title: Why does anger "cloud the mind"?

text:
# Question
Title: Why does anger "cloud the mind"?
There are a lot of anecdotes on frustration and anger inhibiting judgement and problem solving. Examples include "anger clouding the mind" in pop culture, or in programming, where a rule of thumb is to walk away from your computer when you're stuck on a problem for more than 20 minutes.

I'd like to know the physiological reason why the more frustrated or angry a person gets while trying to solve a problem, the less likely the problem gets solved?

# Answer
It is a biological/chemical response. Once in a stressful situation, you're not supposed to act smart or able to solve a rubik cube, but punch whatever is getting you angry and/or getting the hell out of the place.

The adrenaline, and other stuff, discharge are responsible for increased blood pressure, heart rate and what-not (Nordqvist, 2013):

> Anger is not just a mental state of mind. It triggers an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline. Anger has survival benefits, and forms part of our fight or flight brain response to a perceived threat or harm.
>
> When a human or animal decides to take action to stop or confront a threat, anger usually becomes the predominant feeling and takes over our behavior, cognition and physiology.

Actually, we do get more acute cognitive abilities... though at the expense of others :

> The brain shunts blood away from the gut and towards the muscles, in preparation for physical exertion. Heart rate, blood pressure and respiration increase, the body temperature rises and the skin perspires. The mind is sharpened and focused.

Blood is shifted AWAY from the frontal cortex, responsible for nice thoughts (Hanscom, 2014):

> When the real or perceived threat persists we feel or are trapped. This, of course, leads to frustration and anger, which causes adrenaline levels to really skyrocket. The result is that your blood supply is shifted largely to the skeletal muscles, which enables you to flee danger. Other effects include:
>
> Decreased blood flow to your brain – especially to the frontal cortex where most thinking occurs.

Spektor, Treister, et al (2011) states in their study that observing anger in others increases analytical problem solving whilst hindering creative problem solving (not really related):

> Studies 1 and 2 supported two of our predictions: Observing another person’s anger influenced observers’ thinking processes, and the way anger is expressed shaped this effect. Observing anger hindered the solving of creative problems and enhanced the solv- ing of analytic problems.
> 5 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, emotion
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# Question
Title: How do some traumatic experiences establish deep beliefs and ideas?
*Disclaimer - My terminology might be wrong.*

How do some memorable experiences that are traumatic or tough, make the brain form some values. Is there a way to establish core values so strongly ourselves through any manual methods? (without needing to go through traumatic experiences)

# Answer
> 3 votes
Childhood experiences have a greater impact than events later on. It is cognitive structure forming time, with a still strong biological background. Also, the child might see itself as vulnerable, thus willing to form bonds with any protective thing that might appear (Giller, 1999):

> Chronic early trauma — starting when the individual’s personality is forming — shapes a child’s (and later adult’s) perceptions and beliefs about everything.
>
> Severe trauma can have a major impact on the course of life. Childhood trauma can cause the disruption of basic developmental tasks. The developmental tasks being learned at the time the trauma happens can help determine what the impact will be.

Children can recover to leading normal lives after traumatic events, but not all of them. It gets worst if there are continuous traumatic events (Giller, 1999):

> Although most return to baseline functioning, a substantial minority of children develop severe acute or ongoing psychological symptoms (including PTSD symptoms) that bother them, interfere with their daily functioning, and warrant clinical attention. Some of these reactions can be quite severe and chronic.

We go with defense mechanisms to protect ourselves. They might get repressed in our memories but never really fade-out. It is not consensual that it is OK to break down these defenses and make people revive those traumatic experiences. Thus, i do believe you are in a psychodynamic therapy or others. And no, it is not the only way to "reprogram" the brain. There is also cognitive , behavioral, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, which are problem focused, making you relearn the correct way to think/behave in problematic contexts.

> CBT for trauma includes: learning how to cope with anxiety and negative thoughts, managing anger, preparing for stress reactions, handling future trauma symptoms, addressing urges to 'self-soothe' with alcohol or drugs and communicating and relating effectively with people (National Centre for PTSD, 2008). The CBT model when used with survivors of child abuse usually focuses on the 'here and now' rather than revisiting the trauma itself (Henderson, 2006).
>
> Cognitive–behavioral therapy (CBT) techniques have been shown to be effective in treating children and adolescents who have persistent trauma reactions. CBT has been demonstrated to reduce serious trauma reactions, such as PTSD, other anxiety and depressive symptoms, and behavioral problems. Most evidence-based, trauma-focused treatments include opportunities for the child to review the trauma in a safe, secure environment under the guidance of a specially trained mental health professional. CBT and other trauma-focused techniques can help children with cognitive distortions related to the trauma, such as self-blame, develop more adaptive understanding and perceptions of the trauma.

I'd hint that in a context which triggers some childhood trauma (even if it is in a deep layered reasoning), it still keeps that memory being fed, forbidding its physical memory-disposal. Learning the correct reasoning will make these memories fade away eventually.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, personality
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# Question
Title: What is the relation between measures, constructs and concepts?
It is uncontroversial to say that the cognitive sciences do not exclusively deal with directly observable phenomena, but nonetheless aim to study the physical causes of behavior and cognition scientifically. "**Grasping**", for instance, is directly observable, but cognitive science also studies "**intelligence**," which is not directly observable, at least not for all conceptualizations of intelligence.

When cognitive science studies such an unobserved quantity, the difference between the **general concept**, the **unobserved construct**, and the **direct measure** is sometimes rendered implicit. More colloquially: go far enough down the methodological rabbit hole for an unobserved construct, and you will likely eventually find a *patient zero paper* that defines a broad folk concept, then makes a spherical-cow or just-so statement that a construct maps on to the concept.

## Example: Working memory

For an illustration of a just-so definition, take Baddeley and Hitch's definition of **working memory** in their seminal 1974 work as a replacement for the classical short-term/long-term memory model:

> *a system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of information*

(The relationship rendered implicit here is \["memory" -\> STM/LTM -\> WM/LTM\].)

To be fair to Baddeley & Hitch, and so as not to single them out, Baddeley has later defended this problem with their model on productivity and guide to discovery grounds (Baddeley, 2007). I find this quite reasonable, and I do not mean to impugn their excellent research or the model's productivity in any way, only to use the example as an illustration for the question.

## Problem of implicit relations

Implicit relations are antithetical to the practice of science because they engender **unstated assumptions** and hidden theoretical incompatibilities. It is also antithetical to science communication and scientific literacy, because important words like "intelligence" and "memory" become effectively polyvalent, with subtly different meanings that are not apparent without considerable study. The relationship between IQ and intelligence is the prototypical example.

# Question

**What is the relation between measures, constructs and concepts as actually used in the cognitive sciences?** (Contrast intelligence or memory with grasping or walking, if concrete examples are helpful.)

Please read my comments to the question and current answer before asking for additional information.

### Related questions

### References

* Baddeley, A. (2007). Working memory, thought, and action. Oxford University Press.
* Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. (1974). Working memory. Psychology of learning and motivation, 8, 47-89.

# Answer
> 13 votes
In speaking to constructs vs. measures, I believe that the difference is clear and implied in your background: constructs are that which cannot be directly measured (but we assume exists), where measures are directly measurable attributes that we assume relate to the construct. The process you seem to be questioning is that of the **operational definition**, or the process of defining that which cannot be measured (the construct) as that which can (the measurement). Your concern that these are not equivalent is quite right, and many papers are written for the sole purpose of explaining why a certain measure matches a theoretical construct (the process of measurement validation and establishing construct validity).

As to why operational definitions are necessary, the straightforward answer is simple: communication. As constructs are not measurable (in many cases), some type of operationalization must be used. If multiple claims are made on a construct, each using different operational definitions, the results may be contradictory purely due to the differences in the operational definitions assigned by separate researchers! (Education Letter, 2013)

Using operational definitions instead of simply listing the construct can help researchers better determine which results should be comparable. Remember, each of these definitions may have been validated, yet differences in the measurement will naturally yield differences in the data that may not be relevant to the construct. This is the heart of construct invalidity (Groves et al., 2009).

I've always enjoyed seminal papers, and one that you may be interested in is the seminal work defining construct validity (and distinguishing it from other types) by Lee Cronbach and Paul Meehl.

"Construct validity is ordinarily studied when the tester has no definite criterion measure of the quality with which he is concerned, and must use indirect measures. Here the trait or quality underlying the test is of central importance, rather than either the test behavior or the scores on the criteria" (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955, p. 282).

It sounds like you may take issue with failure to apply correct validity checks, and the application of the correct types of validity to the correct situations.

I hope this help to clarify the nuances of a very involved question! Perhaps the heart of the question/solution is this: though constructs and operational definitions of constructs get used interchangeably, they shouldn't be.

**References**

Cronbach, L. J., & Meehl, P. E. (1955). Construct validity in psychological tests. Psychological Bulletin, 52(4), 281–302.

Groves, R. M., Fowler, F. J., Jr., Couper, M. P., Lepkowski, J. M., Singer, E., & Tourangeau, R. (2009). Survey Methodology (Vol. 2). John Wiley & Sons.

