# Question
Title: The effects of bilingualism on colour perception
Peltola et al. (2012) showed that there are two types of bilinguals.

1. *Balanced bilinguals* mix their two languages and are effected by linguistic categories from both.
2. *Dominant bilinguals* seem to switch on the categories of the language they are using, and suppress the categories of the language not in use.

The task Peltola et al. (2012) studied was phoneme categories. The boundaries between vowels are arbitrary and set by the language of the user. The researchers focused on two sounds that are categorised as different vowels in Finnish, but are the same vowel in Swedish. When dominant bilingual participants were briefed about the study in Finnish, they distinguished the sounds quickly. When the same participants were briefed about the same experiment a week later in Swedish, their ability to distinguish the sounds slowed significantly. The balanced bilinguals were equally slow under both briefings.

A similar arbitrary language-dependent categorization exists in colour perception (Regier & Kay, 2009). In fact, the effect of this arbitrary categorization is even lateralized: the Whorf hypothesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left (Gilbert et al., 2006)! So the basics of linguistic relativity seem to be cross-modal.

**Do dominant bilinguals switch linguistic categories on and off in the visual domain? Is the result of Peltola et al. (2012) cross-modal?**

# Answer
This paper was written in 2010:

Perceptual shift in bilingualism: brain potentials reveal plasticity in pre-attentive colour perception.

> In this paper, we test whether in Greek speakers exposure to a new cultural environment (UK) with contrasting colour terminology from their native language affects early perceptual processing as indexed by an electrophysiological correlate of visual detection of colour luminance. We also report semantic mapping of native colour terms and colour similarity judgements. Results reveal convergence of linguistic descriptions, cognitive processing, and early perception of colour in bilinguals.

There are some important (but speculative) considerations here, in my opinion:

1) Aspects of color are defined culturally. Each culture arbitrarily places borders to divide the regions of a continuous spectrum and we pass these divisions on to our children.

2) Different cultures may have non-overlapping hues distributed across a coarse division. For instance, if we took the coarse color "green" and divided it up into 15 shades so that my greens are 3, 8, and 12 and my foreign friend's is 8, 10, and 15 are hues that we each strongly associate with green (because they're typical in our culture). However, my 3 is too close to yellow for my foreign friend and his 15 is too close to blue for me (and I want to call it "aqua").

3) There's also the difficult that the colors we experience in the world aren't pure colors on a ROYGBIV spectrum. An apparently uniform garment can often be small-grain ensembles of many different colored threads.
> 6 votes

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Tags: perception, vision, linguistics, color, cross-modal
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# Question
Title: Why people choose "boring" colors for new cars?
I've been interested in this question for a few years, sorry if this is not the right place to ask it.

As I've been driving around the US for the last few years, I noticed that some community parking lots "lack color" - the vehicles can be defined as colorless - they are white, black, various shades of gray or beige. Yet I've seen several new car catalogs and see that most cars come in several colors.

I was surprised to see this "lack of color" again and again, so I googled it, and found that the trend is not just in America, but worldwide:

2009 Top 10 world car colors

This is interesting, because **I've never ever heard of white, silver or black being called people's favorite color**. Most search results point to "blue" being the favorite color (at least in the United States) for English search results.

This begs the question: **Why do people go for boring/conservate exterior car colors, like white or silver when buying a new car, instead of choosing their favorite color?**

Here are my wild guesses, and it would be great to debunk them:

* Is this due to conformity, resale value, or an attempt to stand out less on a highway?
* Is this because a car is big enough to be seen with rods in the eye?
* Or do people see their cars as just another "appliance", like a toaster, microwave or a fridge, and pick a color similar to what they see in their kitchen?

I appreciate your input!

PS. This article is especially interesting, because it predicts **orange/brown becoming the "new color" of expensive cars**, while most color psychology results I've seen list people naming **orange as "cheap"** color, and advise to avoid it.

America's favorite car colors for 2012 are ... boring

# Answer
Mainly, because they're too noticeable.

You don't really see houses in electric green, pink, or yellow. No one wants to stand out in a crowd or be the sore thumb.

Here: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/10/12/survey-americans-pretty-much-the-whole-world-prefers-boring-colored-cars

I'll post more sources when I can.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, color
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# Question
Title: Are there any reliable self-tests for autism spectrum disorder?
Are there any reliable tests, on-line or available for download, for auto-diagnosis for autism spectrum disorder (including Asperger syndrome)?

I've found that test: http://rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php and treated the results seriously, but I've discovered the questions are strongly based on The Neanderthal Theory of autism, which was answered as having no real scientific basis in this discussion: Is the Neanderthal Theory of Autistic brain a reasonable scientific theory?

So now I'm searching for another test, that is verified by scientists and not based on some unproved assumptions.

**To be clear**: I'm fully aware that no self-diagnosis can be replacement for diagnosis by professional. I'm aware that the results can be strongly affected by my personal assumptions. However, I'm not decided to get formal diagnosis because it would give me no benefits now and my claims to be diagnosed could be rejected because my social skills have been strongly improved in my adult life.

# Answer
> 8 votes
You could take the AQ Test, which is based on the Autism Spectrum Quotient. It was published by the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University. It doesn't give you a diagnosis, but rather suggests that some have more autistic traits based on their score. It measures autistic tendencies other than ones that would be considered a disorder, like most in the DSM.

One of my best friends has Aspergers. He isn't as socially inclined, but he's incredibly brilliant, with an IQ of over genius, and has remarkable spacial intelligence (the ability to take apart things in his mind). Although I don't have any form of Autism, I do have the gene for spacial intelligence, and can assemble and dissemble things as large and complex as glass skyscrapers, although I am not nearly as intelligent as my friend. My father also has this ability, and it is thought that it was passed through his side of the family, as almost all of them majored in the sciences (see hyperlink). This is interesting, because spacial intelligence is not measured in a standardized IQ Test, which means it isn't officially recognized as a form of intelligence (due to it being kind of hard to measure). What's more interesting is that anyone who has strong spacial intelligence can tell you that it's based on examining parts and breaking them into smaller parts, much like the DSM cites that a person with Autism has:

> "(d) persistent precoccupation with parts of objects."

This supports the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. This theory cites that there are different types of intelligence, and among those are not only **Spacial** but interestingly enough, **Interpersonal**, which, according to the DSM, Autistic people do not tend to have. It would make sense that there were different variations of the human race who were able to develop diverse skills, as the intelligences are widely varied. Neanderthals could have invented Spacial Intelligence, but could have lacked strong Interpersonal Intelligence. We could have inherited these genes from intermingling these variations.

Based on your theories of autism, I believe the AQ test is one of the best suited tests for determining whether different traits were passed through the human species. However, although I think this is an interesting theory, I wouldn't discuss this with someone who has Autism because he/she might find it offensive.

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, autism, aspergers
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# Question
Title: Is the energy of an action potential divided among multiple axon terminals?
My understanding is that the bulk of an axon is myelinated, greatly adding to the efficiency of transmitting action potentials. However, the axon terminals are not myelinated. I'm wondering if the energy of an action potential is divided among the various branched terminals of an axon and, if so, how it's divided. For the purpose of this question, I think it's safe to assume that an action potential loses no energy while travelling down the main myelinated part of an axon.

# Answer
> 4 votes
From my understanding, no, this is not the case: `action potentials`, in the axon terminal(s) and other non-myelinated areas, travel like a wave, thus activating all terminals with the same starting energy.

In the myelinated areas of the axon, however, the charge instead performs `Saltatory conduction`, where the charge jumps from one `node of Ranvier` to the next extremely quickly.

You may be interested in the Wikipedia article on `Neurotransmission`. Unfortunately, a few of the citation links on that page are dead, but it should offer some good material anyway.

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Tags: neuroscience, neural-network
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title: Do feelings have a purpose?

text:
# Question
Title: Do feelings have a purpose?
A car has dashboard lights, like "check engine" to indicate malfunctions, etc. Do human feelings have some similar, meaningful function (x produces feeling y), or are feelings just random glitches of cognition?

I can think of feelings that are easy to define:

* **pain**, localized to the injury site as serving a purpose: do not use the injured limb until it feels healed.
* **Heartburn** may be a feeling associated with eating incorrect types of foods: stop chewing gum and the feeling goes away.
* Feeling **heat**/cold has a purpose that may be connected to metabolism and thermoregulation.
* Feeling of **hunger** is relieved by eating

For example, the feeling of hunger can be explained by the balance of hormones of leptin and ghrelin, which control appetite and the feeling of satiety.

But what about those other feelings, defined by abstract words from dictionaries? Jealous, silly, disgusted,motivated,comfortable, etc, etc. Here's a list of human feelings. One can imagine what they are, but to catch oneself in one of them is a completely different thing. **I'm interested if feeling in some way has a purpose.** Can we say something about the hormone/neurotransmitter levels based on how a person is feeling?

# Answer
> 7 votes
To me the question is equivalent to what is the function of **consciousness** itself.

Let me elaborate. There is a difference between **affects/emotional circuits** and **feelings**. The level at which for eg. Jaak Panksepp works is emotional circuits or affects that are primarily unconscious and can be conceived of in terms of instincts.

If **fear** circuit is activated, the organism exhibits a **flight-fight-freeze** response. Conscious feeling of fear may or may not be involved, but physiological changes like activation of sympathetic system happens. If the unconscious fear circuit is OK to keep us out of harm's way (predators) why do we also need to *feel* fearful? A related meta question is, if a zombie behaving like me, but having no ***qualia***, can and will succeed similar to me, why have consciousness?

