive abilities than average population?
Jewish people are overrepresented in politics and science especially in the United States. Do they have better cognitive abilities than average population? If yes, what is the reason for this?

Statistics:

# Answer
Your explanation limits your question to the present day United States. Richard Lynn (2004) indeed found that American Jews have a higher verbal intelligence than non-Jewish whites by an average of 7.5 IQ points. But since American Jews are largely descendants of European immigrants, their higher relative intelligence might be a result of so-called "eugenic practices" (Zeidner, 2012): many highly intelligent Jews (e.g. scientists and artists) received special help from foreign parties to flee the Nazi holocaust, and those that where wealthy (presumably because they were more intelligent) had better resources, e.g. to bribe German officials (which is documented) or simply to pay for their transportation. From the current situation in the US it is therefore unclear if Jews are hereditary more intelligent or other factors have influenced the selection of Jewish American immigrants, if compared to the descendants of non-Jewish immigrants, many of which where poor (and uneducated). As other studies show (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ\_and\_the\_Wealth\_of\_Nations), intelligence is influenced by food (= wealth) and education (= wealth) by about 10 IQ points. So the higher intelligence of American Jews lies within what those factors might explain.

Taking a wider view, there are other studies that find higher intelligence in Jews as far back as the middle ages or in other areas of the world also. The debate is summarized in a Wikipedia article as well as countless articles on the web.

Sources:
> 6 votes

---
Tags: intelligence
---


# Question
Title: Measurement of phase difference between two signals using cross correlation vs. fourier transform
I am studying eeg signals with the aim of distinguishing between preictal and interictal epilepsy states based on the eeg signal. I have read some papers and one of the metrics used to distinguish between the states has to do with measuring the phase synchronization between eeg samples from multiple electrodes. In this regard, I thought the most straightforward way to measure phase difference between two signals would be to compute the cross correlation function, and find the time $\tau$ at which the cross correlation function reaches a maximum - call this **Method 1**. However, in practice what is usually done is to fourier transform the signals and measure phase difference of the complex fourier transform (and possibly average it over a frequency band of interest). Details are explained e.g., here \- see the section on phase synchronization. Call this **Method 2**.

So my question is: what is wrong with Method 1? It seems more intuitive, direct and computationally easier to me. Could someone explain this to me?

**EDIT:** thinking about this even further, it seems the method employed in practice and described at http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Measures\_of\_neuronal\_signal\_synchrony is actually **Method 3** and distinct from **Method 2** above. This link shows how it can be implemented in MATLAB. Consider two signals $x(t)$ and a time shifted version of it $x(t+T)$. The Fourier Transforms will be $X(\omega)$ and $X(\omega)e^{j\omega T}$ respectively. Using **Method 1** one would get $T$ as measure of phase difference. Using **Method 2**: $\Delta \phi$ = $\omega T$ and this averaged over $\[\omega\_1,\omega\_2\]$ will give phase difference as $T\frac{\omega\_1+\omega\_2}{2}$.

**But what would Method 3 give? Is there a difference between phase difference and phase synchronization of two signals?**

# Answer
Methods 1 and 2 are matematically equivalent, but I have experienced that method 2 is computationally more efficient for high sampling rates and large ranges of delay (notice that method 2 does not require a loop).
> 1 votes

# Answer
To clear this up, there is a distinction between **phase difference** and **phase synchronization**. **Phase synchronization = is the phase difference constant with time?** One crude way to measure phase synchronization would be to partition long signals $x(t)$ and $y(t)$ into many disjoint windows, compute the phase difference in each window using either Method 1 or Mathod 2, and then determine if the phase difference is the same across windows. Method 3 gives a more sophisticated method of measuring phase synchronization where we measure the instantaneous phase of signals and track the difference over time to see if its constant. For completeness, I have come across another paper that talks about yet another way to measure phase synchronization.

Also for $x(t)$ and $x(t+T)$ Methods 1 and 2 give the same answer (discarding the frequency term in method 2) but in general I have a feeling that Method 1 and 2 would give different answer for two arbirary signals $x(t)$ and $y(t)$ and would be very interested if someone could explain this mathematically and elaborate on the relationship if any between the answers obtained from Method 1 vs Method 2, which method is better and why.
> 0 votes

---
Tags: measurement, theoretical-neuroscience, eeg, synchronization
---


title: What is runaway excitation?

text:
# Question
Title: What is runaway excitation?
Can someone give me a brief explanation of this term? Found it in a paper but there doesn't seem to be an explanation that is consistent out there to my knowledge.

# Answer
When I have used (or seen) this term, it usually means that recurrent excitatory connections in a network have become stronger than the inhibitory feedback. This means that excitatory activity will grow stronger and stronger, without inhibitory influences to keep it in check. Eventually, the activity within the network will be limited only by spike-rate saturation. This type of network configuration is sometimes used as a model for an epileptic seizure.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience
---


title: aftereffects of auditory adaptation

text:
# Question
Title: aftereffects of auditory adaptation
Adaptation is a very robust feature of sensory processing: when a stimulus is displayed for a prolonged period, or repeatedly, the neural response to it will diminish. This process creates a local change in cortical sensitivity, which is behaviorally evident through worse sensory discrimination of subsequent stimuli which are similar to the adaptor stimulus, but better discrimination of dissimilar ones.