General science; new findings reported from Carnegie Mellon University describe advances in general science. (2013). Education Letter, 90.

# Answer
> 10 votes
Apologies in advance for the long answer. I tried to narrow down the scope by focusing on only a single construct, and only a single aspect of validity, and it still turned out like an essay...

Let's take intelligence research as an example. This work started with an intelligence concept – a fairly vague and ambiguous idea about a personality trait that describes a person's cognitive abilities. From this, a construct was hypothesized: A physical – but unobserved – mechanism that implements intelligence, called faculties (or g-factor). The next step was to figure out how such faculties might be measured. There was a desire to find simple tools to do this, and so a variety of IQ tests – mostly written, and some not – were developed.

It is not clear in any sense that intelligence as a (folk) concept has any ontological basis. Presumably the construct of cognitive faculties should have a physical basis, but in practice it doesn't appear to. And IQ tests do not have as their primary objective the measurement of such faculties anyway (although they may be useful indicators). IQ tests were originally developed to predict academic performance, and test validity continues to be measured against that, which is typical of psychometrics in general. So in what sense (if any) are these terms related to one another?

This is a question of validity, or more specifically, construct validity. The relationship between concept, construct, and measurement, is a dynamic and bi-directional one. An often cited example for intelligence research is the case of the Brazilian street vendors. In a classic 1988 study by Geoffrey Saxe, Brazilian street children who often work as candy vendors were compared with rural non-seller counterparts for mathematical abilities. Though typically measuring lower in IQ, the street vendors matched and in some cases outperformed their rural counterparts on a variety of practical applications involving arithmetic.

Why the discrepancy? It turns out that children with a formal education in math are good at solving mathematical problems framed in a formal manner. Lacking a school education, street kids do not acquire these skills, and so do poorly on tests requiring them to identify and work with symbols such as numbers and operators. However, working as street vendors, these children are very proficient at arithmetic involving currency, such as calculating costs and making change – without any aids. So when presented with math problems framed as currency operations – such as: how much does it cost to buy 3 of this and 2 of that; or how much change do I get back from this bill – they perform better than educated children of the same age.

Similar results were found by Jean Lave (1988): In her study, Berkeley housewives performed significantly better in mathematics framed as grocery shopping tasks - calculating discounts and coupons for example - than framed as typical classroom math problems. In another study by Ceci and Liker (1986) gambling experts were capable of complex mathematics in calculating handicaps in horse-racing, but yet had no difference in IQ than non-experts.

What can we learn from this? Many different definitions of intelligence have been considered. One interpretation of these results is that intelligence is not just a general trait as implied by the single IQ number result, but is composed of a number of independent domain-specific intelligences, some of which are missed by the test. A different interpretation is that an unbiased measure of general intelligence requires framing questions in a context familiar to each subject. One thing that seems certain is that a general factor of intelligence that carries over to any domain appears less ontologically tenable.

Most evaluations of construct validity are domain-specific – they depend on what the theory being validated purports to describe, and as indicated, that too may change based on empirical findings. Of course, changes may not be quick to materialize – the concept of intelligence, and intelligence testing, have both certainly co-evolved over the years, but the rate of change has not been commensurate with findings such as the above, and is often skewed by political agenda. So in the mean time, it is not unusual for researchers to pursue red herrings – cognitive concepts that eventually turn out to be ontologically untenable. But this is hardly unique to cognitive science, and is a natural part of the scientific process of learning.

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Tags: measurement, terminology, methodology, cognitive-modeling
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# Question
Title: Is there a term to describe an inability to express emotion or feelings?
I am writing a novel and was wondering if there was a specific term for someone unable to express his own emotions or feelings. The catch here is, this doesn't mean he doesn't know what anger or love is for example, but just can't express it through his own body language.

The main idea is someone like a method actor for example might have so much experience taking on a certain role and become so good at adopting other personalities and portraying them, that he has forgotten how to be himself. While he might be a expert at taking on the role of a scared child for example, when confronted with something fear inducing out of character, he simply can't express it whether verbally or physically.

Another example might be someone unable to express happiness, but when given dolls or sock puppets, he can very easily show happiness and mood through the puppet/doll. The only issue is expressing this through his own body.

If any of you have seen the TV show Hereos, there is a character called Sylar who has the power to steal other peoples abilities. This is all fine and dandy, but once he steals the ability to shape shift, he starts to lose a sense of who he is. While he can transform and impersonate other people flawlessly, each time he does so he seemed to lose a sense of who he was originally. Essentially, he slowly starts to forget how to be himself. This seems to be the best example I can think of that I've seen on TV.

In essence, I'm looking for a better way to describe what I've listed above in a way other than just 'someone who has trouble expressing emotion'.

# Answer
> 11 votes
It *is* alexithymia if you're looking for a diagnostic term. It is not a case of "you either have it or you don't—alexithymia is a continuum.

There even exists a scale, which is a professional scale so to get it you need to pay for it and be a researcher. It's called Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20).

# Answer
> 8 votes
Perhaps you are looking for **blunted affect**?

Wikipedia's definition goes like this (article has been updated since):

> **Blunted affect** is a clinical term to define a lack of emotional reactivity (affect display) in an individual. It manifests as a failure to express feelings either verbally or non-verbally, especially when talking about issues that would normally be expected to engage the emotions.

# Answer
> 3 votes
If you are interested in this from the perspective of normal-range human functioning, then you could look at the literature on emotional intelligence.

Emotional intelligence is a broad construct. For example, an ability model breaks emotional intelligence up in terms of ability ion perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions. Thus, it does include the ability to express emotions.

Ultimately, there seem to be some issues of measurement related to emotional intelligence. There are typical self-report measures (e.g., self-ratings on questions like "I am good at managing my emotions") which typically correlate highly with traditional Big 5 models and related models of personality. Then there are "ability-based measures" such as the MSCEIT which involve IQ-style questions related to emotion (e.g., classifying emotions in facets, etc.). The ability measures often show some correlations with IQ measures and limited correlations with self-report measures.

Thus, it doesn't seem like most measures do a great job at measuring actual skills in emotional expression. My general impression is that there may be a greater need for more ecologically valid measures of emotional intelligence, particularly as it relates to emotional expression. For example, role play exercises, other reports, and so on.

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Tags: emotion, terminology, philosophy-of-mind
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# Question
Title: How do personality tests work that require you to choose one of two statement that applies most to you?
There are different kinds of psychometric tests, I think the numerical and verbal ones are fair enough, I can see their usefulness. However, I cannot understand how the 'soft' psychometric tests work and how they apply to a particular career.

I just finished one which consisted of 90 'questions', except they were not questions, they were all "pick one of the two following sentences" 90 times. Some made sense, such as

> * Do you like to lead a group.
> * Do you like to fit in with a group.

But others I could not answer because I could not choose either option for example:

> * You are slow at planning.
> * You are slow at making decisions.

I have to answer one. In this case, I'd say that I am not slow in either.

How exactly (detail) do these types of psychometric tests work? A link to an open one would be what I am looking for. How do they create the answers? How do they pair them? Do they change based on your previous answers?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The basic idea is that you get a sample population. Let's say you have 100 people. You give each of those a creativity rating through some process.

Afterwards you give every person in the sample population a stack of questions. You run statistical tests to determine which of those questions correlate with someone being creative. You keep all the questions that strongly correlate with your original creativity rating and throw questions that don't correlate away.

When making a test for a job application you also throw questions that seem to have "correct" answer and who therefore allow for cheating away. Alternatively you can also use those questions to determine the amount to which the test subject tries to game the test.

# Answer
> 6 votes
There is a large general literature evaluating the degree to which personality tests predict job performance. In particular see for example the review by Barrick et al (2001). In general such reviews find that personality measures provide a small but meaningful prediction of job performance.

### Ipsative testing

So in general, you are asking about how personality tests work. But more specifically, you are asking about ipsative personality tests:

> Ipsative is a descriptor used in psychology to indicate a specific type of measure in which respondents compare two or more desirable options and pick the one that is most preferred (sometimes called a "forced choice" scale).

Regarding your statement that you could not answer one of the questions, presumably the instructions asked you to indicate which statement applied most. Thus, it would be hoped that even if there were two statements that both applied to you a lot, or both applied a little, you would be able to indicate which applied more.

For general scientific use where you can rely on people to answer honestly, researchers typically do not use ipsative testing. Ipsative testing generally distorts the correlations between subscales.However, ipsative tests is popular in applied settings such as in selection and recruitment. The argument is that ipsative testing reduces faking.

## Relevant references include:

Heggestad et al (2006) interpreted their results to indicate that ipsative testing was not a viable method for controlling for faking:

> Recent research suggests multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) response formats may provide resistance to purposeful response distortion on personality assessments. It remains unclear, however, whether these formats provide normative trait information required for selection contexts. The current research evaluated score correspondences between an MFC format measure and 2 Likert-type measures in honest and instructed-faking conditions. In honest response conditions, scores from the MFC measure appeared valid indicators of normative trait standing. Under faking conditions, the MFC measure showed less score inflation than the Likert measure at the group level of analysis. In the individual-level analyses, however, the MFC measure was as affected by faking as was the Likert measure. Results suggest the MFC format is not a viable method to control faking.

