# Question
Title: What is the relationship between neurotransmitter release and resting potential in retinal bipolar cells?
Retinal bipolar cells are known to have resting potentials from which they can become more *or* less polarized. What I'm wondering is whether a bipolar cell's neurotransmitter-release rate is zero when it's at resting potential, or whether it's zero when it's fully hyperpolarized.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Bipolar cells reduce transmitter release when hyperpolarized, see the wikipedia page. When the bipolar cell is fully hyperpolarized it will basically stop releasing neurotransmitters. If transmitter release ever becomes totally zero I do not dare to say, however.

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Tags: neuroscience, vision
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# Question
Title: What is the fear/paralysis that occurs before doing an irreversible action?
I often experience paralysis in the face of an irreversible decision or action. What is the term for this or what is it that I'm looking for to describe it and/or research it?

Some examples of this feeling:

* Leaving for a trip: if I forgot something, once I'm at the airport it'll be too late to go back
* Throwing a garbage bag in a dumpster: if I dropped my phone in the garbage at some point, I'm never getting it back
* Dropping a bundle of letters into a mailbox: if I got someone's address wrong, I can't just reach in and pull the letters back out
* Buying something without a return policy: if I don't like it, I'm never getting that money back
* About to jump out of a plane (e.g., skydiving): if I don't like the feeling, I can't just hop back on the plane immediately

I was listening to a podcast in which this was referred to as the "call of the void". However, the (not) ever-reliable Urban Dictionary describes the call of the void as the "what if I jumped" thought, which seems different somehow.

This question is related to (but I think not a duplicate of) the Paradox of Choice, which, as I understand it, states that when people are given more choices, they tend to have difficulty making the decision and are often dissatisfied with the choice they made. It seems this anxiety I'm describing has more to do with the *irreversible* nature of the decision or action.

# Answer
Philosopher Walter Kaufmann calls this fear "decidophobia", but I have never read and cannot find any psychological publications using that term.

If you think about the phenomenon, it becomes apparent that anyone can clearly observe when a person hesitates to decide, but even that person herself could probably not clearly identify all the emotions that accompany this behavior, and, if there is fear, what the exact object of that fear is – the fear could be of anything from deciding between two equally desirable alternatives (fear to decide) to the outcome of a decision that is in fact already made (fear to finalize the decision and face the results).

Psychology therefore prefers to study observable behavior and calls this behavior "decision avoidance".

---

The above answers the question you asked in the title of you question. Your post itself describes a bundle of symptoms that to me are reminiscent of what persons with obsessive-compulsive disorder experience. Many such disorders begin with a worry that something was forgotten and lead to extended rituals of checking for hours if the water is turned off or the lights are out. The problem here is that these people become increasingly incabable of trusting their perceptions and have to repeat certain actions until they are finally convinced the thing was done.

An example is of a woman who frequently goes on business trips and, upon returning home, has to read the name of her city several times loudly letter-by-letter at the airport to get the feeling that she is actually there.

Since I know nothing about you beyond your post, your problem – if it is one – is hard to diagnose. If this "fear to decide" affects your well-being, I recommend you go see a psychologist and talk to them about it.
> 4 votes

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Tags: terminology, decision-making
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# Question
Title: Why can we not see around our point of focus of our eyes?
Why do we have to strictly focus on something to really see what it looks like? Is everything else around blurred, or is our brain trained only to see in the center of the image projected on the retina?

# Answer
> 13 votes
I basically agree with @Nick Stauner, but I want to add another important aspect, namely the gradient of photoreceptor densities in the human retina: In the fovea there is a sharp peak in cone density compared to more eccentric regions, as described in Curcio et al. (1990) and see the following graph obtained from Web Vision:

The cones have a different retinal circuitry, as about 20-100 cones converge onto one ganglion cell via bipolar cells (Webvision. In contrast, tens of thousands of rods may connect onto a single ganglion cell through massive convergence of rod input into bipolar cells and amacrine cell connections (Webvision). This, together with the exceptional high density of cones in the fovea result in excellent visual acuity in the central field of view, and far lower acuity more eccentrically. Indeed, eccentric vision is used for movement detection and rod-driven night vision (conditions of low lighting), while central vision is used for tasks where high-acuity is preferred (analysis of fine spatial detail such as reading).

**References**
**-** Curcio et al. J Comp Neurol 1990; **292**:292-523
**-** Webvision The Organization of the Retina and Visual System, Utah University

# Answer
> 11 votes
Basically, the retina contains two different kinds of receptors: rods and cones. Cones are concentrated in the fovea and activate ganglion cells more discretely than rods. Rods are more interconnected by horizontal cells (if I'm not mistaken...), so multiple rods can often activate the same ganglion cell, whereas each cone is more likely to have its own ganglion cell. Ganglion cells transmit visual sensory input to the brain, so information that is consolidated into one before transmission can't really be discriminated by the brain as coming from one rod or another if both rods connect to the same ganglion cell. Since cones have more independent ganglion cells, they transmit info to the brain more individually. Where cones are concentrated (the focal area of the retina), the resolution of visual perception is more fine-grained.

Here's a somewhat simplistic illustration:
(source: photo.net)
Note the single ganglion cell connected to all three rods, and the three separate cells for each cone.

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Tags: perception, vision, neurophysiology
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title: How do we localize pain?

text:
# Question
Title: How do we localize pain?
I know that different points of the brain correspond to different point of the body. But how a sensory information reaches its correct corresponding area?

For example, let say I put a pencil's extremity on position A of the thumb tip and then on position B always of the thumb tip. How do I discriminate between A and B? Does these electrical activities travel trough two completely different pathways?

# Answer
> NOCICEPTORS AND THE PERCEPTION OF PAIN

The pain from nociceptors remain in bundles for that region until they reach the spinal cord at which time the signal begins to be processed to the appropriate pathway with primitive intelligence (like instinctive jerk away) till the signal reaches the brain and is processed by sentient intelligence (form a plan to avoid these situations in the future). The resolution of pain is something like 100x the size of a nerve branch equal to one bundle in theory but the minimum resolution of pain varies from person to person.
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Does the brain stop processing data when the eyes move?
I was reading this question and remember back to the 70s when our local newspaper changed formats. In an article about why they made the changes that they did, one of the points they mentioned was that by making the columns narrower, you would retain more because the brain didn't process the words when the eyes were moving.

Over the past few years working in instructional design, I've often wanted to cite a reference for my newspaper's statement, or at the very least a reference that debunks it. I've been unsuccessful finding anything on google, but I'm not sure if I'm asking the right questions or not. It may very well be that this was a theory in the 70's, since disproven, junk science, or something very real for which I've not stumbled upon the right search terms.

In any case, it seems to me that I'm the only person in the world whose ever heard this idea, and I'd like to find some reference, positive or negative, to it. Can anyone direct me to some research on the topic?

# Answer
I'm sorry you happened upon that research from the 70s. Should it have been true those with Nystagmus (constant involuntary eye movement) would never learn anything so it must be in a general sense false.

Here is a current thoughts and research into the subject:

> Eye movement-related brain activity during perceptual and cognitive processing
>
> For several decades researchers have been recording electrical brain activity associated with eye movements in attempt to understand their neural mechanisms. However, recent advances in eye-tracking technology have allowed researchers to use eye movements as the means of segmenting the ongoing brain activity into episodes relevant to cognitive processes in scene perception, reading, and visual search. This opened doors to uncovering the active and dynamic neural mechanisms underlying perception, attention and memory in naturalistic conditions. The present eBook contains a representative collection of studies from various fields of visual neuroscience that use this cutting edge approach of combining eye movements and neural activity.
>
> The majority of the articles in the eBook combine the measurement of eye movements with the recording of the electroencephalogram (EEG) in human subjects performing various psychological tasks. The most common methodological approach is examination of the EEG activity time-aligned to certain eye movement events, such as the onset of a fixation or a start of a saccadic eye movement (Fischer et al., 2013; Frey et al., 2013; Henderson et al., 2013; Hutzler et al., 2013; Nikolaev et al., 2013; Richards, 2013; Simola et al., 2013). Several works employ the time-frequency and synchrony analysis (Fischer et al., 2013; Hoffman et al., 2013; Ito et al., 2013; Nakatani and Van Leeuwen, 2013; Nakatani et al., 2013).
> 1 votes

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Tags: reference-request, vision, brain-training
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title: What makes trippy audiovisuals trippy?

text:
# Question
Title: What makes trippy audiovisuals trippy?
There are quite a few videos on YouTube (search "trippy videos") that feel "trippy". From what I've heard, some psychedelic artists are just reproducing what they experience when they trip on drugs like LSD.

A few patterns I've noted:

* Other humans/animals looking straight into the camera.
* Looping motion of objects.
* Brilliant colors.

Is there any research into what makes trippy videos trippy? I don't even know if trippiness is supposed to be subjective(in which case, I suppose this question must be closed). Any pointers would be really helpful.

# Answer
Many of our associations for color, order and music are derived from our culture rather than from biology or some inert psychology. That is to say the bright green house with Christmas lights and tinsel on it all year long might look trippy to you but to the person who designed it it appears to match their society's norms.

