# Question
Title: Why do one's surroundings still seem to rotate when you stop whirling around?
When you spin your head around in circles, the world appears to continue to spin.

* **Why do one's surroundings still seem to rotate when you stop whirling around in a circle?**
* What is happening in the brain?

# Answer
> 8 votes
On each side of your head, in the middle ear, there is a system of canals in which displacement of a group of hair cells measure the movement along the 3 axes (the canals are tilted a bit back from 90°, so the coordinate system is not identical with that of the head).

So, when you move your head around and around as your body "whirls", the cupula of the horizontal canal (HC), which encases the hair cells, moves in the opposite direction and displaces the hair cells, causing the firing of action potentials. Once your head stops, the viscosity of the fluid in which the cupula is suspended prevents it from snapping right back to it's "default" position, so action potentials continue to be fired, and your nervous system (falsely) senses that your head is still moving.

Courtesy of Scholarpedia Vestibular System

# Answer
> 3 votes
You can find similar aftereffects when you stare out the front window of a moving vehicle for a couple of minutes and then stop: the landscape suddenly seems to slowly move away from you for some time; or when you stare out the widow of a train: when it stops the landscape appears to slowly move in the opposite direction. Aftereffects of this type can have any direction: when you stare at a rotating image and the rotation stops, the image appears to rotate in the opposite direction. Depending on the stimulus, this can be a smooth motion or it "jumps" forward and back.

This is called the **direction aftereffect** (DAE), "whereby prolonged exposure to a moving pattern affects the perceived direction of subsequent motion" (Clifford, 2002). This is an effect of perceptual adaptation, where the brain compensates for a supposed error in perception.

The mechanism behind this phenomenon was tested by Schrater and Simoncelli (1998):

> Adaptation to a moving visual pattern induces shifts in the perceived motion of subsequently viewed moving patterns. Explanations of such effects are typically based on adaptation-induced sensitivity changes in spatio-temporal frequency tuned mechanisms (STFMs). An alternative hypothesis is that adaptation occurs in mechanisms that independently encode direction and speed (DSMs). Yet a third possibility is that adaptation occurrs in mechanisms that encode 2D pattern velocity (VMs). We performed a series of psychophysical experiments to examine predictions made by each of the three hypotheses. The results indicate that: (1) adaptation-induced shifts are relatively independent of spatial pattern of both adapting and test stimuli; (2) the shift in perceived direction of motion of a plaid stimulus after adaptation to a grating indicates a shift in the motion of the plaid pattern, and not a shift in the motion of the plaid components; and (3) the 2D pattern of shift in perceived velocity radiates away from the adaptation velocity, and is inseparable in speed and direction of motion. Taken together, these results are most consistent with the VM adaptation hypothesis.

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Sources:

# Answer
> 1 votes
@ChuckSherrington is correct except for a few very minor errors/simplifications.

First, the three semicircular canals that form the Vestibular (or balance) System are located in a safe little pocket of bone called the inner ear. The three canals are oriented at (basically) 90° angles to each other so that we can maintain our balance no matter which position our head is in (e.g. hanging from monkey bars upside down does not make young people dizzy, nor does it change their sensation of gravity.\*) Finally, and crucially, they are linked with our ocular system through a neuronal connection called the vestibolo-occular reflex (VOR).\[1\] Because the connections are excitatory, increased firing from a canal afferent leads to contralateral movement of the eyes (which is how spinning ice skaters can keep track of / focus on where they are visually). I will not elaborate on the role of the vestibulocollic reflex (VCR) in the stabilization of visual acuity for brevity's sake. Normally all this occurs without notice.

The latency of action of the rotational vestibuloocular reflex (r-VOR) is 7-15 milliseconds, which is the time required for the eyes to respond in an equal, but opposite, manner to the motion of the head. This time is remarkably fast compared with the latency for visually mediated eye movements, which is longer than 75 milliseconds.\[2\]

What happens is that with spinning (say, in one plane), the cilia of the hair cells (see @Chuck Sherrington's diagram) are displaced, and remain displaced as long as one is spinning with the same velocity and direction. Once the spinning suddenly stops, the cilia proceed to move to their default position, *tricking the VOC into moving the eyes in the opposite direction repeatedly until the cilia come to a complete stop*.\[3\] You can *observe* this phenomenon by looking into the person's eyes immediately after they stop spinning (make sure they are safe from falling.) Once things settle down in the inner ear, the vertigo (perception of spinning) stops shortly thereafter as well.

The perception described by @what is different altogether.

\[1\] Anatomy and Physiology of the Vestibular System Gizzi, et. al.
\[2\] Vestibuloocular Reflex Testing - Amin, et. al.
\[3\] Baloh and Honrubia's Clinical Neurophysiology of the Vestibular System By Robert William Baloh, Kevin Kerber, MD

\*I say young people because some decreased sensitivity to semicircular canal fluid movement occurs as we age, and elderly people may, indeed, become dizzy with drastic changes in position. This decreased sensitivity is often a contributing factor to falls in the elderly.

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Tags: sensation, vestibular-system
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# Question
Title: Explanations of responses to real graphic harm
I want to know answers to the following questions :

1. Why do I feel curious sometimes to check out sites of "real accidents" such as "Documenting Reality" or "Live Leak" ?
2. Why do I feel nauseous when I have seen a few of these events, such as videos / images of real motorcycle accidents ?

I am confused that I feel both occasionally (every 3 months say) curious to see what really happens to people in these accidents as well as feel physically ill once I have seen that.

I suppose this is somewhat similar to the reason people slow down to "take a look" at a motor vehicle accident while driving past on the highway.

I guess what I am also interested in is -- how is it possible for people to feel turned on by this same content -- such as "self harmers" or psychopaths? Is there a "causal emotional chain" that could be explained the reactions of such people as compared with the feeling of aversion ... or is such arousal just random and unexplainable?

# Answer
I'm not an expert in social cognition and this may be considered somewhat speculative, but I wouldn't be surprised if the literature found a link between shocking images and their high informational value (along the lines of a *delta* in reinforcement-learning models).

Intuitively, one would expect that visual representations of potentially dangerous situations would be extremely informative and therefore extremely salient. Indeed, emotion-induced blindness studies suggest that gory stimuli benefit from the deployment of massive attentional resources, to the point that they may exclude other salient stimuli.

Where this gets speculative is why this is experienced as something pleasurable. I'd suggest that highly-informative stimuli might be pleasurable in general. On the pure social psychology end of things, a search for "morbid curiosity" is bound to turn up some relevant results (as suggested by @medica).

I'll leave it up to you to explore these three bibliographic trails. =)
> 5 votes

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Tags: emotion, social-cognition
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# Question
Title: Are axon terminals always part of a synapse, or are there any that just release neurotransmitters into the ether during an action potential?
By "ether" I mean to no post-synaptic cell in particular.

If this is the case, how common is it for an axon terminal to not be part of a synapse?

Related question: do axon terminals *form* only as part of a synapse? Or are they formed ahead of time, and then connect to form synapses as needed?

# Answer
> 6 votes
> By "ether" I mean to no post-synaptic cell in particular.

Yes; this is an important mechanism, as it allows the *volume conduction* of neuroactive chemicals. For example, many brainstem nucleus, such as the *locus coeruleus*, are small in size, yet affect much or even most of the cortex by this mechanism. Neurotransmitters are released and diffuse in the fluid-filled *extracellular space* (what you call "ether"), affecting many cells at once without making specific synaptic contact with any of them.

This mode of conduction is slow and spatially nonspecific compared to synaptic transmission, but it underlies much of neuromodulation, such as the setting of cortical states via norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin etc.

> If this is the case, how common is it for an axon terminal to not be part of a synapse?

This depends on what brain systems you're talking about. Intracortical connections and most direct afferent and efferent projections are mostly synaptic (since they require speed), but many other systems are greatly, or even mostly, volume conducting. Again, the brainstem nuclei are a good example, but gut neurons are another.

> Related question: do axon terminals form only as part of a synapse? Or are they formed ahead of time, and then connect to form synapses as needed?

Some synapse quickly, others never synapse.

# References

Vizi, E. S. & B. Lendvai (2008): Synaptic and Nonsynaptic Release of Transmitters. *Handbook of Neurochemistry and Molecular Neurobiology*, pp 101-111

Taber, Katherine H. & Robin A. Hurley (2014): Volume Transmission in the Brain: Beyond the Synapse. *The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences* 4-4.

# Answer
> 1 votes
By definition, *axon terminals* are part of a synapse:

> The somewhat enlarged, often club-shaped endings by which axons make synaptic contacts with other nerve cells or with effector cells. Also called end-feet, neuropodia, terminal boutons.

Structural remodeling of synapses and formation of new synaptic connections has been observed since 1999. Neurotrophins are proteins that activate neurons to produce more and new synaptic connections, allowing survival of neurons, regeneration, and neuroplasticity.

The very complex pathways involved in neuroplasticity would suggest that neurons don't put out random axons or dendrites, but do so purposefully to increase synaptic density and neuronal health.

A random growth of dendrites or axons would be both wasteful and deleterious to a highly integrated nervous system, and therefore is as unlikely to be *normal* as non-directionally-oriented and non-innervated skeletal muscle cell formation.

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Knowledge in what fields is necessary to develop an EEG brain-computer interface?
I am a computer science student, and as part of my project, I would like to develop a system that changes the TV channel, increases its volume, etc. by just the thought of it. My primary investigation paved the way to EEG BCI.