However, Bowen et al reached a more positive conclusion about ipsative testing and the degree to which it is faking-resistant:

> The current study extends previous research by comparing empirical data on ipsative and normative versions of the 30-scale Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ). Participants were randomly assigned to “honest” or “faking” groups. Results support the proposition that when the number of scales is large, the measurement dependency problem associated with the ipsative format is negligible. There was satisfactory convergent validity between ipsative and normative forms in both groups. On both forms, the distance between an ideal profile and participants' ratings were narrower in the faking group than in the honest group. The results suggest that though ipsative measures were not completely free from faking, they were relatively more effective in guarding against faking than more commonly used normative measures.

Meade (2004) discuss ipsative measurement more generally.

> Data are described as ipsative if a given set of responses always sum to the same total. However, there are many properties of data collection that can give rise to different types of ipsative data. In this study, the most common type of ipsative data used in employee selection (forced-choice ipsative data; FCID) is discussed as a special case of other types of ipsative data. Although all ipsative data contains constraints on covariance matrices (covariance-level interdependence), FCID contains additional item-level interdependencies as well. The psychological processes that give rise to FCID and the resultant psychometric properties are discussed. In addition, data from which both normative and ipsative responses were provided by job applicants illustrate very different patterns of correlations as well as very different selection decisions between normative, FCID and ipsatized measures.

### References

* Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Judge, T. A. (2001). Personality and performance at the beginning of the new millennium: what do we know and where do we go next?. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9(1‐2), 9-30. PDF
* Bowen, C. C., Martin, B. A., & Hunt, S. T. (2002). A comparison of ipsative and normative approaches for ability to control faking in personality questionnaires. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 10(3), 240-259.
* Heggestad, E. D., Morrison, M., Reeve, C. L., & McCloy, R. A. (2006). Forced-choice assessments of personality for selection: Evaluating issues of normative assessment and faking resistance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 91(1), 9.
* Meade, A. W. (2004). Psychometric problems and issues involved with creating and using ipsative measures for selection. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 77(4), 531-551.

# Answer
> -1 votes
You have seen that one answer is to the question what do they measure (personality traits). The second answer to the question why (because empirical research repeatedly demonstrates that various personality traits can predict various types of job behaviors: mainly performance, deviance, helping, and innovativeness).

But the burning question...how can I fake out these questions to get the job? A: it is unlikely that you can. Some people may tell you to try and guess the correct answer and then to maximize that response (in a forced-choice just guess the right answer). In some old school selection models, this actually makes sense. However, this assumes you know what personality-type the employer is looking for.

The challenge is that modern assessment vendors have a variety of response pattern detectors that are triggered when it looks like someone is trying to guess correctly and max out. These may be actual items that only fakers will pick, like "Everyone likes me" (these are what Christian was talking about), or other more sophisticated detection methods; I work for companies like this, so can't disclose the cooler detection methods.

The hardest thing for the faker is that ultimately you need to know which personality traits are most important and at which level (high,med,low). There is a movement called "evidence-based management" that relies heavily on data and statistical inference in order to justify certain business practices. One such practice is how to weight the personality traits in your assessment battery for employee selection. These weightings are based on statistical models that are proprietary (both the data sources and modeling techniques), may or may not be sample-dependent, and are guaranteed to need revision over the course of a couple of years. This is because employment tests have at best a couple of years of predictive shelf-life. Trying to guess this is like trying to guess the elements of your credit score; well, probably harder.

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Tags: measurement, personality, io-psychology, test
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# Question
Title: Theoretical grounding for Agile/Scrum methodologies in software development
Agile and Scrum methodologies are well known and often studied and written about in software development. But these methodologies are about managing the activities and the workplace itself.

Are there psychologic or sociologic theories (like those studied in Industrial and organizational psychology) that could explain the effectiveness, or lack of it, of Agile / Scrum methodologies?

I am aware of experimental work on the topic, like that by Elizabeth Whitworth. However, I am not interested in empirical studies about the effectiveness of using Agile / Scrum. I am interested in theoretical justifications for why we would expect Agile/Scrum to be effective or ineffective based on what we know about social and io-psychology. **Are there existing psychological or sociological theories that explain the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Agile/Scrum?**

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Related questions on SE:

# Answer
Theoretical integration is unknown to me, and i suspect that many I/Os have not yet heard of scrum and agile. These are relatively new even in their native industry(software).

If i had to write my comprehensive exam paper on it, I'd pitch you two models. First, an oldie but a goldie, the Job Characteristics model (Hackman and Oldham). This model has identified reliable job environment features that tend to drive engagement. You could map these features onto some of the features of an agile environment:

* Skill variety (agile can offer that);
* Task identity (if they let you see through your project, and the execs don't override creative control, this may be available in agile)
* Task significance (this is probably independent of agile; may or may not get this)
* Autonomy (agile can really offer this for the development team; this is probably the number one reason agile may be effective because it separates the development team from the command and control of management that is typical of waterfall methodologies)
* Feedback (i think this is one of the goals of agile is more quick and dirty feedback on your prototypes; anyway feedback motivates people)

The second pitch I would make is a social psychological/sociological theory referred to as social exchange theory (e.g., Blau). The core of this theory is that people develop certain quality relationships with others they exchange with. The way this exchange occurs and how frequently can affect relationship quality. There may be two really general types of relationships: economic and social. Economic exchanges are highly equal, visible, short-term and focused on the thing being exchanged (this characterizes a lot of employee-employer relationships). Social exchanges are less concerned with the urgency and equality of transactions, and are more concerned with longevity, empathy and belonging in the relationship (many organizations try to create this with culture; people want this because it can cause employees to give effort selflessly).

Agile may in some cases appeal to this social exchange type of relationship. A lot of effort, creativity, and risk is exchanged and tolerated among teammates without any immediate monetary reward or sometimes without much awareness from management. Due to the frequency of exchanges with team members in agile methodology, perhaps the relationship development process is accelerated. This would yield more committed and engaged team members, at least when they're working within those teams.

Oh, and the goal setting theorists will insist that it boils down to frequently setting challenging, specific and committed to goals.

Hope this helps.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, io-psychology
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# Question
Title: What kind of cognitive psych journals are receptive to clinicians without any publications?
A good friend of mine is a clinical psychologist. She has been in practice for more then 25 years and has provided psychological help to people for a variety of issues.

One of her specialities is ADHD. She has created what cognitive psychologists call a "process model" (ie flow chart model; see *Cognitive Psychology* by Goldstein for definition) for how ADHD could work as well as solutions for how to correct it based on her expect experience with her patients. She thus helps people successfully adapt to having the disorder by training them using her model.

All she has at the moment is a model, but she feels very confident publishing this model could help other since it has been successful in her clinical work.

She is capable of organizing these ideas into arguments suitable for academic discourse and likely could also find peers to help edit her work. But she must find a journal that would be interested in publishing her model.

I myself do not know much about publishing in psychology and am more familiar with biology and physics. However, from talking to my physicist friends, I have learned there are a lot of changes going on in how articles are published and correspondingly what opportunities are available. She has not considered publishing until recently (last few years) and is trying to get a better sense of what avenues would be appropriate / sensible.

**My Question:**

What kind of journal might be suitable for my friend to attempt to submit to?

**Note:**

The main purpose of this question is to (1) get more information about trends in how publishing works in psychology journals and (2) to get information specifically about what cognitive psychology journals (specifically those who accept process models) look for in accepting papers. Obviously, it will vary a lot but I just want some starting food for thought. **I am not primarily looking for advice but for general information.** Any advice is welcome however. I just provided this note in an attempt to ensure it is on topic and not too broad so its useful for others too.

# Answer
(note: quotes are from useful comments on the question)

> "I think clinical psychology journals would be her best option either way. Without new data, comments from others about reviewing existing models and data are even more critical. Unfairly, scientists often don't like new theories or models being proposed by people without a scientific track record, so I would recommend a journal with double-blind review, so her ideas can be evaluated on their merits and not on her name recognition." -- DanM

With regard to a paper on ADHD in particular,

> "One can generally advance a new model based on a review of the literature. In her manuscript, she might (1) review the relevant ADHD literature, (2) review relevant ADHD models, and (3) propose a new model that is based on (1) and overcomes limitations of the models in (2). She can also suggest how the model might be employed in clinical practice, and use anecdotal evidence mixed with scientific evidence from the literature to back this up. Without some kind of clinical trial(s) (as an evidence base), it's difficult to talk about the efficacy/effectiveness of her therapy." -- mrt

If she writes the kind of article requiring evidence, then her evidence should be something along the lines of this:

> "Regarding evidence base: a key issue is whether she will be reporting the results of systematic data collection or anectodal observations. If she has consistent clinical notes, she could do a systematic retroactive data analysis (as in systematic chart reviews in medical research). More generally, clinical psychology journals (esp. those focusing on pediatric or developmental psychopathology or neuropsychology) will probably be more receptive to this kind of work than cognitive psychology journals." -- DanM
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: Does anyone know of any clinical psychology journals that use a double-blind review process?
Through this question:

What kind of cognitive psych journals are receptive to clinicians without any publications?