When you experience the trip its because of the violation of the norm of images your brain has been trained to recognise. The culture shock eventually errodes as you watch the videos more often because your brain begins to learn the patterns and incorporates it into your culture.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: How to study the effect of sustained exercise and sport on well-being?
I´d like to make a little case study about the impact of including regular weight training in life. I know one man who is going to start to excercise regularly and I have an opportunity to talk with him regularly (for example every month) for about six months, maybe longer. Is there any other option of making this research than via regular interview with direct questions about his view of the impact of sports in his life (for example question: What do you think you´ve learned from training?)? I mean - If I will watch for example self-esteem and it will grow, how can i know it grew thanks to sports and not because of any other change in his life? How to relate any watched cathegory to the regular training?

# Answer
Just to give you a few ideas. The ideas are ordered from better to worse. They are also mostly ordered from serious and expensive research to less serious and cheap research.

**Randomised control trial**: If you are really interested in causality, you would randomly allocate a large group of people to either and exercise or one or more control conditions (e.g., no exercise; alternative activity; etc.) . You would then use various well-validated measures to measure the dependent variable of interest. For example, if you are interested in self-esteem, then you might get self-report measures using something like the Rosenberg Self-esteem scale. An even better study would measure a range of related dependent variables (reports by others of well-being; physical health; other life outcomes of interest).

It sounds like you are interested in longitudinal trajectories of this effect, so you'd want to measure these outcome variables on multiple occasions (e.g., baseline, 1 month, 2 months, 6 months, etc.).

You'd probably also want to do some kind of intention to treat analysis. Basically, there are two questions. What is the effect of the intervention for those who actually follow the protocol, and what is the effect of the intervention for those who are assigned to it but may or may not actually engage in the exercise?

**One sample longitudinal study:** A simpler design would just be the same as above but without the control group. You'd have more threats to causal inference, but nonetheless, results would still be informative to the effect of exercise on self-esteem.

**Single participant longitudinal study:** It seems like this is what you are talking about. There are many issues with this design. Do the results generalise to other people? Is the increase due to other factors in the person's life? That said, if this is just for hypothesis generation or exploring the ideas, it might be interesting.

**Qualitative versus quantitative measurement:** Quantitative measurement of self-esteem is generally better if you are trying to test formal hypotheses about change. Qualitative methods (e.g., asking open ended questions) is often more useful in generating hypotheses and explanations for the obtained results. That said, much more subjectivity can enter interpretation.

As an aside, it is interesting that the vast majority of infomercials selling exercise equipment rely on the cheapest and worst design: qualitative single observation measurement (i.e., anecdotes).
> 2 votes

# Answer
Take a multispectrum approach. These are a few relevant tests I could think of that would give you a general view of the person's mental and physical health.
> 0 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, sport-psychology
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# Question
Title: Does the brain need more sleep after heavy load?
Does the brain require more sleep in the following night, if you have used a lot more of its capacity that day than usually?

# Answer
After stressful events the brain is energized by various (evil in this case) hormones from the adrenal system like cortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine. Good luck getting sleep without some medical help after trying to solve some major world, work or personal issues. So while the brain still needs its normal rejuvenation and maybe an extra 30 minutes or hour to deal with the bad stages of sleep but its probably not going to get it. That is to say there are several stages of sleep and the adreno hormones mess with the length and quality of the stages which can be fixed by a longer amount in some situations or just flat out starting over the next night and trying to catch up on the debt over the course of time.

> Stress, Arousal, and Sleep
>
> Stress is considered to be an important cause of disrupted sleep and insomnia. However, controlled and experimental studies in rodents indicate that effects of stress on sleep–wake regulation are complex and may strongly depend on the nature of the stressor. While most stressors are associated with at least a brief period of arousal and wakefulness, the subsequent amount and architecture of recovery sleep can vary dramatically across conditions even though classical markers of acute stress such as corticosterone are virtually the same. Sleep after stress appears to be highly influenced by situational variables including whether the stressor was controllable and/or predictable, whether the individual had the possibility to learn and adapt, and by the relative resilience and vulnerability of the individual experiencing stress. There are multiple brain regions and neurochemical systems linking stress and sleep, and the specific balance and interactions between these systems may ultimately determine the alterations in sleep–wake architecture. Factors that appear to play an important role in stress-induced wakefulness and sleep changes include various monominergic neurotransmitters, hypocretins, corticotropin releasing factor, and prolactin. In addition to the brain regions directly involved in stress responses such as the hypothalamus, the locus coeruleus, and the amygdala, differential effects of stressor controllability on behavior and sleep may be mediated by the medial prefrontal cortex. These various brain regions interact and influence each other and in turn affect the activity of sleep–wake controlling centers in the brain. Also, these regions likely play significant roles in memory processes and participate in the way stressful memories may affect arousal and sleep. Finally, stress-induced changes in sleep-architecture may affect sleep-related neuronal plasticity processes and thereby contribute to cognitive dysfunction and psychiatric disorders.
>
> Stress and Neonatal Sleep
>
> Routine circumcision, done without anesthesia in the newborn nursery, was usually followed by prolonged nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Since this form of sleep has been described as a low point on an arousal continuum, we consider its increase to be consistent with a theory of conservation-withdrawal in response to stressful stimulation.
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, sleep
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# Question
Title: Phase locking value (PLV) between $x(t)$ and $x(t-T)$
I have been trying to calculate PLV using the hilbert transform (reference). To test if it even works or not, I calculated PLV between $x(t)$ and $x(t-T)$. i find that it drops to zero very quickly as $T$ becomes nonzero as shown in following figure:

Is this as expected? I would expect PLV between $x(t)$ and $x(t-T)$ to be 1. In above graph shift is a normalized quantity such that $T=\rm{shift}\times\rm{length}(x)$

**EDIT:** thinking about this some more. Let us first define what PLV is. If we define PLV as the phase locking between instantaneous phases of two signals $x(t)$ and $y(t)$ where instantaneous phase is defined according to the analytic signal, then I am not able to derive a mathematical relationship asserting that $PLV(x(t),x(t-T)) = 1$. But then **what is the PLV good for? What kind of transformation could be applied to $x(t)$ to yield a $y(t)$ s.t. $PLV(x,y)=1$?**

# Answer
PLV is good for correlating signals that seem out of phase to our measurement techniques due to the digital nature of our recordings but are in sync because of the electro chemical biological nature of the CNS. If you transform two signals into phase you can determine the relatedness of the two signals.

> Phase Locking Value NeuroBytes
>
> The schematic below illustrates how PLV is computed in this implementation. Explanation for each step follows.
> 1 votes

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Tags: eeg
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# Question
Title: Is being "hyper"-offended, no matter the cause, an indicator that someone might be a socio-/psychopath?
Suppose I make the following statement: "There should be no quota for women or minorities in any sort of company, people should be hired based on their capabilities, regardless of their gender or skin color".

There are people who are going to disagree with that. There could be a discussion about it and things could be learned from said discussion, while people respect each other's rights to have a different opinion.

And then there are going to be people who not only disagree, but claim to be offended by it in such a way that they feel it necessary to try and ruin people's lives for adhering to said opinion. Who will try to find your personal information and post it online in the hopes that someone attacks you for sharing said opinion. This is a practice known as "doxxing". They will send anonymous death threats and go to sites like reddit or forums which have a userbase which they agree with, share the URL in which you stated this opinion, in an attempt to get as many people as possible in on trying to destroy your life.

These people seem to believe this vigilante behavior is somehow justified and necessary. That instead of discussion and education and even questioning their own beliefs, the way to achieve your goals is by eradicating all opposition.

So my question is: is this system of going after someone because they have an opinion you don't like, a indicator of a psychological disorder? If so, which one?

And finally, where do people learn that this is acceptable behavior?

# Answer
You're not describing a vigilante but an Avengers. No on Cap. America, Princess Thor and Hulk but the kind of self focused individuals who view the world only how they are affected. Vigilantes are people who decide to enforce a law which is not being enforced by the government Avengers make their own laws. Sometimes avenging a wrong is justified as righteous behaviour in America. A business rips you off? Dispute the transaction with the mediating credit card company. Someone breaks something you own? File a civil case. Buy a Red Bull, Don't get wings? Join the class action lawsuit and get 10 bucks. Doctor screws you over with bad service or meds? File a complaint against their license. That behaviour adheres to the norms of of culture some of which is leaking into to other societies.

The kind of Avenging you describe does not adhere to the norms of our society though and is considered pathological. They have a perpetual victim mentality due to some hurt that happened in their past or some way they hurt someone in their past which they are not able to face as their responsibility. They also could have just been hit in the head or blood vessel popped causing brain injury. All types are bullies. They may think their actions are for the cause. Foremost in their thoughts is purity, morality and correctness: intellectual purity of the academic institute or webpage, the political and religious purity of the society, racial and physical purity of humanity. They think their support is empathic to the cause and world but really they are just sadistically getting high off someone elses pain. Often sadistic people were abused as children and have love and pain confused on some level. Many murders had bad relationships with their father figures and never learned to be their own parent or the work they did as their own parent was not rational.

