# Question
Title: What's the difference between repetition suppression and habituation?
Neural repetition suppression seems to be describing behavioral habituation on a neuronal level. What's the difference between these two terms?

# Answer
> 7 votes
The two concepts are analogous and mutually illustrative, but empirically refer to different levels of analysis: behavioral and neural.

## Habituation

**Habituation** is a form of non-associative learning, specifically, learning that a stimulus is behaviorally unimportant. If I loudly and repeatedly bang on a metal pot immediately behind your head, you will probably be shocked, then uncomfortable, then annoyed, until you eventually learn to mostly ignore the unimportant sound. It is an effect detected in behavioral measures, rather than neural measures, and which, as any Google search will confirm, is well-established across many species. An example of the term's general usage from Wikipedia (which I hope is sufficient for illustration), noting the emphasis on the behavioral rather than neural scale:

> *The habituation process is a form of adaptive behavior (or neuroplasticity) that is classified as nonassociative learning. Nonassociative learning is a change in a response to a stimulus that does not involve associating the presented stimulus with another stimulus or event such as reward or punishment.*

## Repetition Suppression

**Repetition suppression** is a neural mechanism which attenuates (i.e., gradually decreases the intensity of) signals in the brain when a stimulus is detected repeatedly. Presenting the same visual stimulus repeatedly will therefore cause decreased response in some of the involved groups of visual neurons, which is also a useful effect in a number of behavioral research fields like memory and attention research. Two illustrative examples of the term's usage follow:

> **Memory**
>
> *Furthermore, single-cell recordings show experience-based changes in perirhinal neuronal firing patterns broadly consistent with item recognition, wherein firing rates decrease in response to previously encountered relative to novel stimuli (Xiang and Brown, 1998). Such firing rate decreases, termed “repetition suppression” ...*
>
> Gonsalves, B. D., Kahn, I., Curran, T., Norman, K. A., & Wagner, A. D. (2005). Memory strength and repetition suppression: multimodal imaging of medial temporal cortical contributions to recognition. Neuron, 47(5), 751-761.
>
> **Face recognition**
>
> *Repetition suppression, as manifested by the difference in response amplitude between the first and third repetitions of a target, was stronger for fearful than neutral faces.*
>
> Ishai, A., Pessoa, L., Bikle, P. C., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2004). Repetition suppression of faces is modulated by emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101(26), 9827-9832.

Clearly, habituation and repetition suppression share a lot of conceptual similarities, but it's important to remember that they are ultimately models of entirely different, if closely related physical phenomena which occur at completely different scales. Behavioral habituation relies to some extent on neural repetition suppression, but it does so through memory, attention and other cognitive systems. Repetition suppression alone is therefore not sufficient to explain behavioral habituation, or vice versa.

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, terminology, conditioning, perceptual-learning
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# Question
Title: How to describe research on the effect of expectations on memory?
I wanted to test a persons expectation Vs. memory. To put it simply, I want to see whether or not a person will remember more information when told they have a larger/smaller amount of information to consume and reiterate. I haven't been able to find any studies done on the topic so far. Does anyone know how I could rephrase this to get a more narrow search result?

So far I've been searching for Expectation vs. Memory, and have been getting studies that focus on a persons expectation in a different sense...

# Answer
The relevant concepts are **set size** and **span**. The set size is usually the amount of items to be remembered in a memory task, but technically only refers to the amount of information that must be held in (working) memory to complete the memory task at hand, while the span is the amount actually remembered. With this in mind, your topic can be stated as being about whether expectations for set size affect memory span.

I am not aware of any studies directly investigating this. Look into the *executive function/control* literature, because any effect from expectations for set size on memory span will almost by definition involve some form of executive control. I can think of a number of theoretical possibilities, so I would be very interested to read a follow-up question that you answered yourself.
> 3 votes

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Tags: memory, reproducible-research
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# Question
Title: Why don't we get regular checkups for mental health, as in physical health?
It's standard practice to get a checkup from your primary care doctor once a year. Why is this not so for a mental health professional? Is your primary supposed to catch possible mental and emotional problems and refer you to a specialist?

# Answer
The short version is that in Europe and North America, at least, the answer is predominantly yes: your GP is supposed to refer you to a relevant mental practitioner on a case by case basis. This can be prompted either by voluntary disclosure (i.e., the patient brings up mental health issues themselves) or suggested based on comments made by the patients. GPs do not generally have a responsibility to 'catch' mental health problems unless they are potentially life threatening (e.g., suicidal ideation).

This is the most that can be said without knowing which country or countries you are interested in. There are vastly different models of mental health care at work in various countries, and the practice of mental health care varies accordingly. For example, the United States' health care model is primarily based on private insurance, while Britain's is an integrated public-private model, which affects how real practice is conducted. Besides the different incentive structures, countries also have different philosophies of mental health service.

You can often find information about a particular country's mental health care model and philosophy on the website of their public health institution (e.g., department/ministry of health).
> 4 votes

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Tags: psychiatry
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title: What is an acquired taste?

text:
# Question
Title: What is an acquired taste?
Some foods are delicious. People love eating them, and the experience has a positive reinforcement. Thus, people will eat the food again.

Some foods are instead "challenging", at least initially. For example, spicy or unfamiliar food. There are some foods which are considered particularly challenging like Durian fruit or Century eggs.

Why don't people simply stop eating this food, and instead acquire a taste for it?

# Answer
> 3 votes
One explanation for the development of 'acquired tastes' is a form of reinforcement learning called **flavor-flavor learning**. The name sounds a bit odd on its own, but should best be seen in relation to the concept of flavor-nutrient learning.

## What flavor-flavor learning is

When a previously unexperienced flavor is encountered with familiar flavors, the eater may learn to associate these tastes. This is called flavor-flavor learning. There is some experimental evidence to suggest that flavor-flavor learning is automatic when eaters are hungry (Brunstrom and Fletcher, 2008). The study is not as well powered as might have been preferred, however, so the chance of false positives should be kept in mind.

## How flavor-flavor learning explains taste acquisition

Supposing the Brunstrom and Fletcher result is not a false positive, we then have a plausible idea of how acquired tastes might develop from a flavor-flavor theoretic viewpoint: people are exposed to novel flavors in combination with liked flavors at meal times, either through parents or friends or just eating out. Since we tend to eat when we are hungry, in the long run this induces flavor-flavor learning and hence taste acquisition.

If you want to know more, a forward Scholar search on the Brunstrom and Fletcher paper lists some subsequent studies that deal with acquired tastes in additional detail.

## References

> Brunstrom, J. M., & Fletcher, H. Z. (2008). Flavour–flavour learning occurs automatically and only in hungry participants. Physiology & behavior, 93(1), 13-19.

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Tags: perception, feeding, reinforcement-learning
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# Question
Title: What do the super-large brains of whales and elephants map to?
Elephants and whales have brains that are much larger than those of humans. It is presumed that much of their brain is used up for their larger bodies (after all, there is a allometric scaling between brain weight and body weight in mammals).

* Do elephants and whales really need super-large somatosensory cortices to map to their larger bodies?
* Have we mapped out the parts of the brains of a whale or elephant to see which parts of the brain are mapped to which parts of the body?

With whales in particular, they don't even have arms or legs, so I wouldn't expect them to have large regions of the brain devoted to, say, fine-motor skills.

Yet, it is apparent (to many people) that whales and elephants don't have drastically higher intelligence than humans. So their extra brain regions have to go somewhere. Where do they go to?

I asked the same question here, though I'm not convinced by any of the answers provided.

# Answer
> 15 votes
> *With whales in particular, they don't even have arms or legs, so I wouldn't expect them to have large regions of the brain devoted to, say, fine-motor skills.*

Ah, but they also have a complete three dimensions to move in, unlike us humans who only have about 2.5 dimensions to move in. Also, they have a number of different "limbs": tail, multiple fins, etc.

> *Yet, it is apparent (to many people) that whales and elephants don't have drastically higher intelligence than humans. So their extra brain regions have to go somewhere. Where do they go to?*

Why not? How do you accurately measure an intelligence that is structurally different from yours? You have to know how that intelligence works, and for that to happen you need to overcome the language barrier (which is still an issue with cetaceans, since many people think they're just dumb animals! Maybe some cetaceans are like primate apes. Maybe others are like primate humans!).

---

Here is a pdf overview of Cetacean brains. I hope this answers your question:

A few parts pulled from the article:

Cetaceans have very large brains, yes, but humans hold the top of the proportion scale: our brains are larger in comparison to our body size than most other species.

Cetacean brains are, for the most part, like other brains. That is, they are there for the processing of cognition (among other things). A large part of this processing power goes to echolocation.

Regarding similarities between primate and cetacean brains:

> the expansion of the insular and cingulate cortices in cetaceans is consistent with high-level cognitive functions—such as attention, judgment, intuition, and social awareness—known to be associated with these regions in primates.
>
> This view is further supported by the observation that the anterior insular and anterior cingulate cortex in cetacean species having the largest brains exhibit a large number of large layer V spindle neurons, similar to those originally reported to be unique to humans and great apes. These particular neurons are considered to be responsible for neural networks subserving aspects of social cognition.

Furthermore, though specifically regarding dolphins:

> Laboratory studies of bottlenose dolphins have documented various dimensions of their intellectual abilities. These include an understanding of ... (declarative knowledge); an understanding of ... (procedural knowledge); an understanding of ... (social knowledge); and an understanding of ... (self knowledge). All these capabilities rest on a strong foundation of memory; investigations have demonstrated that bottlenose dolphin auditory, visual, and spatial memory are accurate and robust.