Which fields should I research in order to develop such a system, and what equipment in general is necessary? As far as I know we need an EEG device attached to head, a transmitter to send the signal to the TV, a receiver at the TV side, and proper processing of signals and feeding to the TV. **I mostly need more explanation of the EEG side.**

# Answer
> 3 votes
Beyond what you've already listed, you'll need advanced *signal processing* skills, as so far, nobody has figured out how to get much more meaningful information out of the EEG than broad attentional state (alpha blocking and the P300, and the evoked potentials), and maybe some correlates of motor imagery, though none of these have realistically proved themselves yet.

You will need to clean the signal using techniques such as independent component analysis/ICA and wavelet denoising, and identify some weak correlate of mental activity in the strong irrelevant "background" activity. Approaches regarding the latter fall into two camps, as I've noted above: either try to identify some well-known neuropsychological component, such as the P300, on a single-trial basis; and/or use machine learning to agnostically identify a signal, with Support Vector Machines being en vogue right now as far as I know. I assume the latter part you're already informed about.

Check out MOBILab for some of the leading figures with regards to EEG signal processing, but be aware that the EEG is an extremely noisy measure.

# Answer
> 2 votes
On the EEG side, you'll need a way to access the EEG data in real-time so that you can perform whatever computational techniques you need to do in order to generate signals to control the TV. Some of the newer commercial-oriented EEG headsets have SDKs that you may be able to use. We've used the Emotiv system in our lab for mobile EEG research, and they have an SDK that can be purchased for parsing the raw EEG data.

The processing pipeline will probably be something like: EEG -\> Computer that is processing the EEG signal -\> TV Transmitter -\> TV.

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Tags: computational-modeling, eeg, human-factors
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# Question
Title: Law and its formula that says: more time organism working the slower (or less precise) the movements
What is the name of the law and the equation that says that "the more time an organism is working the slower (or less precise) its movements." ?

I read once that there is a law in behavioral science that says that: "The more an organism is doing something(working) the slower its movements are (or less precise, can't remember exactly).". That law also has equation that describes it. I need to know the name of that law.

# Answer
Your question is a bit vague, but it sounds like you might be looking for Hick's Law. Hick's law states the relationship between the number of possible responses that an organism can provide for a given task and the minimum time necessary to engage a response.

You may have also been thinking of one of the computational models for two-alternative forced-choice tasks (2AFC).

Let me know if any of this rings a bell!
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, cognitive-modeling, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: Is there a psychological explanation for the age of 18 being important in many societies?
The **age of eighteen** is an age that in many societies gives rise to various additional rights and responsibilities.

* Is there a scientific reason for assigning such right and responsibilities at the age of 18?
* What are some of reasons and history for this convention?

# Answer
A cursory search strongly suggests that the distinction is arbitrary and practical, with little link to developmental science.

I can find no evidence for any particularly compelling biological change centered around the age of 18. That, along with the fact that the age of eighteen is *not* a universal age-of-majority, makes me say that there is no scientific basis for the choice.
> 3 votes

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Tags: developmental-psychology
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# Question
Title: What do brains do when processing information, that Von Neumann machines cannot (yet?) imitate?
What makes a human processing information so different from a set of instructions in a computer? Solving a problem for any human operating with concepts is still much superior to lots of computer processing. I fail to verbalize what this 'extra' capability is. I just see the result when observing humans solving problems, but what is the mechanism that allows humans to process differently.

# Answer
I'm taking your question to be equivalent to "how does the human brain differ from a computer?". Indeed, it's well-established that humans outperform computers in a large number of contexts, but it's difficult to pinpoint exactly *why* this is. The best answer you'll get is one that outlines how the two computational systems differ.

Let me start with three obvious differences, which IMHO are the most important:

1. Brains are analog machines, whereas computers are digital. This means that brains can apply any number of continuous, non-linear transforms to solve problems. If you're mathematically or programmatically inclined, here's a wonderful paper that demonstrates how a brain can elegantly and efficiently discriminate between two stimulus frequencies (supplementary materials here if you want to mess with the code yourself).
2. Brains are good at fuzzy-logic and uncertainty. Contrary to computers, brain activity can "evoke" or "activate to varying degrees" similar representations. Intuitively, you can think of this as local activation spreading to adjacent areas (although this is a gross oversimplification). On a more cognitive level, this enables things such as semantic priming to be implemented quite naturally, whereas this is horrifyingly complex with digital computers.
3. Synaptic connections are much, much, much, much, **much** more complex than logic gates. Synaptic connections can be reinforced and inhibited on either end of the cleft (presynaptic or post-synaptic). Moreover, the dynamic nature of synaptic connections allows for some interesting emergent properties such as mutual inhibition, or the formation of multiple iso/nullclines in firing rates via more complex interactions (see the Machens et al. paper I linked to in point 1).

With this having been said, let me reiterate the point I made in my previous comment. Human brains have cognition, in the true sense. This alone makes them able to solve problems that other systems can't. To use your own words, humans have conceptual reasoning, whereas computers do not... which is to say the answer was in your question to begin with.

**EDIT:**

To expand on what is admittedly a not-very-useful last paragraph, it seems as though you are conflating *concept* and *representation*. A concept implies conceptual knowledge, which is simply non-applicable to a non-cognizant system. As to how the representations differ, this is where point `2` is relevant. In this case, the representation of a face evokes activation corresponding to various related representations (e.g. on the semantic level). Importantly, this "spillover" occurs by the very nature of the system -- it's not something that's artificially tacked on.

It's the *relationship* between your representation, other representations, and the sensorimotor system ("self") that arguably constitute a *concept*.

> References:
>
> Fletcher, P. C., Shallice, T., Frith, C. D., Frackowiak, R. S. J., & Dolan, R. J. (1996). Brain activity during memory retrieval The influence of imagery and semantic cueing. Brain, 119(5), 1587-1596.
>
> Machens, C. K., Romo, R., & Brody, C. D. (2005). Flexible control of mutual inhibition: a neural model of two-interval discrimination. Science, 307(5712), 1121-1124.
> 5 votes

# Answer
Intuition is what distinguishes human intellect with classical computers. The human intellect is intuitive in the first place and it builds strict logical (conscious) mind on top of it. Computers are opposite. They act according to concrete algorithms. Yet, **you can achieve intuition by emulating it with computer logic**. There is nothing that prevents machines to become intellectual.

I you want details, the intuition is achieved through connectionism (Neural Network), a computational model alternative to the hardwired logic of computers. The Neural Network is ultimately parallel computer. It consists of utterly stupid computational units, neurons, every is connected with (tens of ) thouthands of other neurons. Connection pass simple pulses, raised by neurons. The reaction of the brain depends on the weights of these connections (synapses). Learning is basically adjusting of these weights. This is one of the strength of intellect over computer -- it programs it itself, by the environment, which allows to make decisioins for the problems which are intractable to formalize and it guesses the best answer in the abscense of complete information and does so immediately (in matter of couple of neuron pulses, in fractions of a second), thanks to the **immense parallelism**. These are the things unattainable by stupid, programmed sequential algorithm. I have told that parallelism is achieved through the myriad (100 billion neurons x tens of billions of connections per each = **quadrilions of processing units in one head**) of connections, working in parallel. You thus may guess that even Blue Gene has problem to compete with it with the tasks that are difficult to formalize or which have large search space. You may also notice that parallelism of NN is squred by the fact that **every synaps holds all the images exposed to the brain before**. Yes, every element holds all immense informatioin known to you and you have quadrilions of such elements in your head and they work in parallel (see also von Neumann Bottleneck why it is important that every processor has all memory available locally).

The more parallel machine you have, the more undeterministically it behaves. You cannot predict the outcome computed by ultimate intuition therefore, especially after it constantly self-learning by environment to solve unformalized problems from the environment. This makes it also impossible to grasp the algorithm of the brain that was used to derive the outcome. It reminds the quantum computation/coherence/uncertainty/miracles: the elementary you go, the more miraqulous your particles become (Penroze even foolishly decided that NN intuition miracles from Quantum Computation, which can also instantly reduce immense search spaces into a single optimal solution). You, thus may tell that computers are predictable while people are creative (unpredictable). Yet, that is another story. The point is that classical machines can imitate human mind but you need a lot of self-learning connecitons to diffuse your computation. Classical computers (especially supercomputers) can emulate neural networs but they still do not have enough processors to emulate the whole brain (the intellect is growing with the number of synapses and neurons, you know). The classical supercomputers are not just efficient enough to emulate the NN models. Special neural computers are 1000 times more efficient. Yet, even those machines still cannot simulate one human brain. Might be you can simulate a cockroach. It will not add numbers very well but it will bypass obstacles much more efficiently programer-hardwired logic. The latter is likely to never terminate because it will never be able to consider all situations (like blue brain in the chess contest). Intuition by its miracle just picks one, seeming the best and does not consider individual solutions, not even in the background. Yet, programmer will be able to approach the cocroach creativity developing more and more complex algorithm, likewise Deep Blue is looking more intellectual with more CPUs, more brute force and more complex algorithm. The classical approach approaches the intuition model as it becomes more elaborated and difficult to grasp. In the end, programmer may end up with the program, identical to what cocroach have learned naturally without hassle and this program will be a hell. You better start with NN right away.

The only problem why this was not done so far is that it is still costly to produce quadrillion of transistors/synapses. Nevertheless, **the real brains are specialized NN hardware, after all** and there is nothing in theory that can forbid miracles of artificial intelligence.

