# Question
Title: Difference between drowsiness/sedation and sleepiness
I have been trying to understand the difference between drowsiness/sedation and sleepiness. The only article I was able to find that partly answers my question is "The difference between sedation and sleep" on ipnos.com.

I have experienced both, and they feel distinctly different. Sleepiness feels like a drive, but drowsiness/sedation feels like a state. My personal experience has been that sleeping when drowsy/sedated does not relieve the drowsiness/sedation, but sleeping when sleepy resolves the sleepiness.

Back to the question: **what is the neurological/neurobiological/psychopharmacological difference between sleepiness and drowsiness/sedation, and why does sleep resolve the one but not the other?**

# Answer
> 4 votes
## Sedation

This is a forced state of drowsiness or sleep and as indicated in your Ipnos link, it will not necessarily help with drowsiness or sleepiness brought about due to problems with your circadian rhythm

Sedation is

> the reduction of irritability or agitation by administration of sedative drugs, generally to facilitate a medical procedure or diagnostic procedure.

## Drowsiness and Sleepiness

The terms drowsiness, sleepiness and hypnagogic period are often used to describe the same thing in the general domain, but but in the scientific domain there are important neurophysiological and psychophysiological differences.

## Hypnagogic period

This is the neurophysiological and psychophysiological transition period from the wake to sleep state.

## Drowsiness

This is the state of the transition period from the wake to sleep state **that can be objectively measured**, for example, by EEG (please see Hori et al., 1994)

Typical tests that describe the quality and quantity of the drowsyness are Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT) and Maintenance of Wakefulness Test (MWT) (Doghramji et al., 1997).

## Sleepiness

This is the **subjective state of the subject/patient**. It can also be qualified and quantified, but only by rating scales such as the Stanford Sleepiness Scale (SSS), the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) (See also Johns, (1991)), the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (Åkerstedt & Gillberg, 1990), etc.

## References

Åkerstedt, T., & Gillberg, M. (1990). Subjective and objective sleepiness in the active individual, *The International Journal of Neuroscience*, 52(1-2): pp. 29–37)
DOI: 10.3109/0020745900899424 PMID: 2265922

Doghramji, K., Mitler, M. M., Sangal, R. B., Shapiro, C., Taylor, S., Walsleben, J., Belisle, C. Erman, M. K., Hayduk, R., Hosn, R., O’Malley, E. B., Sangal, J. M., Schutte, S. L., & Youakima, J. M. (1997). A normative study of the maintenance of wakefulness test (MWT), *Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology* 103(5): pp. 554–562.
DOI: 10.1016/S0013-4694(97)00010-2 PMCID: PMC2424234

Hori, T., Hayashi, M., & Morikawa, T. (1994). Topographical EEG changes and the hypnagogic experience. In R. D. Ogilvie & J. R. Harsh (Eds.), *Sleep onset: Normal and abnormal processes* (pp. 237-253).
DOI: 10.1037/10166-014

Johns, M. W. (1991). A new method for measuring daytime sleepiness: the Epworth sleepiness scale, *Sleep* 14(6): pp. 540-545
DOI: 10.1093/sleep/14.6.540 PMID: 1798888

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# Question
Title: What is an explaination for the light-headed and slow-motion feeling after a long hard mental exam?
### Question

After taking a long final exam, people often report feeling like the world is moving in slow motion. I've heard this exam effect jokingly called "zombie feeling" or "brain-fog". I describe the effect as strong desire to stare with a blank mind.

### Background

Based on answers from this question: https://biology.stackexchange.com/q/839/238 the amount of energy the brain uses doesn't really change when awake. So what could this effect be caused by?

Could it be caused by an exhaustion of certain nutrients, like Vitamin B12 or D?

# Answer
The brain fuel is glucose, the long hard mental exam consumes most glucose available, and the result is poor cognitive function.

> Glucose, a form of sugar, is the primary source of energy for every cell in the body. Because the brain is so rich in nerve cells, or neurons, it is the most energy-demanding organ, using one-half of all the sugar energy in the body.
>
> Brain functions such as thinking, memory, and learning are closely linked to glucose levels and how efficiently the brain uses this fuel source. If there isn’t enough glucose in the brain, for example, neurotransmitters, the brain’s chemical messengers, are not produced and communication between neurons breaks down. In addition, hypoglycemia, a common complication of diabetes caused by low glucose levels in the blood, can lead to loss of energy for brain function and is linked to poor attention and cognitive function.