I found out that a colleague of mine should submit a paper she is writing to a clinical psychology journal that uses a double-blind review process. For those who don't know, that means the reviewers don't know who wrote the article and vice versa.

However, I failed to find any such journal through googling.

**My Question:**

Does anyone happen to know of such a journal? I am looking for one that might accept an article (of a colleague of mine) written on ADHD, a learning disability.

If no such journal exists, what is the closest substitute that still uses a double-blind review process?

**Note:**

As I mentioned in the previous question, my colleague has developed a process model of the disorder based on 25+ years of clinical practice. She has used her model for several years now and is looking to publish her it to help others better understand the disease.

# Answer
> 4 votes
My impression is that many (perhaps most) psychology journals do double-blind review (or at least give you the option).

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology is one example. http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/ccp/?tab=4

> This journal uses a masked reviewing system for all submissions.

It sounds like that (a) you are not aware of what clinical psychology journals exist in your area; and (b) how to determine whether they require or allow for masked review. I'll discuss each of these points.

**Finding a relevant clinical psychology journal:** If you are writing a journal article, you will need to perform a review of the literature. Identify journals from those that you cite in your references. There are also various lists of journals organised by topic (e.g., Science Citation Index) that often give an indication of journal prestige. If you are interested in clinical psychology, then you may also want to check out "psychiatry" journals as well.

**Determining review policy.** Every journal has a website, and a section of the website will include instructions to authors. Here you will typically find information about the reviewing process.

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Tags: clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Should psychological checks be as frequent as physical checks to evaluate a patient's condition?
Are there differences between psychological and physical attributes that could justify the lack of these periodic tests in psychology?

# Answer
ABSOLUTELY! The physical and mental are often connected. Take, for instance, the Thyriod. If the thyroid is physically unhealthy then it can cause mental disturbances. It can cause a slew of psychological manifestations for someone. When preceived by a psychological professional, they treat the symtoms they interpret and preceive from their paradigm they treat their patient with psychological techniques and medications.

I have seen this first hand where someone can exhibit pyschological disturbances and are incorrectly diagnosed because the psychological professional does not test their physical state.
> 0 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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title: Why does weather often affect mood?

text:
# Question
Title: Why does weather often affect mood?
There are plenty of people who feel sad, sometimes even depressed when it rains or storms. This effect is often featured in writing and song, where the weather is often a sign of something sinister ("It was a dark and stormy night" is a very cliche beginning for darker stories). I'm curious as to why that is.

I do understand that there are certain activities that can't be done when it rains, but there are "rainy day activities" that take their place. What is it about the weather that makes people feel "down"?

# Answer
The answer is that we don't really know (for non-clinical populations). The relationship between weather and mood isn't straightforward, and the impact of weather on mood may be very small (on average).

There have been some great experience-sampling studies that have looked at this. For example, in a sample of 1233, Denissen, Butalid, Penke, and van Aken (2008) found that:

1. Daily weather had no significant effects on positive affect
2. Higher temperature was associated with higher negative affect
3. Lower wind power and lower sunlight were associated with higher negative affect
4. Lower sunlight was associated with greater tiredness
5. Being outdoors moderated the impact of some weather variables on affect
6. The impact of weather on mood varied significantly across individuals
7. The overall effect of weather on mood was very small

Kööts, Realo, and Allik (2011) found that:

1. Higher temperature was associated with increased positive and negative affect
2. More sunlight was associated with increased positive affect (but not with negative affect)
3. Temperature and luminance were inversely related to feelings of fatigue
4. Being outdoors interacted with weather variables to predict negative and positive affect
5. Neuroticism may account for some individuals' greater reactivity to weather

Keller et al. (2005) found that:

1. The interaction between more time spent outdoors and higher temperature and barometric pressure predicted greater positive affect.
2. Interestingly:
> Among participants who spent more than 30 min outside, higher temperature and pressure were associated with higher moods, but among those who spent 30 min or less outside, this relationship was reversed.

**Conclusion**: As stated, the effects of weather on mood aren't linear. Sunlight can boost serotonin levels, which may explain why *spending time outdoors* improves mood (even when controlling for physical activity). This is corroborated by studies using light therapy for SAD or other forms of depression. And more obviously, we feel fatigued/tired as sunlight lessens. But overall, these effects aren't very big, and they vary quite a bit across individuals (indicating the effects of moderating variables like neuroticism).
> 7 votes

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Tags: mood
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title: Impact of the first love experience

text:
# Question
Title: Impact of the first love experience
When we become adults, we think that love is for adults only associating it with sexual relations but I'm sure that all of us have loved or have had some admiration for the daughter of the neighborhood or a girl attending the same school: that's an idyllic love, I'm sure.

If we know that childhood is characterized by a strong learning capacities and that the learned experiences will have a strong impact on the future behavior of the child, thus the future man or woman, can someone accept easily to see the girl(for a man) or the boy(for a girl) that he/she dreamt in married with another one (when he begins his adulthood).

Isn't such a heart-breaking experience, that can prevent our mind from trying to build new relationships (since we can not replace, at least in our mind,the representation of the loved one while it's becoming a nightmare in the same time)?

And when our mind survive this chaos, will he seek to find someone resembling the one loved during childhood without that we even notice?

* **How is it that people overcome the initial pain of failed love to feel brave enough to risk such pain again when starting relationships?**
* **Do people tend to look for someone who reminds them of their first love?**
* **Is there any studies or statistics for married couples that were "in love" since childhood?**

# Answer
This answer reflects my **own thoughts** on this topic, It **isn't** any *generalized opinion of psychologists* that I am putting forth.

**First:-** Each person is indispensable (*not just the one we love*), comes with his own *characteristics*, teaches us to look at the world from different perspective. But we notice the **impact** of the one we **love more** than any other because we want to feel how he looks at the world, how he feels.

*We want to feel how it is to be him*? Therefore his characteristics become our characteristics (to an extent). Some people say that you become a person you are in love with. Now he has abandoned you, you miss him more and more because *some part of him is still in you*.

**Failed love** empties our world and induces a **void** within life. If given a chance to pinpoint the worst feeling related with failed love and longing for it, I would say that it's the vacuum that haunts us after the person we love doesn't accept us.

Therefore, trying to move on must be acknowledged as our *attempt* to fill that vacuum. Of course, by doing so we run the risk of being abandoned again. But that is *small* compared to our desire to fulfill our love, to fill that void.

**Second:-** Whether or not we look for someone who reminds us of the person we love is another paradigm of our **love history**.

1. How *acrimonious* the breakup was?
2. What *stage of love* were we at when this happened? Because more the time, more difficult will be to give up on the one you love
3. Who according to us was responsible for the breakup?
4. How dedicated we were in that relationship?

If a person thinks that he was **responsible** for the breakup, definitely he would search for someone with **similar characteristics** and once he finds one, he'd be conscious this time and wouldn't try to repeat his mistakes in this new relationship.

If he holds the **other person responsible** for the breakup, then it is difficult to try to accept some other person with same characteristics.

**Third:-** Really, I can't comment on this third one.
> 0 votes

# Answer
While the impact of the first love experience can be very deep, many patterns start long before that. There are so many emotions we pick up from our parents and from the environment that, quite often, our perception of love is not even the result of our personal love experience.Often, it is not even our own pain, but perhaps our parents', that we've internalized as part of a general worldview, and then it gets manifested when we fall in love; and then we think it was our love experience that produced that pain.

Furthermore, regarding \*the initial pain of love misadventure \*, that "pain" usually has less to do with love and more with the ego: I wanted X, and I did not get what I wanted, or got it, but not for very long. (Incidentally, this pain is intrinsic to being alive, as pointed out by the Buddha.)

You've touched on so many things, I don't consider addressing them all... In any case, any trauma can be healed, no matter how deep (notwithstanding exceptions from war and concentration camps).
> 0 votes

# Answer
Haha, I don't think you realized how many topics you touched with this question. Let me see if I can answer the most important of them.

Love is a bad word to use when describing behaviour, because it means different things for pretty much every person. So let's talk affection. Al mammals have the capacity for affection, and it drives them to want to be close to the object of affection, and to care for it, through several emotional mechanisms. Affection is not linked to sexual attraction. Before your sexual desire kicks in, you can develop strong affection for a person. You may rationalize that affection and love, and believe you need to establish a couple relationship with said person, but before sexual desire kicks in, this doesn't involve sexual desire.

You can of course develop sexual desire for a person that is object of your affection. And since people tend to be around their objects of affection a lot, it would be very common for people to do so.

Now, while people certainly learn how to behave when children, including the social norms for social interactions and what is expected of them, you do learn how to behave around and towards the objects of your affection and towards the objects of your sexual desire as a child, and the main influence is the main object of your affection. For your average child that will be their parents. Childhood friends may influence you, but never nearly as much as the child's parents. How you "love" then is mostly determined by how the child saw the parents treat each other and how the parents treated the child, and secondarily by how the parents told the child to "love" or relate to others. Anything else is a minor influence.