A bit messy but I think that the idea is clear. We need an efficient computer to emulate a neural network and thus we'll get an intuition. All the (classical) computers we have around are intended for execuing statements like "if input = this value then set that register/output that value, proceed to next statement". This way you program stupid, non-creative slaves, uncapable to learn and react immediatly finding more or less optimal solutions in the sea yet difficiency of required information. On the other hand, deterministic predictibility of the slaves is more efficient for routine, easy to formalize tasks like adding two numbers where intuition machine is overkill and may simply refuse to follow your commands being in bad mood, you know. You'll have to negotiate with AI.
> 1 votes

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Tags: problem-solving
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# Question
Title: How to report an F statistic in APA style?
How do you report F statistics in APA format? I am working on PHD and am not certain that I am reporting the F statistics in the proper manner.

I have been reporting it as F (\_,\_). The second space I am unclear as to what number gets placed there.

# Answer
> 7 votes
The F ratio statistic has a numerator and denominator degrees of freedom. Thus, you report:

```
F (numerator_df, denominator_df) = F_value, p = ..., effect size = ...

```

The numerator degrees of freedom relates to the factor of interest; the denominator degrees of freedom corresponds to the degrees of freedom for the error variance.

The exact way that these degrees of freedom are calculated depends on the statistical test you are using. Standard textbooks will describe these approaches. For example, in a standard one-way between subjects ANOVA with $k$ groups and $n$ participants per group, you would have $k-1$ numerator degrees of freedom and $kn-k$.

Generally, you will be able to read off these numbers from the output of your statistics package.

### Example

Here is an example with k=3 groups and n=5 participants. See the df in the "group" row and the "error" row.

```
F(2, 12) = 24.667, p < .001.

```

# Answer
> 5 votes
The numbers inside the parentheses are the degrees of freedom for the F-statistic.

The second number is the within-group degrees of freedom. When you have the same number of subjects in all conditions, then the second number will be the number of subjects - the number of cells (conditions) in your design.

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Tags: statistics, publication-process, apa-style
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# Question
Title: Is there evidence that brain and mind are separate?
I've heard countless discussions about whether or not the mind is separate from the brain, but they have all been philosophical.

I am looking for peer-reviewed studies that suggest the mind is not just a by-product of the brain, as I feel this is quite an extraordinary claim.

Are there any such studies?

# Answer
> 30 votes
Another approach to this issue is to consider whether this kind of reductionism ("mind is just a by-product of the brain") is useful. Strictly speaking, architecture is "just a by-product of physics and materials science", but there are phenomena that are usefully described at the level of architecture and would not be well-captured by the atomic and molecular properties that underlie them. The same holds for the mind and brain: we can study the neural correlates of psychological phenomena and these studies are sure to help us understand those phenomena, but they are not logically equivalent. This view has been articulated by many people, here is one (peer-reviewed) example: Miller, G.A. & Keller, J. (2000). Psychology and Neuroscience: Making Peace. *Current Directions in Psychological Science*, 9(6), 212-215. You don't need to be a dualist to hold this view, just to understand that phenomena can have different levels of analysis.

# Answer
> 16 votes
Note: one can never prove a negative. It's hard to say "there's no evidence" as an absolute truth. That being said:

No. All evidence is suggestive of monism. Drugs and brain lesions are physical actions that influence cognitive outcome by physically affecting the brain in ways predicted by pharmacists and neuropsychology. It could also be noted that physical activity (exercise) increases neurogenesis.

When you find an argument that recedes to only being valid in philosophy, it is probably becoming closer to pseudoscience than science. You can never prove something like solipsism is false, but it isn't a very productive belief if you're asking for evidence. Solipsism (as an example) would invalidate the evidence, so there's no point in asking for evidence if that's your perspective.

However, if you accept empiricism (which is all that science can rely on) then you have to accept some degree of scientific realism, and the scientific evidence is that brain causes mind.

# Answer
> -3 votes
I can't imagine what kind of evidence there ever will be but I believe they are seperate. Of course the brain reacts to our mind because it is connected to our body, I feel as if they are seperate but when we feel sad the brain will release certain chemicals so our body feels it too. I'm not sure if this makes sense, it is hard to explain (but it makes sense to me). The fact that I can often tell when my partner or mother are thinking about me (for example more often then not, when they 'randomly' pop into my mind and I check my phone to see if they have replied, I can see they are 'typing...' or I immediately receive a message or a call). This is to me could be proof that the world isn't just what we physically see but that everything is connected on a different level.

This isn't a very scientific answer but I just wanted to share my view

# Answer
> -6 votes
"Evidence " means physical evidence, I guess. The paradox is this - are there non-physical phenomena for which there is physical evidence?

Is there evidence for Out-of-body experiences? If you never had one, you would say no. However, try to guess the answer before jumping here :-)

Can we do a thought experiment? Nuclear war, Solar flares, green house effect, whatever. Humanity has gone blind. Lost the sense of sight.

Thus shapes, colours, forms, changes of state of these properties etc cannot be perceived. They do not see clouds, the blue sky, the far-away stars, birds flying silently in the sky, distant blue seas, lush green forests and so on. Undoubtedly a greatly diminished life, compared to people like us.

Now, if one or two of them acquire eyes somehow, a whole new world opens up. They start experiencing and describing things that seem incredible to other people. They may be considered to have too much imagination, or even mad. They may eventually be persecuted or thrown out of the human community.

The history of science itself has plenty of these happenings. Until radio waves were discovered, Science did not know of its existence, though radio waves have existed for all time. This example extends to x-rays, gamma radiation and many other phenomena discovered at some point in time.

If due to some future catastrophes, suddenly the faculty of colour is lost, then Science will gradually start to deny the existence of colour. If people with long memories, or memories of their ancestors’ tales, talk about these things, they will be considered superstitious.

Update: (@Josh) - Another thought experiment. A 2-dimensional being cannot fathom that things are happening in a 3-dimensional world. Any physical phenmenon will appear to arise from other physical phenomena in 2 dimensions. Similarly, things coming from a 4th dimension will appear to be happening in the 3-dimensional world that appears to our senses.

The fourth dimension theories of Hinton and Ouspensky have a thorough treatment of the subject.

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Tags: philosophy-of-mind
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# Question
Title: What is the scientific term for information overload?
I'm a computer science major. Currently I'm working on a project for which I want to expose users to different levels of information depending on their distance from displays.

Anyone who ever saw a control room of a power plant or the management software of brokers knows that the persons are bombarded with information (directly like numbers, and aggregated like graphs). I think that it might be a good idea to reduce the shown information depending on the distance and the direction one is looking.

I'm pretty sure that psychologists have already done research in that regard, but I'm totally unable to find any paper on that subject. Is there a specific scientific term for this kind of information flood?

# Answer
If what you are seeking is *how* to present material so that cognitive overload does not occur, you are in the realm of learning theory.\[1\]

Cognitive load theory and schema (learning) theory go hand in hand in. *Schemas* are *frameworks of information* (like a steel-framed skyscraper in your mind); they start as very basic ("This is a cell") and become more complex and facile ("NADH-Q oxidoreductase, Q-cytochrome c oxidoreductase, and cytochrome c oxidase are mitochondrial transmembranous enzyme complexes responsible for oxidative phosphorylation, etc.") They *allow* (and form) *Long Term Memory* (LTM). We need a framework ("cell") into which we can stick a fact before we can remember it for more than a very few minutes. The more we know about something (the better our schemas are), the more easily we learn. *Working Memory* (WM) allows us to process what we are exposed to and place it *into a schema* so that we can remember it. Like a computer, we have limited WM (processing ability) available to us at any given time. Efficient processing results in placing material into a schema which then facilitates Long Term Memory (LTM).

Inefficient Processing results in an inability to understand what one was just exposed to. Failed schema identification means leads to inability to use information.

Where does cognitive load come in? Cognitive Load takes up processing speed (reducing WM). If cognitive load is great enough, all WM is used up, and we will be unable to identify/form a schema. There are several types of Cognitive load: intrinsic (how complex the information is), extrinsic/ineffective (a bunch of things including distractions, emotionally demanding states \[e.g. stress\], and especially **the way in which material is presented**, e.g. inducing splitting of attention, etc.) and germane (what's left over to actually form schemas). They are (kind of) additive. Good schemas *reduce* cognitive load (increasing WM).

The linked site presents different models of presenting information that promotes schema formation, identification and processing in different situations, and links to further work.

 Schema Theory and Cognitive Load Theory
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, terminology, attention, human-factors
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# Question
Title: Is there any evidence of a relationship between learning music and increased ability in Mathematics?
I've had more than one mathematics teacher say to me that they had heard of a link between music and maths ability. I thought I observed it informally myself, but it was difficult to tell if those kids just had very motivated and caring parents. (ie few control data points of music and not mathematics and vice versa).

My question is: **Is there any evidence of a relationship between learning music and increased ability in Mathematics?**

# Answer
> 6 votes
There is a clear association between musical ability and mathematical ability, perhaps best recognised in savantism in people with developmental disabilities. There are limited domains in which savantism appears to occur, including mathematical calculations, reproducing music instantly, recalling specific facts, and perfect-perspective drawing.

There are a number of psychological theories from this literature that tie maths and music as related abilities. One is the "male-brain" theory, which argues that male-brains are better at systemising (prediciting how systems work through rules) than empathising (predicting how people work through their emotions and thoughts), while female-brains work vice-versa (Baron-Cohen, 2002). Both music and maths are highly systemised, making them well-suited to "male-brained" individuals.