Mental effort drops glucose levels as reported by the study Mental effort, blood glucose and performance, below an extract :

> Work from our group and elsewhere has explored the link between blood glucose and cognitive performance.Here data are presented showing that a high level of mental effort is associated with a measurable drop in blood glucose levels. ‘Mental effort’ describes situations where energy is mobilised to meet cognitive goals. Reduced blood glucose has been reported in a number of such circumstances, including where computational demands of a task are relatively high (e.g. Serial Subtractions), during high processing loads (e.g. the Bakan task) and during response inhibition (e.g. the Stroop word-colour task).
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, neuroscience
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# Question
Title: How is the effect of current vote scores on people's votes interpreted in psychology?
On a site that people can vote on others' posts (like Stack Exchange sites), I believe people tend to be affected by the current vote score (and for Stack Exchange, if the user has enough reputation, the current vote counts as well) before they cast a vote, or even more, before they decide to whether cast a vote. A typical case is illustrated by this Reddit post,

> I tend to upvote people who have been downvoted out of sympathy.

The linked Reddit post already contains part of the answer but it's more like a subjective discussion so I am not satisfied with it.

Can somebody elaborate on what effects can take place in this process? What is effect on the final vote count/score if we consider it as a whole? Are there any known terminology or models to describe this behavior?

I am new to psychology so any hint will be helpful.

---

Related: Why do people make rants on Meta Stack Exchange sites?

# Answer
> 3 votes
I think you can find an answer from the field of social psychology. The most relevant theory is the social proof, the tendency to immitate the behavior of other people.

> Social proof (also known as informational social influence) is a psychological and social phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behavior in a given situation.
>
> ...
>
> Social proof is one type of conformity. When a person is in a situation where they are unsure of the correct way to behave, they will often look to others for clues concerning the correct behavior. When "we conform because we believe that others' interpretation of an ambiguous situation is more accurate than ours and will help us choose an appropriate course of action", it is informational social influence.

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Tags: social-psychology, communication, internet
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# Question
Title: What is the role of non-synaptic plasticity in learning and memory?
Is non-synaptic plasticity (e.g. changes in the spike threshold) believed to play a large role in learning and memory? If so, which roles are these effects believed to play?

# Answer
The answer is yes. Non-synaptic plasticity exists as you can read in "Non-synaptic neuronal mechanisms of learning and memory in gastropod molluscs" by Benjamin et al. and "Compartmentalization of Non-Synaptic Plasticity in Neurons at the Subcellular Level" by Nikitin and Balaban.

But the effect of hormones such as cortisol may also have an effect.

Non-synaptic mechanisms of regulation and plasticity play a very important role in the brain and its ability to learn in many aspects and at different scales.

A single cell can suffer internal modification that will modify eletrophysiological properties.

Variations of concentration of elements in the CSF also have an effect.

Glia also plays an important role.

So, the brain is a very complex system with a lot of interdependent mechanisms of adaptation, regulation and plasticity. Synapse is just one aspect of it.
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, learning, memory
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# Question
Title: Can you give an example of automatic appraisal process?
I was reading this slide provided by my prof. of Affective Neuroscience. I've read that appraisal is considered a constitutive component of emotion by most of the actual theories. Appraisal is defined as the cognitive act to evaluate the potential impact that an external stimulus may have on me.

**Can you provide an example of automatic appraisal?**

# Answer
We make automatic "appraisals" in more or less every waking moment. We are constantly predicting the potential allostatic consequences of external input and behaving accordingly (e.g., here). Importantly, most appraisals are non-conscious and aren't at all specific to emotions.

Moreover, the automaticity of your appraisals relies on the extent and precision of your prior experience (see here). If you are used to seeing snakes attack humans, then your appraisal about the danger of snakes will likely be quite fast.

Thus, there are virtually infinite examples of an automatic appraisal. Automaticity depends on your prior experience and the precision of incoming sensory input.
> 2 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, emotion
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title: Multiple-stratum intelligence models

text:
# Question
Title: Multiple-stratum intelligence models
My question concerns the mathematics of multiple-stratum models, about which I've not found much that's quantitative, so excuse my inventing my own notation to explain my thoughts.

In models such as Cattell-Horn-Carroll, intelligence components are arranged in, say, 3 to 4 strata. I'm going to invert the usual numbering of these strata so I can summarise my current understanding of these models, regardless of the total number of strata. In other words:

* I'm putting $g$ on its own in "Stratum 1". (I realise it's usually in stratum III in a 3-stratum model.)
* Stratum 2 components are then functions of $g$ and noise terms; for example, they might be approximated in factor analysis as $x\_i=l\_i g +\varepsilon\_i$.
* Stratum 3 components are expressed in terms of stratum 2 components in a similar way, viz. $y\_j=l\_{ji}x\_i+\eta\_j=l\_{ji}l\_i g+l\_{ji}\varepsilon\_i+\eta\_j$ with implicit summation over repeated indices. (I think you can see now why I've inverted the stratum order.) The noise term will still be Normal if the $\varepsilon\_i$ and $\eta\_j$ are Normal and independent. That's a big if, mind.
* We can repeat this in a fourth stratum if the model calls for it (as for example occurs in g-VPR), viz. $z\_k=m\_{kj}y\_j+\theta\_k=m\_{kj}l\_{ji}l\_i g+m\_{kj}l\_{ji}\varepsilon\_i+m\_{kj}\eta\_j+\theta\_k$.