I'll address the questions, but first let me solidify the claim that unconscious processes are sufficient for most adaptive regulations. Consider your example of heat/cold as thermo-regulation of body temperature...but do you really need to 'feel' heat/cold for that. Consider when you are sound asleep- you still unconsciously cover with blanket or throw away blanket depending on how sweaty/ cold you are- you dont need to consciously register that. So thermo-regulation, like other adaptive actions of affects, can happen in absence of accompanying felt feelings.

So what is the purpose of consciousness/feelings? They provide flexibility to behavior and leave it to us whether we want to indulge in adaptive hardwired behavior or do differently. Taking our cold/heat analogy, instead of wiring our thermo-regulation behavior entirely, feelings provide us a way to keep remaining cold, despite feeling cold.

Similarly, consciousness/'free wont' gives the ability to **suppress prepotent (adaptive in short term) response** in favor of our long term view or values. By way of another example, if all we had was an unconscious fear circuit, we would always run when confronted with large challenges that are insurmountable; but when the conscious feeling of fear comes into play, although we may feel sacred as hell when confronted with larger opponents, we can still act bravely and with integrity- and that may be far adaptive in the longer run.

So the short answer is that conscious feelings like jealousy etc. exist **so that we can act contra to that feeling if we wished to do so** and are not doomed to always act as per what the feeling dictates!

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Tags: emotion
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# Question
Title: Are there already models for planning and goal-directed behaviour?
I'm interested in planning and how one is able to take action and plan ahead at the same time. I could imagine one could make observations and project these into the future using past experiences. The reward system could then sort out favorable outcomes which one could aim for, taking the necessary steps.

However I don't know if this is really how the reward system works (I wasn't able to find resources especially for "future" reward) and I can also see difficulties in terms of interference with control of the current situation - planning would have to be handled as some sort of suppressed action.

So are there already cognitive models that try to explain planning and how planning and action could work in parallel (although interacting)?

# Answer
Reward systems are one of the most actively studied topics in (cognitive) neuroscience and prediction error - that is, deviations from expected "future" reward - play a big role in that. Since you're particularly interested in models, I recommend checking out the work of Matt Botvinick and Nathaniel Daw. Here are a few papers that might be good starting points:

Glascher, Daw, Dayan, & O’Doherty (2010). States versus Rewards: Dissociable Neural Prediction Error Signals Underlying Model-Based and Model-Free Reinforcement Learning. *Neuron, 66*, 585-595.

den Ouden, Friston, Daw, McIntosh, & Stephan (2009). A Dual Role for Prediction Error in Associative Learning. *Cerebral Cortex, 19*, 1175-1185.

Solway & Botvinick (2012). Goal-directed decision making as probabilistic inference: A computational framework and potential neural correlates. *Psycholological Review, 119*, 120-154.

Botvinick & Plaut (2004). Doing without schema hierarchies: A recurrent connectionist approach to routine sequential action and its pathologies. *Psychological Review, 111*, 395-429.
> 5 votes

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, motivation, motor, goals
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# Question
Title: Any research on right-hand/left-hand based preferences when interacting with an interface?
My original question is "Left or right placement of interactive elements on a web page", but only now did I find a place where I think I can find the right people to understand it.

The gist is: is there any natural inclination in right-handed people, when reading a web page, for example, to prefer those interface elements which lead to actions (e.g. "print", "save", "get a link", etc.) to be placed on the right side of the screen and then, to prefer navigational elements (e.g. menus, especially tree-structured category menus) to be placed on the left side, while the preference for content for reading would be in the middle?

That is: navigation (reference stuff) on the left, content (passive perception stuff) in the middle, action elements on the right, all in this manner because of a potential instinct to reach for anything action related with one's right hand.

Is there any research or at least speculation on the subject?

And a follow-up question: if there is such an inclination does it appear to be reverse in left-handed people?

*update:* \- similar question asked here: http://www.quora.com/Are-right-handers-more-likely-to-rest-their-cursor-pointer-on-the-right-hand-side-of-the-screen

# Answer
> 3 votes
There is indeed some research on handedness and user interfaces but not exactly at the level you seem to be after. Handedness matters for tablet interfaces, hand occlusion is a particular concern there.

Some references: http://hal.inria.fr/hal-00670516/en and http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.89.4546

Speculating myself a little bit, I would however be careful when drawing practical conclusions from any putative “natural” handedness-related inclination. Maybe there is such a thing and it could conceivably be measured but you need much more than that to justify any UI decision.

In particular, cultural factors (in a broad sense, including web and platform conventions) could just as well play a big role. The usability literature has always emphasized consistency and the fact that your interface is just going to be one of many interfaces with which users are regularly interacting so when in doubt always try to follow common practice, not necessarily because it is better as such but simply to avoid confusing your users. In any case, there is no reason to worry specifically about “natural” inclinations (as opposed to learned ones).

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Tags: motor, hci
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# Question
Title: What's the frequency of the ringing in my ear?
I have ringing in my ears that has become constant over time. Most of the time I just ignore it, to tell you the truth I can't even remember when it started. Lately I'm curious what the frequency of the ringing is.

Is it the same for everyone or does it vary?`The answer seems to be that it varies`

Are there any usual suspect frequencies?

If it's always different from person to person, what's the easiest way of figuring out what it is? Is there an app for that? `I still haven't found answer to this`

When I chew something tough, many times I can hear the ringing increase in loudness and decrease as I flex my jaw and release. Thought this might be relevent.

# Answer
> 13 votes
The frequency is individual, and known as tinnitus frequency or pitch.

From Okamoto et al., 2010:

> Our target notched music introduced a functional deafferentation of auditory neurons corresponding to the eliminated frequency band, and because this frequency band overlapped the individual tinnitus frequency, the notched music no longer stimulated the cortical area corresponding to the tinnitus frequency, although it still excited surrounding neuron.

There is a dependency on "training" (from a Discover article):

> Even in adulthood, experiencing new sounds can rewire the auditory cortex.
> If a rat is trained to recognize sounds at a particular frequency, the
> corresponding region of the tone map will get bigger.

From König et al., 2006:

> To further examine the relation between tinnitus pitch and hearing loss, we grouped the patients by tinnitus pitch (\<=3 kHz, 4 kHz, \>=6 kHz) and calculated the mean audiogram as well as the mean audiogram edge frequency for each group

## References

Okamoto, H., Stracke, H., Stoll, W., & Pantev, C. (2010). Listening to tailor-made notched music reduces tinnitus loudness and tinnitus-related auditory cortex activity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(3), 1207-1210. PDF

König, O., Schaette, R., Kempter, R., & Gross, M. (2006). Course of hearing loss and occurrence of tinnitus. Hearing research, 221(1), 59-64. PDF

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Tags: neurology, hearing
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# Question
Title: Are there statistics about how many assertive people there are in the world?
Based on my own experience, assertiveness is a rather rare commodity to be found among people, which in my opinion causes most of the troubles this world has.

Are there any statistics that attempt to measure how many assertive people there are in the world (or at least in some societies) compared to passive, aggressive and passive-aggressive people?

# Answer
One method of estimating assertiveness would be to look at scores on self-report tests that aim to measure assertiveness. Measuring in this way suggests that assertiveness, as with other traits, is on a continuum. Thus, classifying someone as assertive or not assertive would involve a judgement call. Nonetheless, once you have an estimate of the proportion passing such a threshold, you could then multiply population size by proportion classified as assertive to get a population estimate of assertiveness.

The NEO-IPIP has an assertiveness scale. But you'd have to hunt down some reasonable test norms. Alternatively, the NEO-PI would also be useful and the test manual would provide means and standard deviations for the corresponding assertiveness scale.

```
E3: ASSERTIVENESS (.84)
+ keyed
    Take charge.
    Try to lead others.
    Can talk others into doing things.
    Seek to influence others.
    Take control of things.

– keyed
    Wait for others to lead the way.
    Keep in the background.
    Have little to say.
    Don't like to draw attention to myself.
    Hold back my opinions.

```

Herzberger et al (1984) provides one simple example. They created what they called the Assertiveness Self-Report Inventory. It included items like

> 1. When my date has acted rudely at a party, I don' hesitate to let him/her know I don'd like it.
> 2. After eating an excellent meal at a restaurant, I do not hesitate to compliment the chef.
> 3. When people use my car and don't refill the tank, I let them know I feel unfairly treated.

Overall there were 25 items True/False items like this. Using a relatively small university sample (around 150 all up), mean number of items endorsed was around 10 and the standard deviation was around 4. You could potentially look more carefully at such items perhaps using expert raters of scores to generate a threshold above which constitutes an assertive personality. For sake of example, you might determine that participants who have endorsed 12 items or more are deemed to be "assertive". If you had the raw data, you could determine what sample endorsed 12 or more items. Failing that, you could get an approximate estimate using a normal distribution approximation based on the mean and standard deviation or some variant on this approach.

Of course, there are many limitations to this approach:

1. Self-reported personality is not the same as behaviour or some more objective or other report measure of personality.
2. defining the cut-off can be somewhat arbitrary.
3. You would need to define more clearly how you want to conceptualise assertiveness, in that you seem to be distinguishing a more adaptive form of assertiveness in contrast to a more aggressive approach.
4. Getting representative and large norms for even one country is difficult, let alone the entire world. That said, the NEO-PI and IPIP are likely to offer reasonable existing sources.
5. As others have mentioned, cultural norms should have a dramatic effect on what constitutes reasonable ways of asserting your interests in social ettings. This sociological perspective may even provide a better understanding the phenomena of interest.