In exteme cases these individuals do actual acts of terrorism like Timothy Mcveigh. They have long since aired their grievances generally about one specific topic before they become violent. You'll want to watch Criminal Minds s1e13 Poison for an indepth amount of dramatization on the type.

Creating an artificial intelligence to find individuals who are in danger of becoming violent would be quite easy but the FBI has not seen fit to commision such work.

Originally you asked about antisocial personality disorder or as most people call it sociopathy. This is a citation of DSM 5 describing the disorder numbered 301.7.

> A. A pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others, occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:
>
> 1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest.
> 2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure.
> 3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead.
> 4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults.
> 5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others.
> 6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations.
> 7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
>
> B. The individual is at least age 18 years.
>
> C. There is evidence of conduct disorder with onset before age 15 years.
>
> D. The occurrence of antisocial behavior is not exclusively during the course of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
>
> **Diagnostic Features**
>
> The essential feature of antisocial personality disorder is a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood. This pattern has also been referred to as psychopathy, sociopathy, or dyssocial personality disorder. Because deceit and manipulation are central features of antisocial personality disorder, it may be especially helpful to integrate information acquired from systematic clinical assessment with information collected from collateral sources. For this diagnosis to be given, the individual must be at least age 18 years (Criterion B) and must have had a history of some symptoms of conduct disorder before age 15 years (Criterion C). Conduct disorder involves a repetitive and persistent pattern of behavior in which the basic rights of others or major age-appropriate societal norms or rules are violated. The specific behaviors characteristic of conduct disorder fall into one of four categories: aggression to people and animals, destruction of property, deceitfulness or theft, or serious violation of rules.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Have the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices on human psychology been studied?
What are the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices on the human brain? Naturally they could move metals to or through the brain cell's membrane. I can also see the experience of being in a strange position, meditating, and attempting to be as still as possible for an hour and a half, might cause some long term effect. Have the effects of MRIs and other electromagnetic devices been studied comparatively on human psychology or neurology? Could you also mention the mental health aspects?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Yes, the effects of electromagnetic fields on the brain have been studied extensively, especially with respect to cellphone, WiFi, and other small devices that emit such fields. The results are typically mixed, but the overall consensus is that "it depends" - on the strength of the field, the environment, length of exposure, etc - and most modern consumer devices operate at levels well below safety margins.

The effects of MRIs on cognitive function have been studied to some degree, starting in the 1990s, early in their history. The most prominent cognitive effects known include dizziness, vertigo, concentration, and awareness. Most of these effects are temporary (limited to the time spent inside the MRI machine), typically only found in high-intensity MRIs, and in most cases require movement (movement is theorized to induce a changing magnetic field).

The long-term effects of exposure to MRIs are not well known. However, as MRIs are in very common use, and are often a core part of studies on mental health and cognitive function, their safety is indirectly tested regularly. As such, there is not much impetus to conduct a controlled long-term study. Note also that MRI-related health risks tend to be more important for the operators who are chronically exposed, rather than for the patients who are only briefly exposed.

For your case, you should find out the MRI field strength used: "the majority of systems operate at 1.5T, commercial systems are available between 0.2T–7T.". Most of the known effects on cognitive function are found with MRIs above 3T, which are relatively uncommon. Even if you were inside a particularly powerful MRI machine, as long as you remained perfectly still, no significant magnetic field fluctuations should occur, and even if you did move, the effects are temporary.

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Tags: neuroscience, abnormal-psychology, neuroimaging, fmri
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# Question
Title: Do people who lose their faith tend to replace it with other non-evidence-based reasoning?
I was watching this talk by Phil Plait given at TAM(The Amazing Meeting) 8. You can find a partial transcript here. It will help provide some context.

In the talk he makes the following claim:

> *Studies have shown that people who lose their faith tend to replace it with something else, with a different type of belief. If you start out religious and lose your faith in God, you’ll replace that with something else, some other non-evidence-based reasoning.*

**My questions:**

**Q1:** Which studies is he referring to?

**Q2:** How much evidence is there to support the claim ?

# Answer
> 4 votes
This is an interesting question, so I'll take a stab at it. Direct evidence for the claim is hard to come by. Generally, religious affiliations, conversions, and loss of faith are self-identified in surveys. The reliance on self-identification makes it difficult to test the claim that people move to some other non-evidence-based reasoning, as they may not be aware of it. Indirect evidence is easier to find.

The extensive Religious Landscape Survey (2009) by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life for example, asks the self-identified "unaffiliated" who grew up religious to explain their reasons for leaving their faith. Only about 40% leaving Christianity cite not believing in God as their reason, and less than 30% leaving Catholicism cite no longer being religious in some way. Looking at specific survey responses, most converts leave their religion for reasons other than relying on science and logic, and remain "spiritual" in some way.

Another way to test the claim is to ask people about their beliefs, as is nicely summarized here, from the same survey. A large proportion of non-religiously affiliated participants - even some self-identified atheists - believe in God, the afterlife, or some other type of spirituality.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, religion
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# Question
Title: Do bilingual children learn two languages faster than monolingual children learn one language?
Do children from bilingual families learn two languages faster than children from monolingual families learn one language? In other words, I'm wondering if there's a language learning advantage to growing up in a bilingual home. If that is the case, what about for families that speak 3 languages or more?

# Answer
I think it's all about passion for languages. I have bilingual children and my first was having difficulties with my native language compared to the second one. It's all individual...So the answer is

> it depends

in my opinion I think there is no advantage over the children from monolingual. Children from bilingual families take 2 different languages as one. So in some sense there are still monolingual...

here is some paper:

> Because a key expectation parents have is for their child to perform well in school, it is important for parents to know that bilingual children and monolingual children develop their learning abilities at different speeds. Children learning two languages learn each language more slowly than monolingual children learn their native languages. It is easy to understand why -- children have a limited amount of time with which to dedicate to listening and reading language; if a child is bilingual, he will split that time between the two languages, which slows his learning speed. This often affects the academic performance and communication skills of bilingual children, which can cause stress in the family. In a sense, the average school is set up to go at a monolingual speed, which might outpace bilingual children.

http://everydaylife.globalpost.com/child-development-bilingual-vs-monolingual-household-7371.html

> Bilingual 12-year-olds perform worse at school than their monolingual peers, a researcher at Sweden's Örebro University has found.

http://www.thelocal.se/20110323/32766
> 2 votes

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Tags: learning, language
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# Question
Title: Do unequal step sizes in staircase procedure affect the convergence?
Consider a psychophysics procedure using a standard staircase method to adaptively find the threshold, using a 2AFC paradigm and a 1-up, 3-down method to determine the 75% threshold. Now suppose the use of steps that are unequal in size. I am *not* referring to decreasing the step size after a certain amount of reversals as described by Levitt (1971), but to the use of unequal step sizes. So for example suppose that the available steps are 0.5 - 0.5 - 0.5 - 1 - 1.5 - 0.5 - 2.5 - 2. So this would translate to a discrete set of available stimulus levels of: 0 - 0.5 - 1 - 1.5 - 2.5 - 4 - 4.5 - 7 - 9. Since step size can be used to alter the correct rate at which the staircase procedure converges (e.g., 50%, 75% etc.) Kaernbach (1991), I was wondering what my proposed stimulus-level distribution would mean for the threshold definition of a 1-up 3-down procedure intended to converge onto a 75% threshold?

# Answer
It is going to mean bad things. If you can only create stimuli with a predefined non uniformly sampled set of "levels" then the the corresponding percent correct that the staircase will track will depend on the threshold of an individual observer. For example, if you can create stimuli with levels of 0, 1, 2, 3, ..., 100, 110, 130, 170, 250, 410, where for small levels the up and down step sizes are equal, but for large levels the up step size is twice the down step size. This means the percent correct point is going to be different depending on the threshold of the subject. You wouldn't have to worry about it if you use something like the method of constant stimuli.
> 1 votes

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Tags: perception, measurement, methodology, experimental-psychology, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: How to address a narcissist to go to therapy?
Often people go to a therapist when they start to experience a strong personal discomfort, however often this never happens as because their personality is egosyntonic.

However for whoever is standing near to those persons the situation can become very annoying (see Does neuroticism cause people to hurt others?).

The narcissist is often unconscious to have a "problem", he simply thinks that the problem comes from others and that his way of thinking should be taken also by others.

How to address a narcissist toward going to therapy?

# Answer
> 2 votes
The person prolly isn't a clinical narcissists only a psychologist could diagnose as such. When you do find one though it's a very tough case.

To be honest one of my current psychologist and I discussed the situation of narcissist therapy in detail. I dated someone who fell somewhere in the empathy disorder spectrum. The person wanted me to announce them to the world and due to my socio-economic situation it would result in what little family I have left disowning me. In general psychotherapy can teach someone who is thus sick how to behave in a manner consistent with the norms of society but there remains some question of current methods ability to remedy the disorder in a way that the changes cause the universe which that person experiences not to revolve around them.