My question is this: what distinguishes the contents of the various strata? In the above linear special case the $x\_i,\\,y\_j,\\,z\_k$ all have essentially the same form, a multiple of $g$ plus a noise term (and a more complicated model would still have them each reduce to a noisy function of $g$). My suspicion is that stratum delineation comes down to nesting non-linear transformations and/or noise terms that don't have stable distributions.

# Answer
> 2 votes
You are making two mistakes, one in relation to the identification of the factors or what they represent (and factor analyzes have to be studied a lot by correlations with the tasks that each factor represents). And two, the relationships between the factors.

You do not take into account that each factor would represent very different abilities or processes (for example, the closing speed and the sequential reasoning is very different), the factors can be independent of this way, there does not have to be a linear relationship and in case if correlation exists, **it will be correlation for a specific task**, which leads me to indicate that it is proposing wrong relationships about completely different abilities or processes. This should clarify and is the model to start studying the factorial analysis:

x1 = a1.F1 + a2.F2 ... + b1.S1 + c1.E1

x2=...

x3=...

x1 (score on the task of a specific person) = a1 (factorial weight of common factor). F1 (common factor) + a2.F2 .... + b1 .S (specific factor) + c (factorial weight of the error factor) + E1 (error)

(In the majority of analyzes, an error for a specific factor is not studied)

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Tags: measurement, intelligence, statistics
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# Question
Title: Due to Gestalt Psychology, is the face an illusion?
Gestalt Psychology maintains that we perceive a whole from parts, and that we fill in missing gaps. The "whole" we perceive is more than the sum of parts we perceive - it also involves what our minds add in.

Given this, is the concept of a "face" a result of Gestalt psychology on our minds? All that's on the face are eyes, ears, a mouth, and a nose. Yet we combine all these parts (which objectively seem discrete from each other) and come up with the concept of a face (the "whole" in this example).

Is this kind of reasoning correct?

# Answer
Dependent on your definition of an illusion, there is truth in your claim.

A definition of an illusion is:

> \[A\] perception, as of visual stimuli (optical illusion) that represents what is perceived in a way different from the way it is in reality.

But then - what *is* reality?

First off, Bach-y-Rita famously proclaimed, '*We don't see with our eyes, we see with our brains*' (Abrams & Winters, 2003). The reason he said that is that everything we perceive is generated within our brain; it's a synthesis of visual information (photons) flowing from the photoreceptors in the eye (rods & cones) to the visual cortices. For instance, color and shape are mere reflections of brain activity. Colors do not exist - the brain synthesizes them by combining information from three classes of photoreceptors, each sensitive to another peak wavelength.

Secondly, the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than the Gestalt Principles. The retinal image is actively completed by the brain (Ramachandran & Ramachandran, 2005). There are two relatively large gaps in each of our retinae, namely the place where the optic nerve head leaves the retina, called the optic disc, or the blind spot. No sensations, and hence no conscious perceptions can be generated by these regions which are devoid of photoreceptors. Yet, we do not notice those gaps in the visual field, because the brain interpolates what it guesses might be there in the visual field and actively fills up the empty spaces in the conscious image.

As a consequence of this, people suffering from retinal degeneration might not even notice it, only when they start hitting street signs and bump stuff from the table. Even then, they often do not perceive the patchy dead regions in their retinae, instead, they know there must be a gap, because they are hitting things. The brain simply fills the gaps such that they are not noticeable in the visual percept. Nonetheless, entire road signs or entire crystal bowls or glasses on the table might be erased, as the brain simply extends the table image in our minds.

**References**
**-** Abrams & Winters, *Discover*, June 2003
**-** Ramachandran & Ramachandran, *Sci Am*, April 2005
> 2 votes

# Answer
Gestalt is a German word without a direct translation into English. (Reeves, 2013) The Oxford English Dictionary states that

> Gestalt is a noun in Psychology, meaning “an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts”, with a 1920s origin in German, literally meaning “form, shape”. (OED, n.d.)

With “formation and destruction cycle” theories within Gestalt Therapy, if for example there is a gap in memory of events due to dissociation (mental flight in the fright/flight/fight/freeze/fawn response, also described as mental detachment from the event) during a traumatic event, the person affected and their mind will try to fill in the gaps in order to reach the end goals of **completion** and **withdrawal**. Problems can lay in the way these gaps are filled as wrong information can lay there.