Lastly:

> Field studies have documented impressive cultural learning of dialects, foraging sites, and foraging and feeding strategies in cetaceans.

So, to recap, the cetacean brain lends itself to, among inumerable other things, advanced auditory (sensory), personal (self), and interpersonal processing (social). Also, dolphins, and maybe other species as well, have advanced memory and language processing capabilities.

# Answer
> 5 votes
I think what is happening is a balance of evolutionary cost and resource cost.

Evolutionary cost is the amount of "effort" that natural selection spends refining a feature. Effort that could be spent refining other features, such as making it a more efficient swimmer, etc....so it is by no means free. If you can get the same capabilities with less generations of tweaking, it's all the better. Evolutionary costs are higher on animals that have longer generations and that there are fewer total animals.

Resource cost is how much energy a feature uses, as well as such costs as the high rate of childbirth deaths caused by big baby skulls squeezing through small pelvises.

Assume that everything else being equal, larger brains produce more cognitive capability. But on a large animal, there is far less selection pressure to get the maximum "I.Q points per pound of brain," since the relative resource cost of a large brain is much lower on large animals. So whale brains use largeness, rather than super-sophistication, to get the right level of cognitive capability.

Remember, whales ARE smart, because that intelligence comes cheaply due to the low cost of brain size on a large animal. They might be the equivalent to, say, an orangutan. But unlike the orangutan, they don't have the same pressure to keep the brain small, which would have much larger evolutionary costs.

# Answer
> 1 votes
You commented "Yet, it is apparent (to many people) that whales and elephants don't have drastically higher intelligence than humans. So their extra brain regions have to go somewhere. Where do they go to?".

I would like add a few perspectives.

1) The notion that intelligence can be measured on a one dimensional scale is not really credible from any scientific perspective. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory\_of\_multiple\_intelligences.

2) It seems human to feel that we are the intelligence ones and those who are most like us are the most intelligent. We are very casual in the way that we handle this and often don't notice that we are thinking this way.

What I am trying to get at is that we (collectively) are not very good about thinking about intelligence.

But the question you ask translates to me to be "What are Whales and Dolphins doing with their brains?". That is a huge question and it must surely depend in part on the species you pick.

For the Atlantic Spotted Dolphin species you should check out Denise Herzing who is spending her life trying to answer this question; See https://www.ted.com/talks/denise\_herzing\_could\_we\_speak\_the\_language\_of\_dolphins?language=en.

Dolphins, with a brain size similar to ours and Killer Whales with a larger brain seem to spend a lot of their time in tight social groups with a lot of social interaction.

But overal, it seems we are not yet intelligent enough to figure out what Dolphins are communicating about.

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Tags: neuroscience, animal-cognition
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# Question
Title: What is the evidence to suggest that the introvert/extrovert distinction is a shallow distinction?
The author here claims:

> A great leader knows that making room for both extroverts and introverts to share their thoughts could be the key to whether or not their next project succeeds or fails.

This document purports:

> Carl Jung and the authors of the Myers–Briggs provide a different perspective and suggest that everyone has both an extraverted side and an introverted side, with one being more dominant than the other. Rather than focusing on interpersonal behavior, however, Jung defined introversion as an "attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents" (focus on one's inner psychic activity); and extraversion as "an attitude type characterised by concentration of interest on the external object" (the outside world)

The commentator writes:

> The distinction between introvert and extrovert is shallow psychology. They are sometimes used condescendingly by angsty individuals at either side of the imaginary spectrum. The truth isn't even that most people fall somewhere in between. There is no gray area, because these matters are not black and white. Their use leads to generalization and over-simplification of delicate subject matter. Introvert vs. extrovert is *always* a sledgehammer where a scalpel is required.

My question is: **What is the evidence to suggest that the introvert/extrovert distinction is a shallow distinction?**

# Answer
> 5 votes
I think it is safe to say that in psychological research on personality differences, extraversion (vs. introversion) is one of the most important personality dimensions. In fact, extraversion (along with neuroticism) has been included in "virtually all major dispositional models" (see Watson, Clark, & Harkness, 1994; Zuckerman, Kuhlman, Joireman, & Teta, 1993; as cited in Watson et al. 1999). Extraversion can be reliably measured with personality questionnaires (e.g. Costa & MaCrae, 1992), it is a heritable trait (e.g., Jang et al. 1996) and it meaningfully predicts other important variables such as trait positive affectivity (Watson et al. 2009) or job satisfaction (Judge et al., 2002) to pick two arbitrary examples.

Of course, neither does this mean that it is useful to categorize people into introverts and extraverts (personality research has long moved away from "type" approaches to investigate gradual differences) nor does this mean that extraversion is the only personality difference that matters (it is an important one, but there are others).

In conclusion, extraversion-introversion is a robust and widely replicated personality dimension that features in almost all models of personality.

**References**

Costa, P.T.,Jr. & McCrae, R.R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.

Jang, K.; Livesley, W. J.; Vemon, P. A. (1996). Heritability of the Big Five Personality Dimensions and Their Facets: A Twin Study. Journal of Personality 64 (3): 577–591.

Judge, T. A., Heller, D., & Mount, M. K. (2002). Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 87, 530–541. doi:10.1037/0021-9010.87.3.530

Watson, D., Wiese, D., Vaidya, J., & Tellegen, A. (1999). The two general activation systems of affect: Structural findings, evolutionary consider- ations, and psychobiological evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, 820–838.

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Tags: introversion, extraversion
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# Question
Title: How does Parkinson's disease result in tremors?
From what I understand, Parkinson's disease is caused by the death of dopamine producing cells in the substantia nigra, however I don't understand how that causses the symptoms of Parkinson's. I am particularly interested in the tremor aspect of the disease, although it would be great if someone could also explain how the other psychiatric problems arise (dementia, emotional problems and sleep issues).

The reason for this question is that I am trying to understand how deep brain stimulation (DBS) is able to stop the tremours in Parkinson's, or at least reduce their severity, and whether DBS could also help in the other symptoms of Parkinson's.

**What causes the tremors in Parkinson's disease?** **Why do Parkinson's patients develop dementia, emotional problems and sleep issues?**

**Why does Deep Brain Stimulation alleviate tremors in Parkinson's disease? Can DBS help other Parkinson's symptoms?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
Parkinson's Disease, as you note, is believed to occur due to damage or degeneration to the basal ganglia, especially the substantia nigra. Cells in the basal ganglia and substantia nigra produce dopamine, and in fact, the majority of the brain's dopaminergic cells have their bodies here, but that isn't the whole story. From Kandel's *Principles of Neural Science* (the first rule of neuroscience is always to look in your PoNS):

> Primarily on the basis of studies in MPTP-treated primates, a working model of the pathophysiology of Parkinson disease has been developed. According to this model, **loss of dopaminergic input from the substantia nigra pars compacta to the striatum leads to increased activity in the indirect pathway and decreased activity in the direct pathway** (see Figure 43-6) because of the different actions of dopamine on the two pathways (via D1 and D2 receptors, respectively). **Both of these changes lead to increased activity in the internal pallidal segment, which results in increased inhibition of thalamocortical and midbrain tegmental neurons and thus the hypokinetic features of the disease.**

## Tremors and DBS

Three of the central nervous system's four major dopaminergic pathways originate in the substantia nigra, but it is the nigrostriatal pathway which is believed to be involved in Parkinson's tremors. The nigrostriatal pathway innervates the striatum, which is involved in planning movements. Broadly speaking, because the basal ganglia are involved in action selection and routing information, impaired communication along this pathway can explain tremors as a function of failing to inhibit undesirable actions and facilitating desirable actions (Stocco, Lebiere and Anderson, 2010).

**Deep Brain Stimulation** (DBS) has been shown to be effective in alleviating the symptoms of Parkinson's Disease in a number of studies (e.g., Deep-Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease Study Group, 2001; Weaver et al., 2009). However, comparative studies frequently do not explain the theoretical grounding for the method. Kandel provides the answer (first rule of neuroscience):

> **Selective inactivation of the sensorimotorportion of either the subthalamic nucleus or the internal pallidal segment is sufficient to ameliorate the cardinal parkinsonian motor signs (akinesia, tremor, and rigidity)** in MPTP-treated animals (Figure 43-7). Surgical lesions of the posterior (sensorimotor) portion of the internal pallidal segment (pallidotomy) in patients with advanced, medically intractable cases of Parkinson disease is also highly effective in reversing parkinsonian signs. \[...\] Thus **the hypokinetic features of Parkinson disease appear to result from increased (inhibitory) output from the internal pallidal segment as a result of increased (excitatory) drive from the subthalamic nucleus**.

DBS treatments for Parkinson's take advantage of this finding to achieve their effect by directly stimulating the subthamamic nucleus and/or globus pallidus. This implies that the treatment is *extremely* specific to the mechanism, and though there is no reason to rule out effectiveness in other areas, there is no reason to rule it in, either.

# Emotional problems

Parkinson's Disease patients are, perhaps intuitively enough, prone to depression, and as many as 25-40% of sufferers experience depression (Leentjens, 2004). Less intuitive is the finding that future patients are at increased risk of depression in the three years preceding their Parkinson's diagnosis (Leentjens, van den Akker, Metsemakers, Lousberg et al., 2003). One explanation for this finding, however, may lie with the other two dopaminergic pathways in the substantia nigra (mesolimbic and mesocortical), which are involved in affect and emotion, and that the emotional problems arise from the dopaminergic impairment in a manner similar to the tremor symptoms.