Another relevant theory is the "Central Coherence" theory, which again argues for different cognitive styles that may assist individuals to excel at both maths and music. Happe and Frith (2009) note that individuals with weak central coherence process information in fine detail, often at the expense of the greater context in which these details occur. This method of information processing may be beneficial to developing talents in both maths and music. The authors give the example of developing absolute pitch - a common ability in musical savants - as this requires attention to the exact notes rather than the relationship between notes.

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Tags: developmental-psychology, music, mathematical-ability
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# Question
Title: What is the extent of social grooming in humankind?
Is it mostly intellectual (correcting people's pronunciation, explaining errors in their logic) or physical (fixing their clothing, letting them know about flaws they may be unaware of ("your shirt's on backward"), providing advice about appearance or health, etc.

# Answer
The literature on social grooming in humans mentions

> examples of grooming, most of which are unique to humans, include: running fingers through another’s hair, giving massages, washing the body or hair, shaving, removing lint or hair from another’s clothing, swatting away insects, and giving manicures or pedicures, and removing pus from blemishes or wounds. Grooming for humans can also include applying something to the skin or body as with lotion, nail polish, or make-up.

However, probably the more prominent and interesting line of research in this regard concerns language. The foundational BBS article by Dunbar (1993) argues that

> Group size covaries with relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. This regression equation predicts a group size for modern humans very similar to that for hunter-gatherer and traditional horticulturalist societies. Similar group sizes are found in other contemporary and historical societies. Nonhuman primates maintain group cohesion through social grooming; among the Old World monkeys and apes, social grooming time is linearly related to group size. Maintaining stability of human-sized groups by grooming alone would make intolerable time demands. It is therefore suggested (1) that the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on developing a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding and (2) that language uniquely fulfills this requirement. Data on the size of conversational and other small interacting groups of humans accord with the predicted relative efficiency of conversation compared to grooming as a bonding process. In human conversations about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences. Language may accordingly have evolved to allow individuals to learn about the behavioural characteristics of other group members more rapidly than was feasible by direct observation alone.

In short, under Dunbar's proposal, because human groups are so large and complex, if we were to use the regular, manual grooming of our relatives, we would have to spend around half (e.g. 42% in Dunbar 1993) of our time grooming, which is entirely unsustainable. Language is instead used (and evolved) to more economically fulfill that role. Linguistic gestures, especially small talk, largely overtake the role of manual grooming in humans.

Make of this what you will, it's certainly an important and interesting proposal.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: Does not seeing sunlight for several days impair moral judgment and lower mood?
**Background:** In winter, daytime is very short where I live. A few months ago, due to a bad sleeping habit, I had not seen sunlight for almost a month. Then I noticed some strange things had been happening to me for a few days. I wasn't feeling any emotion (especially fear). In addition, ability to distinguish between right and wrong was slowly fading away.

Does not seeing any sunlight for some number of days affect sense of morality and emotions?

**Update**: As I recall, this happened to me 3 times over 4 years of time. But I wasn't aware of it.

# Answer
Although not the question you asked, there has been at least one study looking at the influence of 'cave-like environments' on cognition - people are more prone to magical thinking/illogical beliefs (not their term) when placed in a dark, windowless environment.

**Rigoli et al (2013): Cave-like Environments Facilitate Magical Thinking**

> Abstract
>
> The cognitive mechanisms that underlie beliefs in the supernatural are not well understood. In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, we hypothesized that the cave environment “affords” such usage. In our experiment, 52 participants completed a survey about their metaphysical beliefs inside a room providing a great deal of natural light, while another 52 participants completed the same survey in a dark and windowless room. The survey asked participants to rate their beliefs in a variety of supernatural phenomena and also included multiple-choice questions which described bizarre scenarios that could be explained either scientifically or supernaturally. The supernatural responses to both the rating-scale questions and to the multiple-choice questions were significantly higher in the cave-like condition. These results are consistent with anthropological claims that the dark zones of caves may have played a role in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness that contributed to humans’ tendency toward magical thinking.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Yes and no. As organisms in environment emotions could be defined as our bodies reaction to our environment so yes if your environment changes then of course your emotions will change. So there's that. However if you're asking what I think you're asking which is for some sort of explanation for the observed changes in your behaviour that have been caused by changes in your environment, then I could try to sound all knowledgeable about this and say "Sure! Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a well known syndrome etc etc." However SAD is not an explanation for your condition, it's merely us categorising phenomena and then saying that what we observe is an explanation for what happened, when it's really not, and in fact this act by its very definition is an observation of what happened and not an explanation.

So to sum up, have you observed changes in your physiology as a result of changes in your environment? Of course, and that's normal. It's almost a statement of the obvious when you think about it. Do we have an explanation for this in terms of psychology? No, not if we're being intellectually honest about it. Personally I'd argue that it's not a psychological problem at all, but a natural bodily reaction to a change in its environment. It just so happens that we as a society have begun to medicalise normal bodily reactions to environmental changes, claimed that because we have them that there is something wrong with us (as opposed to something being wrong with our environment) and started giving them names such as SAD, or anxiety, or depression etc etc.
> 1 votes

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Tags: emotion, moral-psychology, mood
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# Question
Title: How many trials are needed to estimate a response time distribution?
I want to estimate the properties of a response time distribution (mean, variance, tail-length) for individual subjects.

How many samples (trials) do I need to collect to get reliable estimates?

Does it depend on the method of estimation (i.e. maximum likelihood versus hierarchical Bayesian)?

# Answer
The number of samples that are necessary for a good parameter estimation does indeed depend on the estimation method. I am not aware of a simple rule of thumb to determine an optimal sample size, but there has been a lot of literature on this topic. A paper that might be a good starting point for a literature search is

Van Zandt T. (2000) How to fit a response time distribution. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 7(3): 424-465. \[Link\]
> 4 votes

# Answer
Disclaimer: I'm not generally doing experiments where reaction time is the primary DV. But I thought I'd look at this issue and explored RTs from a neuroimaging dataset, and I think the findings are relevant to the question.

I think without further qualification, this question doesn't have an answer. Here I've plotted the estimation of reaction time/RT over the time course of an experiment (248 trials total), based on the RTs collected up to each time point, for a single subject:

For each point, the CI is the CI of the mean for all trials up to the respective trial number; so at x = 10, it's the CI for the mean based on the first 10 trials. Incremental mean is the mean over all trials up to this point; it is not the mean of means, but the mean of RTs. The total mean is the mean over all trials collected in this experiment.
I'm ignoring that the data is probably not normal for now.

As you can see, the *width* of the confidence interval of the mean asymptotes fairly quickly and doesn't get much better after 100 or so trials. However, you also see that the "incremental mean" (the mean of all trials up to this point) has not yet reached the true ("total") mean yet. This is likely because of a significant practice effect; the longer the experiment goes on, the faster the subject becomes. So while the precision of the estimate does not improve much after the 100th trial, the CI doesn't actually contain the "true" value- because the "true" value is non-stationary!
So maybe 200, 250 trials is not enough!? But I don't think the mean would have become stationary at a certain time point/trial count. Rather, eventually, fatigue would have overtaken the practice effect and RTs would have started rising again. *d'* would probably worsen, and variance rise, etc.
Metaphorically, we could call this Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in experimental psychology, in that we change what we measure by the process of measurement.

Now as you can see, this experiment is fairly special in that RTs are quite high - around 1500 msec. This is because my paradigm is comparatively complicated. Maybe practice would matter less, and the estimates asymptote more quickly, and more stable, in a different paradigm; for example, a very simple low-level signal detection experiment. This is why I'm saying there is no straight-forward answer so far, as the specific behavior of RT depends on the paradigm.

Maybe you could try to account for the time effect - for example, with a regression with time as a predictor and estimation of the subject-specific intercept for RT independent of the time term. But then, that's "subject-specific RT intercept after removal of covariates" or something like that, not "reaction time mean".
> 4 votes

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Tags: measurement, methodology, reaction-time, bayesian
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# Question
Title: Are hot-streaks in athletics real, and if so, is there a known psychological basis?
It is common to refer to an athlete who is enjoying a sustained period of success (e.g. a long consecutive game hitting streak in baseball) as being "hot", suggesting that something about their physical or psychological state is different.

However, hitting streaks and other sustained periods of success are bound to happen just by random chance. Therefore, it might be a fallacy to believe that a person is "hot" when really their behavior is expected by random fluctuations in performance.

Is there any research that indicates hot-streaks are real? If so, is there a known psychological basis? (For example, does confidence in one's ability actually improve performance?)

# Answer
Andrew Gelman has blogged and published about the "hot hand" phenomenon from a statistical perspective. His statistical perspective is probably fairly authoritative, and his psychological perspective, at least in being very inclusive, not implausible. His basic idea is the following:

* Previous wins are very *unlikely* to have *no* effect on future performance.
* Previous wins (or losses) are likely to have some, albeit probably small, effect.
    + For example, a player's performance could decrease, maybe due to overconfidence
    + A player's performance could increase, for example, due to increase confidence
* Rather than asking if there is any "hot hand" effect at all, the better question is: of what kind is this effect?

In the sense of the latter, the existing studies are actually fairly homogenous: they all argue for a small to marginal effect, on the order of a few percentage points or less. So the idea that the "hot hand" effect is a small and highly variable phenomenon is supported both by a priori reasoning, and by the bulk of the data.