Gestalt therapy uses techniques to bring the person into the present rather than the past or projected future (Hess, 2007), helping the person to reach completion and withdrawal without the need to force the memories of the past.

## Explaination

### Note

* Although Frederick (Fritz) and Laura Perls, the founders of Gestalt Therapy in the 1940s and 50s, had worked with Kurt Goldstein, a neurologist who had applied principles of Gestalt psychology to the functioning of the organism, the extent to which Gestalt Psychology influenced Gestalt Therapy is disputed. On the one hand, Laura Perls preferred not to use the term "Gestalt" to name the emerging new therapy, because she thought that the gestalt psychologists would object to it; (Wysong, 1982 p.12) on the other hand Fritz and Laura Perls clearly adopted some of Goldstein's work. (Barlow, 1981) Therefore, although recognising the historical connection and the influence, most gestalt psychologists emphasise that gestalt therapy is not a form of gestalt psychology. (Source)

### History

> The concept of gestalt was first introduced in philosophy and psychology in 1890 by Christian von Ehrenfels (a member of the School of Brentano). The idea of gestalt has its roots in theories by David Hume, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant, David Hartley, and Ernst Mach. Max Wertheimer's unique contribution was to insist that the "gestalt" is perceptually primary, defining the parts it was composed from, rather than being a secondary quality that emerges from those parts, as von Ehrenfels's earlier *Gestalt-Qualität* had been\[citation needed\]
>
> ...
>
> Early 20th century theorists, such as Kurt Koffka, Max Wertheimer, and Wolfgang Köhler (students of Carl Stumpf) saw objects as perceived within an environment according to all of their elements taken together as a global construct. This 'gestalt' or 'whole form' approach sought to define principles of perception—seemingly innate mental laws that determined the way objects were perceived. It is based on the here and now, and in the way things are seen. Images can be divided into figure or ground. The question is what is perceived at first glance: the figure in front, or the background.
> (Source)

### Key Principle of Gestalt Therapy

The key principle of Gestalt is that you need to examine the relationship between your inner world and external world; and how that relationship changes. (Reeves, 2013) Are the two worlds in balance? In other words, do you have a healthy contact with your environment?

One concept within the key principle is the “formation and destruction cycle”. The cycle goes from sensation, to awareness, to energy, to action, to full contact, to completion, to withdrawal and then back to sensation. Where the contact is destructive, the aspects of destruction are referred as ‘Contact Boundary Disturbances’.

### Formation and destruction cycle – Expanded by me from Reeves (2013)

The Gestalt model of therapy integrates humanistic with psychodynamic theories, and this is where the psychodynamics come in. Not only can you compare some of the disturbances to Freudian ego-defence mechanisms, but you are actually analysing what is happening within the client whilst trying to help them to reintegrate their **self** with **the environment**.

You can help the client to work out where the gaps in memory are, and why **they think** it is important to fill those gaps. The aim is then to **help the client to work out** that it isn't important, and that what is more important is the here and now. How is the battle to find these answers affecting the here and now and how can it affect the future? Then you allow the client to work out a way to accept that they are **not necesarily** going to know everything as it was blocked for a reason (to protect the client as part of the fright/flight/fight/freeze/fawn response during the traumatic event).

## References

Barlow, A. R. (1981). Gestalt-Antecedent Influence or Historical Accident. *The Gestalt Journal*, 4(2): pp. 35—54.
Available at: http://www.gestalt.org/barlow.htm (**No DOI or PMID found**)

Hess, E. (2007). *Gestalt Therapy*. \[Video file\] Produced by University of Texas.
Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbOAdMdMLdI

OED. (n.d.) *Definition of Gestalt*. \[Online\] Available at: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gestalt

Reeves, A. (2013). *An Introduction to Counselling and Psychotherapy: From Theory to Practice*. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Wysong, J. (1982). *An Oral History of Gestalt Therapy* Highland, NY: The Gestalt Journal Press
> 1 votes

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# Question
Title: Country records about criminal recidivism rates
I find myself doing a work on criminal psychology, I understood that recidivism rates were registered by government agencies although it seems not to be that way (some projects were famous in the past but I do not think they developed). If any of those projects were developed, I would be grateful for information on the subject.

On the other hand, if someone on the site knows the most famous articles or works developed on the subject, I would be grateful if you could indicate references to me, since I may not be handling those documents due to the publication dates.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Seena Fazel and Achim Wolf published an article titled *A Systematic Review of Criminal Recidivism Rates Worldwide: Current Difficulties and Recommendations for Best Practice* (Fazel & Wolf, 2015) and the article concluded that

> Recidivism data are currently not valid for international comparisons. Justice Departments should consider using the reporting guidelines developed in this paper to report their data.