Unfortunately, I do not know a mechanism for dementia or sleep issues.

## References

* Deep-Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease Study Group (2001). Deep-brain stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus or the pars interna of the globus pallidus in Parkinson's disease. The New England journal of medicine, 345(13), 956.
* Kandel, E. R., Schwartz, J. H., & Jessell, T. M. (Eds.). (2000). Principles of neural science (Vol. 4, pp. 863). New York: McGraw-Hill.
* Leentjens, A. F. G. (2004). Depression in Parkinson's disease: conceptual issues and clinical challenges. Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry and Neurology, 17, 120-126.
* Leentjens, A. F. G., van den Akker, M., Metsemakers, J. F. M., Lousberg, R. & Verhey, F. R. J. (2003). Higher incidence of depression preceding the onset of Parkinson's disease: A register study. Movement Disorders, 18(4), 414-418.
* Stocco, A., Lebiere, C., & Anderson, J. R. (2010). Conditional routing of information to the cortex: A model of the basal ganglia’s role in cognitive coordination. Psychological review, 117(2), 541.
* Weaver, F. M., Follett, K., Stern, M., Hur, K., Harris, C., Marks, W. J., ... & CSP 468 Study Group. (2009). Bilateral deep brain stimulation vs best medical therapy for patients with advanced Parkinson disease: a randomized controlled trial. Jama, 301(1), 63-73.

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, neurology, dopamine
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# Question
Title: Does the scarcity of female programmers, suggest that men are more intelligent than women?
> Developing software is simultaneously artistic and scientific, which accounts for its appeal for some of the smartest and intuitive people on the planet

There is a generally observable and most likely a statistically provable scarcity of women in the programmer community.

Would it be right to conclude from this that men are generally more intelligent than women? If so, what's the cause of this? And if not, why?

# Answer
The short answer: **No, sex differences in professions is not a good basis for judging the intelligence of males and females**.

I would like to address some of the assumptions and misconceptions in the question. First, I would like to deconstruct the question, and then answer it.

### Deconstructing the question

One of the earlier titles of the question was "Are men more intelligent than women?". It starts with the observation that there are more males who work in areas related to mathematics and programming, therefore males are more intelligent.

I think this is a common bias in humans. People know a lot about their area of expertise and then judge others by their lack of understanding of what they are experts in. To take a stereotypical example, perhaps a female clinical psychologist, doctor, or lawyer may wonder why so many males are mathematicians and programmers. She might think that this is because they lack the intelligence to function effectively in domains that require strong interpersonal skills. I am not defending this point of view either. I merely intend to highlight that to judge others by your own standards of what represents intelligence is problematic.

### Answering the question

Have a read of page 91 of "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns", which represents the position of a large reputable APA task force of leading intelligence researchers. Summarising a huge literature, males tend to perform much better on visual-spatial intelligence test items such as mental rotation and tracking moving objects. Females often perform better on verbal abilities such as synonym generation and verbal fluency. Overall, there is minimal difference in full-scale IQ.

You could also have a read of Hide's (2005) summary of meta-analytic sex differences across a wide range of cognitive tests.

> Here, the author advances a very different view, the gender similarities hypothesis, which holds that males and females are similar on most, but not all, psychological variables.

However, this only addresses mean differences, and there is certainly much greater differences within sexes than between.

### References

* Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard Jr, T. J., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., ... & Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American psychologist, 51(2), 77. PDF
* Hyde, J. S. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American psychologist, 60(6), 581. PDF
> 23 votes

# Answer
No. In developing IQ tests for intelligence science has found that age not sex is the key difference between groups of people for which non-biased conclusions can be drawn.

> Most IQ tests are constructed so that there are no differences between the average (mean) scores of females and males. Areas where differences in mean scores have been found include verbal and mathematical ability.

-Wikipedia Sex differences in psychology

If anything modern research purports that women have an insignificant half point above men.
> 3 votes

# Answer
To think that men and women would *differ* should be obvious (specialization to differing tasks). To think that one group would be *better or worse overall* would be counter-intuitive (survival would be worsened).

When I was in college, the Engineering school with the highest proportion of women (46%) was Computer Science. I don't know why. I think it is also the Engineering field with the most women actually employed. When I worked as a programmer in a company with about 100 employees, about 40% were programmers, and most of those were women. Some of them were among the most intelligent people I have ever known.

I think that no general statements about intelligence relative to male vs female will hold up overall. I do know that females have much greater touch sensitivity, as proven by research. But that would make sense in terms of evolution. Computer programming has not been around very long for male-female differences to arise in the brain. (Check back in a million years.)
> 2 votes

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Tags: intelligence, sex-differences
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# Question
Title: If sleeping is related to 'saving information' you've experience, is forgetting related to more energy?
So I was watching this youtube video (Only check 1:05 - 1:25) where it suggested we sleep because the brain needs rest to save/process all information we perceived throughout the day. I directly made the connection to my own body with the following thought:

> I can stay up for extended periods without the need of sleep. However, I easily and very quickly forget anything, almost like dementia, but if I try hard, I can remember it.

**If the necessity of sleeping is related to the amount of information received, does forgetting information reduces that necessity?** *And does forgetting result in longer days without being tired?*

Keep the jargon and technical details to a human level, please.

# Answer
Short answer: No.

Long answer: The need for sleep is not a function of information received in any meaningful sense. **Memory consolidation and forgetting processes** are not thought of in terms of energy expense and conservation by any current cognitive science models, and lack of sleep will not necessarily cause you to go mad or die *as such*. Both are active processes; there's nothing inherently more energy-conserving about forgetting a memory than consolidating one, or vice versa.

Memory consolidation and forgetting processes in the brain are both, ultimately, **physical changes** like any other, which implies that energy must be spent in some sense. This energy is simply a thermodynamic quantity that has virtually nothing to do with how tired we feel or mental energy, however. *Cognitively* speaking, energy isn't a well-defined or scientifically meaningful term, so it's not particularly surprising that it ended up on a list of "five simple questions that science can't answer."

For an example of an active inhibitory forgetting mechanism with references, see my question about retrieval-induced forgetting. If you want to know about memory and the study of memory, I recommend reading Baddeley, Eysenck and Anderson's comprehensive *Memory (2009)*. While it does not directly deal with sleep in depth, it will equip you to ask the right questions about how sleep relates to memory and learning.
> 5 votes

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Tags: learning, memory, sleep
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# Question
Title: Cost of EEG devices suitable for neurolinguistic research
What is the cost of an EEG device (electrodes and other indispensable hardware, software if available for standard office computers, or a whole package with a dedicated computer and software) that is of suitable quality for neurolinguistic research? My own attempts to find information on this were futile. The Wikipedia article quotes low-cost devices from US$ 100 onwards, but I'm guessing the very cheap ones are of rather limited use for research. There is also an OPenEEG project, but I'm looking for an out-of-the-box solution. The commercial suppliers I found online do not quote any prices.

I just need a rough estimate to what amount of money is necessary to do any publishable academic research, and how much solution for average research needs would cost - such as 500 Euros/Dollars, 1,000, 10,000...?

# Answer
> 5 votes
We were looking for an EEG device few years ago. The commercial offers were between 20,000 EUR for a 32 passive electrode to 50,000 EUR for an 64/128 active electrode. This included everything except the computers - some offers were without off-line data processing software. I never considered the EEG systems that were not mentioned in the method section of my research domain. And beware of the local regulations and ethical considerations concerning home-made devices for recording human biological signal.

# Answer
> 4 votes
An old question, but there has been some recent developments by third-parties and now cheaper and hopefully just-as-accurate EEGs exist.

From Are recent affordable EEG devices any good? we see the Emotiv System and a paper that can attest to its accuracy.

We also have OpenBCI, an open-source EEG catered to makers, which has recently been funded successfully on Kickstarter.

Both EEGs can be had for \< $500, but both are relatively new in the scene so it would be interesting to see how they compare to traditional methods.

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Tags: linguistics, eeg
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# Question
Title: Are there any reliable type descriptions for Big Five personality traits?
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) model of personality provides a list of 16 personality types with accompanying descriptions, like this. **Are there analogous types for the Big Five model of personality?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
A few thoughts:

* MBTI has four dimensions, whereas the Big Five has five dimensions. Thus, when you set a high-low split on MBTI you get $2^4=16$ types. If you were to apply the same idea to the Big 5, you could get $2^5=32$.
* However, the Big 5 framework tends to take the underlying continuum of personality traits more seriously. At the very least this should yield a more precise description of standing on a dimension.
* The dimensions of the Big 5 are generally understood independently. Thus, it might be sufficient and more parsimonious to have a verbal description to describe a person's standing on each of the five traits. I think this is how most Big 5 test manuals work. They will provide descriptions of what it means to be high or low on each trait and this can be used to provide an overall description to the test taker.

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Tags: measurement, personality, test
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# Question
Title: Why does a person feel sad without knowing the reason?
I have known people to behave in a way they despise, and they don't know why.

# Answer
> 12 votes
Modern theories of emotion suggest that like many aspects of self-knowledge, emotion is "inferred" rather than "introspected".