I suggest an appeal to ego might work. My appeals to morals, emotions and logic did not work. When I bruised this persons ego centered around them doing something obviously stupid that was causing them physical pain they responded well. The person hurt their foot after we broke up and the doctor would not give them pain meds because they would not ask for fear of becoming addicted. They had however discussed their affinity for Mary Jane so I offered to buy them some pot and they refused. It's legal here but could not afford the trip to the special doctor or the pot itself. I swore fine and when you want your nose reattached for you seem to have your mind to remove it I will pay the plastic surgery. They asked what do you mean and I explained the concept of Cutting off the nose to spite the face. Then my help was accepted. So I would frame the argument around self betterment. Do not attempt to point out fallibility of the individual to self help. They love gifts. Maybe buy a book that deals with psychotherapy and includes something that resembles their problem. (Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt if they are female and maybe the lesser The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed If male a lot of problems are so inherited from parents and learning about their parents flaws may help them self identify) A lot of important people in the world bare some of the dark triad traits and have learned through therapy how to be more successful and influence people.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, abnormal-psychology, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Does expecting to be in a safe situation elicit unsafe behavior?
When the traffic light is red you are aware that a car might comes rushing in. So you are extra careful and always check the street before you actual cross the street. But one the other hand if you have green light and think you are good to go, it seems to be very likely that you just walk over the street without even taking a glance. There is still the danger of a car/cyclist, however, that may run a red light. Not looking could thus seriously be harmful.

So to put it in a more general context. Does expecting to be in a safe situation elicit or allow unsafe behavior?

# Answer
The psychology of the Jay walker or those who violate small laws (virtually unimportant to society expect when assigning blame and compensation for damages) is indeed a tricky thing. The motivational force behind the jay walking and the present awareness of the dangers of the situation often prove key to determining if the person will experience hardship as a result of their choices. That is to say the drunk or otherwise impaired will be at a higher risk of improperly crossing the street and being harmed. Then those experiencing emotional extremes are thus also likely to be biased to ignore danger. Likewise those who are otherwise sick or mentally afflicted. However the level headed person who is fully aware of the situation would have an increased probability of assuming his action is dangerous and may take more precautions. Those who fail to understand the danger of the situation though fully aware may not be as vigilant and may experience additional harm. Likewise also some drunks drive excessively slow knowing that what they are doing is wrong and dangerous but because of their impairment the amount of damage they do can still be catastrophic.
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, performance, bias, situation-awareness
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title: A subtle test for color-blindness

text:
# Question
Title: A subtle test for color-blindness
Is there a test method of proving a person being color-blind, without letting the test subject know, that he/she is being tested?

E.g. showing the person cards with colored dots like depicted here is not a valid answer.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Depending on the instructions that you give to the person, you might be able to disguise the fact that they are completing a color-blindness test. You could use stimuli like those in the Ishihara test, but instead ask the subject to do a math problem where they add the previous two numbers. You can also tell them that sometimes no number will be presented, and have a few cases of actual blank tiles mixed in with the regular stimuli. If a subject reports the wrong sum consistently for trials that involve a particular hue, you can be reasonably confident that they are colorblind for that hue.

There is also a short test developed by researchers at City University London which has subjects track a square during a movie. It's probably no more subtle than the Ishihara test, but it is less well known and therefore subjects might not infer what the purpose is. See http://www.city.ac.uk/health/research/centre-for-applied-vision-research/a-new-web-based-colour-vision-test.

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, methodology, vision, test
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# Question
Title: Is there a difference between the time/effort it takes for the blind and the sighted to learn to read Braille?
The visually deprived brain undergoes extensive remodeling due to cross-modal plasticity. This leads to increased areas of the cortex being available for other purposes such as tactile processing. Now I am wondering if there is anything known about how long it takes for the blind to learn Braille as compared to normally sighted people?

# Answer
> 3 votes
The time required to learn Braille may vary depending on factors such as age, partial/full and early/late blindness and individual differences (see here), but what has come out of studies such as this is that visual deprivation appears to speed up Braille learning.

In the study I cite, all subjects received the same degree of training, but individuals who had been blindfolded for five days performed better in a Braille discrimination task compared to sighted subjects. The authors take these results to be possibly indicative (though there are some concerns on this suggestion in the article) of neuroplastic changes (Hamilton & Pascual-Leone, 1998) specifically in the somatosensory and visual cortices. Visual deprivation might lead to the recruitment of visual cortex areas for tactile discrimination thus enabling for faster Braille learning.

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Tags: perception, learning, vision, language, plasticity
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# Question
Title: Can a person with multiple personality disorder have one of their personality based on a real person?
**Can a person with multiple personality disorder have one of their personality based on a real person encountered during their lifetime?** For example, in a family with multiple children, can one of the children with multiple presonality disorder have one of their personas be a "clone" of sibling? If so, how close are the two, and more interestingly, what happens when the two meet?

This question is related to this one about isolated internal representation of people, and potentially to the phenomenon of imprinting

# Answer
The article you link to is fairly comprehensive, and probably already answers your questions.

* Dissociative Identity Disorder is no longer referred to as multiple personality disorder. This is a highly misunderstood disorder, and involves many possible symptoms besides the appearance of "alters". "The diagnosis itself remains controversial among mental health professionals."
* "It is now acknowledged that these dissociated states are not fully mature personalities, but rather they represent a disjointed sense of identity." This answers your question about how close a "clone" personality would be to the real thing - ie, only in a limited sense.
* Similarly, note that in most cases this disorder manifests in childhood "(usually before age 9)". While I don't doubt that "alters" are modelled on people (fictional and real) that the patient has observed in their past, any actor will tell you that creating a "clone" personality takes a lot of work, and is likely far too much to expect of a child, let alone one suffering from the extreme level of abuse or neglect that typically initiates this disorder.
* "Sometimes the alters are imaginary people; sometimes they are animals." So while I can't say for sure if it's possible for an "alter" to be an imitation of a real person, it's certainly not common.
* Moreover, it is believed that "The distinct personalities may serve diverse roles in helping the individual cope with life's dilemmas." In other words, "alters" are formed to avoid stress, not increase it, so it wouldn't be in the patient's interest to imitate a real person.
* Finally, "Environmental triggers or life events cause a sudden shift from one alter or personality to another," so this is the likely outcome should a "clone" alter meet its inspiration.
> 6 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, personality, developmental-psychology, psychiatry
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# Question
Title: Is there a technical term for when the brain recalls an incorrect, but almost correct answer when trying to recall a word/name?
For example: If I was trying to recall the name Elaine but instead only the name Ellen could come to mind. It's as though I know 'where' the memory is, but since the memory is poor and so similar to another name with more associated memories, the more dominant, false memory is recalled instead.

I'm not really sure the proper way to describe my question but perhaps one of you can infer what a fool like me is trying to ask.

# Answer
> 2 votes
If you want a very technical term, you could use "paraphasia", but most people just call it a "speech error" or "naming error". These are usually categorized according to error type: such as semantic (cat --\> dog), phonological or "formal" (cat --\> mat), mixed (both semantic and phonological: cat --\> rat), nonword (cat --\> kag), unrelated (cat --\> log), etc. Your example would probably be considered a mixed error because it was semantically similar (another common female name) and phonologically similar (shared at least 2 phonemes). Tip of the tongue refers to a more specific case where you have a strong sense of knowing the name and some aspects of it, but not being able to recall it.

If you're interested in the neural correlates of these errors, Myrna Schwartz, Gary Dell, and their colleagues have published a series of articles investigating naming errors in stroke patients with language deficits (aphasia). A recent paper mapped aspects of their computational model of word production onto lesion locations in the left hemisphere (Dell et al., 2013, Cognition, 128:3, 380-396).

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Tags: memory
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# Question
Title: Where to obtain and how to score the Bukowski et al "Friendship Qualities Scale"?
Where to obtain the Bukowski Friendship Qualities Scale? How do you calculate the scores from it?

It might be available here but I'm not sure because I don't have access to the article: http://spr.sagepub.com/content/11/3/471.short

Bukowski, W. M., Hoza, B., & Boivin, M. (1994). Measuring friendship quality during pre-and early adolescence: The development and psychometric properties of the Friendship Qualities Scale. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 11(3), 471-484.

# Answer
**Obtaining:** Yes, the items are listed in Bukowski et al (1994). See Table 1. You could always email the author explaining your research project and ask him whether he would allow you to use the measure.

**Scoring**: A quick look suggests that each item is scored on a 1 to 5 scale. Table 1 suggests that there is a scale-level, and subscale-level of scoring (i.e., 5 scales, and 10 subscales). Table 1 shows how items relates to scales and subscales.

Scoring scales and subscales seems to be just a matter of getting the mean of constituent items.

### References

* Bukowski, W. M., Hoza, B., & Boivin, M. (1994). Measuring friendship quality during pre-and early adolescence: The development and psychometric properties of the Friendship Qualities Scale. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 11(3), 471-484.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, measurement
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# Question
Title: Experiencing neuronal activity inside the body/brain
Can one feel/experience "any" neuronal activity in oneself?