The references section of this article also lists articles, reports and statistics available including an article on "the prediction of criminal and violent recidivism among mentally disordered offenders".

## UK Statistics

The Ministry of Justice (part of the UK Government), produces regular statistical reports on reoffending rates within the UK. The Government Collection of **Proven Reoffending** Statistics contains quarterly reports for periods covering January 2009 through to March 2016 — the last report covering January 2016 to March 2016 is dated 25th January 2018. Without comparing reports from that date with older reports against this article, I cannot say whether the recommendations were followed by the UK Government.

## US Statistics

> The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) collects criminal history data from the FBI and state record repositories to study recidivism patterns of various offenders, including persons on probation or discharged from prison.
>
> The latest study of state prisoners estimated the recidivism patterns of about 400,000 persons released from state prisons in 30 states in 2005. The findings from the 2005 study cannot be directly compared to those from BJS's previous prisoner recidivism studies due to changes in the demographic characteristics and criminal histories of the U.S. prison population, an increase in the number of states in the study, and improvements made to the quality and completeness of the nation’s criminal history records since the mid-1990s. BJS has also used criminal history records to examine the recidivism of persons placed on federal community supervision in 2005.
>
> In addition to recidivism statistics based on criminal history records, BJS collects administrative data through the Annual Surveys of Probation and Parole to examine the rate at which offenders are at risk of being incarcerated for a new offense or for violating the conditions of their supervision.
> (Source)

## References

Fazel, S., & Wolf, A. (2015). A Systematic Review of Criminal Recidivism Rates Worldwide: Current Difficulties and Recommendations for Best Practice. *PLoS ONE*, 10(6):e0130390.
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0130390 PMCID: PMC4472929

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Tags: reference-request, psychology, forensic-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is understanding of natural language and how can we test or measure it?
**What is the definition of the understanding of (written) natural language and how can we test or measure this understanding?**

Natural language understanding is neglected part of natural language processing in computer science. Exact definitions and tests of understanding are necessary for producing artificial general intelligence (AGI) - e.g. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-41649-6\_13 article argues that artificial general intelligence (e.g. software piece) should learn and self-modify itself but such development is possible only if AGI can estimate the quality/fitness of the new self-modification - whether this self-modification is better than existing version of AGI and whether this self-modification can be applied? Obviously - if we want to apply machine learning and AGI to understanding of the natural language then we should be able to test and measure the understanding.

There is article https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-41649-6\_11 about understanding specifically but it is somehow narrow minded to the particular QA task. Maybe cognitive science have better tests?

For the reference - there are some AGI systems of "cognitive architectures" under development (wikipedia has list of them) - like OpenCog, NARS, Soar and some others.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Natural language understanding systems can be based on discourse representation theories, which represent the meaning of English sentences as first-order logical predicates. Attempto Controlled English is one example of a natural language understanding system that relies on discourse representation theories.

Similarly, there are several implementations of semantic parsers that convert natural-language texts into formal representations of their meanings.

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, language, artificial-intelligence, metacognition, language-processing
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# Question
Title: Can't use the urinal when next to someone. Is this psychological?
It's a common symptom that men are unable to wee in public, for example in the urinals in a bar. This is sometimes called shy-bladder syndrome as far as I know.

Is this condition known to have physiological grounds, or is it a psychological issue?

# Answer
> 4 votes
> Is this a psychological issue for me?

Depends: is there any other common factor that makes you unable to urinate? If not, then it's probably psychogenic.

It's very common.

> **Paruresis (Psychogenic Inhibition of Micturition): cognitive behavioral formulation and treatment**
>
> Paruresis is a condition characterized by difficulty or inability to urinate in situations where others are present, or may soon be present. Despite knowledge that paruresis can significantly impact on occupational functioning, social functioning, and quality of life, there exists a paucity of research into effective treatments. Although cognitive conceptualizations have been advanced for other anxiety disorders, there has not been a comprehensive cognitive behavioral model of paruresis. This article presents a revised cognitive and behavioral conceptualization of paruresis, drawing on empirical evidence from other anxiety disorders. Using this conceptualization, a cognitive-behavioral intervention strategy is outlined, with clear targets for cognitive and behavioral strategies.

**Reference:** Boschen, M. J. (2008). Paruresis (psychogenic inhibition of micturition): cognitive behavioral formulation and treatment. *Depression and Anxiety*, *25*, 903-912. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/da.20367/full

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Tags: social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Catching a thief in a closed circle of people
I am trying to investigate the issue with money getting lost form peoples wallets in a shared flat.