This is exemplified by a classic experiment in which men were surveyed by an attractive female interviewer while on a bridge. Some of the men were on a "fear-arousing" suspension bridge, while other men were on a "non-fear-arousing" solid bridge. Men surveyed on the suspension bridge were more likely to include sexual content in their answers, and more likely to call the interviewer later. Presumably the men on the suspension bridge were more aroused than the ones on the solid bridge, and misattributed their arousal to the attractiveness of the interviewer.

Similar research supports the idea that physiological inputs (eg, the effects of hormones in our system) are combined with a process of inference to produce emotion.

Imagine having a low level of serotonin in your brain. This may cause a negative effect on your mood - sadness. Now you want to know why. So you search for possible reasons: Maybe a conversation you had recently didn't go well, maybe your bank account is low on funds, maybe you notice that you haven't spent time with friends lately... Successful attribution typically requires a plausible cause-and-effect relationship - that is, the most likely explanation is probably the correct one.

Put another way, people in general sense physiological states (such as sadness) without knowing why. They then (unconsciously) "guess" why through inference. Sometimes they get it right, and sometimes they get it wrong. If you've ever had a girlfriend on her period blame her feelings on the way you treat her, then you know what I mean. So the reality is that people who feel sad and don't know why, are ... accurate. The only difference between feeling sad and knowing why, and feeling sad and not knowing why, is successful attribution - coming up with a plausible guess.

# Answer
> 10 votes
Emotional experience may be modeled in a variety of ways. I favor the *circumplex model* for describing the structure of subjective emotional experiences in any given moment:

However, positive and negative *affect* are not polar opposites as they occur over time; the relationship between frequencies of positive and negative emotions is only weakly to moderately negative, as befits the two-factor structure of the *Positive and Negative Affect Schedule* (*PANAS*; Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), a common measure of retrospective affective experience over brief periods of time.

One may feel sadness, or self-loathing, or any emotion in a given moment without knowing why immediately, if ever. Self-awareness and emotional insight are separate from the capacity for emotion. Some people barely understand any of their emotions, let alone their sources, though I think most of us probably understand most of our emotions.

Given the extremely limited information in this question (full disclosure: I flagged it as too broad...you'll see why by the time I'm done with this gargantuan answer), I've already offered two very general possibilities:

1. A person feels one of these emotions in a given moment and doesn't know why; maybe the emotion is unusual, but the person isn't necessarily, especially if it's an isolated event or an odd situation.
2. A person lacks emotional insight or self-awareness, and may be somewhat unusual in this regard.

**If** a person tends to experience a lot of negative emotion over a wide range of circumstances, it might not be so unusual to be confused about why it won't go away. Negative emotion tends to wear away at a person over time, especially when it's intense, unremitting, and therefore often self-reinforcing and somewhat irrational. In this case, one might also infer some information about that person's personality. Then again, this kind of consistency in a person's emotions and behavior can be fairly hard to observe, especially over a short time, especially without actually knowing that person well or communicating with her. Therefore the main message here is to withhold judgment unless you have really known someone across multiple contexts and a decent length of time, and talked to her about the relevant behavior. This isn't to say that our intuitive judgments are necessarily wrong; we're actually pretty good intuitive judges of each others' personalities. My point is that there is no certainty to be had on these matters, maybe not even over the course of a year of open interaction and observation in a professional psychotherapist's (or psychometrician's!) office. How could there be, when none of us *truly* understand our every single emotion, and when even a sense of certainty can prove false? Epistemological issues like these are somewhat inescapable in matters of subjective phenomenology like emotion (of any kind).

Further cautions are in order in light of @caseyr547's answer. The answer is not invalid, but it is rather focused on abnormal psychological issues related to the emotions described vaguely in the OP: sadness, guilt, and *self-hatred*. Major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder apply to a fairly extreme subset of the potential interpretations of your very broad question. If you take a look at the diagnosis section of the major depression Wiki, you'll see it's not a simple matter to qualify. For instance, "A major depressive episode is characterized by the presence of a severely depressed mood that persists for **at least two weeks**." \[Emphasis added.\] Another glance at the epidemiology section will tell you that major depression is pretty rare; maybe rarer than you'd expect, especially after a brief skim of that list of criteria that includes, "Fatigue or loss of energy," and, "Insomnia or sleeping too much."

Moreover, depression may be better understood more commonly as a symptom than as a disorder unto itself. Clinical and subclinical depression have a wide variety of causes, some of which would make most of us depressed (without really modifying our personalities in a long-term way). Even within the domain of abnormal psychology, depression may result from a much broader and frequently comorbid spectrum of psychiatric syndromes than merely bipolar disorder. The spectrum spans much of the first and second axes of the DSM-IV, and spans much of the third and fourth too if we loosen our definition of psychiatric syndromes enough. It's therefore important to recognize (and irresponsible to not mention) that depression, especially subclinical depression (e.g., lasting less than two weeks) can occur for a very wide range of reasons, **most** of which **do not require (or justify) medication.** Even those that may justify medication do not necessarily require it, nor should medication be assumed a sufficient treatment unto itself for any disorder. Most people with psychiatric disorders **can benefit from counseling** (with or without pharmacotherapy), **as can most everyone else. No stigmas, labels, or minimal criteria should be attached** (implicitly or otherwise) **to the prospect of seeing a counselor for help with understanding or managing negative emotions of any kind. Some negative emotion is normal; no one need deal with it alone.**

Since some negative emotion is normal, negative emotionality also varies normally, and "normal" allows quite a lot of room for noticeable individual differences. Negative emotionality (as subjectively reported using the PANAS, and other similar measures) follows a roughly *normal distribution* ("bell curve"), meaning that over two thirds of the population varies across a range of two standard deviations, which is more than enough to include perceptible differences as judged by others. If, for example, you would happen to score one standard deviation (*SD*) below the population average on a measure of negative emotionality, and you happen to know the other person reasonably well (e.g., you've been friends or even classmates for a year or two), and that other person happens to score one *SD* above the population average on negative emotionality, I'd be willing to bet that with a difference of two *SDs* between you, you're much more likely to be aware (than not aware) that the other person experiences more negative emotionality than you. Nevertheless, in this example, you would both still be essentially normal individuals (at least, insofar as I've described you two here at all), and nothing would be "wrong" with either of you necessarily.

This is not to say that, in this example, you would both be equally likely to be psychologically healthy, let alone equally healthy. *Psychological well-being*, negative emotionality, and *neuroticism* are all roughly, normally distributed in the general population, and all three exhibit moderately strong bivariate correlations. That is, in this example, the person with more negative emotionality than you (+1 *SD*, vs. your -1 *SD*, a 2 *SD* difference) would score about .9 *SD* lower on psychological well-being (on average; that's a rough point estimate of *|r|* = .45 with a big margin of error, as far as I know), and about .9 *SD* higher on neuroticism (same disclaimers apply). Again, some neuroticism is normal, everybody's a little bit neurotic, myself included, and a little bit of it is probably good (that is, it's probably healthier to be average than extremely low). That's not to say more neuroticism isn't harmlessly different from less neuroticism, all else being *not* equal in proportion. As with negative emotionality, neuroticism relates to a lot of increased health risks, psychological and otherwise (see for instance Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007). It's in this sense that caseyr547's answer isn't wrong: there is a greater risk of those disorders at higher levels of negative emotionality and neuroticism, **if that is in fact what we're talking about**. In this extended discussion of personality, do not forget that your question does not necessarily describe a usefully informative observation of personality.

Anyway, what's to be made of all this information? What should we do with it? I'm afraid I'm not making the slightly more negative-or-neurotic-than-average among us feel any better (though they are probably **still well within the "normal" range of individual variation**)...and I'm afraid I might be talking to myself by asking these rhetorical questions, so I'll address both sides of the OP, but try to keep it brief.

* If you're that person feeling sad, guilty, ashamed, or sick of yourself, don't take this as reason to worry more about it. Nothing is set in stone: not your personality if you want to change it, not your fate if you don't want to change, and not your attitude toward yourself or how you're feeling today, not even if you've been this way for years. Life is long, no one ever really stops growing until they die, so learn to love, or at least live with who you are and where you're at. In personality, most things are double-edged, so don't forget your strengths, and don't dwell on your weaknesses. You've got plenty of time to change if you want, and plenty of good reasons not to if you don't. For one thing, I'm about to see if I can get some more love flowing your way, so hang in there, keep your head up, and open your heart to those who reach out to you, even if it hurts.
* If you know someone like the OP describes, **don't judge; ask**. Not everyone who's having a bad day wants to talk to anyone, but a lot of them do, so stick your neck out a bit and talk to them. Better yet, get them talking to you, and listen! That's the only way you're really going to get to know what you're dealing with. Emotions are only scribbled on our faces, not spelled out in plain English; that's what plain English is for! Use it! You'll surely have an incomplete picture of **why** they feel the way they do until you talk. Care enough to find out **why from their perspective**, and see if you can't brighten it up a little bit just by understanding. You don't have to tell jokes or distract them or get them crunk to do them good. Sometimes all it takes is knowing that someone else cares enough to listen, to understand, to sympathize. That could be you! It's really pretty easy.

**References**

Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. *Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2*(4), 313–345.

Watson, D., Clark, L. A., & Tellegen, A. (1988). Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: the PANAS scales. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54*(6), 1063–1070. Available online, URL: http://www.cnbc.pt/jpmatos/28.Watson.pdf. Accessed January 9, 2014.

# Answer
> 7 votes
There are (at least) two approaches to tackle this question (which haven't been mentioned in the other answers). One is an personality approach, another is a more situational approach.