In the visual domain, there is also the concept of an **afterimage**. If one looks at a green patch for a long time, then a white wall will appear red. If one looks at a curved line for a long time, a straight line will appear to curve the other way. The landscape next to a waterfall will look like its traveling upwards, etc.

Does anything similar exist in the auditory domain? Can adaptation lead to illusory percepts in audition? And if not, why do you think this would be?

I'm particularly interested in the neural level of explanation, and would be very happy to hear all speculations, however far out they are.

# Answer
The most well known sensory after effect illusion in the auditory system is probably the Zwicker tone (Zwicker, 1964).

> If a white noise with a half‐octave‐band suppression placed anywhere from 300 to 7000 Hz is presented at an over‐all sound‐pressure level of about 60 dB for 1 min and then switched off, a decaying, poststimulatory sound similar to a pure tone is heard for about 10 sec. The pitch of the post‐stimulatory tone corresponds to a frequency within the suppressed band.

Norena and Eggermont (2003) argue that compared to non Zwicker tone stimuli, Zwicker tone stimuli give rise to an increased firing rate and an increase in the between neuron correlation of spike trains (I think) in the primary auditory cortex.
> 6 votes

# Answer
Auditory hallucinations happen very often and are non-pathological for most individuals. When triggered by psychosis (through excessive emotions, chemical imbalances, brain pathway failure) and do not stop they become pathological. In general things like hearing music when none is playing, hearing a ringing (outside of tinnitus) or hearing someone call your name (when no one is speaking or someone is referring to someone else) are this type of hallucination. Typically this happens when spazzed out high, experiencing some kind of cognitive dissonance, stressed, sleepy, it also thought that sensory deprivation triggers hallucinations of various types. In general the sensory deprivation hallucinations are thought to be caused by spontaneous firing of the auditory nerves.

The opposite case is also true when someone does have tinnitus the brain adapts in a way to ignore the spurious humming and detracts that sound from the interpretation of life around them.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: perception, sensation, optical-illusion
---


# Question
Title: The best "negative motivation" movies (or books, etc.)?
Requiem for a Dream is the best negative motivation movie I ever seen. This movie really helped me.

And recently I started to notice that **negative motivation** is the only type of motivation that really helps me.

What other \[really good\] **negative motivation** movies do you know? Or may be books, something else?

Maybe this question is *off-topic* here. But I really need to know other **negative motivation** movies.

*Sorry for my English*

# Answer
> 2 votes
Goodfellas and the Wolf on Wall Street both leave the watcher contemplating the results of the actors bad behaviour. The two movies are highly related; one is about the mob and the other about the market place.

Learning from bad behaviour and seeing it fail is method used in moral storytelling called conditioning. Its an old idea that goes all the way back to ancient animal training but was first formally studied by Pavlov. Negative reinforcement causes people to lose an appetite for evil by seeing the devastating outcomes and punishment so that those behaviours are associated with pain and loss to cause avoidance.

Also worth noting are

* The Great Gatsby (old and new)
* Bruce Almighty
* Click
* Pay it Forward
* Inception
* Oedipus the King
* Romeo and Juliet (West Side Story)
* The Crucible
* Dances with Wolves (Avatar)
* The Necklace
* The Tell-Tale Heart
* Most episodes of Scandal
* The Matrix Revolutions
* Cloud Atlas
* Star Wars: Episode III
* Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
* House of Flying Daggers
* A Beautiful Mind
* Good Will Hunting
* TRON: Legacy
* How to Train Your Dragon 2
* Harry Potter
* The Butterfly Effect movies especially the last one

---
Tags: motivation
---


title: Detect an imagination EEG signal

text:
# Question
Title: Detect an imagination EEG signal
Is there an EEG brain signal that has specific features resulting from imagination? For example, if a subject sees a car and imagines that the car is moving left. Could we capture this signal and decrypt what was the person imagining?

# Answer
Yes of course. Most work with eeg and imagination focuses on the inner voice and what people are telling themselves and thinking to themselves. Imagine (pun intended) if we could reach into the mind of a terrorist and as they think about plots. Its not really all that hard but its not at all covert at the moment (all the schizoiod type personalities can relax). With a bunch of electrodes connected to the brain we are able to transfer what one person's imagined actions into another persons head for execution. Its really crude at the moment but at some point it will revolutionize the way we think about communication, art, education and intimacy. Connecting to imagined visualizations would be simular only instead of involving the motor cortex it would work with the visual centers.
> 2 votes

---
Tags: eeg, signal-detection
---


# Question
Title: Survey Questionnaire design - What are the alternatives to Likert scale in measuring attitudes?
I work in Social Science Research (Management)

In my school, Likert Scale is extensively used to measure attitudes.(Strongly disagree to Strongly agree). So, I kind of assumed that it's an absolute standard.

But recently, while I was reading material on designing surveys, I came across the argument that highly criticized this format of response categories, owing to a tendency called "acquiescence response set".