### References

* Herzberger, S. D., Chan, E., & Katz, J. (1984). The development of an assertiveness self-report inventory. Journal of Personality Assessment, 48(3), 317-323.
> 5 votes

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Tags: personality, well-being
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# Question
Title: How can the aversion response be explained neurologically?
If Dopamine and Dopamine D2 receptor is involved in craving, wanting and clinging towards something or incentive salience

> Dopamine is closely associated with reward-seeking behaviors, such as approach, consumption, and addiction.\[38\] Recent researches suggest that the firing of dopaminergic neurons is a motivational substance as a consequence of reward-anticipation. This hypothesis is based on the evidence that, when a reward is greater than expected, the firing of certain dopaminergic neurons increases, which consequently increases desire or motivation towards the reward (from dopamine on Wikipedia)

What is the opposite mechanism in humans - by which we are experiencing aversion from something?

For example, someone finds something rotten, stinky and covered in white fuzzy mold in a plastic bag. Eww! Gross! Get it away! don't touch it! Keep distance. **What is neurologically responsible for the person's feeling of aversion towards an object like that?**

Are there different pathways to aversion?

For example, would seeing a person who looks like a witch from fairy tales (old, ugly, rotten teeth, lots of warts, body odor) cause the same aversion response as moldy food?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I remembered that Disgust is one of the 6 major emotions and there is quite a lot written about it:

> The neural basis of disgust
>
> The scientific attempts to map specific emotions onto underlying neural substrates dates back to the first half of the 20th century. However, it was not until the mid-1990s when it was recognized that six basic emotions, including disgust, were each related to a specific neural structure and therefore considered to be a part of the clinical neurosciences.\[23\] Functional MRI experiments have revealed that the **anterior insula in the brain** is particularly active when experiencing disgust, when being exposed to offensive tastes, and when viewing facial expressions of disgust.\[24\] The research has supported that there are independent neural systems in the brain, each handling a specific basic emotion.\[4\] Specifically, f-MRI studies have provided evidence for the activation of the insula in disgust recognition, as well as visceral changes in disgust reactions such as the feeling of nausea.\[4\] The importance of disgust recognition and the visceral reaction of "feeling disgusted" is evident when considering the survival of organisms, and the evolutionary benefit of avoiding contamination.\[4\] \[edit\]

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: Why do drivers not slow down when they see signs indicating road work?
I found the following anecdote on Quora

> Many years ago, I worked for a gas & electric power company, and had been a member of a crew installing a road-side gas main. Despite the signs, flashing lights, and traffic cones we'd set up well in advance of the work zone, the overwhelming majority of people would speed past us--sometimes within an arm's length, seemingly having no regard for our safety. Our supervisor showed up to check on our progress, and, witnessing the danger, he walked to our truck, took out a yellow compressor hose, and rolled it out across the road. Immediately & without exception, from that point on, every single car slowed down before driving over the hose.

This is the worker's interpretation of the behavior:

> In my youthful mind, I concluded that people were simply more concerned about damaging their cars than they were about damaging other people, but in my now middle-aged mind, I believe it's more complex than that. Maybe it's one of those countless subconscious, split-second decisions our minds have to make throughout each day, assessing probabilities & adjusting accordingly: 'I see the road crew, I've never struck a person with my car before, it's much more likely than not that I won't strike a person today, and those people are aware of my car & have the ability to avoid it, therefore, carry on.' \[versus\] 'I see an object on the road, I see that I can't avoid the object, I've experienced damage to my car before when driving over objects in the road, and that object isn't going to move, therefore, caution is merited.'

Is this interpretation correct?

# Answer
Presumably the decision of drivers to slow down in response to work zone signage is influenced by many factors.

* Signage and road factors: Presumably there are a wide range of factors related to the nature of the signs and the structure of the road setting that influence whether people slow down. For example, I've seen road work signage on freeways that were often in place even when no actual road work is occurring. In these cases I've seen many drivers slow down little if at all. In contrast, I typically see much greater reduction in speeds when actual road work is occurring. Or for example, I imagine that a worker standing with a sign would be more effective than a static sign.
* Cultural and norm factors: Presumably countries and regions differ in cultural attitudes to driving, the acceptability of speeding, and the general tolerance for risk taking. Road safety advertising employ a wide range of strategies for reducing speeding including targeting personal interest (e.g., you'll get fined if you speed) or highlighting consequences (e.g., speeding increases the likelihood of killing yourself and others).

## A few empirical studies

Jarvis (1983) performed empirical research on Australian highways and found that

> There is a clear indication that work area speed limits reduce vehicle speed on entry into the work zone; however, the large majority of drivers still exceed the speed limit posted.

Garber and Patel (1995) found that signs triggered by radars indicating excessive speed were more effective in slowing cars than static signs.

### References

* Garber, N. J., & Patel, S. T. (1995). Control of vehicle speeds in temporary traffic control zones (work zones) using changeable message signs with radar. Transportation Research Record, (1509), 73-81.
* Jarvis, J. R. (1983). The Effectiveness of Road Work Speed Limit Signs. Australian Road Research, 13(3).
> 6 votes

# Answer
This short talk deals with issues of "cheating slightly" :Dan Ariely: Our buggy moral code. While it does not explain why a hose slowed down traffic, the speaker discusses cases of "I see others cheating, so it's ok to cheat a little more".

In case of road work, people slightly bend traffic laws. They see other drivers from the same state or same social class(ex:a bunch of cheap cars) cheating on traffic laws. It's similar to people from the same college cheating, as described in the talk. Following the talks logic, if a driver sees others speed In a work zone, the driver is much more likely to speed. And with a constant stream of traffic, this effect would not stop.

It would be interesting to hear if a single driver on an empty road would slow down for men in work zone.
> 1 votes

# Answer
It may also be due to errors in perception. Our brains did not evolve to perceive/judge objects and distances while traveling at such high speeds and we may misjudge how fast we are actually going to how fast we think is safe. There are some studies out there that ask people how long the white dividing lines on freeways are (people always under estimate the length). I think I came across these studies in Daniel Kahneman's, Thinking Fast and Slow.
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, decision-making, human-factors
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# Question
Title: Positive and negative reinforcement and punishment effectiveness
According to Skinner, positive reinforcement is superior to punishment in altering behavior.

> As Skinner discussed, positive reinforcement is superior to punishment in altering behavior. He maintained that punishment was not simply the opposite of positive reinforcement; positive reinforcement results in lasting behavioral modification, whereas punishment changes behavior only temporarily and presents many detrimental side effects.

* **From the different combinations of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment and negative punishment, which has been shown to be the most effective in behaviour modification?**
* **Also, does combining stimuli like positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, become more effective?**

# Answer
In a two-alternative forced choice task with Mongolian Gerbils, Illango et al. (2010) compared the effectiveness of appetitive, aversive, and a combination of appetitive and aversive reinforcers. They conclude that the combination of appetitive and aversive reinforcers led

* to the highest speed of acquisition
* to maximum possible performance
* and delayed extinction

Note, however, that this does not have to be an effect of the reinforcers, but might also be an effect of the informational feedback. In a study on human category learning, Ashby & O'Brian (2007) compared the effectiveness of positive and negative *feedback* (i.e., not reinforcers) in a two-alternative forced choice task. They also found that a combination of positive and negative feedback results in the best performance.

**References**

Ashby FG, O'Brien JB. (2007) The effects of positive versus negative feedback on information-integration category learning. Percept Psychophys 69(6):865-78. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18018967

Ilango A, Wetzel W, Scheich H, Ohl FW. (2010) The combination of appetitive and aversive reinforcers and the nature of their interaction during auditory learning. Neuroscience. 166(3):752-62. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20080152
> 14 votes

# Answer
For sake of covering all my bases, I'll begin with brief, simple definitions (that I'm sure you probably know, but can't say for others). Much of the material is heavily paraphrased or explained in references listed.

**Positive reinforcement** is the process by which certain consequences of a response increase the probability that the response will recur. (Let's stick with primary to simplify things a bit.)

**Negative reinforcement** is a process by which a response that leads to the removal of an aversive event is increased.

NOTE: **Punishment** is *not* an equivalent nor interchangeable term. Punishment is an aversive stimulus that is presented specifically to weaken or suppress an undesired response.

There have been studies on the effectiveness of various permutations of stimuli and forms of reinforcement. **Continuous reinforcement** is when every response is reinforced; this is powerfully effective in rapidly achieving manipulation of behavior - though these changes are easily reverted if suddenly reinforcement is suddenly lifted.

In contrast, **partial**, or **intermittent reinforcement** has been shown to be a means to continue/keep behavior... resistant to extinction. A classic example is that with casino gambling - one's reward is obtained at various intervals of time. The first and occasional introductory "wins" may provide feelings of exaltation. In addition, since gambling requires a cost in order to continue with the behavior, the well-known *gambler's fallacy*, a game-theoretic/ecomomic dilemma concept that may also be at play.

On the other hand, punishment deals with the intent to reduce the probability a certain response will reoccur. Deals with the intent of causing undesired consequences the subject will attribute to a given behavior. "In learning theory the punishing event delivered is always contingent on performance and demonstrably reduces the frequency of the behavior being punished." ^

There are examples of various 'reinforcement schedules' ('algorithms', statistical patterns, heuristics, dependent on the objective); if positive stimuli or reward and negative/neutral results manifest fixed-ratio; simply put, the subject of conditioning will catch on, whether the ratios are "behavior" or "time-interval" contingent. The subject will catch on to the pattern, consistency, and this influences the strength of the conditioning effort. Conditioning tends to be most successful when the reward if given on occasion, with time-dependent variability between isolated events.

The most effective strategy generally is to follow with how the use of slot machines manage to get people addicted. "Response rate does not change between (?) reinforcements." The time-variable (desirability irrelevant) chance for reward, spin-to-spin, has been shown to be the most effective.