**Personality: Emotional Clarity**

A part of the question is the idea that some people have more difficulties in knowing why they are sad. This is indeed relevant in research on emotional intelligence. One concept that has been investigated in the area of emotional intelligence is "emotional clarity".

Boden and Berenbaum (2011) explain:

> Emotional clarity represents the extent to which people can identify, discriminate between, and understand their feelings. Research using factor analysis, hierarchical cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling (MDS) of self-report scales has identified emotional clarity as one of two dimensions, along with attention to emotions, underlying constructs such as emotional awareness, alexithymia, and emotional intelligence (Coffey et al., 2003 and Gohm and Clore, 2000). Attention to emotions and emotional clarity are relatively distinct from dimensions representing emotional expression and intensity (Coffey et al., 2003 and Gohm and Clore, 2000).

Thus, people differ in emotional clarity. Boden and Berenbaum suggest that, furthermore, some people specifically differ in their ability to identify the reasons for emotions:

> In contrast to previous theory and research, we propose that there are at least two distinguishable, albeit strongly associated, facets of emotional clarity. The first facet, which we refer to as source awareness, is the extent to which people typically know the causes of their emotions. The second facet, which we refer to as type awareness, is the extent to which people can typically identify and distinguish the types of emotion (e.g., anger versus fear) they experience. The existence of two facets of emotional clarity has been suggested by at least one other study (Baker, Thomas, Thomas, & Owens, 2007)

Their results "provide initial evidence that one can measure source and type awareness separately."

So far, there is little research on this specific aspect of emotional intelligence but some data suggests that it may be connected to interesting outcomes. For example, the results Boden and Berenbaum (2012) suggest that in people "with low source and type awareness, suspicious beliefs are formed to make sense of and explain emotional arousal."

**Situational Approach: Mystery Moods**

Instead of looking at personality differences, one may also look at why people may in general have positive or negative moods without knowing why.

One research program that has addressed this question is the one on "mystery moods".

Leander, Moore, and Chartrand (2009) explain that

> although we can often point directly at the sources of our moods and identify what brought us into our current affective state, other times we cannot. Sometimes we might be in a particularly good or bad mood without any explanation for why we feel that way; other times we are so unaware of our feelings that it takes another person to remark on our behavior before we recognize our current mood. Indeed, we are often unaware of our own mental states and processes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wilson & Brekke, 1994), and moods are no exception.

They define **mystery moods** as "Moods that emerge without awareness, or for reasons beyond our knowledge."

Furthermore, they discuss three possible reasons for mystery moods:

> First, success or failure at *nonconscious goals* has consequences for mood. Unlike the affect that results from conscious goal pursuit, however, mystery moods arising from nonconscious goal pursuit may not always be experienced consciously, and even when they are experienced consciously, their sources are typically unknown.
>
> Second, *automatic evaluation* systems may generate mood states that reflect the overall positive or negative valence of the environment and result in a corresponding mood. Given that automatic evaluations occur outside conscious awareness, moods stemming from them are not necessarily tied to a singular, specific source.
>
> Third, *interpersonal motives* might render individuals susceptible to social contagion effects, such that we might spontaneously and nonconsciously "catch" the moods of others. Social interaction may also lead us to be sensitive to nonconscious social acceptance or rejection cues, which can lead to mystery moods.

**References**

Boden, M. T., & Berenbaum, H. (2011). What you are feeling and why: Two distinct types of emotional clarity. Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 652–656. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.06.009

Boden, M. T., & Berenbaum, H. (2012). Facets of emotional clarity and suspiciousness. Personality and Individual Differences, Special Issue on Behavioral genetic contributions to research on individual differences, 53, 426–430. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.04.010

Leander, N. P., Moore, S. G., & Chartrand, T. L. (2009). Mystery moods: Their origins and consequences. In G. B. Moskowitz, H. Grant, G. B. (Ed) Moskowitz, & H. (Ed) Grant (Eds.), The psychology of goals. (pp. 480–504). New York, NY, US: Guilford Press.

# Answer
> 3 votes
While the first post went on to explicate a model of emotional experience, it did not tackle the actual question of *why a person does not know why it feels that way*.

First of all, figuring out the reason why certain things are a certain way involves inferential processing and reasoning. Explaining one's behavior and emotional states to oneself fuels neortical processes which might not have the capacity to fully resolve the question. From my point of view there are two possible heuristcs for this. Firstly, there might be a strong connection between the emotional processes and the thinking capabilities (in terms of causal reasoning), in which emotional default states corrupt reasoning. The habituation to and the reinforcement of behavioral patterns associated with emotional states may be so strong that problem solving is hardly possible (or the knowledge about behaviors might be seen as "wrong" only in retrospect but not when the critical situation is actually happening). It is established that the limbic system, a driving force of motivation and behavior, can effectively overrun neocortical activity (especially frontal cortical areas), rendering reasoning effectively incapable of problem solving under certain circumstances (known as "being overrun" by emotional states). This overrunning can persist chronically due to the strength of emotional activity and lead to behaviors and emotional states which might appear to be incontrolable by the subject - leading to repetition of behaviors which do not lead to an a priori desired state.

Secondly, the exact opposite can also hold true, namely that emotional states may be too disconnected from reasoning. In this case, neocortical activity just has not the capacity to resolve the multidimensional problem space which is embodied in the limbic system activity. Limbic activity is mostly reward-driven, so that this part of the nervous system actively seeks for consummatory behaviors which are tightly connected to homeostasis (sexuality, food, drinking, relaxation ...). Since the neocortical activity relies on input to make conscious conclusions about certain states (internal or external), a weak connection between the midbrain and the endbrain might lead to a lack of understanding or misunderstanding of own behaviors - by still perpetuating the behaviors and emotional states which have certain motivations, but stay incapable of being reflected upon.

In general, "feeling sad" probably has many reasons, so a good solution to the problem is to talk to other individuals in order to receive new input and by this to outsource problem solving to helping others, so that own critical thinking becomes less corrupted by the system it resides in ...

# Answer
> 2 votes
This is only a guess at why one might feel sad and act irrational there are many other things which could cause such behaviour. (Like for instance something could cause you to be sad and depressed but you forget the thing that hurt you. Leading to depression caused by anger. )

Clinical depression otherwise known as Major depressive disorder afflicts many people world wide. Often it can be correctable with an anti-depressant. DSM IV and DSM 5 have these listed as diagnostic criteria:

> 1.Depressed mood most of the day.
>
> 2.Diminished interest or pleasure in all or most activities.
>
> 3.Significant unintentional weight loss or gain.
>
> 4.Insomnia or sleeping too much.
>
> 5.Agitation or psychomotor retardation noticed by others.
>
> 6.Fatigue or loss of energy.
>
> 7.Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt.
>
> 8.Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness.
>
> 9.Recurrent thoughts of death (APA, 2000, p. 356).

It is easy to confuse MDD for Bipolar because bipolar has a depressive, hypomania (elated) and mania (angry, insomnia and hypersexuality) features and in DSM 5 Bipolar is a superset of MDD. Bipolar disorders are more difficult to correct and depending on the doctors diagnosis they may prescribe anything from lithium a mood stabilizer to major sedatives.

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Tags: emotion, clinical-psychology
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title: How can I prime aversion to conflict?

text:
# Question
Title: How can I prime aversion to conflict?
I'm looking for a way to prime subjects in an experiment to dislike exposure to conflict (arguments, anger between people, incivility, etc.). Does anyone know of a good method for this?

# Answer
Meier et al (2006). FULL TEXT has some discussion of aggression primes.

Meier, B. P., Robinson, M. D., & Wilkowski, B. M. (2006). Turning the Other Cheek Agreeableness and the Regulation of Aggression-Related Primes. Psychological Science, 17(2), 136-142. FULL TEXT
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: How can items from a general self-esteem/efficacy measure be changed to measure context specific self-esteem/efficacy?
I am very interested in a survey employing a Likert type scale in my research. I have come across the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. I would like to use this scale to get a sense of how subjects feel about their self-esteem during their trial in my research.

The questions will stay consistent with Rosenberg’s test model keeping five of the items positively worded and keeping five negatively worded using the four-point scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree.

* Can the scale questions be "changed"/presented without losing validity in the self-esteem measurement?
* If not, then how do I let participants answer questions in the context of my experiment and what I am trying to improve? For example, I would like to know how they feel about learning a new language (e.g., Japanese) using a traditional method. Then I present a new method and ask again how they feel about learning the same new language? I would like to capture feedback from participants that would let me know if they feel better/more confident about learning a new language by utilizing a new method/approach?

The Rosenberg questions are extremely general (I believe this is the beauty of it) which means it can yield stronger more general results. However, from my limited knowledge, I believe a generally confident person would answer those questions positively most of the time which means filling-out this scale before and after an experiment wouldn't conclude drastic result/change. However, if those questions were directed towards an issue that the subjects in the experiment all find difficult, then I believe their subjective answer to the questions would show considerable change if a \*new method promises to improve their perceived intuition over a traditional method?

The following are the questions from Rosenberg’s self-esteem scale:

1. I feel that I am a person of worth, at least on an equal plane with others.
2. I feel that I have a number of good qualities.
3. All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure.
4. I am able to do things as well as most other people.
5. I feel I do not have much to be proud of.
6. I take a positive attitude toward myself.
7. On the whole, I am satisfied with myself.
8. I wish I could have more respect for myself.
9. I certainly feel useless at times.
10. At times I think I am no good at all.