I'm working on my questionnaire and have drafted several questions that measure the attitude of respondents related to an information system. Ex: The system provides accurate information. (strongly agree, Agree, Neither, Disagree, Strongly disagree)

My question is - what are the alternative scales I can use to measure the attitudes of the respondents? what is the more reliable way to measure attitudes?

# Answer
> 2 votes
In attitude psychology Likert response scales are still the norm. They do have their problems (and there are a good deal of problems), but many of them can be addressed satisfactorily.

The acquiescence bias you mention is a small issue. It can be balanced out by reverse coding roughly half of your test items. The acquiescence bias then becomes random noise rather than a systematic bias, which is annoying but not very damaging as long as your analysis has good power.

For example, if you have a 4-item scale that measures roughly the same thing, you could mix items like "The system provides accurate information" with items like "I would not recommend the system to others".

Does that make sense?

---
Tags: measurement, attitudes
---


# Question
Title: Connections between different theories of personality
There are a several theories on personality: the Big Five personality traits, Watson en Clark's extraversion en neuroticism, Grey's Behavioural Inhibition & Behavioural Activation (BIS/BAS), Eysecks Psychotocism, Extraversion and Neuroticism (PEN) model, the Socionics & Information Metabolism theory discussed in this related question, the list goes on.

But are there any theories proposing 'translations' from a personality described according to one theory, to the same personality described according to one of the others?

I would expect that this translation would be mediated through latent variables. However i have not found any research that does this, while there are papers on the relatioships between test-results. That is, there is empirical research that describes the correlations between the scores on questionnaires that are designed to measure personality according to different theories.

For example: From BIS/BAS to the big five - Smits and Boeck - European Journal of Personality Vol 20, no 4, 255–270

The reason i ask, is because i have a dataset of some 460 subjects who took several personality questionnaires (big 5 as well as BIS/BAS), in addition they completed the Adjective Check List (ACL). Test subjects also did tests which measure impulsiveness: a Response Inhibition task, a Reversal Learning task and the Balloon Analogue Risk Task.

I think it would be interesting to compare a model based on literature to the correlations found in this dataset. Specifically i would try to predict certain approach/avoidance measurements (test-subjects also completed an approach-avoidance task) from the rest of the test data and the theoretical connections between the different factors that are supposed to underlie the measurements.

Other related questions:

What is the support for a global personality factor?

What is understood about interactions between personality types or traits?

# Answer
It's unclear if the idea of 'translation' from one personality framework to another is a meaningful concept. A score on any given personality factor represents some weighted combination of measures - usually endorsement of questionnaire items like "I am the life of the party", etc.

As such, every factor score is a unique variable that probably doesn't reflect some underlying property of the human brain, but is a scientifically convenient construct

Though personality theories are usually based on how different trait scores factor analyse, and so they often have a lot of overlap. Eysenck's Neuroticism and Extroversion factors are very similar to the Big Five N and E factors, because those emerge very strongly when you look at the common clusters of human traits. But they aren't identical, because they're comprised of different items and exist in a different multidimensional test structure with different cross-loadings.

The different theories are different *because* they cannot be translated to one another, though similarities can always be drawn.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: measurement, personality, cognitive-modeling
---


title: Attitude to judge and avoid efforts

text:
# Question
Title: Attitude to judge and avoid efforts
I've opened a question trying to point out every doubt I had on a language of development: I thought it could be constructive.

**I'm pretty proud of the formulation of this question since it gives almost nothing as understood. While I was studying math at university many books were giving many concept as known.**

At the moment in which I'm writing 5 persons downvoted the question saying: "*How about learning something about 1) JavaScript objects ({}), 2) jQuery callbacks 3) jQuery plugins?*"

Actually there is a cognitive error in this sentence. He thinks (opinion) that I've lacked of effort, but actually I've studied Javascript at the university (fact). I've also tried to google for it (fact), but without the exact knowledge of what to look for I could not find an explanation. *I'm making an assumption interpreting his sentence.*

**Another guy simply answered in a constructive way.**

I think that this cognitive error is pretty diffuse. How is it called? Is it an attribution error? Can it be motivated by the need for feeding self-esteem while putting no effort in making something constructive?

# Answer
The competence you have and the competence you need has a big gap to understand the code.

You said that

> He thinks (opinion) that I've lacked of effort, but actually I've studied Javascript at the university (fact).

My assumption (might be wrong) is that you have taken one or two courses of JavaScript there. If you have studied JavaScript at the university, that does not prevent you to study more of it at your own to understand the basic code syntax better.

Overly exaggerated example of this case would be that someone asks at Physics forum: "Could you explain me the theory of relativity in detail?"

...and the person has just taken one physics course in high school.

If many users ask that kind of questions, expect answers and get them on Stackoverflow, then it is full of similar questions and more experienced users have nothing else to do than to explain things in words of one syllable. In that case the forum would not work efficiently.

I did not answer to your questions, because I think that you are approaching this problem from a wrong angle.

Anyway, you are correct that users in Stackoverflow should behave more constructive way. People are more critical there to the formulation of the questions than in other StackExchange sites for some reason.
> 1 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology
---