You may find Premack's Principle relevant to your questions. This concept states that a behavior engaged in this high frequency (intensity) can be used, intentionally or not, to enforce low-frequency.

I have a couple other sources I need to skim through to fix up my response make any statements made more affirmatively concluded from well-designed experiments.

### References
> 9 votes

# Answer
Perhaps when it comes to operant conditioning, it may be helpful to think in terms of targeted behavior first. A student learning about this concept will be helped if they thought of the behavior being targeted for reinforcement.

So consider:

1. What is the behavior being targeted for reinforcement?
2. Is the behavior being targeted, being targeted for an increase in the said behavior, or a decrease in the said behavior?
3. Then comes the observation of what leads to an increase or decrease in the targeted behavior.
4. Under Skinnerian laboratory observations, Skinner and of his ilk, were seeking to observe what and when and how frequent the intended behavior comes about, once the behavior they (the laboratory observers) desired to see in the objects behavior.
5. It is important to note that operant means which behavior is 'operating' in the environment which consequently leads to ultimately a 'reward' or 'punishment' so as to increase or decrease the said behavior.
6. Positive and Negative Reinforcement is thus understood by either extending a reward (positive) or withdrawing a 'punishment', or unpleasant experience (can be considered as punishment), with both strategies designed to increase (reinforce) the targeted behavior.

Things become a little bit murkier when aversive conditioning, positive and negative punishment is thrown into the above equation.

Psychologists/academics tend to complicate issues with their tendency to introduce 'new' terminology for essentially similar concepts, which then makes things a whole lot more complicated than they should be.
> 1 votes

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Tags: behaviorism, conditioning
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# Question
Title: Minimum duration for presenting a visual stimulus on screen
My experiment involves presenting simple visual stimuli briefly on screen (200 ms to 1000 ms). The stimuli would be simple enough (e.g. a circle and a line) but I want to use a range of durations to test out some hypotheses. I would like to know if there's a minimal time for human eyes to perceive simple visual stimuli, so I could say "the durations I've chosen for my experiment are safely above the minimal value suggested by 'so and so' in the psychophysics experiment.

I am sure many factors would have an impact on such a value, such as the participant's condition and how far the target is (in my case it's the distance between someone, sitting at their desk, and the computer screen), etc., but perhaps there are data and rules already established? If anyone knows of applicable guidelines or literature, I would really appreciate it.

(I've tried searching under "tachistoscopic presentation minimum time" but haven't discovered anything useful yet. Any other search term combo would also be helpful.)

# Answer
> 5 votes
In psychophysics, this is known as an absolute threshold. The absolute threshold will depend on a variety of factors such as brightness, size, etc.

It is also important to keep in mind that the time needed to *detect* a stimulus may be too short to cause some desired effect on the participant (e.g. a manipulation). For example, the time needed to detect a stimulus is necessarily shorter than the time needed to identify a stimulus. Though research on subliminal stimuli suggests stimuli can sometimes be presented *below* threshold and still achieve some manipulation. However, some of this research is controversial.

Often, researchers will choose a range of display times specifically in order to unravel the time course of some cognitive process. For instance, when displaying a cluster of dots, how long is needed in order to subitize them?

There is insufficient information in your question to give you an exact number, but I suggest looking at similar studies and see what sort of display times they use.

# Answer
> 3 votes
This depends on intensity but it is shorter at most intensities than your screen could possibly present a stimulus. Don't worry about it or cite references. It would be like citing a reference for why you don't need to worry about quantum effects when testing the best kind of screwdriver.

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Tags: perception, experimental-psychology, vision, psychophysics
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# Question
Title: Does the Hodgkin-Huxley Model take into account the action of the ion pumps (e.g., Na-K-ATPase)?
After the firing of a neuron, the sodium and potassium concentration differences vanish.

It requires some time for cell to actively transport the ions in and out to re-establish the balance.

Does the HH model incorporate this effect?

# Answer
HH doesn't "count ions", it pretends the reservoirs are infinite.

Specifically, the "reversal potential" for each ion species is a constant. This constant is calculated from the Goldman Hodgkins Katz equation which uses the concentrations on either side of the membrane to calculate the reversal potential given the concentration gradient.

We could hypothetically keep this a function of the individual species concentrations and add a current to the model to represent the pump, but you would gain little in predictive power and much in computational complexity.
> 4 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, computational-modeling
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title: What is the definition of pathology?

text:
# Question
Title: What is the definition of pathology?
While trying to get more information for my previous question, I found several different definitions for the terms "pathology" and "pathological." While under normal circumstances I'd be inclined to say the latter stems from the former, there seems to be heavy connotation where terms such as "pathological liar" are concerned.

One of the definitions at dictionary.com states:

> Caused by or evidencing a mentally disturbed condition

Seems a bit vague, to me. **Can anyone clarify this?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
I think the answer can actually be found in the Dictionary.com link you cite:

> `-ological`; *suffix*; used to form adjectives; belonging or relating to a particular type of scientific study; e.g. biological, technological

And (taken from Wikipedia):

> The word pathology is from Ancient Greek *πάθος*, pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and *-λογία*, -logia, "the study of".

So `pathological` would be:

> an adjective describing a thing that belongs or relates to suffering or the feeling of suffering.

(literally translated, of course)

So we can see that it's not just disease-related (suffering) but also mental health-related (feeling of suffering).

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Tags: terminology, abnormal-psychology
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# Question
Title: Is the Raspberry Pi capable of operating as a stimulus presentation system for experiments?
I'm outfitting a small behavioural lab with a fiscal-austerity-induced budget. I'm considering trying out a Raspberry pi for individual participant systems. My tentative plan is to run linux and code experiments in python.

Does anyone have any experience with this?

My primary concern is whether the processor and video capabilities of the Pi will make it accurate enough in terms of timing. Will the Pi have substantial delay / variability between a call to present complicated visual stimuli (like arrays of Gabors) and the time stimuli actually appear on the screen? When a keyboard or mouse button gets pressed, what will be the delay / variability between the actual response time and the recorded response time?

# Answer
> 2 votes
So I've had a chance to try out the RPi for this purpose. Short answer: it works great (with some limitations).

The RPi does not support OpenGL. I approached this system with the idea of using a python environment to create and present experiments. There are two good options for this that I know of, opensesame and psychopy. Psychopy requires an OpenGL python backend (pyglet), so it won't run on the Rpi. Opensesame gives you the option of using the same backend as PsychoPy uses but has other options, one of which does not rely on openGL (based on pygames). This 'legacy' backend works just fine. But the absence of openGL means that graphics rely solely on the 700 mHz CPU, which quickly gets overloaded with any sort of rapidly changing visual stimuli (ie. flowing gabors, video, etc.).

The RPi does have a very good video card (for a $25 computer) that supports OpenGL ES. Riverbank software provides python bindings for OpenGL ES (pogles), so there is the possibility for hardware acceleration in python. This has not currently been implemented on PsychoPy or Opensesame. It probably won't happen anytime soon, because there is currently an additional limitation on this system: there's no way to use OpenGL ES in the linux windowing environment (xwindows). This will probably be developed in the medium-term. But currently even a lightweight version of xwindows on the RPi is noticeably clunky and slow (overclocking the CPU helps with this). OpenGL can be used on the Pi through CPU emulation (via Mesa)... but this so heavily overloads the CPU that it's effectively useless.

So the RPi is not well suited for displaying rapidly changing visual stimuli (ie. flowing gabors, video). And PsychoPy effectively doesn't run. But Opensesame runs fine with the non-openGL 'legacy' backend. For a manual RT experiment involving the presentation of static images, this setup running on the Pi will have much the same timing resolution as the same setup running on any other computer.

And it will get better, probably pretty quickly. OpenGL ES support in xwindows should come pretty quick, and once this is available it will be possible to use OpenGL ES python bindings currently under development to make backends for PsychoPy and OpenSesame. These will support fluid moving stimuli and video, and free up the CPU for other tasks. My personal hope is that this will free enough resources to allow the RPi to interface with other systems... like an eye-tracker computer or an eeg amp.

But for now it seems just fine for basic no-video psychophysics. And it's very, very cheap... even factoring in the cost of a small DVI monitor you should be able to get a data collection system up and running for less than 100 euro.

# Answer
> 1 votes
Your question is not specific enough.

There will be necessary a delay, the actual question is how long will it be and what delay is acceptable for you.

The first question could be answered by knowing the complexity of your program, the language used (Python is slow), and the power of your hardware (the Pi should not be very powerful).

So, if you have a code example that could help. Just an idea, but you can also ask the video game community which could be good at optimizing such things ;)

Considering the second question, I don't know literature on current production software capacities. Psycho-physic literature could help as well as asking more details to open source developers such as those of:

* Psychopy (Python)
* Psychtoolbox-3 (MatLab)

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Tags: methodology, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the sleep study that showed that a percentage of humans have a biological clock that is ~28 hours or greater?
There was an article published some years ago about a sleep study (I think from Germany) that showed about 10-20% of people (European's I think) are genetically predisposed to function on a 30-hour\* cycle. (As opposed to the 24 hour Circadian rhythm.)

\*I think it was 30 hours, but don't know for sure. And I can't seem to find any reference to the study or what this "sleep disorder" is called. From Googling, I **don't** believe it is any of the following:

* Delayed sleep phase disorder
* Segmented Sleep Disorder
* Non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder

The study was **most likely** related to cognitive function and may have been funded by a space agency.

Hope this is on topic here, I just saw this site in Area 51 but didn't read much about it.