*If a Rosenberg scale shouldn't be used in this case, then what would be an appropriate scale?*

I was originally looking at The General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE). However, I would still ask the same qustions of GSE that I have of Rosenberg's Scale. How can I "retro-fit" GSE to make it in the context of say learning a language & self-efficacy?

The following are the questions from the GSE scale:

1. I can always manage to solve difficult problems if I try hard enough.
2. If someone opposes me, I can find the means and ways to get what I want.
3. It is easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my goals.
4. I am confident that I could deal efficiently with unexpected events.
5. Thanks to my resourcefulness, I know how to handle unforeseen situations.
6. I can solve most problems if I invest the necessary effort.
7. I can remain calm when facing difficulties because I can rely on my coping abilities.
8. When I am confronted with a problem, I can usually find several solutions.
9. If I am in trouble, I can usually think of a solution.
10. I can usually handle whatever comes my way.

# Answer
It depends on the types of changes you are looking to make. In general, my experience has been that changes to a response scale can be done with minimal threats to validity (e.g. looking to change the 4 item Likert type scale to a 6 item Likert type scale). On the other hand, changing question wording itself usually can't be done "without losing validity" (Goodman, Iervolino, Collishaw, Pickles, & Maughan, 2007).

To answer the "what now" question, you can either use the survey as is, or modify it to better fit your needs (and "revalidate" as needed). This decision is ultimately up to you and should be based on what you think would give you the best information about what you are trying to measure. Based purely off of your brief description and the questions provided, you may prefer to modify the survey. It doesn't seem like the survey, as is, would give you the information you are looking to measure.

**Reference**

Goodman, R., Iervolino, A. C., Collishaw, S., Pickles, A., & Maughan, B. (2007). Seemingly minor changes to a questionnaire can make a big difference to mean scores: a cautionary tale. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 42(4), 322–327. doi:10.1007/s00127-007-0169-0
> 6 votes

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Tags: methodology, experimental-psychology, survey
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title: Do women talk more than men?

text:
# Question
Title: Do women talk more than men?
If you believe the stereotype, women are much more talkative then men. Is there a kernel of truth to this stereotype? I have seen media reports of studies trying to debunk this as a myth. However, some people seem to doubt whether these studies are based on representative samples. What is the current state of the science on this question?

# Answer
Funnily enough, there was a *Science* article published on this (see here).

In their sample of university students, Mehl et al. had participants wear a specialized device that recorded audio samples from daily life (The EAR). They report that (emphasis mine):

> The data suggest that women spoke on average 16,215 (SD = 7301) words and men 15,669 (SD = 8633) words over an assumed period of, on average, 17 waking hours. Expressed in a common effect-size metric (Cohen’s d = 0.07), this sex difference in daily word use (546 words) is equal to only 7% of the standardized variability among women and men. Further, the difference does not meet conventional thresholds for statistical significance (P = 0.248, one-sided test). **Thus, the data fail to reveal a reliable sex difference in daily word use. Women and men both use on average about 16,000 words per day, with very large individual differences around this mean.**

Although, it's possible that we might see systematic differences depending on factors other than sex (e.g., SES, age).

### References

* Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Ramírez-Esparza, N., Slatcher, R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really more talkative than men?. Science, 317(5834), 82-82.
> 13 votes

# Answer
Based on the previous answer, I digged a little deeper myself and found some other interesting data. The Mehl et al. paper is indeed great because it sampled naturally occurring speech occurring over several days. Previous research seems to rely mainly on speech sampled in specific situations. Nevertheless, the evidence seems to converge. I found two meta-analyses. One looks at gender-differences in talkativeness in kids and the other is about adults.

The main results:

* In **adults** (Leaper & Ayres, 2007), men were actually slightly *more* talkative (d=-.14)
* the talkativeness of men was higher in mixed-gender interactions (d=-.28) than in same-gender interactions (d=-.09), reflecting mens' attempts to dominate conversations with women?
* men were more also more talkative when discussing impersonal topics (d=-.79), whereas women were more talkative involving self-disclosure (d=.39), in line with gender norms
* In **kids** (Leaper & Smith, 2004) there was no overall difference in talkativeness (d=.07, n.s.)
* for younger children (\<3years), girls were more talkative (d=.32), while there was no difference for kids aged 3-16 (d=.08), likely reflecting different language development speeds for boys and girls

All in all, the idea that there is a kernel of truth to the stereotype of woman being more talkative than men seems to be refuted.

**References**

Leaper, C., & Ayres, M. M. (2007). A meta-analytic review of gender variations in adults’ language use: Talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11, 328–363. doi:10.1177/1088868307302221

Leaper, C., & Smith, T. E. (2004). A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Variations in Children’s Language Use: Talkativeness, Affiliative Speech, and Assertive Speech. Developmental Psychology, 40, 993–1027. doi:10.1037/0012-1649.40.6.993
> 6 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, language, gender
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# Question
Title: Is the consciousness currently in oneself the same as the consciousness that used to be or in the future will be in oneself?
People seem to believe that one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others, but the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future. How likely is this to be true? I have almost no knowledge about neuroscience, so please refrain from using much neuroscience jargon if feasible, even if it's at the cost of not giving a thorough explanation. A simple "yes," "no," or "we have no idea" answer would suffice if need be.

# Answer
**Short answer**
Consciousness is different between individuals and can change over time.

**Background**
Nelkin (1997) provides the following definition of consciousness:

> When philosophers and psychologists think about consciousness, they generally focus on one or more of three features: phenomenality (how experiences feel), intentionality (that experiences are "of" something, that experiences mean something), and introspectibility (our awareness of phenomenality and intentionality of experiences).

Although I am not an expert on the matter I think this definition answers your question. You say `People seem to believe that one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others, but the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future.` Because the phenomenality changes over time, because **past experience change the way sensations feel** (new versus familiar sensations are very different) your statement that consciousness is constant is invalid.

The intentionality and most notably the introspectibility makes consciousness a very personal thing, meaning that your statement `...one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of other` is valid.

---

As a neuroscientist I can tackle the two statements posed on more familiar ground to me. I dare to say that consciousness is not a stable entity, because in the end, sensations, perceptions and awareness of the world are all in your head and generated by neurons. Because psychoneuropharmaca or brain damage can lead to temporary and permanent altered states of consciousness, respectively, the statement that `...the "same" consciousness as the one that has been in one's body in the past and the one that will be in one's body in the future` is simply invalid.

From a similar neuroscientific vantage point one's brain is obviously different and physically separate from another person's brain, so we quite frankly are not sharing a consciousness. Consciousness is therefore a personal thing, the more since one can suffer brain damage without another even noticing it, hence `one's consciousness is a "different" consciousness than that of others` must be true.

**Reference**
Nelkin N, *Philosophy of Science* 1993
> 2 votes

# Answer
After reading Consciousness article from wikipedia, my answer is no.
Consciousness is the quality or state of awareness, or, of being aware of an external object or something within oneself.
First to deny consciousness exists seems so absurd for undeniably thoughts do exist and over time our awareness grows or falls our thougts change, so by stated definition our consciousness changes over time.
I think that if consciousness was the same in all people individuality and free will wouldn't exist. We are conscious that means we can take control and effect our lives. I've learned from vedas that we can divide our concious self to thoughts, emotions and focus. We can control our focus because we have free will to do so, and our focus is used to focus our thoughts to whatever we want.
Carl Gustav Jung coined a term "collective unconscious" it is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind. Jung distinguished the collective unconscious from the personal unconscious, in that the personal unconscious is a personal reservoir of experience unique to each individual, while the collective unconscious collects and organizes those personal experiences in a similar way with each member of a particular species.
> -1 votes

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Tags: consciousness, philosophy-of-mind
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# Question
Title: Methods for stimulating exact positions in the body
I am interested in knowing if there are state-of-the-art, non-invasive techniques that could be put on, and taken off from the user's body several times without compromising positioning accuracies.

For example an array of electrodes that is meant to repeatedly stimulate some exact spots on the skin. For example, putting such actuators on a T-shirt or on the sole of a shoe wouldn't be very accurate and deterministic.

# Answer
For experimental purposes, an electrode array or comparable 2D device can be mounted and re-mounted on the same spot by using **visual markers**, e.g. with water resistant ink. By using a matrix of actuators with a back and front, and a clearly defined "up and down" (and/or left and right) one could suffice by just two little spots on the skin.

Alternatively, stable **bodily features** can be used when applicable. For example ribs and vertebrae are stable positions that can serve as markers.

A more sophisticated means is a **stereotactic procedure**. For example the head can be easily fixated using a chin rest and head support on the forehead. This pretty much fixates the head. This is for example used with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, as shown in the figure below:

Source: Hospimedica

Although this list is not exhaustive, it gives an idea of possibilities.
> 4 votes

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Tags: stimulation
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# Question
Title: How are qualia localized in consciousness?
I understand that evolution incorporated arbitrary qualia into the default network to inform consciousness (the largest cranial global processing information subnetwork) about properties and qualities of the body in spacetime. However, how does the feeling in my toe know to appear near my toe when nerves there are stimulated? Is this an illusion, and there is extraneous processing that matches the visual stimulus of me looking at my toe and the tactile stimuli of someone touching it to make those qualia feel related, even localized in the same area in space?