Beyond that, Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky (1985) have demonstrated that people reliably over detect "hot hands"; we see patterns in near-random variance that aren't really there. Moreover, combining what we know about our perception of the "hot hand", and our statistical knowledge about it, we can establish one more fact: very often, when you think you're observing a "hot hand", you're wrong. This is because the effect size for the "hot hand" appears very small, so small that it is statistically questionable, and if even repeated statistical analyses have trouble establishing its size, we can be sure that the naked eye will not be able to reliably identify it in an individual case.

All this is an example of the debate between *null hypothesis testing* versus *parameter estimation* statistics. From the perspective of null hypothesis testing, we consider plausible that the effect might be truly zero, or something else, and zero is our null hypotheses. From the perspective of parameter estimation, we are interested in what the effect actually is, and it being precisely zero is rather unlikely to begin with.

Thus, I believe it justified to say this about the "hot hand" effect:

* It exists, in some form or other.
* It is likely small, and highly variable (sometimes positive, sometimes close to zero, sometimes even negative).
* Whenever you think you see it, you probably don't.
> 5 votes

# Answer
@jona is correct: from a statistical point of view, this "hot hand" effect is often an illusion, produced by our own faulty statistical intuitions. However, this isn't the whole story - even if we overestimate it, performance does systematically vary over time.

Most of the work on this, or at least most of the work I know, has been in the **Positive Psychology** tradition. **Flow** (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990, see also this scanned book chapter), in this literature, is a positive state complete absorption, where task demands, available resources, and a whole lot of other factors, reach an optimal balance for enjoyable, high-level performance (wikipedia covers this as well as anywhere else).

How this applies to sport should be obvious (and is presumably quite well covered in this book): athletes will perform close to the peak of their abilities when in a flow state, and so this will correspond to a "hot hand" streak.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, performance, sport-psychology
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# Question
Title: How is averaging used in calculating the Bereitschaftspotential?
I have a question about the averaging involved in the Bereitschaftspotential. On the wiki page you can read that, because it is so small, the Bereitschaftspotential only becomes apparent after averaging.

My question: do they mean averaging over different electrodes, but in a single trial?

Or do they mean averaging over electrodes AND over trials?

Thanks in advance

# Answer
> 6 votes
Generally, EEG potentials are primarily averaged over trials, not electrodes. Averaging over electrodes is often done in addition to trial averaging, but this by itself does not make the potentials visible on a single-trial basis since the "noise" overshadowing the potentials is largely shared by all adjacent electrodes.

The Bereitschaftspotential is also averaged over trials, especially since it is usually specified to be observed over specific electrodes.

As you note in a comment, single-trial identification of EEG phenomena, such as the Bereitschaftspotential (or the P300), is being attempted using machine learning techniques. However, these work far from reliably, and the original work on the Bereitschaftspotential was done far before these powerful machine learning techniques became available. So in the original BP work, averaging was done over trials (and often, over subjects, too). This is apparent in for example the Methods section of Libet's famous paper from 1983 (p. 624):

> For present purposes, analysis of RPs is made for those recorded at the vertex, where they were all maximal. ... 40 trials were performed and averaged by a computer of average transients

The *vertex* = electrode Cz.

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Tags: neuroscience, motor
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# Question
Title: Which is more likely to cause a person to devalue some other person?
Scenario: Mary and John are in a relationship. Elen is Mary's best friend.

What will make Mary devalue Elen more? Hearing that Elen likes John (romantically) or hearing that John likes Elen?

Let's assume that Mary and John have been dating for a few months. Mary is a dependent person with low self-esteem who would go to great lengths not to lose her boyfriend. All three of them are around 20 years old.

# Answer
> 1 votes
According with the description of Mary, I think that she would devalue her best friend.

**Explanation:** Elen and Mary have been friends for more time than John and Mary have been dating; this means that Mary could feel more betrayed because she trusted a lot in her friend, and respected her boyfriend. She's more likely to think that John does not like her because she's not enough good for him (because of her self-esteem), and that would generate more dependence (she would try to fix this problem because a part of her identity is at stake). Hope this help you.

# Answer
> 0 votes
Because Mary is in a relationship with John she likes him sexually. Liking somebody sexually has more value then a regular friendship, thus, even to begin with Elen has less value to Mary than the relationship that she has with John. Now, in addition to that, Elen begins to pose a threat to Mary's relationship with John by liking John. If that was not enough, John likes Elen, too.

I think that it's not rare that when a person starts dating somebody they stop being friends with other people. So, to answer the question: Mary will devalue Elen.

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Tags: social-psychology, perception, emotion, personality, motivation
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# Question
Title: How does appreciation for music change over time for the same person?
I know that there's a concept of acquired taste, where a child may find certain tastes, like peppers and beer unappealing until certain age or frequency of exposure.

* Is there something similar to acquired taste in music?
* How does perception of the "beauty" of the same musical track vary for the same individual over a lifetime?

There has been an episode of the popular TV show "South Park" that deals with taste in music, although in a satirical way.

# Answer
Following the comments you've received, I'll add my own subjective answer in the affirmative to your first question. I think we've already compiled enough votes and comments here that support @JoshGitlin's unscientific answer to say that there is some empirical basis for theorizing the existence of a "taste" acquisition process in music. Nonetheless, here's another somewhat unscientific (and inadvertent) contribution from Wikipedia:

> ***Acquiring the Taste*** was the second album of English progressive rock band Gentle Giant...This was a departure from the blues and soul styles found on their self titled debut. It was more experimental, more discordant, and with more varied instrumentation. In the sleeve text, the band made this famous declaration:
>
> "...It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of being very unpopular. We have recorded each composition with the one thought - that it should be unique, adventurous and fascinating. It has taken every shred of our combined musical and technical knowledge to achieve this. From the outset we have abandoned all preconceived thoughts of blatant commercialism. Instead we hope to give you something far more substantial and fulfilling. All you need to do is sit back, and acquire the taste."

So there you have it: a fairly sophisticated band of musicians appealing to some common intuition about the very process in question, acquiring a taste for certain music. At the risk of being flagged for spamming, I'd even recommend that anyone curious enough to try out the process for oneself should give the album a listen; it's likely to be quite different from the music you're used to, but it's also likely to grow on you somewhat (it's certainly grown on me since I first heard it)!

As for your second question, generally speaking, aesthetic appreciation of a given, enjoyable stimulus (including, but not limited to discrete musical compositions) changes in at least two ways over repeated exposures.

* Hedonic adaptation often occurs to some extent, such that as novelty wears off, so does enjoyment.
* Nostalgia plays a somewhat opposite role under certain circumstances, such as those that associate the stimulus with a desirable memory.

There's probably plenty more to it than just these two influences though. How it all actually plays out would be very interesting to see, so here's an upvote for any references others might be able to offer in their own answers!
> 2 votes

# Answer
The short answer is that **it depends on what music you've been exposed to.**

First of all, it's important to understand what music is.

**Music is layers of mathematical patterns**. To be more specific it is a range of frequencies that have a mathematical relationship between them (in frequency) which are periodically played in a manner which displays a mathematical relationship of time. The range of frequencies makes up our musical system and is usually based off of A at 440hz. **All other notes have a fraction with a nice integer of 440hz**. It is important to understand that it doesn't *need* to be 440hz, but the notes do need to be relative to each other in a way that produces a relationship with a nice fraction.

On top of that, **the mathematical pattern that makes up our musical system is further extended into scales**. For example the C major scale is made up of the following pattern: tone-tone-semitone-tone-tone-tone-semitone. Actually, all major scales have this pattern. (See here)

To add another layer of mathematical relationship, **we have rhythm and timing in our musical system**. I'm sure you are aware of the relationship between notes having fractions of timing; the half note counts for half of the beats that a whole note does and so on.

The point to realize about all of this is that we enjoy music because of the patterns our brains find in them. Sometimes we don't understand music and therefore we don't enjoy it. The more we are exposed to a certain type of music, usually equates to a greater interest in said music. See the question on Music.SE here regarding this phenomenon; in summary, it was explained that it is indeed the case that exposure equals a greater appreciation for music and this is why big producers often pay radio stations to play their songs so that it gets greater exposure and more record sales.

Consider this, you have a specific background and exposure in life to a certain kind of music (whatever that music may be), do you think you could enjoy music from a completely different culture the first time you hear it and to the same degree that the locals do?

My unsolicited personal opinion, made through intrapersonal observation, is that the brain enjoys patterns and the ability to predict the result of a pattern. How often do you find yourself thinking about the next note that will be played when listening to a song that you really enjoy? I think this anticipation and ability to decode the pattern plays a major role in us acquiring the taste of a particular song or genre. I have personal had the experience to come to like genres of music which I disliked very much in the past.

Extra reading:

"How Your Brain Listens to Music" \- an article about people with auditory cortex damage and how they experience music
> 1 votes

# Answer
There are multiple reasons why we may like or dislike certain kind of music. For example, it may be because of nostalgia or because it helps one to relax or get into a certain mood.

There are also multiple kinds of listeners. Some just think of music as a background noise for their everyday activities while others may sit down and actively listen to music. They will meditate or even fall in REM sleep while listening. In my opinion, the latest will experience more profound emotions and will be more emotionally attached to music listened that way. This kind of experience is what most progressive, jazz and classical (just to name a few) musicians seek in writing or playing music.

While this is highly subjective, i believe that one of the reasons (while there can be many more and may change with time and experience) attract people to music is the unconscious desire to improve oneself and learn lessons. There is a similar behavior explained in the chapter about relationships in "The road less Traveled".