# Answer
Free-running circadian periods were estimated to vary from 13 to 65 hours in normal subjects according to a 1979 study by R.A. Wever. This paper was referenced in a more recent article regarding the circadian pacemaker (Czeisler et al., 1999). I could not access the Wever article directly to assess quality. However, the Czeisler article takes issue with the methods of earlier work that purported to show circadian rhythms longer than about 24 hours:

> ...the generality of these findings has been limited by reports that activity (16, 17), knowledge of time of day (18), and exposure to ordinary indoor room light (19, 20) can shift circadian phase or alter the observed free-running circadian period in humans and thus may have influenced those observations (21)."

Czeisler et al. sought to control these confounds and estimate a rhythm with very little variance centered at 24.18 hours.

> Czeisler, C. A., Duffy, J. F., Shanahan, T. L., Brown, E. N., Mitchell, J. F., Rimmer, D. W., … Kronauer, R. E. (1999). Stability, Precision, and Near-24-Hour Period of the Human Circadian Pacemaker. Science, 284(5423), 2177–2181. doi:10.1126/science.284.5423.2177 PDF
>
> R. A. Wever, The Circadian System of Man: Results of Experiments Under Temporal Isolation (Springer-Verlag, New York, 1979); Experientia 40, 1226 (1984).
> 6 votes

# Answer
I can't find the exact study you had in mind, but I think that you are referring to Dr. Charles Czeisler's seminal (and long-term) work on circadian rhythms.

In a recent study of his, he considered the effect of the wavelength of light on the extent to which it was able to reset the circadian "clock", which is the cycle you are referring to. He did experiments in the 70s and 80s with maintaining subjects in "time free" environments to gauge the intrinsic phase of the rhythm.

As an aside, some of the more theoretical mathematical work in this area was done by Art Winfree and a pop-sci account of his work and Czeisler's can be found in Steven Strogatz's book Sync.

> Rüger, M, St. Hillaire, MA et al. (2013)Human phase response curve to a single 6.5 h pulse of short-wavelength light. *Journal of Physiology, 591*(Pt 1),353-63. \[DOI\]
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, reference-request, sleep
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# Question
Title: What is the effect of high expectations on long-term happiness?
Are there any studies about the long term effects of having high expectations of oneself on one's happiness? Does crashing after failing to reach unrealistic goals significantly impact long-term happiness?

# Answer
> 5 votes
There are definitely studies on this, but I don't have the references at hand. I've heard about this in the online Harvard courses on positive psychology by Tal Ben-Shahar.

In terms of "crashing", there are studies about baseline-happiness, showing you bounce back up after a setback, and back down, after a positive event, like winning the lottery. Only intrinsic perspective changes can increase or decrease your base-level of happiness.

He also talks about a study showing "pessimists" are better at estimating their short and long term success rate. And "optimists" are bad at estimating short term, but good at estimating long term success. The interesting thing is, the pessimists set lower expectations, and their base-level of happiness remains. The optimists have higher expectations, and try until they succeed. The increased belief in their own efficacy, and resilience in the face of a set back, helps to increase their base-level of happiness.

On the other side of the coin, he stresses the importance of "realistic optimism". He says the keys to success are a combination of optimism, passion and hard work. Only optimism (high expectations) is not enough. A quote, by approximation, by Maslow:

> Too much optimism does not lead to success, and results in depression. A sense of reality is needed.

You can look into the Stockdale paradox.

Sorry I can't give you a shorter, more concise answer at the moment, maybe I'll revisit this later.

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Tags: emotion, positive-psychology, well-being
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title: Dyslexia and IQ

text:
# Question
Title: Dyslexia and IQ
**Background Information of my questions:** At the age of eight I was "diagnosed" with Dyslexia, I am now 47. I went from not being able to read and barely able to write to a college reading level in 9 months. I was in a program run by a Mrs. Cooper in Pennsylvania. I have taken several different IQ tests during my lifetime and found the results vary widely. I have noted that in the last ten years or so Dyslexia seems to be an almost antiquated diagnosis and am very curious about the definition of dyslexia in current science and the correlation, if any, between Dyslexia and intelligence.

**Questions**:

* Is there any specific IQ test that is directed at measuring the IQ's of people with dyslexia?
* What is the correlation between having dyslexia and IQ?

# Answer
> 4 votes
Looking at google: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/dyslexia-iq-0923.html

I know several dyslexic researchers in computer science and cognitive psychology/neuroscience suffering of big difficulties with spelling for example. I think they that are arguably intelligent despite of the dyslexia !

As for the IQ tests, you should keep in mind that some modules (in the weschler test for ex.) are oriented toward language skills (e.g., analogies), some toward general knowledge and some others toward performance (e.g., memory, visual reasoning).

I don't know to which extent dyslexia could impact each of these modules, but that could explain the differences you observed between tests (i.e. the relative importance they give to language compared to other skills).

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Tags: learning, measurement, intelligence, reading, iq
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# Question
Title: Best practice to handle double negatives when using the expectancy-value model?
My question is regarding the multiplicative combination rule in the Expectancy-value model developed by Fishbein and Ajzen, and the issues regarding the expectancy value-muddle, or the case of "double negatives," in the multiplicative combination.

For my master thesis, I conducted a questionnaire toward a sample of people and asked questions about their attitudes toward a hospitality company. My intention is to derive their attitudes with the help from the expectancy-value model:

$$ \ a=\sum\_{i=1}^{n}b\_{i}e\_{i} $$

a is one respondent's attitude towards the object. $$\ b\_i$$ is the belief that the object has the attribute i. $$\ e\_i$$ is the evaluation of the attribute.

a is one respondent's attitude toward the object. $b\_i$ is the belief that the object has the attribute i. $e\_i$ is the evaluation of the attribute i.

The first question (e) accesses the respondent's opinion of the importance of attribute i (e.g. central location), and the second question (b) accesses the respondent's belief that the hospitality company will deliver attribute i. I also have a direct attitude variable, which is not in the scope of this problem unless it is, of course, a part of the solution.

The respondents choose one alternative on a bipolar semantic differential scale with the extremes between "unimportant - important" (e) and "unlikely - likely" (b) for every attribute with a coded scale between -3 to +3.

The attitude points are compared with various hypothesis t-test. One independent t-test between the experimental group and the control group. And one dependent t-test to investigate a difference within the groups.

It's beyond the scope of the examination to carry out a focus group to elicit the attributes from a representative sample of the population (hospitality company customers). Thus, the reason to use a bipolar scale to "permit" a negative response e.g. "unlikely" instead of "slightly likely" on the lower scale:

> "For example, when - as part of belief elicitation - a person indicates 'my drinking alcohol makes me nauseous,' it is reasonable to use, for that person a unipolar scale to assess the strength of this belief. However, when the same statement is presented to an individual who did not personally emit it, the individual may well judge it to be highly unlikely or false. To permit this kind of response, a bipolar belief scale should be used, such as a seven-point scale ranging from unlikely to likely or fall to true." (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010, p.106)

A problematic issue, the expectancy-value muddle or the case of the double negative, occurs when the respondents answer with a negative evaluation and belief. Newton et al. (2011, p.3) claim that the phenomenon "expectancy-value muddle" occurs since the b\*e "computation are uninterpretable":

> "if both responses were coded on bipolar scales, then the individual would receive the highest score possible due to the multiplication of the two negative terms (-3\*-3=9). Thus, the ranking of scores in the expectancy-value framework becomes contingent upon the method of scaling used. Hence, the rankings of expectancy-value scores are dependent on item scaling can have important implications for the analysis and interpretation of results." (Newton et al., 2011, p.2-3)

Fishbein and Ajzen have also dealt with this problem; French and Hankins (2003) explain the 'psychology of the double negative', which was originally presented by Ajzen and Fishbein (1980):

> "The rationale given by Fishbein and Ajzen for the scoring system adopted is based on what they term the ‘psychology of the double negative’. For instance, if an ‘expectancy’ belief and its associated evaluation were both scored from - 3 to + 3, as recommended by Ajzen and Fishbein (1980), an individual who indicated that (s)he thought an outcome was both likely and good would score the maximum possible (+ 3 * + 3 = + 9), as would an individual who thought the outcome was both unlikely and bad (-3 * -3 = + 9). That is, a negatively valued consequence with a perceived low probability of occurring is thought to be as much a reason for inferring a positive attitude as a positively valued consequence with a perceived high probability of occurring. Note that, according to this viewpoint, the distant positions have led to the same numerical outcome." (French & Hankins, 2003, p.39)

Fishbein and Ajzen thus state that bipolar scaling is the best choice:

> "In sum, evidence available to date indicates that bipolar scoring is generally superior to unipolar scoring of behavioral beliefs." (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2008, p.2231)

And they have also stated that the multiplicative combination is correct:

> "We thus conclude that the multiplication of belief strength and outcome evaluation, which is at the core of the expectancy-value model, is a reasonable and well-supported assumption." (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010, p.118)

What puzzles me is that Fishbein and Ajzen, both in 2008 and 2010, have suggested to convert from a bipolar to a unipolar scale after the data has been collected:

> "Even though the shift from unipolar to bipolar scoring involves a simple linear transformation (i.e., subtraction by 4), it results in a nonlinear transformation of the product term (be). This can be seen in the following computation where the original values of b are transformed by the addition of a constant B, and the values of e by a constant E. For simplicity, only one behavioral belief is entered into the expectancy–value equation:
>
> $$ \ A\_{B}\propto(b+B)(e+E)\propto be+Eb+Be+BE $$
>
> In practice, however, the impact of a linear transformation is often relatively small as a result of a restricted range of belief strength or outcome evaluation scores. In the limiting condition in which scores on either variable are the same for all participants, a linear transformation of that variable will result in a linear transformation of the b * e product, thus having no effect on correlations with external criteria." (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2008, p.2226-2226)

To conclude, both French and Hankins (2003) and Newton et al. (2011) problematize the multiplicative combination because of the double negatives, also called the expectancy-value muddle. They do suggest various solutions but recommend two other models developed by Schmidt (1973) and Haddock and Zanna (1998), the "expectancy-valence model" and "open-ended measures of attitudinal components," respectively.