# Answer
Without neural activity you wouldn't experience or perceive anything. Perception in itself is a reflection of neuronal activity. If you are referring to the question whether you can feel a neuron fire - then no, that is not possible. To 'experience' neuronal activity you should record it. There are a wide variety of methods to do that: EEG, MEG, fMRI, PET etc.
> 3 votes

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Tags: perception
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# Question
Title: Evolutionary motivation for the existence of pleasure?
It seems like pleasure goes beyond needs. What is its purpose? Is it supposed to make you not do anything, because of how good you feel? Are there animals that don't feel pleasure, but only have needs to satisfy, and how would their CNS differ from human/primate CNS?

My main question: What is the motivation for there being some sort of pleasure, as opposed to simply the absence of a certain need? In the case of an orgasm, why exactly does a person feel very good for a while - why doesn't he just go directly into a state of neutrality, with there no longer being a need for sex? If a person defecates, why is there a momentary pleasant feeling - why doesn't the person simply go into a 'no longer have the need to defecate' state?

It really seems that there is an unnecessarily large amount of pleasure, as opposed to a mere lack of need.

It seems like there are 2 mechanisms that motivate action - the need to satisfy an unfulfilled need, and the need to achieve a reward. Is this the case? If yes, what is useful about this? It seems like a the 'need to satisfy an unfulfilled need' by itself should be good enough.

EDIT:

For example, we have an instinctive need to not feel like starving, or to not feel extremely tired - we simply don't want to feel that way. However with some things, it seems like there's more than just a need - with sex, there is a 'need' to have sex - a male who hasn't had sex for long enough, will simply want to have sex, so that he gets rid of the feeling of wanting sex - but there is also the motivation of expected pleasure from the orgasm. Similarly, I'd say that there is some sort of pleasure from food.

I think this is true (that there are 2 motivating factors, not just one), and I think that it's quite weird in some sense. Why isn't there just a need - why doesn't a male after sex simply stop having the need to have sex? I think I've read something about the pleasure having something to do with encouraging certain types of behavior, but I really don't know.

# Answer
> 5 votes
First a couple of definitions:

* **Positive reinforcement** occurs when an event or stimulus is presented as a consequence of a behavior and the behavior increases.
* **Negative reinforcement** occurs when the rate of a behavior increases because an aversive event or stimulus is removed or prevented from happening.

Learning may occur as a result of negative or positive reinforcement; ie, through the elimination of a need, or through the pleasure of reward. Traditionally, these have indeed been thought of as two complementary mechanisms as you suggest, but the modern view is that they are actually synonyms. They are different ways of looking at the same thing, like describing a glass of water based on how full or how empty it is.

For example, eating can be described as the elimination of hunger (negative reinforcement) or as the pleasure of taste (positive reinforcement). The choice depends on the context of the situation, but it is always possible to describe any reinforcement as both negative and positive.

As for why the feeling of pleasure exists at all, you can think of it this way: If an action only results in the elimination of a need, then there is no motivation for the subject to do any better than that. We can fulfil our hunger with rice-cakes, but we are motivated to seek high-calorie foods because of the pleasure they give. This was an essential survival mechanism for our ancestors.

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Tags: emotion, motivation, reinforcement-learning, evolutionary-psychology
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title: How to predict romantic attraction

text:
# Question
Title: How to predict romantic attraction
Dating websites and psychological researchers attempt to find those factors that predict the fit between potential romantic partners. Examples for factors taken into consideration are the "big five" dimensions of personality, attractiveness, or hobbies. These factors are found by looking at people in successful versus failed relationships.

When I get to know someone over a long period of time, these factors might be what makes me want to enter a relationship with them, and in fact they might predict how successful a relationship to that person will be. But when I meet a stranger what I find is that none of these factors predict if that *spark of attraction* will fly. Often, the girls that make me go all slack-jawed and drooling with romantic tunnel vision have little in common with the profile I would create for my ideal partner, while an attractive girl that fulfills all criteria for a successful relationship with me will leave me completely cold.

**Is there research into how to predict if one person will spark the romantic interest of another?**

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I accept opinion, if it is based on careful reflection and does not just contain banalities.

# Answer
> 9 votes
You are quite astute to have noticed the difference between your stated preferences and actual preferences - most people don't. Yes, there has been a fair bit of research on prediction techniques and their effectiveness.

In 2008, in a study by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel, participants were asked to predict their romantic preferences - what they found attractive in potential mates. The subjects were then followed up on speed dating and other dating behaviour over the following month to see how their actual choices compared with their predictions. The results showed that both men and women have no useful insight into their own romantic preferences that could be used to predict their actual dating choices.

A number of other studies examining a variety of methods for matching dating partners using questionnaires, physical traits, personality characteristics, dating techniques, and other theories of compatibility all failed to find a correlation between people's expressed preferences and actual dating behaviour. Many online dating sites promote their compatibility calculation tools that are based on self-reported preferences, but research so far suggests that none of them do much better than random.

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Tags: social-psychology, personality, sexuality, physical-attraction, love
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# Question
Title: What aspects of ACT-R are not contained within Spaun?
ACT-R was the first big cognitive model and excels at modelling human behavioral data quite accurately.

Spaun, which is the world's largest functional brain model, took a lot of ACT-R's insights and applied them, most notably in it's model of the basal-ganglia-thalamus loop. More importantly, it did so in biologically plausible manner while ACT-R has been struggling recently to map it's functions onto brain areas and functionality.

That being said, ACT-R still seems to have an extremely active community and Spaun's developers are mostly restricted to the lab from which it originated. An obvious reason for not converting is if Spaun's range of cognitive functionality is missing some components of ACT-R.

What functionality of ACT-R isn't found in Spaun?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Both ACT-R and Spaun are modular, and could be extended to include capabilities of each other. Comparing the functionalities of the two architectures by a simple checklist is not the most appropriate way to compare them. Here are some points to consider:

1) ACT-R is primarily symbolic, whereas Spaun is a neural network. ACT-R is actually making a theoretical claim by committing to a symbolic architecture. This is one of the most famous debates in cognitive science; the upshot is that the two approaches each have limitations, and they go about solving problems in different ways. For a good starting point in this debate, see Fodor & Pylyshyn (1988).

2) Architecture aside, different algorithms can be implemented to solve the same problem. Maybe both Spaun and ACT-R can do simple declarative memory retrievals, but do they predict the *same* response times and accuracies for a given retrieval? I suspect they don't.

3) As mentioned in your answer, Spaun does not include a of long-term memory but does include working memory. In ACT-R, long-term memory and working memory are not distinct concepts; working memory can be construed as a subset of items in memory that are highly activated. There is no discrete distinction. This suggests that the structure of components in ACT-R is fundamentally different than Spaun.

# Answer
> 3 votes
Long-term memory storage and forgetting are the two main features that are found in ACT-R, but are missing from Spaun. Currently, Spaun only has a working memory and a fixed long-term memory; it lacks the ability to store new items in a long-term memory.

This is currently being tackled by trying to create better hippocampal models and encoder learning rules. However, there is clearly still a lot of work to be done.

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, computational-modeling, spa
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# Question
Title: Different neural structures for quick vs. methodical decision making
In the book "Thinking, Fast and Slow", the author claims that there are two systems of thinking. System 1 is quick, instinctive and emotionally driven while System 2 is more logical and deliberate.

Firstly, has there ever been any physiological proof, in terms of brain activation areas or other signs, that these two systems exist. If they do exist, have they ever been capture in a cognitive model, regardless of biological plausibility?

# Answer
I would disagree with @Krysta: the distinction between system 1 and system 2 processes goes far beyond that of cognition with/without emotion: it's a complex debates that's been going on since the 70s (in it's current form, it's echoed in a wider debate going back centuries). For the sake of brevity, let me resort to bullet points.

* For psychologists, Evans (2008) is the go to reference on this matter. Obviously, Kahneman is the grandfather of this topic, and his book is a great introduction for the layman, you'll find a much more rigorous discussion here.
* There's a lot of variation in terminology here - while "*dual process theory*" is the commonly accepted generic term for this idea, you'll also see it as "type, or system 1/2 processes", "intuition/logic", "associative/controlled processes", etc. Again, see Evans (2008).
* A nice simplification of the distinction would be to say there's two kinds of processes, System 2 processes, which requires Working Memory (i.e. maintaining, updating, and manipulating a representation of information over a period of time), and System 1 processes, which don't. System 1, when taken this way, isn't a single "subsystem", its a diverse set of processes (this idea is nicely laid out in Stanovich, 2009, who uses the term "The Set of Autonomous Systems (TASS")), amongst other sources) including evolved, domain specific *modules* for solving specific problems (i.e. recognising faces), the emotion subsystem, and rules and associations which have become automatic through experience, and implicit learning (stereotypes, for example).

+ To finally get to your question, **yes, this does translate into specific neural systems**.

    - Working Memory (and thus system 2 processes) is pretty clearly localised to the prefrontal cortex (see Braver et al, 1997, for example).
        - System 1, not being a single "system", obviously can't be localized to a single brain region. However, many of it's component processes can be: emotion to the limbic system, face recognition to the fusiform face area, etc. (I don't know much about localization of implicit learning, but I would guess the hippocampus is involved).

> I've just realised I haven't answered your second question, about cognitive models. I'll come back to this at a later date. **EDIT** I've just noticed you're working with Chris Eliasmith. I can think of few people better qualified to answer your second question than he is.