What if my somatosensory cortex was moved to my stomach (say all dendrites and axons were chopped off and were replaced with wireless hubs that signaled to the newly transplanted somatosensory cortex in my stomach). I would presumably experience no change in consciousness, which indicated localization of qualia is not achieved by the spatial embedding of the neurons, but by their graph-theoretic interconnection.

If I swapped the information processing (in some information-theoretic sense, say graph-dynamics) associated to the smell of strawberry (it's much more complicated than that but just go with it for a second) with the brain's processing of thermal information from afferent skin sensors, would I appear to feel the smell of strawberry all over my body when it's cold and the feel of cold in my nose when I smelled strawberry? I am excluding affect swap here so the qualia of strawberry smell now feels unpleasant like cold and the qualia of cold feels pleasant like strawberry smell.

Now what if in mad science I permuted the thermal sensors all over my body? Say my foot and hand neurons got swapped (say through a nanobot intercepting wireless relay). Would my hand feel cold when my foot is immersed in ice and vice versa? This would indicate these qualia are processed in consciousness in the brain rather than at the afferent sensor sites.

For bonus credit: How does this relate to phantom limb syndrome? Are there other observed processing defects that lead to faulty localization? E.g. Out of body experiences, certain particularly nasty mental disorders like dementia, rewiring of somatosensory map due to stroke, that engineering dean who wanted his arm chopped off (I forgot the name but I heard this from V.S. Ramachandran)

Second bonus credit: I've read "butterflies" in your stomach are serotonin releases in the enteric nervous system. Doesn't consciousness have to be informed of this release for you to feel it? If not, how do disconnected information graphs allow you the cohesive ability to feel in love?

# Answer
This question has been unanswered for a long time and I will attempt to address the issues posed not one by one, as there are a great many questions, but with an overall working of the sensory nervous system with respect to topographic mapping. Moreover, the question uses a great many "suppose ifs" that have never, and most likely will never or cannot be tested. Therefore a basic overview of topographical mapping may shed light on the matter.

The somatosensory cortex is a highly **topographically organized** structure. Although warped in size, it basically contains an exact topographical map of the body, referred to as a *homunculus*:

Source: Guardian

In other words, perceptions in the upper arm are represented very near to the lower arm representation in the somatosensory cortex. The motor cortex contains a very similar map.

Similarly, the visual cortices contain many maps representing the visual field, referred to as the **retinotopic** map. Likewise, the auditory system maps frequency space in a highly topographical manner (the **tonotopic map**).

Removing a part of the somatosensory cortex out of its context may wreck havoc on this ordered structure. For example, it has been shown by groundbreaking work from Michael Merzenich and colleagues that when the fingers of a monkey are sewn together, the finger representations in the sensory cortex also fuse, i.e., the **border between the coupled fingers degrades** and vanishes eventually. This experiment shows that when two separate bodily structures are repeatedly and structurally stimulated simultaneously, they fuse in the cortex. Upon separation, original mapping is restored (Allard et al., 1991). I consider this proof that **adjacent structures influence each other's representations in the cortex** because they often receive parallel stimulation. Coherent stimuli typically result in increased synaptic strength.

**Phantom limbs** are interesting indeed. For example, the groundbreaking work by Ramachandran focused on upper arm amputees. These folks would feel sensations in their (amputated) hand when their cheek was stimulated. In the homunculus it can be readily seen that facial representations are close to the hand representation. Upon deafferentation of the arm region in the cortex, surrounding bodily representations take over the 'silenced' regions, and the cheek region 'steals' the hand (which is relatively huge). However, interestingly, the **cheek not only serves its own original representation**, but **refers now to the amputated hand as well**. Hence, the memory of the hand lingers, showing once again that the bodily map is strongly imprinted in the brain and that it is not simply isolated from its context.

How then are visual and tactile stimuli fused as being correlated? This happens in the higher multi-sensory areas in the brain, the so-called *association cortices* such as found in the temporal lobe.

Source: Insituto Balseiro

These higher areas will link various perceptions and merge them into coherent perceptions. Limbic association areas may couple the butterflies to love.

**Conclusion**
In all, qualia are localized in the brain by mapping sensory information onto highly organized topographic maps in the cortex. Changes in the periphery (e.g. amputations) will affect this cortical mapping due to plasticity and hence these cortical maps are plastic (subject to change). The reverse can never be easily tested (taking a piece of brain away will have gross consequences) as said, but I think that the quote "Neurons that wire together fire together" is important here. As said, synaptic strength increases when adjacent neurons fire in coherency and when taken apart their mapping will become distorted. Lastly, emotional feelings are combined with the physical sensation of butterflies in your stomach and synthesized into a holistic feeling of love, probably by the limbic association cortices and perhaps other association areas. in general, the association areas synthesize the various sensory systems by linking them, most likely due to experience.

**Reference**
Allard et al., *J Neurophysiol* 1991;**66**:1048-58

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> 4 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, consciousness, qualia
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title: Efficient learning strategies?

text:
# Question
Title: Efficient learning strategies?
When learning a new subject or a skill, is it more effective to break practice into small sub-skills and focus on them for months until they have been fully mastered, or to practice each small sub-skill together?

For example, if someone wants to learn a new programming language, should they take one basic topic and practice it over and over before diving into other topic? How did leading experts acquire their expertise?

**Are there effective general strategies for learning and acquiring expertise?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
There has been a lot of research into this topic in the recent years. My understanding is influenced by the following :
1. The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.
2. Mastery by Robert Greene.
3. The Mundanity of Excellence.
4. Why Skills trump Passion by Cal Newport.
The best thing for you to do would be to read these for yourself.
**CHOOSE THE CHALLENGE :** This is something really important. You need to choose a challenging problem you want solve or a skill you want to master, which lies just outside your comfort zone. If it is easy, you'll feel bored. If it is too difficult, you'll feel overwhelmed. Choose something which lies just outside your comfort zone. This leads to what is usually called as the flow experience.
**THE PROCESS :** To simply put it, mastering a skill is a process with approximately the following steps.
1. Watch someone perform it and visualize yourself doing it.
2. Break the skill into its fundamental building blocks(fbb).
3. Choose one of the small fbb's and try to perform it.
4. At this point, you will not be able to get it right. So, slow down the performance drastically . Go step by step, making each step perfect.
5. Then, make it faster again. Play around with the pace of performance till you are fluent.
6. Repeat the performance everyday.
**THE MOTIVATION :** As you can see, the process is painful. You need to understand how to replenish the motivation fuel. Talent Code gives a good approach. But I prefer the one given in "The Mundanity of Excellence". Basically, motivation comes from three things : Fun, Reward and Challenge. Everyday you must try to experience these things to remain motivated. Have fun at the workplace. Attack a small challenge which lies just outside your comfort zone everyday. Achieve small targets everyday and reward yourself for doing so.
**THE ATTITUDE :** You need to get the attitude of a craftsman. The goal is to achieve mastery over your craft. So, when choosing jobs, prefer areas where you can achieve mastery instead of fame or money. Cal Newport explains this really well.
**THE TOOLKIT - BECOMING A CRAFTSMAN :** This is something out of my experience. So, how exactly can you be a good craftsman ? It's all about your tools. Imagine an empty toolkit in your hand. Now, all you got to do is fill it up with all sorts of tricks of the trade. If you can master tools that are valuable and rare, you will stand out from your peers. Enjoy collecting different tools and mastring how to use them. While learning programming, just imagine this toolkit. Everyday learn some new trick or technique and put it into your toolkit.After a few years , you will have a big toolkit and you will have the capacity to solve the big problems in your field of expertise.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Of course, if you try to learn a new language, you should start to learn the basics. Maybe it's good to buy a book for the topic.

**Structure the knowledge**

It's important to have an overview because you must know what you should learn. Maybe you can create a mindmap which is very effective. Look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind\_map#Research

**Use the knowledge**

Like in Math you should use the techniques like division, multiplying... It's the same with languages. Read books in the language you want to learn.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, attention
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# Question
Title: What are proper EEG frequency bands and electrode placements for imagined speech?
I am doing an EEG experiment about imagined speech recognition. Which frequencies will have the most relevant information? I chose the frequency band \[4-40\] Hz as a start, mainly because of signal processing considerations. Filtering out the remaining frequencies basically removes the DC voltage and most of the EOC artifacts.
Which frequencies should I select?
Also which channels will contain the signal (*i.e.*, the most relevant data)?

# Answer
A study by D’Zmura et al. (2009) in which two syllables were spoken in imagination showed that imagined speech information was present in EEG alpha, beta and theta bands. The **beta band** (13-18 Hz) proved most informative. The most informative electrodes were located mainly near the top of the head (**vertex**) where electromyographic artifacts had least influence.

They used various signal processing steps (standard low-pass filtering to remove 60 Hz line artifact, DC filtering, signal enveloping etc.) to clean up their signal. Please refer to the reference list for specific signal processing details.

<sub>**References**</sub>
> 8 votes

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Tags: eeg, signal-detection, speech, signal-processing
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# Question
Title: Is the SPAD-T textual analysis software still available?
I am looking for an old program called SPAD-T that is still used for textual analysis (especially in psychology).

Can anybody tell me where I can download or purchase a legal copy? Failing that, does anyone know how I could contact the original publisher/developer?

Note that I have cross-posted the question here.

# Answer
> 3 votes
After a little bit of googling, it seems that the original developer of SPAD-T, CISIA (dead link), is no longer in business, and the software appears to have become unavailable. I found the company off this list, so maybe it will be of some help in finding an alternative.