These models, however, are not applicable to my problem. I have already carried out questionnaires that do have double negatives in the resulting data.

I'm considering to either use the suggestion by Fishbein and Ajzen (2008) or to accept this issue as a "psychology of the double negative" presented by the same authors (1980).

But I'm not sure, and that's why I'm reaching out to this community to ask: What is the best and common practice to overcome this issue with double negatives when using the expectancy-value model?

**Bibliography**

* Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (2008). Scaling and Testing Multiplicative Combinations in the Expectancy–Value Model of Attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38(9), 2222–2247. doi:10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00389.x
* Ajzen, I., & Fishbein, M. (1980). Understanding attitudes and predicting social behavior. Prentice-Hall.
* Fishbein, M., & Ajzen, I. (2010). Predicting and Changing Behavior: The Reasoned Action Approach. Taylor & Francis Group.
* French, D. P., & Hankins, M. (2003). The expectancy-value muddle in the theory of planned behaviour — and some proposed solutions. British Journal of Health Psychology, 8(1), 37–55. doi:10.1348/135910703762879192
* Haddock, G., & Zanna, M. P. (1998). On the use of open-ended measures to assess attitudinal components. British Journal of Social Psychology, 37(2), 129–149. doi:10.1111/j.2044-8309.1998.tb01161.x
* Newton, J. D., Ewing, M. T., Burney, S., & Hay, M. (2011). Resolving the theory of planned behaviour’s “expectancy-value muddle” using dimensional salience. Psychology & Health, 27(5), 588–602. doi:10.1080/08870446.2011.611244
* Schmidt, F. L. (1973). Implications of a measurement problem for expectancy theory research. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 10(2), 243–251. doi:10.1016/0030-5073(73)90016-0

# Answer
> 3 votes
Have you read this:

Fishbein, M., Middlestadt, S. (1995) Noncognitive Effects on Attitude Formation and Change: Fact or Artifact? *Journal of Consumer Psychology, 4*(2),181-202. \[DOI\]

Direct quote from page 187:

> Note that the psychology of the double negative is an essential part of an expectancy-value formulation (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein, 1967; Fish- bein & Ajzen, 1975). From the perspective of an expectancy-value theory, and consistent with Heider's (1958) balance theory, believing that an object does not have a negative characteristic or that performing a behavior will prevent a negative outcome should contribute positively (rather than negatively) to the attitude toward that object or behavior. For example, if a student does not believe (i.e., if he or she disbelieves) that "my professor is a capricious grader," this belief should, according to an expectancy-value formulation, contribute positively (not negatively) to his or her attitude toward my professor.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The problem is fundamentally due to the level of likelihood you allocate to an event, that is variable $e\_i$, should not be measured using a bi-polar scale. Instead, likelihoods should be associated with a percentage, between 0 and 100%. This is a more natural unit, as a "low likelihood" result usually means that the respondent thinks the probability of the occurance to be low, e.g. 20%. I could easily convert a bipolar scale to a percentage scale by using simple arithmetic. E.g. if the scale is -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, then I would convert these numbers to percentages as 0, 16.6, 33.3, 50, 66.6, 83.3, 100. This avoids the double negative problem, and is a more natural measurement of certainty than the bi-polar scale.

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Tags: measurement, methodology, cognitive-modeling, statistics, mathematical-psychology
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# Question
Title: What are some examples of emergent abilities?
By emergent ability I mean this: suppose that competently performing ability Z is contingent on, and only on, having skill X and skill Y developed to a certain level (that is, ability Z is a non-linear combination of ability X and Y that is distinct in type from those abilities).

You would see a person developing, slowly, their abilities X and Y, and then, when they have developed them sufficiently, one would suddenly observe ability Z.

I am interested in this question because it might seem like ability Z is a neurally innate ability that is suddenly triggered by some experience, when in fact this ability is just a combination of other abilities.

My question is perhaps two-fold: Do these sorts of abilities exist, and if so, what are some examples?

# Answer
> 3 votes
Many tasks can be decomposed into subtasks. And in a similar way the skills required to perform a task can be decomposed into component skills. For more detailed discussion, check out discussion of task analysis.

A few examples:

* Driving a manual car requires an additional component skill (using the clutch and gearshift) over and above all the skills required to drive an automatic car (knowledge and application of road rules, speed control, vehicle control, etc.).
* Writing an email requires a wide range of skills including basic skills in using computers, skills in communication and writing, and so on.

Much of education is based on the idea of layering new skills on top of those already established. For example, reading, writing, numeracy, and computing skills are fundamental to a lot of what is taught at university.

Another perspective on your question is to think about transfer and training.

* **Transfer**: Skills in many tasks involve transferring what we already know and then developing some task specific adaptations. For example, if you were to write a report in industry after starting a new job, you would build on all your previous training in report writing, but there would also be some domain specific learning related to the new job. In this sense, the previous acquired skills assist performance, but domain-specific learning is required.
* **Training**: Training, practice, and experience also tend to have a certain structure. Development of skill in an overall task tends to lead to development of component skills. For example, when learning to drive a car, an individual will tend to get practice in all the component skills. The nature of experience itself will encourage development of steering, road navigation, and gear changes. Training can also be designed to deliberately compartmentalise skill development (e.g., see the part-whole training discussions \[Naylor et al (1963)\]).

Relating all this to your specific question, defining component skills and emergent abilities as discrete entities is difficult. Transfer is often relative, and each task in a new context or with different details can alter the dynamics of transfer and performance.

### References

* Naylor, J. C., & Briggs, G. E. (1963). Effects of task complexity and task organization on the relative efficiency of part and whole training methods. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 65(3), 217.

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Tags: developmental-psychology
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# Question
Title: Desire to climb from evolutionary perspective?
When I go near a hill or dune, I feel **desire to climb** there and have a wider look on the surroundings. I know a lot of people who **love** mountains and want to climb higher and higher, but never have thought about why... Many people climb high building, restaurants on TV towers are very expensive, but very popular anyway.

I've recently started to think about it. From evolutionary point of view taking **higher ground** have made a lot of sense. Predators could be seen from larger distance, and in the era of fighting communities, higher grounds such as hills were higher to conquer.

But is such theory scientifically proven? Are there actually any researches on why people want actually to climb higher?

# Answer
> 7 votes
It's an interesting question, I imagine the desire is multifaceted and that it may reflect multiple desires and multiple activities. In particular, I'd distinguish between (a) the desire for a viewing experience and (b) the desire to get to the top and achieve goals.

### Desire to Climb

There are many examples of people taking joy in climbing. This can be seen for example in rock climbing, mountain climbing, and hiking.

Obvious motivations include motivation for exercise and a desire to experience nature. Some mountain climbers are seeking thrills (see sensation seeking). Some studies of mountain climbing mention the flow inducing nature of mountain climbing (see MacAloon et al 1983 for an analysis).

Climbing in such cases also has a rather natural goal of reaching the top. Attaining goals can be satisfying (see goal theory for further elaboration). And clear goals may be part of the enjoyment in various related activities such as in sports and games.

Part of these activities is that the process of reaching the top is often a big part of the pleasure independent of the pleasure of the final view.

### Desire for a view

There is another broad class of behaviour related to people's desire for a "good view". Houses, apartments, offices, restaurants, and so on with better views are valued by people. Viewing platforms are popular tourist attractions.

Benson et al (1998) provide an empirical analysis of the price added to real estate that is attributable to various view types and quality of views. In their analysis they found that high quality ocean front views added some of the most to house prices.

I imagine a distinction could also be made between people's desire for a once off experience and a daily experience. There is a novelty associated with a viewing platform whereby for that moment you get to see the world from a different perspective. You get to see connections between streets and buildings or mountains and rivers that you otherwise miss when immersed at regular ground level. I wonder whether this desire for a novel experience is somewhat different to a desire for a pleasant view on a daily basis.

### Reflections on evolutionary psychology

I'm always a little bit uncomfortable with evolutionary psychology arguments. They often have a "just so" feel about them where it is difficult to prove or disprove them.

For example, I could make up an evolutionary argument. Human ancestors presumably climbed trees and liked to survey the land. Places which provided a good overview of the surrounding land enabled greater identification of both potential benefits (e.g., food, drinking resources, mating opportunities) and threats (e.g., other tribes, predators, scarcity of food and water). Such places would also provide further information on impending weather. Thus, humans and ancestors may have been more likely to survive and reproduce if they experienced pleasure in such circumstances.

However, the above evolutionary argument could also be complete rubbish. The desire to experience a view may be connected to many other rational explanations. Or alternatively, you could look at the nature of aesthetics and how they map on to the beauty of a view.

For further discussion of evolutionary psychology and aesthetics see here

### References

* MacAloon, J., Csikszentmihalyi, M., Harris, J. C., & Park, R. J. (1983). Deep play and the flow experience in rock climbing. Play, games and sports in cultural contexts., 361-384.
* Benson, E. D., Hansen, J. L., Schwartz, Jr, A. L., & Smersh, G. T. (1998). Pricing residential amenities: the value of a view. The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, 16(1), 55-73.