Furthermore, how should you behave towards an object of affection (the childhood person for example) is contextual, and depending on how you learn this the relationship should be, you'll adapt to feel so it fulfils your expectations.

For example: If a boy has a girl-best-friend, but in his family only people of the same gender can be friends, and when people of different gender are friends it is always implied that they are a couple or are becoming a couple, it is likely the boy will develop romantic feelings for his girl-friend. But if the boy understands that friendship with girls is as valid as friendship with another boy, it isn't so likely that will happen.

This all contingent, of course. It may or may not be. But the environment and development makes it very much likely for it to go one way or another. When you take into account affection + sexual desire pretty much define what a couple relationship is, chances are childhood friends of different genders (or same genders if they are gay) are likely to, at one point, be in love with each other, and how likely this is depends on what the children learn, how often they interact with each other under what contexts, etc. (let's not forget that proposed physiological mechanism that makes us not develop sexual attraction for people we've interacted a lot with since childhood, like our parents or siblings. This also factors in.)

Anyway, this defines how you see your relationship with this object of affection throughout your life, and can also increase attachment. Attachment creates possessiveness, and this is further modified by what the child learned within his family (Possessive parents teach children to be possessive with their partners or want-to-be-partners, and children are likely to accept this teaching). The more attachment, the more it will hurt when the person is not "yours".

There's yet another factor though: Idealization. Remember always that the brain has a hard time making a difference between what really happens and what we are just imagining. Interaction, samples of affection, etc. increase attachment and also keep it alive. So if you fall in love with X during your teen years, but continue having fantasies about being in a relationship with X for several years, even if you don't see X during that time, the attachment will remain and may even increase. This is, again, modified by what you learned as a child and pretty much all other life experiences related to affection (How much you need affection at the moment, how much you think you are worthy of affection, etc.)

"Isn't such a heart-breaking experience, that can prevent our mind from trying to build new relationships?"

Depends on a lot of things. If the attachment to said person is very high and you've not generated attachment to anyone else, it might. If you don't believe you are worthy of love/affection, and thus don't feel it from anyone else but that person, and your mind decides that once loosing this person the most cost-effective course of action is to "give up", it probably will. There are many specific scenarios like this, it's all very contingent.

But not always. You can form attachments to different people, and if you don't re-live the interactions that generated the affection with X, then it will become weaker over time. In the meantime you can, through interaction, form attachment with Y, effectively replacing the object-of-affection. The affection to X might remain, but not as strongly, or not in the same context as before.

Now- when the person loses X, does it look for something similar to X? I don't think so, but I can see how it might look like it.

You chose X for a reason, his/her psychological characteristics "fit" with yours in a way that it allows you to satisfy your needs for affection through X. The mind will look for another entity that can satisfy the same needs, and it identifies it through certain traits, X had this traits originally, since that's why your mind selected him/her as a "viable candidate", so the next person, Y, must have similar traits.

But you don't choose Y because it resembles X. You chose Y for the same reason you chose X- because they both fit the traits that you need to satisfy your needs, according to your mental structure.

Whew. Hope that does it :D
> 0 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion, developmental-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the situation called where a strong party uses logical reasoning based on a flawed foundation?
I am interested in the situation where two parties (people or organisations) differ in their commitment to exert power where party has more commitment to exert power than the other. The two parties have a dispute on some matter. The strong party builds an argument upon an erroneous point and with great rigour proceeds with some logical conclusions. The strong party is gladly involved in philosophical dispute concerning the validity of all links, but first. The initial point is sold as an axiom.

My question is twofold:

1. does this situation have name?
2. What is the best strategy to deal with this situation for a weak party?

# Answer
A partial solution:

As for the logical fallacy (unrelated to "strong" and "weak" parties), you seem to be describing a "Fallacy of Presumption," where one makes an argument based off of a false/questionable/undefended presumption. There are several more specific cases of this type of fallacy. A website that describes a few is listed below (found via a Google search).

http://www.philosophypages.com/lg/e06b.htm
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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title: What kind of Psychometric test is this

text:
# Question
Title: What kind of Psychometric test is this
I’ve taken this exam as a requirement for a job. Unfortunately, I forgot what the exam was called. All I can remember is that the exam has 100 items grouped into five or four. Each group of five or four questions contains numerical, logical, and vocabulary questions. The questions look something like this:

Something that you use when raining
**U**, S, G, C, M (Umbrella)

A small explosive thrown by hand
**G**, C, W, J, Z (Grenade)

An apple costs $2.50.
If you have 10,how many can you buy?

**4**, 5, 6, 4.5, 5.5

Complete the series: 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 16, ?
**22**, 21, 20, 23, 24

# Answer
It an Intelligence test which was not well designed based off Spearmen's work. Performance evaluations like this can lead to promotion if you score well. If you find a correlation exists in the organization I suggest you take multiple intelligence tests multiple times to learn the testing methods of questions to score better.
> 1 votes

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Tags: measurement
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# Question
Title: What rules are tested during the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task?
I was reading about the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test and although I understand the concept, I'm not clear on what rules are usually tested. Does it always vary between associations between shape, colour and number? For example, let's say I have a card with two red circles. Are the only possible matches to this card something with two shapes on it, red shapes on it or circles on it? Are more complex rules, such as the number of shapes + 1 or circles associate to green also tested?

# Answer
> 5 votes
If you read between the lines of Evaluation of a Short-Form of the Berg Card Sorting Test, you can find that indeed the only rules tested are the simple colour, number and shape matching. This can be identified by either looking at the source code attached to the paper or looking at the sample result table.

**Update:**

See also this paper.

# Answer
> 1 votes
There is a good explanation here.

This is not a test of IQ or something similar. It is more complex test of ability to find rules and follow from very limited feedback, rules that are changing in time and might be counter-intuitive.

WCST is about sequential learning, adaptivity, and memory. Rules usually are as simple as "same color" or "same shapes".

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: What are there neuroanatomical mappings of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task?
I know that the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task is used to diagnose various mental disfunctions such as schizophrenia and drug addiction. However, has it been specified what brain regions or structures are being evaluated and how?

# Answer
According to Wikipedia:

> As predicted by the acquired brain injury literature, early PET studies have shown the task involves significant activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. However, more recent fMRI studies have shown that the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex together with the caudate nucleus may be the regions most important for the set-shifting process required in the WCST. These regions are also associated with working memory functions.

Furthermore, according to Andrew Amos preservative errors are due to frontal lobe dysfunction, while random errors are due to basal ganglia dysfunction.

At a glance, this does seem to make sense since the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex has been associated previously with working memory and the caudate nucleus (as part of the basal ganglia) is known to be associated with switching between rewarding tasks.

More recently a series of lesion studies have been conducted with an analogous task with monkeys providing further insights into brain areas, with a summary of the most important summaries here.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, clinical-psychology, neuroanatomy, executive-function
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# Question
Title: How to know whether a methodological technique is quantitative or qualitative?
How do you classify NASA TLX, ANOVA, Matched Pair T-Test, Self-Efficacy Scale, and System Usability Scale? Are these types of data analysis considered quantitative or qualitative?

Please answer whether each is quantitative or qualitative.

Below are a few webpages about these forms of data analysis.

I believe that the NASA TLX, Self-Efficacy Scale, and System Usability Scale are **qualitative**. While ANOVA and the Matched Pair T-Test are both **quantitative**.

If I am wrong, please let me know what the correct answer is and why.

# Answer
It's important to distinguish between measures and analyses, because only analyses can be quantitative or qualitative, not measures.

Measures are, essentially, systematic processes by which we acquire our data, and analyses are processes we use to look at the data. As a rule of thumb, the difference is not hard to find and is given in the name: quantitative analysis deals with numbers, and qualitative analysis doesn't. It looks more complex than it is.

ANOVA and t-tests are both forms of statistical linear regression, for example. They 'concentrate' many standardized observations down to a manageable model we can easily deal with, like an extremely effective form of memory chunking. They're quantitative because they have to do with numbers. Analyses can be quantitative or qualitative, and you can easily tell them apart by whether the technique relies on numbers or judgment.

You didn't actually give any examples of qualitative analysis in the question, but the prototypical example of qualitative analysis is the case study. For various reasons, it's sometimes necessary or just useful to conduct a study based on a single case (e.g., the memory patient HM). These studies can draw meaningful and very useful conclusions based on qualitative analyses like comparative studies, double dichotomy, etc., when we would never be able to reach a meaningful level of statistical power (e.g., because only one or very few patients is/are known to exist in the world).

Measures are neither quantitative or qualitative. Analytic techniques are quantitative or qualitative based on whether or not they work through numbers or human judgment. (Sorry about the formatting, I'm posting from a tablet and will clean it up later.)
> 6 votes

# Answer
ANOVA and t-tests are statistical tests for significance and therefore quantitative.

The other mentioned items are scales (adding numbers to a certain choice) and therefore they can be considered as ordinal scales, and hence as quantitative as they are based on numbers.