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## Reading

Evans, J. S. B. (2008). Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 59, 255-278.

Stanovich, K. E. (2009). Distinguishing the reflective, algorithmic, and autonomous minds: Is it time for a tri-process theory. In two minds: Dual processes and beyond, 55-88.
> 2 votes

# Answer
Regarding the first question:

It is well documented that emotions guide/modulate "higher" cognitive processes. A more specific theory of how this could work is, for instance, Antonio Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis. Additionally, I'm not so sure emotion and "cold" cognition can really be categorically seperated, seeing as they share a lot of the same brain structures/processes: "Brain structures at the heart of the neural circuitry for emotion (e.g., the amygdala) impact cognitive processing from early attention allocation (Holland & Gallagher 1999) through perceptual processing to memory (for a recent review, see Phelps 2006). Similarly, brain structures involved in the neural circuitry for cognition, such as DMPFC and VLPFC, have an intrinsic role in the experience of emotion". So (although his work is obviously great and meaningful), his mistake seems to be the categorical distinction.
> 1 votes

# Answer
Neuroanatomically speaking I think Kahneman may be talking about the "hot" and "cold" executive function pathways (this wikipedia article is fairly informative on the subject). **Hot executive function is thought to involve affect or reward processing**, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is generally thought to be crucial for this. **Cold executive function is thought to be invoked more by abstract tasks with little reward involvement**, and is associated with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.

This extract from Prencipe et al. (2011, cited below) has more to say about the cognitive modeling of this theory--the article is from a developmental standpoint, so it speaks specifically to children and adolescents.

> Rather than considering executive function (EF) in hot and cool situations in a dichotomous fashion, this characterization recognizes the interplay between relatively hot aspects of EF and relatively cool aspects of EF (Cunningham & Zelazo, 2007). According to this model, information is processed hierarchically, with relatively quick evaluative reactions followed by the generation of approach–avoidance-oriented responses. These relatively simple responses may suffice, or, if necessary, further processing and reprocessing of information may ensue that allows reflection on context and future consequences, and that supports the top-down control of behavior. The extent to which a reflective response is likely to be generated depends on a number of factors, including time, motivation, and neural and cognitive maturity. Given that neural development also proceeds in a generally hierarchical fashion, with areas of the brain associated with more complex processing developing later than areas of the brain associated with more automatic processing (e.g., Bunge & Zelazo, 2006), children and adolescents may be expected to be less reflective than adults. Moreover, difficulty in generating reflective responses is likely to be most evident in emotionally charged situations that have meaningful personal consequences; in these situations, emerging cognitive control must be implemented in the context of potential interference from relatively automatic responses to potential rewards and punishments.

I haven't read "Thinking Fast & Slow" but I would in general be pretty skeptical of claims that there are two "systems" for thinking; it is a bit more accurate in my view to say that these are two capabilities that can be brought to bear on a situation, and most situations will involve some combination of both. In addition, **I have never heard any evidence that there are processing-speed differences between hot and cold**.

Prencipe, Angela; Kesek, Amanda; Cohen, Julia; Lamm, Connie; Lewis, Marc D.; Zelazo, Philip David (2011). "Development of hot and cool executive function during the transition to adolescence". Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 108 (3): 621–637. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2010.09.008. ISSN 0022-0965.
> 1 votes

# Answer
The previous answers have elaborated quite well in terms of whether an actual physiological division of the two types/speeds of processing actually exist. In regards to the "model" aspect of my question, the only model that I know intimately, Spaun. Spaun does have these two types/speeds of processing mapped to two different circuits, if we are focusing on Eoin's definition of working-memory vs. non-working-memory.

In Spaun, most (if not all) of the tasks using working memory must be routed through the basal-ganglia-thalamus loop and tasks that don't require working memory are encoded in the neuron weights.

For example, in the counting task, Spaun is shown some commands that give it a range for counting. The command recognition is done quickly once via neuron weights adapted from a trained deep-belief network. The actual counting is done via the much slower and iterative basal-ganglia-thalamus loop.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, cognitive-modeling
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# Question
Title: Are cognitive biases hardwired in the brain or they are acquired during lifetime?
The Kahneman–Tversky interpretation of biases as deviation from rationality was challenged by Gigerenzer on the basis that heuristics help making decisions and, thus, rational from the evolutionary point of view.

But are individuals born with significantly biased judgment as part of their genetic heritage or biases come mainly from early education and later experience?

Given a wide variety of issues implied in this question, maybe you can answer about some biases?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Addressing your first question (like @Josh, I would advice moving the other point to a new question), Morsanya & Handley (2008) (I can't find an open-access copy, sorry) have recently argued that heuristics have to be learned and acquired over time. They presented a group of children aged 5 - 11 with several multiple-choice reasoning tasks, consisting of conjunction fallacy tasks, if-only fallacy tasks (concerning counterfactual reasoning), sunk cost fallacy tasks, and syllogistic reasoning, and found that as children got older, or scored more highly on an IQ test, they tended to provide more "heuristic" responses, and less "correct" ones.

They interpret this result as indicating that younger/less intelligent children aren't sophisticated enough to figure out the correct response, but haven't developed the heuristics either, so respond as random. As children become older/more intelligent, heuristics develop, but the children still haven't developed enough to produce the correct responses (bear in mind that with adults, more intelligent individuals produce more correct and less heuristic responses, so the trend reverses once people are advanced enough to figure out the correct response).

# Reference

Kinga Morsanyi, Simon J. Handley, How smart do you need to be to get it wrong? The role of cognitive capacity in the development of heuristic-based judgment, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, Volume 99, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 18-36, ISSN 0022-0965,

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, bias
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# Question
Title: Does fixing cognitive biases do more harm than use?
The Kahneman–Tversky interpretation of biases as deviation from rationality was challenged by Gigerenzer on the basis that heuristics help making decisions and, thus, rational from the evolutionary point of view.

What drawbacks of "fixing" biases have been empirically confirmed? I mean, avoiding heuristic rules requires more cognitive efforts, which possibly affect really important decisions.

PS: This question was separated from Are cognitive biases hardwired in the brain or they are acquired during lifetime?.

# Answer
"Fixing" (compensating for) a cognitive bias means "improving the result", so by definition, the result is always better. The drawback, as stated, is in the time and resources spent getting there.

Having said that, even when time spent is controlled for, there are scenarios where subjects make better decisions when they "trust their gut" rather than "think things through".

One example, cited here:

Students were asked to select a poster to take home, and then followed up a few weeks later to find out how happy they were with their selection. The control group simply chose their preferred poster, while the experimental group was asked to provide reasons first. The results: Students who provided reasons for their choice made different choices – preferring a different style of poster – and their satisfaction levels at follow-up were significantly lower. Winner: Heuristics.

Another example described here:

Subjects were given descriptions of several cars, in the form of pros and cons, and asked to select the “best” one. Most of the cars had an equal number of pros and cons or more cons than pros, but one of the cars had 75% pros and 25% cons, making it the correct choice. Subjects in the experimental group were asked to give their decision some thought, while subjects in the control group were given the same amount of time to decide but asked to perform a distraction task during that time. Clearly the experimental group had the advantage of dedicated mental resources to make a deliberated decision, while the control group would rely on heuristics. The results: When the total number of pros and cons is small (4), conscious decisions are indeed significantly better than unconscious decisions. However, when the total number of pros and cons is relatively large (12), heuristics have the edge.

Also see: Bounded rationality.
> 8 votes

# Answer
The question is asked – and Arnon's answer is given – based on the assumption that biases play a role only in "momentous" descisions, that is decisions that are relatively rare and can profit from rational consideration.

But biases play a constant role in navigating your everyday life. For example, you don't do the Pepsi Challenge every time you buy food. You just pick the joghurt that you know you like (bias), or whose list of contents appear most healthy to you (bias), or the price of which you find signals quality (bias) or is cheap (bias). Assuming that you understand the effects of food packaging, placement, shop lighting, muzak, shop aisle geography, price structure, advertisement you don't even remember having seen, etc., and can ignore its effects is just another bias. And maybe you are a nutritional scientist and actually (think that your science enables you to = bias) know what is healthy food, you probably are not a psychologist, financial expert, political scientist, sociologist, and so on, too, and will have to rely on hearsay (bias) or experience (bias) for most of your other decisions. And since you are almost constantly making decisions throughout the day – which turn do I take?, should I brake when the traffic light is yellow?, is it worthwhile to fight this out with my wife or will we have better sex when I let her be right?, should I correct my son or am I being overprotective?, what clothes should I wear today?, will it be fun to watch tv or will I have more fun tomorrow if I go to bed now?, is this online debate really worth my comment?, etc. etc. etc. –, and rational decision making is effortful (Baumeister), most of your decisions must be made heuristically.

Removing biases and forcing you to rationally process all information would leave you overwhelmed and unable to function. You simply don't have the time and mental resources to make every minor decision rationally. Biases are absolutely necessary for your survival. Without them you are reduced to a state similar to that of a toddler, who has yet to acquire biases, i.e. develop this mechanism that automatically filters the relevant from the irrelevant.