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Tags: motivation, evolution, aesthetics
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# Question
Title: Is good short term memory correlated with good long term memory?
Is there any link between one's ability to store information in their short term memory, with their ability to store information in their long term memory?

# Answer
There is a functional dissociation between short and long-term memory.

It was observed by Milner (1966) that a patient (case H.M) can have a normally working short-term memory with an impaired long term one; and by Shallice & Warrington (1970) that a patient (K.F.) can have correct long-term memory performance while a severe impairment in short-term memory.

So there is no simple relationship between the two, if at all. Nevertheless, it could be a correlation but probably mediated by other factors such as attentional processes, explicit learning strategy etc.
> 6 votes

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Tags: learning
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title: Predicting how long a task will take

text:
# Question
Title: Predicting how long a task will take
As a software engineer I have always struggled with predicting how long a project would take by underestimating and I have noticed that all of my colleagues have the same problem. In this video at 3:32 Luke Jones labels this problem `The familiar road phenomena` where people underestimate how long a task will take when they are familiar with the task.

* What studies have been conducted on the familiar road phenomena?
* Why do humans do this and what is the evolutionary advantage?

# Answer
If someone is familiar with repeating a task, it becomes a habit. Routines within a habit take less brain power. With less conscious effort needed to do it, someone would most likely underestimate or gloss over what the task consists of.

This is just one possible interpretation; there might be other reasons as well.

The evolutionary advantage would be that we need less mental resources to deal with things we are familiar with. We would say, struggle to learn to peel a potato at first, but after a few dozen/hundred times, we do it effortlessly. The brain will try to optimize these things into a habit loop to conserve resources needed to do things. Without habits, we would spend too much time on 'simple' things like recognizing a person's facial features.

Source: Duhigg, Charles. *The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business*. Random House, 2012.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, time
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# Question
Title: What is the proper term for the synchronization of eye movements?
In humans and most two eyed species, eye movements synchronize so that both eyes are focused on the same point. This facilitates 3D vision significantly, allowing bifocal cues. I remember reading a bit about this but I can't recall the actual term or any related words I would use to find more information on the phenomenon.

What is this "synchronization" called?

# Answer
> 5 votes
**binocular coordination**

Linked below is a general overview of binocular coordination which also describes how, due to independent saccades events, mammalian eyes are generally *not* actually very well "synchronized".

Kirkby JA, Webster LA, Blythe HI, Liversedge SP. (2008) Binocular coordination during reading and non-reading tasks. Psychol Bull. 134(5):742-63

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18729571

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Tags: terminology, vision, eye-movement
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# Question
Title: Is there sub-conscious error correction in interpreting heard language?
My personal experience suggests there is a background process taking place when interpreting a partially heard utterance. The sound is taken in, the conscious part of my mind begins the process of asking for a repetition because of imperfect reception and then a possible interpretation is delivered to my conscious mind for acceptance or rejection. Usually the logic can be seen, how a few words heard imperfectly can be combined to make sense, a partially heard name combined with a pronoun and a mental list of participants narrows the possibilities to one or two, but I don't have a sense of doing this analysis consciously. A second, almost a paraphrase, interpretation is offered up seemingly from the sub-conscious, "she's asking about Tony's birthday."

If you try to search for linguistics or language and error correction you will find out that there is a lot of concern about teacher behavior during language acquisition. That is *not* what I want to know about.

**I would like to know if there is a subfield in cog-sci that deals with error correction specifically with regard to heard language.** Somewhere I can begin a search. Sometimes all you need is the right search terms.

# Answer
A simple explanation for the phenomenon is top-down feedback. As the bottom-up acoustic/phonological input is coming in, there is top-down feedback based on your knowledge of the language, the situation, and all of the other contextual information, which is helping to constrain or inform your interpretation of the bottom-up signal. A classic example that is close to the example in your question is the *phoneme restoration effect* (originally demonstrated by Warren in 1970, and studied in depth by Samuel for decades): if a speech sound is replaced with an extraneous sound like a cough, listeners still report hearing the missing speech sound. Importantly, they report hearing exactly the sound that would belong in that context. So a manipulated word like "\*eel"(where the * corresponds to the cough), sounds like "wheel" if it is the context "the \*eel was on the axle", but the same word sounds like "peel" in the context of "the \*eel was on the orange".

This kind of integration of multiple sources of information is typically called "interactive processing". For a review in the domain of speech perception see McClelland, Mirman, & Holt (2006).

References:

McClelland, J. L., Mirman, D., & Holt, L. L. (2006). Are there interactive processes in speech perception? *Trends in cognitive sciences*, 10(8), 363–369. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.06.007

Samuel, A. G. (1981). Phonemic restoration: Insights from a new methodology. *Journal of Experimental Psychology: General*, 110(4), 474–494.

Samuel, A. G. (1996). Does lexical information influence the perceptual restoration of phonemes? *Journal of Experimental Psychology: General*, 125(1), 28–51.

Warren, R. M. (1970). Perceptual restoration of missing speech sounds. *Science*, 167(3917), 392–393.
> 2 votes

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Tags: terminology, language, signal-detection
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title: Psychology of timbre processing

text:
# Question
Title: Psychology of timbre processing
Are there any studies concerning the psychological aspects of timbre processing in the brain, e.g. while listening to music? In particular, can any lower-level correlates be discerned when trying to answer questions like:

* what makes particular timbres more pleasing than others? (e.g. a trumpet vs pure sine wave)
* what accounts for different preferences between people? (e.g. preference for piano sound over trumpet)

# Answer
For a general discussion of neural correlates of music perception, check out the review by Koelsch et al (2005).

Menon et al (2002) provide a starting point for learning about neural correlates of timbre processing. I quote the abstract. But have a look at the article for more info

> Timbre is a major structuring force in music and one of the most important and ecologically relevant features of auditory events. We used sound stimuli selected on the basis of previous psychophysiological studies to investigate the neural correlates of timbre perception. Our results indicate that both the **left and right hemispheres are involved in timbre processing**, challenging the conventional notion that the elementary attributes of musical perception are predominantly lateralized to the right hemisphere. **Signiﬁcant timbre-related brain activation was found in well-de- ﬁned regions of posterior Heschl’s gyrus and superior temporal sulcus, extending into the circular insular sulcus**. Although the extent of activation was not signiﬁcantly different between left and right hemispheres, temporal lobe activations were signiﬁcantly posterior in the left, compared to the right, hemisphere, suggesting a functional asymmetry in their respective contributions to timbre processing. The implications of our ﬁndings for music processing in particular and auditory processing in general are discussed.

Halpern et al (2004) provide another relevant study:

> The generality of findings implicating secondary auditory areas in auditory imagery was tested by using a timbre imagery task with fMRI. Another aim was to test whether activity in supplementary motor area (SMA) seen in prior studies might have been related to subvocalization. Participants with moderate musical background were scanned while making similarity judgments about the timbre of heard or imagined musical instrument sounds. The critical control condition was a visual imagery task. The pattern of judgments in perceived and imagined conditions was similar, suggesting that perception and imagery access similar cognitive representations of timbre. As expected, judgments of heard timbres, relative to the visual imagery control, activated primary and secondary auditory areas with some right-sided asymmetry. Timbre imagery also activated secondary auditory areas relative to the visual imagery control, although less strongly, in accord with previous data. Significant overlap was observed in these regions between perceptual and imagery conditions. Because the visual control task resulted in deactivation of auditory areas relative to a silent baseline, we interpret the timbre imagery effect as a reversal of that deactivation. Despite the lack of an obvious subvocalization component to timbre imagery, some activity in SMA was observed, suggesting that SMA may have a more general role in imagery beyond any motor component.

### References

* Menon, V., Levitin, D. J., Smith, B. K., Lembke, A., Krasnow, B. D., Glazer, D., ... & McAdams, S. (2002). Neural correlates of timbre change in harmonic sounds. Neuroimage, 17(4), 1742-1754. PDF
* Halpern, A. R., Zatorre, R. J., Bouffard, M., & Johnson, J. A. (2004). Behavioral and neural correlates of perceived and imagined musical timbre. Neuropsychologia, 42(9), 1281-1292. PDF
* Koelsch, S., & Siebel, W. A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(12), 578-584. Koelsch, S., & Siebel, W. A. (2005). Towards a neural basis of music perception. Trends in cognitive sciences, 9(12), 578-584. HTML
> 3 votes

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Tags: perception, music, hearing
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# Question
Title: What happens in your brain when a concept "clicks"?
**What happens in your mind when the "lightbulb goes off", or a concept "clicks" for you? Why is there such a threshold for human understanding?**

**Existing searches**: I've searched a good amount for it. "when the light bulb goes off" leads me to English Grammar-related/expression questions, "What’s Happening When Something Clicks?" gives one or two decent articles, like one from xraylistening.com, but doesn't really scientifically answer my question. "Aha moment" just tells me about the feeling. These are just a few of the searches I've done. I've searched, but haven't gotten a satisfactory answer.

# Answer
With the aim of fleshing out Jeff's link, **insight** is the broad concept you are talking about. More specific terms which focus on the apparent abrupt shift include Eureka effect and Aha! effect.

The Kounios and Beeman (2009) article mentioned by Jeff discusses potential neural models of the Aha moment. Kounios and Beeman state that

> Although the experience of insight is sudden and can seem disconnected from the immediately preceding thought, \[studies using EEG and fMRI\] show that insight is the culmination of a series of brain states and processes operating at different time scales. Elucidation of these precursors suggests interventional opportunities for the facilitation of insight.