There are 4 suspects for being a thief of the money. Some of the suspects have been affected as well - the money was stolen from them. This complicates the issue, cause I believe, from the psychological point of view, some people may report that their money were stolen from them as well, just to get out of the picture. The question is - is there a psychological approach as to how to find the person behind this? Are there any methods how can one lead the conversation with the whole group to slowly navigate a thief to confess directly or indirectly through guiding questions or perhaps some bluffing? Are there signs of behaviour to look for when leading the discussion?

# Answer
One way to get at this is to use the "guilty knowledge" test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie\_detection#The\_control\_question\_test\_and\_the\_guilty\_knowledge\_test

In this test, you would need to first find out exactly how much money was reported stolen, and from whom. Then you would ask each suspect a combination of "true" questions and "false" questions. A true question contains only true details of the incident, while a false question contains some false details of the incident.

Let's say Tom, Dick, and Harry claim to have had 10, 12, and 20 dollars stolen from them respectively. If Tom did it, he is lying about his amount, so during his turn, you would ask him \`\`Did you steal 12 from Dick and 20 from Harry, for a total of 32 dollars?'' You would also ask him some "false" versions of the question, e. g., "Did you steal 11 dollars from Dick and 2 dollars from Harry, for a total of 13 dollars?" You would then see if he reacted differently to the "true" version of the question compared to the "false" version of the question. If he does, then it could be due to him knowing how much was stolen, and that would be evidence he was the one who stole it. You could enhance the effect by monitoring heart rate (perhaps with a phone app) throughout the questioning.

For this to work, it must be the case that you and the thief both know the exact amount stolen, but that none of the victims know this information because they haven't talked to each other. The thief would know because s/he stole it, and you would know from surveying everyone and adding it all up.

Additionally, you can find out when each person's money went missing, where the wallet was located during each theft, and what denominations the bills were. Include these details in your "true" questions, and change them in your "false" questions.

Even then, this is an unreliable test to implement on your own, so there's no guarantee it would work. Most likely you're out of luck.
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology
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# Question
Title: How is at called when a person can't feel the sense of recognition?
I meet a person who doesn't feel a sense of recognition. When for example forgetting a name, and you give them a few choices, they can tell you whether one of the choices feels "right" through a corresponding bodily sensation.

How is it called when a person can't feel such a sense of recognition?

# Answer
There are several conditions associated with a disconnect between the feeling of recognizing something, the ability to name something, the ability to react to something appropriately, etc. called agnosias.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosia

EDIT: See also "capgras delusion", which is possibly a more extreme version of what you're describing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgras\_delusion
> 1 votes

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Tags: terms
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# Question
Title: Reproducible meta-analysis in psychology
I am a big proponent of reproducible data analysis. In particular, I like when researchers share documents in formats like Sweave and knitr which weave statistical output (e.g., text, tables, and graphs) into a statistical report.

I previously asked for examples of reproducible research of any kind on Stats.SE and for advocating articles in psychology. However, at present I'm particularly interested in complete examples of reproducible meta-analysis.

Meta-analyses involve a number of steps. Summary statistics and study information is extracted from source studies. Various transformations and steps are applied to the data (e.g., corrections for reliability, conversion from one statistic to another, etc.). Various models are tested; tables and graphs are produced. Some journals are requiring that researchers supply tables of data used (e.g., references used, summary statistics). However, I can see meta-analysis as an area which could benefit from a more comprehensive reproducible approach: (1) it would permit greater inspection of specific methods used; (2) researchers could more easily build on the analyses used.

Thus, my questions:

* **Are there any complete examples of reproducible meta-analysis preferably in psychology or a related discipline?**
* **Is there any published advocacy for reproducible meta-analysis?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
**Update (2023)**: A lot has happened in 10 years. I have published a couple of open meta-analyses myself. Matthew Jané has put together the more comprehensive compilation of open science meta-analyses (which include links to mine and many others): https://matthewbjane.github.io/opensynthesis/

**Old Answer (2014):** I have started to see a fair bit of discussion about reproducible meta-analysis.

Tim Churches seems to have a github repository with a few examples of meta-analyses in R.

See in particular the public health example:

# Answer
> 0 votes
In reference to your first question, not a lot of published standards, I suggest some standard guideline on my site, but that's just that, suggestions. You might want to check out the Cochrane Collaboration though they have produced a set of standards for use in health care related meta-analysis.

You also may want to check an early-ish study by Shadish et al (1997) as an example:

Shadish, William, R., Matt, George, E., Navarro, Ana, M., Single, Gregory, Crits-Christoph, Paul, Hazelrigg, Anthony, J., Lyons, Larry C., et al., (1997). Evidence that therapy works in clinically representative conditions. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 65, 355-65.