The NASA one can be administered by using a sliding scale which can be considered to be a continuous scale, allowing for parametric statistical testing. However, if divided in say 10 choices, it becomes an ordinal scale and non-parametric tests have to be used.
> 6 votes

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Tags: methodology, experimental-psychology, statistics, survey
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# Question
Title: Does short-term memory decrease after working memory, or does it decrease before working memory?
I see contradicting claims.

This book shows working memory peaking in 20s, short term memory peaking out later (not doing badly until one's 40s), but this paper shows STM peaking out earlier than working memory.

# Answer
> 4 votes
It doesn't really make sense to talk about whether "short-term memory" or "working memory" decline first, so I think there is some confusion of terminology. It seems the reference comes from the second linked article, which colloquially suggests that 'short-term' face memory declines before working memory. In modern working memory research, the relationship between short-working-long term memory generally is as follows.

* **Short-term memory:** A few seconds.
* **Working memory:** As long as consciously maintained.
* **Long-term memory:** Permanent.

This ontology goes back to Baddeley and Hitch's work on the modal model of working memory from the 1970's, and has largely been maintained in subsequent item-based models (how most people think of human memory today).

Short-term memory isn't used as a formal construct very often in memory research anymore because it's a rather vague term, though I think perception researchers still use the term when they don't want to tread too far into memory theory. Instead, it's simply used colloquially as any means of remembering something over short time scales.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, memory
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# Question
Title: Reference request for creator of heuristic for processing fMRI data (T.Nichols)
I am using nilearn and nipy package for python processing FMRI data. When computing mask, it says:

> Compute and write the mask of an image based on the grey level This is based on an heuristic proposed by T.Nichols: find the least dense point of the histogram, between fractions m and M of the total image histogram.

and

> This is based on an heuristic proposed by T.Nichols: find the least dense point of the histogram, between fractions lower\_cutoff and upper\_cutoff of the total image histogram.

In both masking functions of nilearn and nipy. Who is T.Nichols? I wasn't able to google him/her out.

here are the links to the functions:

http://nipy.org/nipy/stable/api/generated/nipy.labs.mask.html

https://nilearn.github.io/building\_blocks/generated/nilearn.masking.compute\_epi\_mask.html

# Answer
> 4 votes
I know very little about fmri, but as @strongbad points out, surely it is Professor Thomas Nichols at Warwick.

I'm not sure what the authoritative reference is, but Luo and Nichols (2003) might be worth a look. They state:

> We construct a histogram based on all non-tail data (10th to 90th percentile) and use the location of the minimum bin as the antimode estimate.

Luo, W. L., & Nichols, T. E. (2003). Diagnosis and exploration of massively univariate neuroimaging models. NeuroImage, 19(3), 1014-1032. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nichols/Docs/fMRIvis.pdf

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Tags: reference-request, fmri
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# Question
Title: What are the mathematical models of memory?
Are there mathematical models of memory in humans or animals?

I want to know how neuroscientists use mathematics to describe memory in living creatures. **How do neuroscientists model memory and show how it works by mathematics?**

I am a theoretical physics PhD student, and interested in neuroscience too. The only tool which I have and I could use to study neuroscience is mathematics and programing. That's why I want to know how neuroscientists address the memory by mathematics. I know how math works to describe neurons oscillations and action potential, but I don't know how it works for memory.

Any reference or review article is welcome too.

# Answer
Very many references may easily be found with a Google search for "mathematical model memory". Probably the most classic and iconic reference is Atkinson and Shiffrin (1965), which is also described on Wikipedia. Its three components and their relationships are nicely encapsulated in this figure:

Many other, lesser-known mathematical models of memory exist, including but not limited to these:

You may also be interested in the following references:

And a related question here, in which "memory" comes up twice:

---

**References**
**·** Anderson, O. R. (1983). A neuromathematical model of human information processing and its application to science content acquisition. *Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20*(7), 603–620.
**·** Anninos, P. A. (1972). Mathematical model of memory trace and forgetfulness. *Kybernetik, 10*(3), 165–167.
**·** Atkinson, R. C., & Juola, J. F. (1974). Search and decision processes in recognition memory. In D. H. Krantz, R. C. Atkinson, R. D. Luce, & P. Suppes (Eds.), *Contemporary developments in mathematical psychology: I. Learning, memory and thinking*. Oxford, England: W. H. Freeman.
**·** Atkinson, R. C., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1965). Mathematical models for memory and learning. *Technical Report No. 79: Psychological Series.* Institute for Mathematical Studies in the Social Sciences, Stanford University. Retrieved from http://www.rca.ucsd.edu/selected\_papers/IMSSS\_79.pdf.
**·** Bower, G. (1967). A multicomponent theory of the memory trace. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), *The psychology of learning and motivation: I*. Oxford, England: Academic Press.
**·** Carpenter, G. A., & Grossberg, S. (1987). ART 2: Self-organization of stable category recognition codes for analog input patterns. *Applied Optics, 26*(23), 4919–4930. Retrieved from http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/fulltext.cfm?uri=ao-26-23-4919&id=30891.
**·** Carpenter, G. A., & Grossberg, S. (1987). A massively parallel architecture for a self-organizing neural pattern recognition machine. *Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing, 37*(1), 54–115. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.70.9588&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
**·** Fukushima, Y., Tsukada, M., Tsuda, I., Yamaguti, Y., & Kuroda, S. (2009). Coding mechanisms in hippocampal networks for learning and memory. In *Advances in Neuro-Information Processing* (pp. 72–79). Springer: Berlin Heidelberg.
**·** Hicklin, W. J. (1976). A model for mastery learning based on dynamic equilibrium theory. *Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 13*(1), 79–88.
**·** Hochreiter, S., & Schmidhuber, J. (1997). Long short-term memory. *Neural Computation, 9*(8), 1735–1780. Retrieved from http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~itamar/courses/ECE-692/Bobby\_paper1.pdf.
**·** Hopfield, J. J. (1982). Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational abilities. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 79*(8), 2554–2558. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC346238/pdf/pnas00447-0135.pdf.
**·** Hopfield, J. J. (1984). Neurons with graded response have collective computational properties like those of two-state neurons. *Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 81*(10), 3088–3092. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC345226/pdf/pnas00611-0151.pdf.
**·** Hopfield, J. J. (2008). Searching for memories, Sudoku, implicit check bits, and the iterative use of not-always-correct rapid neural computation. *Neural Computation, 20*(5), 1119–1164. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/ftp/q-bio/papers/0609/0609006.pdf.
**·** Mandler, G. (1967). Organization and memory. In K. W. Spence & J. T. Spence (Eds.), *The psychology of learning and motivation: I*. Oxford, England: Academic Press.
**·** Min'ko, A. A., & Petunin, Y. I. (1981). Mathematical modeling of short-term memory. *Cybernetics, 17*(2), 287–298.
**·** Preece, P. F., & Anderson, O. R. (1984). Mathematical modeling of learning. *Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 21*(9), 953–955. Retrieved from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tea.3660210910/pdf.
**·** Raaijmakers, J. G. W. (2008). Mathematical models of human memory. In *Learning and Memory: A Comprehensive Reference, Vol. 2: Cognitive Psychology of Memory* (pp. 445–466). Elsevier.
**·** Restle, F. (1971). *Mathematical models in psychology*. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
**·** Rojas, R. (1996). *Neutral networks: A systematic introduction*. Springer. Retrieved from http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/rojas/neural/neuron.pdf.
**·** Tsuda, I., Yamaguti, Y., Kuroda, S., Fukushima, Y., & Tsukada, M. (2008). A mathematical model for the hippocampus: Towards the understanding of episodic memory and imagination. *Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement, 173*, 99–108.
**·** Yamaguti, Y., Kuroda, S., Fukushima, Y., Tsukada, M., & Tsuda, I. (2011). A mathematical model for Cantor coding in the hippocampus. *Neural Networks, 24*(1), 43–53.
> 12 votes

# Answer
If you have a physics background, you may be particularly interested in Sparse Distributed Memory, a model that provides a number of psychologically plausible characteristics, and is also neuroscientifically plausible.

The model and some of its characteristics are summarized in this paper.

Many great references have been provided by Nick Stauner, but this model is, in my view, one of the most promising and comprehensive ones in Cognitive Science.
> 4 votes

# Answer
My lab uses the Semantic Pointer Architecture (where vectors are used as pointers between different dimensions, for more information check out "How to Build a Brain" by Chris Eliasmith) which is a Vector Symbolic Architecture (where sparse vectors represent symbols) to model working memory in a biologically plausible manner. So far this has been used in Spaun in it's model of serial memorization, as well as various other cognitive tasks such as the n-back task (soon to be published).
> 1 votes

# Answer
Memory is a big word. Usually, neuroscientists and psychologists will try to model a specific cognitive process: for example, long-term recognition memory (the ability to distinguish between previously learned items and new items). Here is a link to a very good introductory text in computational neuroscience (which includes a section about memory and learning): http://grey.colorado.edu/CompCogNeuro/index.php?title=CCNBook/Main

Here is a link to a bible of neural networks: http://www.ru.lv/~peter/zinatne/ebooks/The%20MIT%20Press%20-%202003%20-%20The%20Handbook%20of%20Brain%20Theory%20and%20Neural%20Networks%20-%202nd%20Edition%20-%20ISBN%200262011972%20-%201309s%20-%20TLFeBOOK.pdf
> 0 votes

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Tags: memory, theoretical-neuroscience, computational-modeling, mathematical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Why is empathy not a part of the Big 5 personality traits?
I have looked at the big 5 personality traits, and they include 5 basic factors: openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and agreeableness. Why is empathy not on the list?