I think that appreciation is one of those things that depends on so much variables that it can't be yet explained by rationalization. But we can still appreciate and explore this chaotic branch of psychology with books such as "Musicophilia".
> 0 votes

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Tags: perception, aging, music, hearing
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# Question
Title: Is there a term for a person who moves from one field of expertise to a new field and has an inflated belief in their competence in the new field?
Person A has led a successful career and is very well renowned in field A.
Later in life, person A moves to field B, a field they're curious about but have very little experience in.

Person A struggles to accept their limited understanding of their new domain, having been an expert in their own domain for so long, and imposes their (usually) incorrect views on a field B topic on others based on a confidence they've built from being good in field A.

Is there a term in psychology for this phenomenon?

# Answer
> 8 votes
*Déformation professionnelle* is probably the closest match:

> ***Déformation professionnelle*** is a French phrase, meaning a tendency to look at things from the point of view of one's own profession rather than from a broader perspective. It is often translated as "professional deformation" or "job conditioning". The implication is that professional training, and its related socialization, often result in a distortion of the way one views the world.\[\]

Followed by the law of the instrument / Maslow's hammer:

> The concept known as **the law of the instrument, Maslow's hammer, Gavel or a golden hammer**\[\] is an over-reliance on a familiar tool; as Abraham Maslow said in 1966, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."\[\]

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**References**
1 \[déformation professionelle\]. Bönisch, J. (2007, November 30). Déformation professionnelle: Beruflich bedingte Missbildung. *Süddeutsche Zeitung*. Retrieved from http://www.sueddeutsche.de/karriere/deformation-professionnelle-beruflich-bedingte-missbildung-1.786888.
1 \[law of the instrument\]. Maslow, A. H. (1966/2004). *The psychology of science* (pp. 15). Maurice Bassett.

# Answer
> 4 votes
> People base their perceptions of performance, in part, on their preconceived notions about their skills. Because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgments about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment.

This is an example of the Dunnig-Kruger effect\[1\] Simply stated, it is the cognitive bias that people who are ignorant of a subject/field overestimate their competence in that subject/field. *People tend to be unaware of their incompetence.*

Though this is an interesting phenomenon, it is not as specific to acheivement impairing one's ability to gauge competence as is *Déformation professionnelle.*

\[1\] Why People Fail to Recognize Their Own Incompetence, Dunnig et. al., Current Directions in Psychological Science, 82 (2002)

# Answer
> 3 votes
I think the most common verbage would be

> Poseur

Though often used in subcultural contexts, 'posuer / poser' means someone who affects an attitude or position — which is very much the case when someone comes in from an external field and acts with the authority of a resident expert.

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Still, I stand by my position that this question is best served at the English Language site, since the community there will provide amore-rich breadth of answers for consideration.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, terminology, bias
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# Question
Title: Assuming everything has conciousness, can technical hardware have higher level of conciousness than a rock?
If we assume that everything has conciousness – plants, animals, even rocks, then can we say that technical hardware, like a calculator for example, has a higher level of conciousness than a rock?

# Answer
> 4 votes
There's a philosophical stance called panpsychism that addresses this question. Of course, there is no proof, but the fundamental question is really about humans. Is consciousness an intrinsic property of matter or does it emerge from complex matter structures?

It's probably something we'll never know, but Tononi's model of consciousness leans towards emergence.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-neuroscience, consciousness
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# Question
Title: Is quantum tunneling required for nerve signals to cross the dendritic synaptic barrier?
A person says:

*"It turns out that the synaptic barriers of dendrite brain cells are too thick for nerve signals to classically cross. This means that nerve signals need to use Quantum tunneling to cross the dendrite synaptic barrier."*

This is supposed to have the consequence that all classical models of the brain are false, and that only quantum based models of consciousness can work for explaining the mind.

Is this true? Is there a way for particles or nerve signals to cross the dendritic synaptic barrier without quantum processes?

# Answer
> 12 votes
I don't know what precisely "nerve signals" is supposed to refer to, but neurons exchange information mainly via one pathway: neurotransmitters. And these do not travel the synaptic cleft via quantum tunnelling - obviously, since **quantum tunnelling is a phenomenon on a quantum scale (concerning electrons), while neurotransmitters are far larger, at the molecule level**.
There are a number of other ways by which neurons cooperate, such as ephaptic coupling. However, the main one is the release of neurotransmitters following an action potential in the presynaptic neuron. Neurons are connected at their synapses, mostly via axo-dendritic chemical ones. That means that one neuron's axon (its "output line") is met by a part of another neuron's dendrite tree. The point where the two meet is the synapse. Axon and dendrite do not actually touch; there is a microscopic "synaptic cleft" between the two, in which the extracellular fluid which fills the brain flows. I assume it is the synaptic cleft which the "dendritic synaptic barrier" is supposed to refer to.
During the action potential, the presynaptic neuron releases neurotransmitters, such as GABA or Glutamate, into the cleft. These passively diffuse within the cleft, eventually coming in contact with the post-synaptic neuron. There, they bind to receptors which activate the post-synaptic neuron.
As far as I know, neither the release of neurotransmitters at the presynaptic neuron, nor the passive diffusion process through the synaptic cleft, or the binding to postsynaptic receptors require quantum tunnelling to any interesting degree. Basically, the stuff just floats around in the extremely narrow synaptic cleft until it comes across a receptor.
Possibly, the "person" you are talking about means some other aspect of the process, such as the receptor binding. Alas, I do not see how the specific way by which action potentials propagate is relevant for consciousness. Consciousness does not seem to depend on what happens at a specific synapse, but to the large-scale patterns of neuronal activity. **If neurons were to communicate via lasers, electrically, or as they do (chemically) hardly seems to matter - what matters is that they communicate, and which neurons communicate, and what they communicate.**

All of this are very basic, well-established facts about the workings of the brain. The wikipedia article is a perfectly fine introduction, though literally any neuroscience textbook will explain it like that, and countless research papers in peer-reviewed journals have investigated the process in detail, e.g. this.

There exist a number of theories regarding cognitively relevant quantum phenomena in the brain, most prominently probably Orch OR. As far as I understand it, Orch OR does not focus on the communication between neurons at chemical synapses, but on quantum states within neurons and other forms of coupling (some ephaptic coupling/electrical synapse hybrid?). Regardless of what Orch OR proposes of how the brain works, the chemical synapse is commonly thought to be the primary way by which brain neurons exchange information, and there, neurotransmitters don't tunnel, but diffuse - trivially; since neurotransmitters, being molecules, are far too large to quantum tunnel.
Furthermore, Orch OR is universally assumed to be a rather bad model of the brain.
Certainly, other perspectives exist; but the basic process of action potential propagation via chemical synapses has a well-deserved near dogmatic status in the neurosciences.

Lastly, the person you're quoting seems quite confused about very fundamental brain anatomy. For example, there are no "dendrite brain cells". The brain hosts *neurons*, each a *single cell*, each with a *dendrite tree* (see here for a famous picture). I wouldn't expect anybody who doesn't even understand what a neuron is to revolutionise neuroscience any time soon.

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, consciousness
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# Question
Title: If one is flexing a muscle, for any given motoneuron involved, how many action potentials occur per second to keep the muscle flexed?
Also, will the axon terminals in a given motoneuron ever run out of neurotransmitters to release if they are constantly undergoing action potentials (say in the situation outlined above where a muscle is being kept flexed)? Or is there always enough reuptake to ensure that this could never happen?

# Answer
Second question: won't happen in the healthy individual/inapplicable. Anatomically speaking, muscles don't flex, they contract. Joints flex. And muscles never fully relax to the point of zero contraction/zero firing. (The flexion of a joint can be achieved passively, even when the animal is dead.)
Even at rest, muscle is kept in a constant state of at least slight tension, the basic *tonus*. Skeletal muscles are usually set up in antagonistic pairs, with one flexing and one extending a joint. A specific balance of agonist and antagonist tonus implements a stable position of the joint, and stable positions can be achieved near-permanently.

First question: depends on effort. Muscle firing during increased, active contraction is a function of effort, as muscle contraction is increased via *rate coding*. The stronger a muscle is supposed to contract, the higher the motor unit's firing rate has to become. (I should probably mention the *size principle* here...) Motor neurons are reported to reach firing rates of a few tens (up to 50) of hz during high effort.

A question you're possibly interested in: for how long can extremely high firing rates be sustained? Or: is muscle failure under sustained extreme effort, corresponding to high firing rates, sometimes a result of motor neuron drop-out rather rather than e.g. ATP depletion at the muscle itself?
Note first that muscle force is greater for eccentric and isometric activity (ie., release under control or static tension); voluntary contraction is a bit weaker. From another perspective, if a muscle is electrically stimulated externally, it is still able to exert force far beyond the point where the subject cannot voluntarily uphold the tension. This means short-term fatigue following high tension is primarily neural.
I do not know what precisely causes this fatigue (nor do I think the experts have uncovered it yet), but the limiting aspect does not seem to be neurotransmitter re-uptake, or even metabolic processes in general. As Gandevia writes:

> intrinsic moto neuronal properties, reflex inhibition and disfacilitation, Renshaw cell inhibition, and insufficient drive from supraspinal sites may all contribute to the decline in moto unit firing rate in fatigue

Also see this.
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Why aren't Connectionism and Dynamicism considered part of the Computational Theory of the Mind?
In the Wikipedia article for Computational Theory of the Mind (**NOT** to be confused with Computational Representational Understanding of Mind which includes Connectionism), it is mentioned that alternatives to this philosophical view are Connectionism and Dynamicism (though there is some debate as to how different Dynamicism is). Why is this? Since they still use mathematical models run by computers, which still take in information and still process it, they seem to still fall under the Computational Theory of the Mind. What distinction am I missing here?