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Tags: reference-request, statistics, reproducible-research, meta-analysis
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# Question
Title: How does this experiment prove a causal relation between coherence and good feelings?
I'm reading *Thinking, Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman and I came across the following text:

> The Remote Association Test has more to tell us about the link between cognitive ease and positive effect. Briefly consider the two triads of words:
>
> $$\text{sleep mail switch}\\\text{ salt deep foam}$$ You could not know it of course, but measurements of electrical activity in the muscles of your face would probably have shown a slight smile when you read the second trial, which is coherent (*sea* is the solution). This smiling reaction to coherence appears in subjects who are told nothing about common associates; they are merely shown a vertically arranged triad of words and instructed to press the space bar after they have read it. The impression of cognitive ease that comes with the presentation of a coherent triad appears to be mildly pleasurable in itself. The evidence that we have about good feelings, cognitive ease, and the intuition of coherence is, as scientists say, correlational but not necessarily causal. Cognitive ease and smiling occur together, but do the good feelings actually lead to intuitions of coherence? Yes, they do. The proof comes from a clever experimental approach that has become increasingly popular. Some participants were given a cover story that provided an alternative interpretation for their good feeling: they were told about music played in their earphones that "previous research showed that this music influences the emotional reaction of its individuals". This story completely eliminates the intuition of coherence. The finding shows that the brief emotional response that follows the presentation of a triad of words (pleasant if the triad is coherent, unpleasant otherwise) is actually the basis of judgments of coherence. There is nothing here that system 1 cannot do. Emotional changes are now expected, and because they are unsurprising they are not linked causally to the words.

(Kahneman refers to the automatic and intuitive way of thinking as system 1)

**My Question:** Why does the adding of the cover story in this experiment show that good feelings lead to intuitions of coherence (that there is a causal relation)? I find this conclusion rather strange. I'm probably mistaken but it seems to me that Kahneman is saying: the fact that there was no intuition of coherence when these participants were expecting to respond emotionally to music, shows that there is a causal relation between the good feelings and the intuition of coherence. Why would this make sense?

# Answer
This excerpt refers to an experiment described in Topolinski & Strack (2009) and Topolinski & Strack (2009), and is part of a series of experiments that used a variety of different methods to demonstrate the causal relation between affect and coherence, of which only 1 is described above, so even if it isn't convincing by itself, a lot of additional evidence would need to be questioned to thwart the conclusion.

This particular experiment uses a popular paradigm developed by Schwarz & Clore (1983) (which in turn is based on a previous experiment by Zanna & Cooper (1974); for reviews see Schwarz & Clore (1988), Schwarz & Clore (1996), Schwarz (2012), and Wikipedia), that has been used many times to demonstrate a causal relation between affective experience and intuition or metacognition. The premise behind this experimental paradigm is that once an affective experience is attributed to a particular cause, it is no longer used as information for subsequent judgments. This assumption has been demonstrated in many experiments, but contrast it with Payne et al (2005) and Allen et al (1989) who report that attempts to correct misattribution failed in their studies, suggesting that affective experience information can be reused in some circumstances. Luckily, this latter possibility does not impact the experiment in question.

The authors of this experiment propose a detailed mechanism for how subjects make judgments of coherence: As the word triad is read, the processing fluency (cognitive ease, or the rate that the words are processed) causes an affective response (subtle smiling reaction), that subjects become aware of, and attribute to subsequent intuitive judgments (such as coherence).

This particular experiment tests the hypothesis by manipulating subjects to misattribute the affective response (to background music). Thus, if affect does not inform coherence judgments, then misattributing it to another source should have no effect on results. On the other hand, if affect does cause coherence judgments, then attributing affective response to another cause should eliminate it as a source of information for coherence judgments, resulting in poorer performance. The control group listened to the same music, and was also directed to misattribute something to it, but it was fluency rather than affect.

The results of the experiment indeed demonstrated that once subjects reattribute positive affect to background music, they no longer use it for coherence judgments, and this results in a significant reduction of correct responses, leading to the conclusion that affect is an important indicator (cause) of coherence.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I would not be surprised if the testers did do some initial testing and came to the conclusion that knowing what the test was measuring affected the results.

Thus, the music story is just a misdirection layer added to attempt to prevent bias in the measurements because a participant "figured out" what is being measured. If the participant were told to do the exact same thing without some sort of cover story then some, if not many, would figure out what was going on because "figuring out" the purpose of something one is participating in would be a natural tendency. If instead, the testers could get the participant to focus on why is the music important instead of the words then it increases the chance that what is being measured is really the emotional affect of reading the words.
> -1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, perception, emotion, experimental-psychology
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# Question
Title: Calculating statistical significance in behaviour change
I have run a study on a group of 158 individuals to see if a teaching intervention can change their perceptions of scientists.