# Answer
> 11 votes
The basic goal of research on the big 5 is to identify those dimensions of personality that can account for the **most important** differences between people.

**How do you determine what is important and "makes the list"?** The research from which the Big Five have been derived relies on the lexical hypothesis. In a nutshell, the idea is that if a trait is important, it should be part of our language. So personality researchers such as Allport and Cattell have devised long lists of words existing in our lexicon used to describe the traits of people. Then they asked people to judge themselves with regard to these traits. Finally, they tried to identify underlying (common) dimensions in these trait descriptions by using statistical analyses (e.g. factor analyses). For example, if someone agrees to being a "friendly" person, he or she will probably also agree to being a person who "cares about people". These analyses resulted in the 5 very broad dimensions of personality.

**What about empathy?** Empathy is highly related to **agreeableness**. In fact, if you look at personality questionnaires, the agreeableness scales are likely to tap into empathy:

* For example, the NEO agreeableness subscale of the International Personality Item Pool includes items such as: "\[I\] Am concerned about others." or "\[I\] Sympathize with others' feelings." which are essentially items measuring empathic concern.
* The NEO-PI-R (Costa & Macrae, 1992) is one of the most widely used Big Five questionnaires (with 240 items it's a pretty large and comprehensive one). It describes agreeableness as "the kinds of interactions an individual prefers from compassion to tough mindedness." It has two sub-scales that are related to empathy: *Altruism* ("active concern for the welfare of others") and *Tender-Mindedness* ("attitude of sympathy for others.").

This makes clear that from the perspective of the Big Five, empathy may be regarded as an element of agreeableness.

In line with this, agreeableness predicts specific measures of empathic concern and prosocial behavior such as helping.

All of the above should not imply that it has no value to think about and measure empathy as a specific trait (rather than the general agreeableness factor). This is just about different research goals. The goal of the Big 5 is to be maximally parsimonious. Some detail will be lost by this strategy. However, if you are specifically interested in empathy, it may make more sense to focus on it at the cost of **parsimony**.

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Tags: personality, empathy, big-five
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# Question
Title: What mental illnesses cause different performance on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task
I am aware that the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) has been used multiple times to demonstrate differences in executive function control in schizophrenics, but what other mental illness sufferers have been demonstrated to have significant performance differences on the WCST?

# Answer
> 7 votes
The diseases and mental dysfunctions that have been studied are Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, ADHD, Substance Dependence, Autism, Multiple Sclerosis and Schizophrenia (with and without tardive dyskenisia). I'll add more specific statistics (such as trials required to acquire first rule) and better references later.

In the meantime, during my search I found this really quick table: from this paper showing the amount of completed categories and preservative errors (when a person is ignoring that the rule has changed).

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, reference-request
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# Question
Title: How do moral judgments change for older adults?
There have been numerous studies that compare the moral judgment/sensitivity of adults and children (a good example is this paper by Decety, Michalska and Kinzler, showing significant differences between the moral judgments of each group). However, I am curious if there exist any similar studies for older adults. For example, is there any significant difference between the moral sensitivity of adults over 60-70 and younger adults?

# Answer
> 6 votes
**Moral Judgement:**

From Wikipedia:

> ... moral judgment ... is "the ability to reason correctly about what 'ought' to be done in a specific situation."

Research on moral judgement was pioneered by Jean Piaget, summarized in his book "The Moral Judgment of the Child" (1932), in which he implies that moral development levels off in adolescence. Piaget introduced the standard moral judgement task paradigm that is still often used today to assess moral development by asking subjects to make moral judgements on particular stories or dilemmas. In his research, peak performance on these tests was achieved around mid-adolescence, and he never bothered to test older subjects. Interestingly, performance of older adults was only finally put to the test in 1996. This study showed that (a) moral development does not peak in adolescence, as adults perform slightly better, and (b) older adults do not differ much in overall performance than younger adults, but the details are mixed - in some areas of morality they perform better and in others worse.

Beginning in the 1960's, Piaget's work was extended by other researchers such as Kohlberg and Gilligan to include moral development throughout people's entire life-span. This spurred much research on moral development in adulthood. For example, a study published in 1997 summarizes the dubious state of the research at the time as follows:

> In sum, findings to date suggest three possible developmental paths of moral reasoning development in adulthood: (1) a plateau effect in adulthood; (2) ongoing development throughout adulthood; or (3) on-going development in earlier adult-hood with decline in later adulthood.

Results of that particular study are depicted in the image below:

As you can see, it's not really that clear what happens in later adulthood, but it doesn't seem to be much different from early adulthood.

**Moral Sensitivity:**

From Wikipedia:

> ... moral sensitivity ... is "the ability to see an ethical dilemma, including how our actions will affect others."

Research on moral sensitivity is much more recent. Even in his early works, Piaget was aware of this effect on moral judgement task performance. In the original paradigm, very young children were asked questions like "should a child who accidentally broke 15 cups while washing the dishes be punished more than a child who accidentally broke 1 cup while stealing a cookie". Although the children were often aware that stealing a cookie is wrong and washing dishes is not, the large amount of damage caused would outweigh that due to its emotional impact on the child. By around age 8 or 9 however, children understand that the amount of harm is not a relevant factor - only the intention is.

However, later research suggested that moral sensitivity is still correlated with emotion much later in life. By adolescence, this emotional reaction no longer affects moral judgements, but it continues to impact other aspects of moral reasoning such as deserved punishment. An early attempt to measure sensitivity (2001) used the speed of word associations as an indirect indicator, and found no significant difference between the performance of younger and older adults once the age-related decrease in overall performance was taken into account.

Modern research on moral sensitivity uses fMRI to detect changes in activity in areas of the brain associated with emotion (limbic system) and moral reasoning (prefrontal cortex). This approach is relatively new, and still fairly expensive, so sample sizes tend to be small. The study cited in the question also concludes, as is well established, that:

> ... judgments about how wrong an action was did not differ significantly by age

but as for moral sensitivity:

> ... with increasing age, subjects reported feeling less upset when viewing objects being damaged ... With age, agents were rated as even more mean if they had harmed a person intentionally than if they had harmed a person accidentally ... with increasing age, participants were less willing to punish agents who intentionally damaged objects than those who intentionally harmed people ... Comparison across the three groups showed a significant difference ... between the early childhood group and the adult group in the connectivity between the vmPFC and amygdala reflecting increased functional integration between these 2 regions in adults.

It would certainly be interesting to see how these results extend to later adulthood - ie, if they continue in a linear fashion, or taper off as in moral judgement scores.

Most modern research on older adults focuses on the effects of brain damage (eg, 2006, 2010, 2010), which is naturally more common with age. When compared with same-age controls, patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex perform worse on a variety of moral judgement tasks. Degradation in brain function may be responsible for a decline in moral sensitivity with age in some cases.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, reference-request, moral-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to bridge implicit and explicit memory?
It is self evident, from the various studies of Skinner and Pavlov, that a traumatic - or one of a similar nature - experience possesses the tendency to reside within certain schemas through the processes of classical conditioning; exmpli gratia, one may experience unpleasant stings from a wasp ,and thusly bestow fear ( based on that of the pain derived from stings) upon all creatures with similar characteristics through generalisation. And, hence these conditions based upon the creatures may last for prolonged durations, depending upon the frequency and "intensity" of the exposure.

However, my question is: could there possibly be a way to bridge implicit memory with declarative in such a process similar to conditioning? So that, as one, for instance, endeavours to memorise a speech, a certain experience associated , despite the fact that the speech may have never encountered the memoriser, could massively boost one's ability to do so.

I acknowledge the fact this question may not only seem far-fetched and implausible but perhaps spawned from ignorance, yet, I am invariably pondering upon ways to increase one's memory a part from the traditional mnemonics and other strategies.

**Is it possible to 'bridge' implicit and explicit memory?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Short answer:** It does not make sense to talk about 'bridging' implicit and explicit memory.

**Longer answer:** Explicitness and implicitness of memory is most appropriately considered a property of the *memory test*, not the *memory being tested*. Memories, physically speaking, have both explicit and implicit properties. They are 'bridged' by default.

The difference between explicit (and more specifically declarative) memory and implicit memory is more definitional and epistemic, i.e., related to our ability to measure and analyze, than anything empirical. Memory is declarative, by definition, when it can be tested by way of an articulated participant response. Memory is implicit, by definition, when it can be tested by way of behavioral performance.