# Answer
The Computational Theory of Mind is not that the mind does some form of computation in the wide sense of computation. Rather, look at the examples for the CToM given in the Wikipedia article; people like Fodor, Pinker, Marr. Their view is very much the opposite to the Connectionist position of West Coast scientists like Rumelhart, Elman and McClelland. Both assume the brain does some form of computation, but they differ greatly about what *kind of computation* it is doing. Fundamentally, by the CToM, cognition is *symbol manipulation* and the mind Von Neumann-like (with a central-processor accessing memory), and to Connectionism, it isn't.

Historically, much of the foundations of CToM as it is currently used was first and best articulated by David Marr (although the basic thought is of course much older). Marr assumed cognition can be described on 3 distinct levels;

1. a *computational level*, which describes what job the system is supposed to do; for example, the visual system is supposed to discover cues for depth, object boundaries, and so on
2. The *algorithmic level* is a description of which calculations are used to perform this computation; for example, in the case of vision, by computing a Laplacian transformation.
3. The *implementational level* is how neurons are actually wired together to perform these algorithms - the *wet*, and to many researchers, not so interesting part.

This framework is basically what much of modern CToM operates within.

Fodor or Pinker assume minds operate like a specific form of computer: somewhat akin to a Von Neuman machine. Specifically, minds do *symbol manipulation*. Symbols are distinct, abstract cognitive entities which are assigned some meaning. Typically, they represent something. So to a CToM person, the mind works by taking a symbol, such as a low-level representation of a small part of the outside world, and performing an operation on it. In vision, it might take low-level visual items and add them together to construct a 3D representation of the outside world. In language, it might take lexical units and operate on them using linguistic rules, yielding a linguistic/semantic representation.

Importantly, in all of these, the thing which is operated on (the symbol) and the thing which does the operation (some mental module) are distinct. Symbols are manipulated via mental modules showing rule-like, algorithmic behaviour. In at least some theories, each manipulation within a module follows in sequence after another.

So CToM typically entails a symbolic and representational theory of mind; it also often comes as a modular, nativist, and universalist theory.

Connectionism, in contrast, does not assume any of these, and it was in fact originally proposed as a direct answer and alternative to the CToM. In connectionism, the 3 levels approach is often not seen as foundational, or even useful; to study how neurons work is to study how cognition works. In Connectionism, there is no central processing unit and no distinct symbol. There is no difference between "data" (symbols, representation) and the processor. Processing and symbols are implicitly distributed amongst neurons; processing doesn't happen in modules and in sequence, but in parallel. The central unit is not the module, but the network. Neuronal systems don't implement specific rule-like operations like a "normal" computer program, but deal with the world by finding patterns in the input and linking it to dynamically created response patterns. In some frameworks, representationality is disputed.

The two Stanford Encyclopedia articles on CToM and Connectionism are a good introduction to the topic and the long and intense argument between the two schools about what the mind does.

The same spiel also goes for the Dynamical Systems take on cognition, because when compared to CToM, the two - Dynamicism and Connectionism - are united in what distinguishes them from the CToM. When comparing Dynamicism to the CToM at length, van Gelder immediately and explicitly aligns connectionism and dynamicism when comparing them to

> ... the computational hypothesis (CH) that cognitive agents are basically digital computers. Perhaps the most famous rendition is Newell and Simon’s doctrine \[:\] “a physical symbol system ..." ...
> In recent years, however, the ... alternative has been gaining momentum. One of the most notable developments has been the rise of connectionism, which models cognition as the behavior of dynamical systems ...

Dynamicism, like connectionism, is non-symbolic, not sold on the Von Neumann model, and emphasizes adaptive processes (such as learning) over static, modular faculties. Moreover, Dynamicism emphasizes interactions with the outside world as well as embodied, non-symbolic phenomena.

As a post-script, I want to note that Marr is perhaps a bit straw manned when he is (by people on the CToM side, usually!) painted as the Arch Symbolist. Marr developed his foundational work together with Poggio, who has worked with neural networks and stochastic models a lot, and is sometimes presented as a Dynamicist(!).

Also: to add to the confusion, CToM research usually features much less interest in *explicit computational models* than connectionist work. Connectionist research almost always features computer implementations of models, and dynamicism can be heavy on the formulas. CToM research often prefers qualitative descriptions.
> 10 votes

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, philosophy-of-mind, connectionism, dynamic-systems
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# Question
Title: How long does physical attraction typically last in a permanent relationship?
How long, on average (and with as much other statistical data, e.g. standard deviation, as possible) does physical attraction between male and female in a permanent relationship last?

I believe this is a well-founded question based on the assumption that elderly couples are almost never physically attracted to one another, so almost always there is a point of earliest physical attraction loss. If you think that assumption is false, please let me know.

# Answer
I'm not sure I can give you the data purely for *physical attractiveness*, but what *has* been intensively researched is *passionate love*, which includes physical attraction. Passionate love is usually assumed to include sexual desire, and correlates quite well with rated attraction. As Hatfield writes:

> Generally, passionate love is associated with the terms “arousal,” “desire,” “lust,” “passion,” and “infatuation".

I hope that's what you're asking for. Elaine Hatfield (of the "would you go to bed with me?" study fame) has developed the Passionate Love Scale; Tennov has researched Limerence. Other famous names in this regard are Liebowitz and (Helen) Fisher. The counterpart to passionate love is often called companionate love, attachment, or affection.

Qualitatively speaking, on average, passionate love goes down with relation length. As Hatfield says, time has a "corrosive effect". Past researchers conceptualize this in a multi-stage model of relationships, where relationships naturally transition from passionate love into compassionate attachment. A well-known correlate of this is the "7-year itch", corresponding to a globally consistent mode around 4 years after marriage for divorces. However, some people report passionate love after decades of being together.

In all attempts to quantify any of this, there are a number of critical cofounds. @what has already brought up that some objective component of attractiveness might naturally decline with age. I'm not so sure this is that dramatic though, because there are well-known compensatory mechanisms for attraction within relationships that might be more important than e.g. decline of outsider-rated attractiveness with age. After all, what correlates with how attractive you rate someone is not the same as how attractive your partner is to you.
Moreover, there is a reliable difference between studies on younger and on older couples; the correlation between relationship length and passionate love/attraction is very reliable in young couples, but much weaker in older couples, and while younger couples often break up seemingly because passion has waned (as passion and satisfaction are correlated), there are older couples who're passionately in love (here and here). As Hatfield speculates, this might be because couples were passion is stable have a much higher chance to last, but those where it wanes quicker, end quicker. So that's for cofounds. I did not find any clear solution to this problem, and I can't really think of a good way of dealing with the self-selection problem (where longer relationships will inherently qualitatively differ from younger ones because they *must* have certain qualities to have come that far).
However, the relationship *within* relationships seems to hold, with a negative correlation within both older and younger relationships.

Quantitatively speaking, a much-quoted figure is Tennov's "18 months to three years". Exceptions are assumed to be comparatively rare, but also known to exist.
I can't give you the standard deviation on this, but I can give you something better: a regression model. One is by Sprecher & Regan, page 172, one by Hatfield, page 404.
Of course, this will not give you the single point in time where passionate love suddenly ends; but this is not realistic either. In relationships, attraction usually doesn't suddenly stop, it wanes. Graphically speaking:

However, I also found a much more optimistic picture for physical attractiveness over time in a large (almost 2000 people) sample:

What is clear even here however is the "7th-year itch".
> 5 votes

# Answer
I think here is study you are looking for: Sex Differences in the Implications of Partner Physical Attractiveness for the Trajectory of Marital Satisfaction

Report from 4 independent longitudional studies.

This is not so easy question to answer. For sure there are difference between male and female in M and sd. Especially it is determined by interpersonal dynamics (Koch, Mansfield...)

The second difference is in love style (Sternberg, Triangular theory of love)

Also it is known that attractivnes at age 16 is also important (Benzeval, Green...)

Andy many other variables is important for this simple question...

0) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24128188 1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19817035 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangular\_theory\_of\_love 3) http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0063975

EDIT: Im sorry for bad formating. I am on work now so I wanted to reply quick. In first study (you have to download the study and read it) you have a lot of predictors of martial satisfaction including atractivnes of wife) at beginning of relationship and later. So you can track how physical atractivness decline and other predictors raise in concept of martial satisfaction)

Other articles are here to describe other influential variables which are not described in first article.

Please read the first article, you have APA full text in the upper right corner.
> -1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, statistics, sexuality, physical-attraction
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# Question
Title: Name of a cognitive test assessing whether a child can think independently
I am looking for a names / examples of a tests that determine if the child is thinking on its own (I have tried searching on wikipedia topics about cognitive sciences/ psychology etc. with no luck). To be more specific, long time ago I saw a video that described two tests:

In the first, a teacher was given two cookies, and the kid just one. Teacher asked the child "Is it fair that I have two cookies and you just one" and the kid replied as it was supposed to "No". Teacher then has split kid's cookie in half and asked again "Is it fair now?" and kid stated "Yes, cause we both have two now".

My memory fails at accurate description of second test, but I remember that it was supposed to determine if the kid is thinking 'What I know is what everybody knows'.