(I'm mostly answering this because I suspected that it otherwise never would be.)

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Tags: software
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# Question
Title: Freud's theory regarding child to parent attraction
This ***may*** be a thought from false information but even from some teachers I've heard quotes of how `Sigmund Freud` had a theory about how *children are attracted to their parent of the opposite gender.*

I was just thinking, *is that the real theory?* Or did `Freud` mean that we are attracted to the person that ***reminds*** us of our parent of the opposite gender either physically and/or emotionally?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Both are true, to my knowledge (in the sense that Freud did believe this). They relate to the Oedipus and Electra complexes, which are are core parts of classical Freudian theory.

Children, through the Oedipus and Electra complexes during the phallic developmental stage, where they sexually desire their same-sex parent, eventually come to identify with their same-sex parent by resolving these desires through different mechanisms. These mechanisms are castration anxiety, in boys, and penis envy, in girls.

He believed that these mechanisms would lead to partner preferences matching the same-sex parent. Freud also believed that failing to successfully resolve the Oedipus or Electra complex could lead to a host of "problems" in adulthood, like neurosis, pedophilia and homosexuality.

I don't need to say that this classical view is outdated and not supported by evidence or modern theories.

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Tags: physical-attraction, attraction
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# Question
Title: Why do most people laugh with a "ha" sound?
When people laugh, the most common sound is "ha", while some may "ho" or "he". When do people pick this up when they grow, or is this just natural?

Some people laugh differently again, but I tend to believe they are just acting, not naturally letting it out, just so they feel different from others. Is this true?

# Answer
> 6 votes
Since this question has been unanswered for quite some time I will try to provide an acceptable approximation to an answer. Excuses beforehand for the many block quotes but it is not my area of expertise. The quotes are from a revealing article by Provine (1996).

As commented on by others, laughter can be specified better by their actual sound then by the written word (for a nice link on the bewildering variety of written laughter: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=419591). Spectral analysis of laughter in the lab showed that it is

> \[...\] characterized by a series of short vowel like notes (syllables), each about 75 milliseconds long, that are repeated at regular intervals about 210 milliseconds apart. A specific vowel sound does not define laughter, but similar vowel sounds are typically used for the notes of a given laugh. For example, laughs have the structure of "ha-ha-ha" or "ho ho-ho," but not "ha-ho-ha-ho."

And

> The Stereotypic structure of a laugh is, at least in part, a result of the limitations of our vocal apparatus.

The fake laughters may indeed be different, for example fake crying is also very challenging. Emotionless laughing is also characterized by different facial expressions.

As to where laughter comes from it is important to note

> \[...\] that chimpanzees and other great apes perform a laugh-like vocalization when tickled or during play. \[...\] Breathy, panting laughter is probably the primal form that dates back to the common ancestor of all great apes and people. Human beings evolved their characteristic laughter after branching from an ancestor in common with chimpanzees (estimated to be around six million years ago, according to DNA hybridization data).

Laughter will, however, undoubtedly be affected by your surroundings, since

> Laughter is a decidedly social signal, not an egocentric expression of emotion.

Hence, laughter is born out of an interplay of nature (evolution and restricions imposed by the vocal apparatus) and nurture (social setting).

**Reference**
Provine. Laughter. *Am Sci* 1996;**84**:38-45

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Tags: personality, humour
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# Question
Title: How does this illusion - that I just inadvertently created - work?
As I was working on a basic chess application for Android, I loaded some chess clip art into my imageviews. Then this happened. Look closely at the top two rows.

At first I was startled. My imageviews had reformatted themselves! But no. All the squares are still identically sized.

Question is this: How does this image fool our minds? What can illusions like this tell us about how the brain is wired?

# Answer
> 8 votes
This is likely related to other illusions of relative size, such as the Ebbinghaus (A) and Delboeuf (B) illusions.

These illusions show that perception is not a 1:1 representation of retinal input. Instead it is a mental (re-)construction.

As reviewed by Mrucek et al:

> an object's size is not inherently represented in the size of its projected retinal image. Rather, the perceived size of an object is constructed by integrating multiple sources of information including, but not limited to, retinal image size, physical and perceived distance (Berryhill, Fendrich, & Olson, 2009; Boring, 1940; Emmert, 1881; Ponzo, 1911), an object's geometrical and textural properties (Giora & Gori, 2010; Kundt, 1863; Lotze, 1852; Oppel, 1855; Helmholtz, 1867; Westheimer, 2008), knowledge of an object's typical size (Konkle & Oliva, 2012), and the **relative size of different objects in a scene** (Coren & Girgus, 1978; Roberts, Harris, & Yates, 2005; Robinson, 1972).

A number of factors produce assimilation and contrast effects in size (as in your example), central variables seem to be the distance and the similarity of target and inducing stimuli (Roberts et al. 2005).

This is getting a little bit off topic, but Mruczek et al. (2014) show that dynamic visual aspects can feed into this illusion too. Also check out the StarTrek illusion which also has a relative size component. Isn't that cool? The name alone...

These illusions may seem to be cute effects. However, they have important real world consequences. For example, Wansink and van Ittersum (2012; Ittersum & Wansink, 2013) investigated the effect of plate size on consumption. Imagine that the white circle in picture B is the plate and that the black cirle is your dessert. If you have a big plate you eat more, which is (also) related to the Delboeuf illusion. These illusions seem difficult to counteract:

> Even a 60-min, interactive, multimedia warning on the dangers of using large plates had seemingly no impact on 209 health conference attendees, who subsequently served nearly twice as much food when given a large buffet plate 2 hr later.

I could go on..., sorry.

**References**

Ittersum, K. V., & Wansink, B. (2012). Plate Size and Color Suggestibility: The Delboeuf Illusion’s Bias on Serving and Eating Behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 39(2), 215–228. http://doi.org/10.1086/662615

Mruczek, R. E. B., Blair, C. D., & Caplovitz, G. P. (2014). Dynamic illusory size contrast: A relative-size illusion modulated by stimulus motion and eye movements. Journal of Vision, 14(3), 2. http://doi.org/10.1167/14.3.2

Roberts, B., Harris, M. G., & Yates, T. A. (2005). The roles of inducer size and distance in the Ebbinghaus illusion (Titchener circles). Perception, 34(7), 847–856.

Wansink, B., & van Ittersum, K. (2013). Portion size me: Plate-size induced consumption norms and win-win solutions for reducing food intake and waste. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 19(4), 320–332. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0035053

# Answer
> 1 votes
I can't tell you the exact underlying mechanism unfortunately. I can analyze the illusion so as to approximate an answer.

You can see that the effect is virtually absent when the white squares on the two rows are nearly similarly sized (rook - pawn). The effect is biggest when the white surfaces are most unequal (king - pawn).

Additionally, to me, the white fields seem to be bigger than the black ones, not so much the reverse. I think it is the illusion of the remainder of the black fields looking like they are offset and widening, which is most evident in pawn - bishop.

So in all, the white squares are central to the illusion, and the black fields are seemingly bordering the white fields. It now looks as if the black outlines are widened around the white squares. This may be related the fact that the white squares seem to be interpreted as squares and the black field (-remainders) as the borders of the white squares. In other words, the white fields are interpreted as squares, the black fields as borders.

Hence, I think this illusion is to be sought higher up in the cortex, where visual images are interpreted as opposed to 'simple' retinal illusions.

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Tags: perception, cognitive-neuroscience, vision, consciousness
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# Question
Title: Are there peer-reviewed psychology or neuroscience journal articles that include the raw data (data set)?
I am hoping to carry out a pedagogical analysis of some peer reviewed papers, preferably on topics in cognitive science.

This would be easier with the raw data its self, in additional to the results section of the paper.

# Answer
> 6 votes
Check out *Psychological Science* articles with the "Open Data Badge". There's also the *Journal of Open Psychology Data*.

# Answer
> 4 votes
See this previous question about journals that specialise in publishing psychological datasets.

See the tag for some more specific examples.

PlosOne Psychology has recently increased its requirements to supply raw data. So recent psychological research in the journal is more likely to have data attached to the manuscript. I did a quick look and found a small but meaningful proportion had raw data attached.

In general, there are a range of journal policies around the requirement to make raw data available. There is a move towards greater access to raw data. So a good place to look is journals that have a greater requirement for data access. But even then, you typically still have to hunt around.

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Tags: reproducible-research
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# Question
Title: Is teacher guidance always necessary to become an expert?
Is it necessary to have a teacher (or mentor/coach) to master every skill? What if I am taking an online tutorial with pre-recorded videos? Can I count that teacher training?

I have read the concept of deliberate practice and 10,000 hours of practice being needed to become an expert. But my question is whether these 10,000 hours need to be (partially) guided to receive personal feedback and/or coaching, or whether self-learning is sufficient?

# Answer
I'll give you an example of a famous mathematician who developed his mathematical research in isolation. Arguably If someone manages to achieve a high level of skill in solitude for such an extraordinary difficult discipline as mathematics I would deny the need to have a teacher (in any case) to master a skill which is less difficult than be an expert in math. (Which is arguably any discipline). However as mentioned in the comments having some kind of feedback might be useful in mastering a skill faster. Additionally not every person is as gifted as was S. Ramanujan. Therefore I suggest it depends on your inborn intellectual abilities with regard to the skill you want to become an expert of. Therefore this question cannot be answered in general but only with respect to person X inborn intellectual qualities with regard to the skill person X wants to become an expert of. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa\_Ramanujan
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning, attention
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