Of course biases can lead to wrong decisions. But these errors do not indicate that you should abandon all biases completely, but that you need to *refine* those that are misleading to more accurately reflect reality.
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, bias
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# Question
Title: What is the name of a cognitive bias by which existing facts are tailored to fit a personal hypothesis?
What is the name of a **cognitive bias where a person takes all of their knowledge of a particular subject (at a point in time) and arranges it in a hypothesis or world model** that makes sense to that individual?

In particular I'm thinking of Sigmund Freud and his work on the interpretation of dreams. It seems to me that he took what he knew at the time and arranged it in a hypothesis, selectively including or excluding facts to the point where he deemed just about everything in dreams, from hats to stairs to buildings and mountains in dreams as referring to sexual content.

I believe that Freud himself, in his book mentions that before him people were evaluating dreams as various influences of spirits or divines. A modern researcher might interpret dreams as a product of interaction of brain regions and neurotransmitter systems.

Is this a cognitive bias or a general way in which a certain kind of brain (rational temperament) works?

# Answer
"I think you are referring to confirmation bias" (from wikipedia)

> Confirmation bias, also called myside bias, is the tendency **to search for, interpret, or prioritize information in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses**. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. **The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs**. People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position.
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, bias
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# Question
Title: Is there any scientific basis to different learning styles?
People often identify themselves are visual, audio or kinesthetic learners. This at first sounds plausible, but when I reflect on myself, I find that I am unable to define exactly what it means to be either type of learner.

Can someone provide some scientific article discussing actual scientific evidence for different learning styles and perhaps some example to exactly what different learning styles means?

# Answer
In response to a related question about learning styles, I provided this answer.

In that answer, I quote Pashler et al (2009) which is generally critical of the learning styles literature. I quote Pashler et al where they state:

> Our review of the literature disclosed ample evidence that children and **adults will, if asked, express preferences about how they prefer information to be presented to them**. There is also plentiful evidence arguing that people differ in the degree to which they have some fairly specific aptitudes for different kinds of thinking and for processing different types of information.

However they find minimal experimental evidence to indicate that students assigned to educational conditions that are adjusted to their stated learning style preferences do any better.

### References:

* Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., Bjork, R. (2009). Learning Styles Concepts and Evidence. *Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9*, 105. ARTICLE.
> 4 votes

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Tags: learning
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# Question
Title: Is there a formal name for "I'm right, don't try to challenge me" / "if you push against me I will be 100x more stubborn" personality trait?
Some persons gets really annoyed if we try to demonstrate our thesis to them or to put in light that they are behaving in a childish way.

Dale Carnegie, in his most famous book: `How to win friends and influence people`, wrote that it's almost completely unuseful to try to criticize others even if we are completely right. Even if we are trying to help them. The psychological reason behind is that we hurt their self-esteem / ego.

But when does this come to be extreme? When people are extremely stubborn and any attempt to change their mind or to show a different point of view becomes like a fight with them? (Of course this definition is usually related to some of their belief on which they can become oversensitive).

It can happen when they have a strong need to confirm their beliefs, but also if their belief is that to insist is disrespectful.

I think this trait is very frequent in Narcyssistic (which thinks to be super rational).

This trait can be explicitated both in an **aggressive** way and in a **passive resistence.** The description provided by wikipedia:

> In psychology, passive-aggressive behavior is characterized by a habitual pattern of passive resistance to expected work requirements, opposition, stubbornness, and negativistic attitudes in response to requirements for normal performance levels expected of others. Most frequently it occurs in the workplace where resistance is exhibited by such indirect behaviors as procrastination, forgetfulness, and purposeful inefficiency, especially in reaction to demands by authority figures, but it can also occur in interpersonal contexts.

# Answer
> 2 votes
**Defensive Pride** I would say match your question title.

# Answer
> 2 votes
This is the opposite of Agreeableness, part of the 5-factor model.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is there a name for a person who looks for a name for another person's supposed faults?
Every few days there is a new question here at Cognitive Sciences asking for a scientific term to describe a behavior that the inquirer finds fault with.

Examples include:

Reading this type of question, I often get the impression that the person asking them is affronted that the person they describe in obsessive detail did not agree with their view or follow their advice, and now want to regain their sense of self-importance by pathologizing the other. It seems to me that many, if not most, of these questions are not based on facts but on the egomaniacal deslusion of knowing better.

For example (using the first question above):

* How does the inquirer know that the person moving to a new field is not an expert in it? Is he himself expert enough to judge the other's expertise? It is a well-known fact that even experts often disagree so violently that they accuse each other of complete ignorance. So how can the average cogsci.SE passer-by competently judge anyone's expertise or lack thereof?

You'll be easily able to find similar objections to all other questions.

**So what is the name for that affliction?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
I personally, but explicitly do not support the teachings of Freud, but this sounds like what Freud would call "Intellectualization." This is supposedly a defense mechanism.

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Tags: personality
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# Question
Title: Which personality traits relate to prosocial values?
Which personality traits are strong in people with values such as:

* kindness
* humility
* sympathy
* empathy
* abnegation
* church-professed values
    + solidarity
    + love for others
    + forgiving the other
    + defending the weak
    + putting the interest of other people at the same level of our interest
    + Trying to maximize your own profit is not the primary value, helping the other is the first value.
* being good
* mercy
* charity

# Answer
Check out Schwartz (1992) on universal values. His Figure 2 places wealth within the power value space, but near achievement, and opposite from benevolence and universalism. Benevolence, universalism, and to some extent tradition would probably subsume the values you've mentioned in the OP, whereas power and achievement would probably more than cover "trying to maximize your own profit" as a value.

I also developed my own measure of values (Stauner, Boudreaux, & Ozer, 2010) to manage the ceiling effect I've found in using the Schwartz Values Survey. I've found a similar opposition between valuation of "Helping people" and "Being or becoming financially secure". This corroborates your intuition about the strong difference between these values. I have data from the same surveys on the Big Five traits, but I haven't analyzed these relationships yet, so it's a little too early for me to weigh in on trait relationships myself. If I ever get around to publishing these analyses of my data, I'll try to remember to edit in a summary here.

In the meantime, check out Roccas, Sagiv, Schwartz, and Knafo (2002) and Vecchione, Alessandri, Barbaranelli, and Caprara (2009). Roccas and colleagues found that benevolence mostly relates to agreeableness, universalism to openness, and traditionalism to agreeableness and a few facets of other traits. Conversely, power relates negatively to agreeableness and openness, basically. Achievement relates to certain facets of extraversion, conscientiousness, and (negatively:) agreeableness. It's somewhat more complex than this, so I hope you can access the article through a library and take a closer look yourself. Vecchione and colleagues' article is even harder to sum up without sacrificing its nuances, but to put it very bluntly, their results seem roughly comparable, though the method is different.

**References**
\- Roccas, S., Sagiv, L., Schwartz, S. H., & Knafo, A. (2002). The Big Five personality factors and personal values. *Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28*(6), 789–801.
\- Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. *Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25*(1), 1–65. Retrieved from Google Books.
\- Stauner, N., Boudreaux, M. J., & Ozer, D. J. (2010). *Factor structure of the Values Q-Set*. Poster presented at the 118th convention of the American Psychological Association, San Diego, CA. Available at http://www.slideshare.net/NickStauner/apa-2010-poster-draft-1.
\- Vecchione, M., Alessandri, G., Barbaranelli, C., & Caprara, G. V. (2009). Personality determinants of political participation: The contribution of traits and self-efficacy beliefs. *Personality and Individual Differences, 46*(4), 487–492.
> 2 votes

# Answer
I believe that the most commonly accepted personality model in psych is the 5-factor model. I would argue that Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are pro-social, in the sense that Agreeableness captures many of the values you've listed, while Conscientiousness captures many other pro-social values, such as willingness to work hard and desire for achievement.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, personality
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# Question
Title: Why do people behave better when observed?
Why does it seem that people behave like they are supposed to when they are being observed?

For example. If you place a fake security camera on an employee, they would behave better (or at least appear to).

Alternatively, when a system or workflow becomes transparent, it seems to me that people would make an extra effort to do better since they are more exposed.

Is there any particular identified effect, cognitive bias, or phenomenon that describes the reasons behind this change of behavior?

# Answer
> 1 votes
It sounds like rational behaviour (i.e., it is not a cognitive bias). Monitoring generally creates a closer link between behaviour and social consequences (either rewards or punishments).

A huge number of theories capture ideas about how the social context influences behaviour (e.g., social norms).

In the work context, you could look at ideas around maximal and typical performance.

That said, there is literature that looks at the pros and cons of monitoring on workplace performance. In particular, excessively fine grained monitoring can lead to increased stress, lower job satisfaction, turnover, etc. See for example Kinnie et al for a discussion.

### References

Kinnie, N., Hutchinson, S., & Purcell, J. (2000). 'Fun and surveillance': the paradox of high commitment management in call centres. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 11(5), 967-985.

# Answer
> 0 votes
It is called the observer effect or the Hawthorne effect. Also, I don't really know what this is, but I recently stumbled across the term reactivity, which seems to be the same sort of thing.

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Tags: social-psychology, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: Name of the bias where someone really needs something after they find out it exists
I'm looking for the name of the cognitive bias that is expressed in the following story.