It's like if you put two kids in the same room with a large amount of 'sth', and asked one, let's call it 'Martha', to leave the room. Then, you make the kid that stayed take for example two instances of 'sth' and afterwards ask him 'Do you think the kid that left the room knows that you took it?" and kid kid replies "Yes" because it cannot differentiate 'Martha's' knowledge from it's own.

I'd appreciate any ideas where to seek.

# Answer
> 8 votes
The first one is a test if a child has understood conservation of matter. It is an example of a *conservation task*. These belong to the tests used in the framework of Piaget to test what stage of development a child is in.
Here is a video demonstration of the cookie task. Here is another question on this site pertaining to a different conservation task.

The second one is an example of a *false-belief task* test for the Theory of Mind. See here for some criticism of the false-belief task, questioning if it truly tests what it aims to test.

I don't think it's appropriate to say either of these is used to test if children are "thinking on their own" for what it's worth. They're about developmental stages.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, terminology, developmental-psychology, test
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# Question
Title: Is there a research field which holds close connections between computational neuroscience and classical robotics
Is there a research field which holds close connections between computational neuroscience and classical robotics, particularly building corresponding robots to implement and test the theories from computational neuroscience ?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Yes, it's often called Neurorobotics. There are several labs doing this kind of research. Here's a small sample:

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: Name for the need to reply “you can’t fire me, I quit”
It’s a cliché in movies. The boss fires the employee, and they reply “you can’t fire me, because I quit”. Similarly, when in a romantic relationship, one person may decide to end it and the other answers the news with “well, I have been thinking about ending this for some time” (whether true or not).

Both of these replies should be unwarranted and effectively meaningless: the end result is the same. Yet, people often feel this need to “one-up”1 one another. Does this need have a name? And do we have any formal findings (or ongoing research) as to why we have it?

1 Not exactly “one-upping”, since you’re not outdoing the first person — more like preemptively doing what they’re doing, as if life works like a MTG game, and the last thing any of you do is the first to happen.

# Answer
I don't know of any term that refers specifically to this sort of counter-offensive reaction to ending a social relationship (be it romantic, professional, or otherwise), but I vaguely recall reading about some theory that distinguished reactions to relational stress as follows: $$\begin{array}{c|c|c|}&\mathbf{Active}&\mathbf{Passive}\\\hline\mathbf{Constructive}&\rm Actively\ constructive&\rm Passively\ constructive\\\hline\mathbf{Destructive}&\rm Actively\ destructive&\rm Passively\ destructive\\\hline\end{array}$$ The reaction in question is *actively destructive*. A *passive* alternative would be less decisive / assertive, and either patient / understanding / cooperative (i.e., *constructive*) or apathetic / pessimistic / negative (i.e., *destructive*). Sorry I don't have a reference off the top of my head; I think this came from my social psych textbook as an undergrad, but I'm not sure.

As for plausible explanatory constructs, consider:

* Dominant personality
* Avoidant or anxious-ambivalent (i.e., *insecure*) attachment style
* Needs for power and autonomy
* Behavioral tendencies involving defensiveness and reactance
    + Certain defense mechanisms may apply depending on whether the person is reacting genuinely or just defensively (and doesn't actually want to end the relationship).
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, terminology
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# Question
Title: What is, formally speaking, major depressive disorder?
DSM and ICD define a mental disorder called major depressive disorder (MDD), and I suppose the notion of MDD defines quite rigorous criteria and methods to diagnose it in people. I don't know, how MDD is defined, what is its criteria, what are its diagnostic methods. On the other hand, cognitive behavioral therapy practitioners, such as David Burns, define depression through the use of rating scales.

For example, David Burns has a questionnaire, called Burns Depression Checklist (BDC). It asks you 25 questions about various thoughts and moods you experienced at least once during the week. Then it asks you to assign a number from 0 to 4 to each of them, meaning how strongly you experienced it, 0 meaning “not at all”, 4 meaning “a lot”. Then you add the numbers up, and if you get more than 10, you have a depression: mild depression (11-25), moderate depression (26-50), severe depression (51-75), extreme depression (76-100). The questions are very different, they ask if you feel sad, or discouraged, or worthless, or guilty, or lonely, or demotivated, or sleep to much, and so on. Therefore you can have different combinations of physical and emotional symptoms, and still have depression according to BDC. For example, i could put number 4 to questions about guilt, hopelessness, and self-esteem, yet put number 0 to questions about motivation, interest in work, and feeling tired; or I could do the other way around, and it would still mean i have a mild depression.

According to the study called *The Epidemiology of Major Depressive Disorder*, 16.2% of US citizens experienced MDD in their lifetimes. If we assume Burns's definition of depression through result of BDC scale, then this study's data contradicts common sense and my anecdotal evidence. I gave BDC to various friends of mine, and all of them showed at least mild depression. From behavior and self-accounts of many people I meet every day I can safely assume that mild and moderate depression (in Burns's definition) are the statistical norm; the depressed people are the *majority* of population. I understand that anecdotal evidence means nothing.

My question is as follows. What exactly is major depressive disorder? How it is defined in a formal way? What are the criteria, which a person should met, to be diagnosed with MDD? What are the methods to diagnose it (for example, do psychiatrists use rating scales like BDC)? Finally, how MDD is different from the many alternative definitions of “depression”, including the colloquial ones?

I ask this because I can't reconcile my intuitive hunch that most people around me are depressed, some of them heavily, yet studies show that depression, while serious, isn't that widespread. If MDD is defined in a very different way, than Burns's depression, then it would mean that only a minority experiences MDD, so there's no contradiction.

# Answer
The ICD and DSM definitions can be a bit opaque, but there are several criteria that are usually considered necessary for diagnosis. Different practitioners may diagnose more conservatively or more pervasively, but those differences are based on their professional experience, and they are all meant to interpret from similar guidelines. Because there are different severities of depression, as with any illness, diagnosis relies also on the subjective judgement of a doctor or other mental health practitioner.

Generally, if one experiences a persistently low mood and low energy for a period of longer than two weeks, they may be diagnosed with so-called "clinical" depression. Usually this entails disruption to one or more aspects of daily living, e.g. food, sleep, interpersonal relationships, work or hobbies. This type of disruption is sometimes termed "clinically significant distress", a fairly common criterion for mental illness.

Prevalence is difficult to accurately assess. The NIMH reports 6.7% 12-month prevalence in the US. The CDC has a map of US states showing statistics for current depression, ranging from under 5% to as high as 15%. Other statistics exist in other countries. These data may reflect the best methodology available, but they are still fallible. Epidemiology of mental illness is a difficult field of study.

The inventory you cite is one of several commonly used ones. It's also important to remember that a psychiatrist will not rely on self-report questionnaires for diagnosis. A doctor would conduct a thorough intake interview which takes into account many other factors. A fifteen or twenty question survey is not sufficient to definitively diagnose anyone.
> 4 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, depression
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title: List of affective states for a study?

text:
# Question
Title: List of affective states for a study?
I am putting together a study that attempts to assess whether people assign particular affective or emotional states to images--specifically, animated GIFs. Is there a "standard" list of emotional states that has been used in research before, or that tends to be favored by researchers who study emotions? I'm considering something like Plutchik's three-dimensional circumplex model, but I didn't know if there was something else that tended to be more favored.

# Answer
There are a range of "adjective checklists" that have been developed to assess affective states, personality traits, or characteristics of individuals. Two of the most widely cited measures are the Multiple Affective Adjective Check List (MAACL) and the Multiple Affective Adjective Checklist-Revised (MAACL-R) (Zuckerman & Lubin, 1965; Zuckerman & Lubin, 1985). Although the actual MAACL-R manual may require purchase, lists of the affective items are available in other publications (Gotlib & Meyer, 1986).

Clinically, I have used the How Do I Feel Right Now? chart for clients who have difficulty identifying and naming their emotional states (http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/careerservices/2012/11/30/emotional-intelligence-what-is-it-and-why-do-employers-want-emotionally-intelligent-employees/).

Other sources of emotion lists in the field of psychology include:

* Shaver and colleagues have a heavily cited paper on types of emotions (1987)
* The Geneva Emotional Music Scale (Zenter, Grandjean, & Scherer, 2008)

Gotlib, I. H., & Meyer, J. P. (1986). Factor analysis of the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List: A separation of positive and negative affect. *Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 50*(6), 1161-1165. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.50.6.1161

Shaver, P., Schwartz, J., Kirson, D., & O'connor, C. (1987). Emotion knowledge: further exploration of a prototype approach. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52*(6), 1061.

Zentner, M., Grandjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. *Emotion, 8*(4), 494-521. doi:10.1037/1528-3542.8.4.494

Zuckerman, M., & Lubin, B. (1985). Manual for the MAACL-R: The Multiple Affect Adjetive Check List Revised. Educational and Industrial Testing Service.

Zuckerman, M., & Lubin, B. (1965). The Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (MAACL).
> 4 votes

# Answer
We are far from having any standards on the topic of emotions, and there are numerous ways to gather a user's emotional feedback. Of course, there is no optimal solution, and the choice mostly depends of your protocol requirements and expectations.

Using emotional terms, for instance, might be limited, as there is a bias of common understanding by every users, and a bias of granularity due to the terms categorization.

However, if you look for a quite comprehensive list of emotional terms, I would invite you to check this *list of related terms* of the Geneva Emotion Research Group. Other relevant research material is also available from their website.
> 1 votes

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Tags: emotion, measurement, methodology
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