More broadly, you ask why there is such a threshold for understanding. One answer is that the phenomena by definition only applies to phenomena that operates that way. Most understanding does not involve an Aha moment. Problems are routine, or they involve searching for an answer by reading materials, or they involve asking someone, or they involve working through a process, and so on. Furthermore, most problems do not have single discrete insights that are going to make a huge difference. Rather, successful performance is the culmination of many smaller tasks. All this is just to say, insight by definition involves a particular dynamic of impasse and then discovery.

Some literature on the Aha moment focuses on problem solvig techniques to both explain the occurrence of the impasse and the insight. For example, problem solvers upon reaching an impasse may start to re-arrange knowledge or engage in various restructuring processes. The literature also discusses incubation processes which in theory may permit more distal knowledge structures to be integrated with the problem.

### References

* Kounios, J., & Beeman, M. (2009). The Aha! Moment The Cognitive Neuroscience of Insight. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 18(4), 210-216. PDF
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, learning
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# Question
Title: Validity of regression therapy and degree of acceptance of the subject within the psychology community
I had a debate with my friend on regression therapy as he feels it is an accepted method to discover a person's past life & his memories. I find it completely unacceptable to my sense.

**What studies have been done regarding the effectiveness of regression therapy and to what degree is this practice accepted by mainstream clinicians?**

I can agree regression therapy on to get to forgotten, ignored or repressed experiences that are bothering people and helping them to overcome their problems which similar to memory therapy. But I cannot understand the logic of extracting past life experiences and past life memory. It is totally indigestible that psychologists (specially in India) believe in these practices. Or is that a few of psychologists are misusing the profession for monetary gains.

# Answer
There is an article on Wikipedia discussing past life regression.

A general scientific explanation of beliefs about past lives is that:

> the memories are the result of cryptomnesia, narratives created by the subconscious mind using imagination, forgotten information and suggestions from the therapist.\[1\]\[2\]\[3\]\[15\]\[16\]\[17\]\[18\] Memories created under hypnosis are indistinguishable from actual memories and can be more vivid than factual memories.\[2\]\[19\] The greatest predictor of individuals reporting memories of past lives appears to be their beliefs about the existence in reincarnation - individuals who believe in reincarnation are more likely to report such memories, while sceptics or disbelievers are less so.\[1\]\[5\]

The study discussed in Spanos (1996) sounds particularly relevant to understanding the nature of such past life beliefs. To continue quoting the Wikpedia article:

> Spanos' research leads him to the conclusion that past lives are not memories, but actually social constructions based on patients acting "as if" they were someone else, but with significant flaws that would not be expected of actual memories. To create these memories, Spanos' subjects drew upon the expectations established by authority figures and information outside of the experiment such as television, novels, life experiences and their own desires.

Thus, past life regression therapy is invalid in the sense that patients are not actually recalling past lives. Nonetheless, there still remains a question of whether it offers therapeutic benefits. Meaning, purpose, and self-esteem are all important human needs. For therapists and patients who believe in past lives, fleshing out past lives could potentially help to fulfil such needs. That said, I don't know of any scientific studies that have evaluated such therapy. Such therapy also raises a number of ethical issues in terms of fostering illusions in the client.

### References

* Spanos NP (1996). Multiple Identities & False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective. American Psychological Association (APA). pp. 135–40. ISBN 1-55798-340-2.
> 2 votes

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Tags: memory, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the effect of imagining doing an exercise on muscle growth?
I recently read a study by Yue, G et al. (1992) which I found incredibly interesting. I have no background in physiology and I was hoping that someone who does can clear things up.

If I understood it right, the study had two groups of people who trained their Hypothenar eminence (pinky) muscles. One of the groups did so by doing the actual exercise and a second did so by imagining themselves doing the same exercise. The group that did the exercise improved by 30% and the group that imagined themselves doing it improved by 22%.

**Did those who imagined themselves doing the exercise have a muscle increase in their muscle or did the improvement come from the brain having better control of that muscle?** Also, what should I expect if I imagine myself lifting a dumbbell all day?

<sub> Yue, G., & Cole, K. J. (1992). Strength increases from the motor program: comparison of training with maximal voluntary and imagined muscle contractions. Journal of Neurophysiology, 67(5), 1114-1123. </sub>

# Answer
The article by Ranganathan et al (2004) provides some relevant information. The authors discuss how it can be increased by two main factors, neural adaptation and muscle growth. They note how the motor skill acquisition literature supports the use of visualisation as an adjunct to actual practice as a means of improving performance:

> Research on motor skill acquisition has demonstrated clearly that mental practice leads to improved performance (Corbin, 1972; Feltz & Landers, 1983). Thus, the neural events controlling the muscle parameters for performance (e.g., amplitude, timing) can be improved through mental practice.

They mention studies that have found no effect of visualisation on strength (e.g., Herbert et al 1998).

However, in their study they did find an effect of visualisation on strength. They attribute this gain to neural adaptation rather than muscle growth.

> The key ﬁndings of this study were that mental training increases voluntary strength of both distal and proximal muscles of human upper extremities and the strength improvements accompanied elevations of time-locked (to MVC trials) cortical potential (MRCP). Based on the MRCP data (Figs. 3–5), we are conﬁdent that **the primary mechanism underlying the strength increase is a mental training-induced enhancement in the central command to muscle**. The data suggest that repetitive mental attempts of maximal muscle activation trained and enabled the brain to generate stronger signals to muscle. ... greater strength is a consequence of stronger brain activity. A stronger central command could recruit the motor units that were otherwise inactive in an untrained state and/or drive the active motor units to higher intensity (higher discharge rate), leading to greater muscle force

### References

* Corbin, C. B. (1972). Mental practice. In W. P. Morgan (Ed.), Ergogenic aids and muscular performance (pp. 93–118). New York: Academic Press.
* Feltz, D. L., & Landers, D. M. (1983). The effects of mental practice on motor skill learning and performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Sports Psychology, 5, 25–27.
* Herbert, R. D., Dean, C., & Gandevia, S. C. (1998). Effects of real and imagined training on voluntary muscle activation during maximal isometric contractions. Acta Physiologica Scandinavica, 163, 361–368.
* Ranganathan, V. K., Siemionow, V., Liu, J. Z., Sahgal, V., & Yue, G. H. (2004). From mental power to muscle power—gaining strength by using the mind. Neuropsychologia, 42(7), 944-956. PDF
> 7 votes

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Tags: physiology, training, visualization
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# Question
Title: How do songs trigger memories associated with previous experiences of listening to the  song?
**Background**: If I like a particular song, I listen to it while doing other things until I get sick of that song. This creates an extremely strong bond between the two things: the song and the activity. The activities usually being programming languages or video games. Whenever I hear the song again, the emotions and/or visuals of whatever I was doing flood my brain, and I can remember them vividly.

### Questions

* How does hearing a song trigger memories associated with that song?
* Is there anything special about songs and memory associations?
* Has any particular research been conducted on the association between songs and memory?

# Answer
I believe this phenomenon is well known in cognitive science. That is how our memory works.

The simpliest explanation would be the Hebbian learning rule: "Neurons that fire together, wire together." So, you can imagine some neurons firing when you hear the music and some when you see the game. Now, if these used to fire together, they are probably connected. Somehow you've learned that these stimuli come together and your brain is recalling them all even if this time only the audio stimulus is presented.

Try reading more about episodic memory:

> For example, memories of people’s faces, the taste of the wine, the music that was playing, etc, might all be part of the memory of a particular dinner with friends. By repeatedly reactivating or “playing back” this particular activity pattern in the various regions of the cortex, they become so strongly linked with one another that they no longer need the hippocampus to act as their link, and the memory of the music that was playing that night, for example, can act as an index entry, and may be enough to bring back the entire scene of the dinner party. Episodic and semantic memory

However, auditory triggers are possibly not the strongest available. According to an idea called "Proustian phenomenon" the strongest would be smell. Example study to that matter: Proust revisited: Odours as triggers of aversive memories

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## Reference:

Toffalo, M.B.J., Smeets, M.A.M., van den Hout, M.A. (2012). Proust revisited: Odours as triggers of aversive memories. *Cognition & Emotion, 26*(1):83-92.
> 9 votes

# Answer
According to network models of memory, when information is stored in memory, it is not stored separately and by itself, but together with all the other aspects of the situation that you percieved. For example, if you listen to music, you do not simply memorize the tune, but also your mood, the causes for that mood (your girlfriend next to you), the smells and sights of the place, even what you did before and after listening to the music. Each of these informations is stored as a knot or node in the "semantic network" that is your memory, and with each time that things happen in conjunction, the connection between these nodes is strengthened a little bit.

Now, if you retrieve information from memory (e.g. you hear the music again or come to the concert hall and remember the place or tune), the node for that information gets activated and that activation spreads along the connections of that node to other nodes and activates them as well. So for example listening to that piece of music again will remind you of all the notable situations, but also of things that get activated through other activated nodes. For example remembering your girlfriend sitting next to you at that one time, will remind you also of how she broke up with you a few weeks later, and thus the music may make you sad, although when you listened to it the first time, it was a happy situation.

If you google for "semantic network" you will find comprehensive explanations, illustrations and examples.

As to the answer by Oriesok Vlassky explaining episodic memory: Both models integrate easily and do not contradict each other but rather complement each other well. So I would say the answer is his and mine combined.
> 4 votes

# Answer
Janata's (2009) study might be of interest to you. Specifically the paper proposes that the Media Pre-Frontal Cortex (MPFC) "...associates music and memories when we experience emotionally salient episodic memories that are triggered by familiar songs from our personal past."

**References**:

Janata, P. (2009). The neural architecture of music-evoked autobiographical memories. Cerebral Cortex, 19(11), 2579-2594. http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/11/2579.full
> 4 votes

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Tags: memory, music
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