A fellow coworker was instrumental in getting a 75 gallon fish tank installed in the lobby of the company that we work at a couple of weeks ago. The water needs to cycle for a while before fish can be introduced. The other day he was testing the water when someone walked by and asked when we would be getting fish. He said probably a week or so. The person was appalled that it would take so long to get fish.

The company had been without a fish tank for 20 years and now they've had one for a couple weeks and this person thought one or two more weeks was way too long to wait. **What is the name of this bias?**

# Answer
> 4 votes
It's not a bias. It is natural human nature. At least the 2 year old's case is.

It's just like how you would not have thought of going to Six Flags (An amusement park) unless it was mentioned to you.

When the 2 year old hears ice cream, the kid thinks of the sweet taste, or the pleasure ice cream brings. In the kid's case, the case is *impatience* or *inability to defer gratification*.

For the employee, it is simply that he thinks the cycling of the tank and fish delivery would take less longer than a week or two.

The two examples are both different things. I am positive that the 2 year old's case is NOT a bias. The employee's case may simply be surprise.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I never knew the name for this before and used to just call it "awareness bias"; however, upon reading your question, I did a little bit of digging on Wikipedia and found out about the mere exposure effect, also known as the "familiarity principle" in social psychology.

My other source was this page.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, motivation, well-being, bias
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# Question
Title: Are staircases more efficient than the method of constant stimuli?
A Bayesian Quest adaptive procedure (Watson and Pelli 1983) is the theoretically most efficient procedure for estimating thresholds under a certain, potentially unrealistic, set of constraints. In my field a transformed up-down method (Levitt 1971) is used much more commonly. Has any work been done comparing the efficiency of the transformed up-down method with the method of constant stimuli?

# Answer
> 6 votes
There was a special issue of the journal Perception and Psychophysics in 2001, titled **Psychometric Functions and Adaptive Methods**. It contains several papers relevant to your question. Klein's paper \[1\] references all the others and reviews what each is about. It should serve as a good starting point.

An excerpt from Klein's summary:

> 6. **The simple up–down (Brownian) staircase with threshold estimated by averaging levels was found to have nearly optimal efficiency in agreement with Green (1990)**. It is better to average all levels (after about four reversals of initial trials are thrown out) rather than average an even number of reversals.Both of these findings were surprising.
> 7. **As long as the starting point is not too distant from threshold, Brownian staircases with their moderate inertia have advantages over the more prestigious adaptive likelihood methods**. At the beginning of a run, likelihood methods may have too little inertia and can jump to low stimulus strengths before the observer is fully familiar with the test target. At the end of the run, likelihood methods may have too much inertia and resist changing levels even though a non stationary threshold has shifted.

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\[1\] Klein, S. A. (2001). Measuring, estimating, and understanding the psychometric function: a commentary. Perception & Psychophysics, 63(8), 1421–55. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11800466

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Tags: signal-detection, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: Are association, conditioning, and symbolic learning the same thing?
**Symbols**: Our brains are able to understand that some things stand for other things. For example, the sound we make when we say "food" stands for things we can eat. And with writing, we can say that words have meaning because they stand for things in the real world.

**Association**: A brand is what someone associates with a company. I associate McDonalds with delicious, unhealthy food.

**Conditioning**: And I can associate other things. I might feel bad when I hear a certain song because it was playing during a bad breakup.

**Is associating things an entirely different process from linking things together to create symbols?**

# Answer
Conditioning is considered an example (type) of association by associationism, a school of philosophy in psychology that suggests that all mental processes may be based on similar or proximal mental states. Usually this idea is too broad and vague to be very practical to apply, but it has spawned a number of useful fields of study, including connectionism, a general strategy used in neural networks and learning modelling, and schemata, used in memory research.

Using connectionist models, artificial neural networks have demonstrated learning in a variety of subject areas, including operant and classical conditioning (examples of association), and handwriting recognition and sign reading (examples of symbols). This suggests that the process involved may be essentially the same.

One of the major challenges to basic associationism has been that in practice, associations do not seem to obey any straightforward rules. For example, children learn to associate words like "food" with their meaning very quickly with few (sometimes no) repetitions, while branding requires many more repetitions, and other associations (there is nothing intrinsically bad about this song) may never be learned. For this reason, more rigorous theories, such as conditioning, are preferred.
> 6 votes

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Tags: learning, behaviorism, conditioning
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title: How is tone volume encoded?

text:
# Question
Title: How is tone volume encoded?
I am wondering whether increasing the volume would result in (a) a neuron that was already firing to now increase its spike rate, (b) a different group of neurons to add their activity to the population total, (c) a different group of neurons, coding for the new volume, to become active while the first group of neurons silences, or (d) some combination of the above. In particular, I am curious about the subcortical portion of the auditory pathway.

# Answer
> 7 votes
There are quite a few stations between cochlea and the brain and I will focus on the auditory nerve. That said, your theories (a) and (b) are both correct, and therefore (d) applies as well.

**(a)** Neurons in the auditory nerve increase their firing rate when sound level is increased (Heil et al, 2011). This can be regarded as the primary mechanism for encoding sound level.

**(b)** Increased sound levels are accompanied by a larger area in the cochlea being activated due to the low-frequency tail (Kiang & Moxon, 1974). Hence, more neurons start firing at higher sound levels when the tone frequency is the same. Although this may add in the perceived sound level, it is likely of less importance than (a), as it is basically a reflection of the mechanical properties of the basilar membrane in the cochlea and primarily reduces frequency resolution.

**(c)** There are no neurons ever identified that are dedicated to sound level encoding. Instead, auditory nerve fibers encode sound frequency (according to the place-frequency map of the cochlea) and they encode sound intensity via their firing rate.

**(d)** Hence, since both (a) and (b) are correct, your hypothesis (d) holds, as it is a combination of the above.

One can safely assume these intensity-coding mechanisms hold up in the responses of neurons in the next station - the cochlear nucleus. However, the higher up you go in the auditory system, the less likely a 1:1 relationship as found in the far periphery applies.

<sub>**References**
\- Heil et al., *J Neurosci* 2011; **31**(43): 15424-37
\- Kiang & Moxon, *JASA* 1954; **55**(3): 620-30</sub>

# Answer
> 3 votes
Siebert (1968) modelled level discrimination based on the information in the firing rate of auditory nerve fibers. The model does a reasonable job over a narrow range of conditions, but misses a large number of effects. Since Siebert's original effort, a number of more advance models have been developed. A more recent model by Colburn et. al (2003) highlights just how complicated sound level encoding is at the level of the auditory nerve:

> It is shown that the rate information provided by individual AN fibers is more constrained by increases in variance with increases in rate than by saturation. As noted in previous studies, there is sufficient average-rate information within a narrow-CF region to account for robust behavioral performance over a wide dynamic range; however, there is no model based on a simple limitation or use of AN information consistent with parametric variations in performance. This issue is explored in the current study through analysis of performance based on different aspects of AN patterns. For example, we show that performance predicted from use of all rate information degrades significantly as level increases above low–medium levels, inconsistent with Weber’s Law. At low frequencies, synchrony information extends the range over which behavioral performance can be explained by 10–15 dB, but only at low levels. In contrast to rate and synchrony, nonlinear-phase cues are shown to provide robust information at medium and high levels in near-CF fibers for low-frequency stimuli. The level dependence of the discharge rate and phase properties of AN fibers are influenced by the compressive nonlinearity of the inner ear.

--

Siebert, W. M. (1968). Stimulus transformations in the peripheral auditory system. Recognizing patterns, 104-133.

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Tags: neuroscience, hearing, neurophysiology
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title: Is this Auditory Processing Delay?

text:
# Question
Title: Is this Auditory Processing Delay?
Would a person exhibiting some of these symptoms be a candidate for Auditory Processing Delay, or does it possibly suggest some other sort of diagnosis?

Some basic symptoms/examples:

1. A seeming inability to follow directions. When zipping a suitcase the other day, subject was instructed to, "Open the top compartment and close the side." Subject opened both up. When asked, "Can you repeat what I just said to you?" He paused, correctly repeated the instructions and understood his error.
2. An almost comic inability to remember song lyrics or tunes. He is completely tone deaf and can't even recall simple children's songs, even after excessive amounts of repetition.
3. While carrying some boxes last week, subject was about to crash into some things. Someone shouted, "Watch out!" and he kept walking, knocking over some things. When questioned after, he said, "I didn't know what that meant!" "Stop?" was suggested, "Do anything but continue doing what you're doing?" "I guess," he replied, "I didn't think of that."
4. Frequent excuses of "I forgot" when given a list of instructions/tasks.

# Answer
> 4 votes
Research into auditory processing deficits is a minefield and there is no real consensus as to what is and is not a deficit in auditory processing. Further, and possibly more relevant for individuals with, or dealing with, a processing disorder, is how to treat/manage the disorder. Again, unfortunately, there is no real consensus on the issue. Ferguson (2009) presents a relatively non-technical overview of the issues.

--

Ferguson MA (2009) Diagnosing Auditory Processing Disorders. ENT News, January/February.

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Tags: reference-request, communication
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