For example, consider something basic like transporting yourself from point A (say, your house) to point B (say, the train station). You have implicit memory of this route, which we can see by observing you move from A to B. You also have explicit memory of this route, which we can see by having you describe the path from A to B. It is fundamentally no more complex than that.

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Tags: memory, working-memory, conditioning
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# Question
Title: What's the difference between executive functions and cognitive control?
I suspect that the difference between these terms may vary from researcher to researcher, since the wikipedia page treats them as synonymous. What's the difference between executive functioning and cognitive control? Is cognitive control a type of executive function?

# Answer
> 5 votes
You are right to suspect that cognitive control and executive function are essentially interchangeable, at least for most purposes. Among researchers in the area, I would say there is a slight difference, however.

**Cognitive control** refers to the more abstract concept and affords researchers more degrees of freedom in defining what that means operationally speaking. Here is a fairly representative example of its use, from Botvinick et al. (2001), found on a quick Scholar search:

> A remarkable feature of the human cognitive system is its ability to configure itself for the performance of specific tasks through appropriate adjustments in perceptual selection, response biasing and the on-line maintenance of contextual information. The processes behind such adaptability, referred to collectively as cognitive control ...

**Executive function**, meanwhile, tends to either depend directly or conceptually on the seminal paper by Miyake et al. (2000), which more explicitly models this sort of control in terms of *shifting*, *updating* and *inhibition* functions. This is an extremely influential and productive model, and at least within the context of working memory research, I would say it sees more use than the more conceptual 'cognitive control'.

**References**

* Botvinick, M. M., Braver, T. S., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., & Cohen, J. D. (2001). Conflict monitoring and cognitive control. Psychological review, 108(3), 624.
* Miyake, A., Friedman, N. P., Emerson, M. J., Witzki, A. H., Howerter, A., & Wager, T. D. (2000). The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex “frontal lobe” tasks: A latent variable analysis. Cognitive psychology, 41(1), 49-100.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Evidence of 'virtually limitless' long-term memory
In his paper, 'What do People believe about Memory?', Professor Svein Magnussen of University of Oslo claims:

> ... memory science is not aware of any limitation on the amount of information the brain is able to store and retrieve. Most classical papers on the memory for large amounts of information suggest that human long-term memory is virtually limitless.

Please can you provide evidence that well-supports this claim?

# Answer
I have tried to put your question in the context of modern memory research, but without involving specific models (which would make your question far too broad to answer). Hopefully, this will clarify what purpose the construct of long-term memory serves in modern memory theory, and what exactly is meant by it being "unlimited," without giving a chapter-length answer.

# What is long-term memory to memory researchers?

Operationally speaking, long-term memory is memory that fails to exhibit the primary effects that characterize, and which we use to define and study, shorter term and working memory, especially capacity limitations and interference. In a sentence, long term memory is memory that has survived the forgetting process for sufficiently long that the expected chance of forgetting asymptotically approaches zero under a particular model. From the article in the question, some very useful context precedes the given quote:

> Closely linked with the idea of memory exercising, is the question of whether long-term memory has a limited storage capacity or is limitless. **This question is illustrated by the textbook anecdote of the professor of ornithology who stopped learning the names of his students because each time he learned the name of a student he forgot the name of a bird.**

The bolded quote lies at the heart of what memory researchers mean when they say that there are no known limits on long-term memory. Within the context of current storage-based memory models, we may say that **long-term memory is limited if and only if cross-domain interference is known to occur at arbitrarily long time scales** (i.e., if new memories can "push out" old memories.)

# Memory interference

The existence of cross-domain interference is an oft held anecdotal belief, but there is no empirical evidence to support the idea of any such limit on memories that have 'survived' the consolidation process for sufficiently long. It is particularly helpful to understand the effect known as **proactive interference** here:

> **Proactive interference** (PI)
>
> Suppose I present you with a list of food items (apple, steak, ham), then test your recall. Then, I present you with another list of food items (orange, carrot, chicken soup) and test your recall again. Your performance will be worse than on the first list, because the first list is **proactively interfering** with your recall of the second list.
>
> Now, if I present yet another food item list, I can increase the PI effect until your retention approaches zero. If I instead present you with a list of car parts, your performance goes back to 'normal'. This is known as **release from proactive interference**.

The existence of release from proactive interference effects implies that no or very little cross-domain interference occurs at all, even over relatively short scales, and therefore that no *long-term* cross-domain interference occurs. Based on this alone, it is fair to say that modern memory science is not aware of any limitation on the amount of information the brain is able to store and retrieve.

# Concluding remarks

I hope my answer has been informative regarding how memory researchers define memory, and what they mean when they say that long-term memory is "unlimited." As I think your question is getting at, long-term memory is certainly not a well defined construct. It isn't something we can observe directly or even indirectly, but tends to be used as a definitional convenience, at least within a research context.

Long-term memory is simply memory that no longer exhibits the characteristic effects that memory researchers operationally define memory by in the first place; a decidedly *negative* construct. It isn't wrong to say that long-term memory is unlimited, but it isn't particularly useful knowledge unto itself, either.

Note also that, although the distinction between short- and long-term has remained extremely popular since its introduction in the 60's, it is not universally accepted. Erikssonian long-term working memory theory, process memory theory and ecological psychology are all examples of models or schools of thought that either reject or are entirely incommensurate with the idea of a short vs. long-term distinction, or even that memories are "stored."
> 3 votes

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Tags: memory
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# Question
Title: Does Spaun's serial memory exhibit proactive interference and serial searching
Xuan Choo recentely created a model of serial working memory for Spaun. Does this model of working memory exhibit the effects of proactive interference (as well as changing data types yielding freedom from proactive interference)? Additionally, does this model show signs of exhaustive serial search (the time for answering questions increases as the list gets longer)? If not, what future areas of investigation might yield this result or is it impossible?

### References

# Answer
Choo's OSE model paper does not present evidence that would allow us to say whether or not the model exhibits proactive interference or set size effects. Presumably, this is because it is specifically a model of **primacy** and **recency** effects, not a general model of working memory. The thesis scope is given on page two:

> Two major behavioural effects are often observed when analyzing recall performance data. The first is known as the primacy effect, which is generally seen in most serial recall tasks. The primacy effect describes the tendency for items near the start of a sequence to be more accurately recalled than other items in the sequence. The second effects is the recency effect, which describes the opposite of the primacy effect.
>
> \[...\]
>
> Identifying the mechanisms in serial memory that are responsible for this behaviour \[primacy and recency effects in serial memory\] and developing a model that is able to capture this behaviour while maintaining biological plausibility is the primary motivation of the research behind this thesis.

All results are reported with respect to serial position, because the scope of the thesis is relatively narrow. Without also modeling response time and semantic categories, I'm not sure how or why the particular model would be adapted to investigate either of these effects. That's just not what it does.

Developing a model of proactive interference with Spaun seems improbable, because the framework doesn't appear to have any way to model semantic or declarative memory, and you need that to show proactive interference effects. There is no reason the Spaun framework/NEF could not be used as a basis for memory models which exhibit set-size effects, however. Spaun's input is visual and image-based, so that should be no problem.

For proactive interference, something like ACT-R, or another biologically plausible cognitive architecture which already features declarative memory, would be more apt. There are a number of papers on modeling proactive interference with ACT-R on the publications page (click on "Interference").
> 2 votes

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, spa
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# Question
Title: How does the brain physically get tired?
When engaging in physical work-outs, people often research how regular muscles store energy, how to eat and exercise cleverly so that the exercises actually make them stronger and more healthy instead of making them constantly tired or even sick.

Where can I find similar explanations, but for brain, that would explain and describe how brain, as an organ, gets exhausted and what is the proper/recommended discipline for using brain as an organ the most effectively? (e.g. how should study sessions get scheduled, what should be included into the diet, what activities should be possibly avoided,etc)

# Answer
The first rule of Neuroscience Club is to check your Kandel.

The second rule of Neuroscience Club is to check your Kandel.

Joking aside, the gold standard of neuroscience is Kandel et al.'s **Principles of Neural Science**, currently in its fifth edition. It's an extremely (and in the cognitive sciences, I would say uniquely) comprehensive and authoritative work, and you can certainly use it to find an explanation for your questions about how the brain stores and uses energy, or virtually anything else. It's that rare kind of book which successfully distills a massive subject down to something as simple as possible, and no simpler than that.

> Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M., Siegelbaum, S. A., Hudspeth, A. J. (Eds.). (2013). Principles of neural science (Vol. 5). New York: McGraw-Hill.

It does not really make sense to talk about "how to use the brain as an organ most effectively." The brain is only metaphorically similar to muscles, and only in certain respects. One of the relevant differences is that neurons do many things and often exhibit nonlinear behavior, whereas muscles more or less only stretch and contract. This currently makes it very difficult to scientifically define what optimizing brain function *means*, exactly, compared to defining what optimizing muscle function means.

I will not deconstruct the question further since it is primarily a reference request, and this will all be more than clear from Principles of Neural Science.
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, reference-request
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