Before the intervention, all the children in the study were asked to choose 6 words to describe a scientist. This data collection was repeated at the end of a 5-week intervention, and then again 3 months after the intervention was complete.

I have begun processing the data and have categorised all the words that the children have used. When I look at the data for the cohort I can see that there has been a change in the types of words used to describe scientists (Pre 128 children used one stereotypical word, post this dropped to 67 and 64 in follow-up).

What statistical tests should I use to demonstrate the significance of these changes? All the data is tracked so I have individual data on the change of language use for each participant, I also have data for the group.

# Answer
> 1 votes
This answer should provide a reasonable discussion of how to compare the two results for statistical significance.

We have n1 = n2 = n3 = 158. We have p1 = 128/158, p2 = 67/158, and p3 = 64/168. Just run the hypothesis test on each pair to see if there is a significant shift.

However, there is a bigger issue here. This question should have been answered before you started collecting data. The first thing you should be doing is coming up with your theory to test. Then you design your experiment. And only then should you be collecting the data, unless your goal is just to collect large amounts of data for future theory testing, which does not seem to be the case here (Best Research Practices).

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Tags: statistics
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title: Research on the van Norden percept

text:
# Question
Title: Research on the van Norden percept
What are the latest research and explanations concerning this auditory effect? I haven't managed to turn up much on the net, so just to check that I've named it correctly, my experience of it was being exposed to two alternately repeated beeps differing distinctly in pitch and finding that after a while I just heard a single repeated beep of constant pitch as if my brain had merged the two.

### Context

Jansson (1994) writes:

> Music may also be intercepted successively by noise bursts and still be perceived as continuous, even if the music signals are deleted within the noise bursts (van Norden, 1975)

### References

* Jansson, E. V. (1994). Violin timbre and the picket fence. Quarterly Progress and Status Report, KTH, Stockholm, 35, 79-84.PDF
* van Norden, L.P.A.S. (1975): Temporal Coherence in the Perception of Tone Sequences, Thesis, Technical University, Eindhoven.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I have found the following — all mention van Norden, (1975):

Chang, A.-C., Lutfi, R., Lee, J., & Heo, I. (2016). A Detection-Theoretic Analysis of Auditory Streaming and Its Relation to Auditory Masking. *Trends in Hearing*, 20
DOI: 10.1177/2331216516664343 PMCID: PMC5029798

> **Abstract**
>
> Research on hearing has long been challenged with understanding our exceptional ability to hear out individual sounds in a mixture (the so-called cocktail party problem). Two general approaches to the problem have been taken using sequences of tones as stimuli. The first has focused on our tendency to hear sequences, sufficiently separated in frequency, split into separate cohesive streams (auditory streaming). The second has focused on our ability to detect a change in one sequence, ignoring all others (auditory masking). The two phenomena are clearly related, but that relation has never been evaluated analytically. This article offers a detection-theoretic analysis of the relation between multitone streaming and masking that underscores the expected similarities and differences between these phenomena and the predicted outcome of experiments in each case. The key to establishing this relation is the function linking performance to the information divergence of the tone sequences, *DKL* (a measure of the statistical separation of their parameters). A strong prediction is that streaming and masking of tones will be a common function of *DKL* provided that the statistical properties of sequences are symmetric. Results of experiments are reported supporting this prediction.

Krogholt Christiansen, S., & Oxenham, A. J. (2014). Assessing the effects of temporal coherence on auditory stream formation through comodulation masking release. *The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America*, 135(6): pp. 3520—3529.
DOI: 10.1121/1.4872300 PMCID: PMC4048442

> **Abstract**
>
> Recent studies of auditory streaming have suggested that repeated synchronous onsets and offsets over time, referred to as “temporal coherence,” provide a strong grouping cue between acoustic components, even when they are spectrally remote. This study uses a measure of auditory stream formation, based on comodulation masking release (CMR), to assess the conditions under which a loss of temporal coherence across frequency can lead to auditory stream segregation. The measure relies on the assumption that the CMR, produced by flanking bands remote from the masker and target frequency, only occurs if the masking and flanking bands form part of the same perceptual stream. The masking and flanking bands consisted of sequences of narrowband noise bursts, and the temporal coherence between the masking and flanking bursts was manipulated in two ways: (a) By introducing a fixed temporal offset between the flanking and masking bands that varied from zero to 60 ms and (b) by presenting the flanking and masking bursts at different temporal rates, so that the asynchronies varied from burst to burst. The results showed reduced CMR in all conditions where the flanking and masking bands were temporally incoherent, in line with expectations of the temporal coherence hypothesis.

Winkler, I. & Schröger, E. (2015) Auditory perceptual objects as generative models: Setting the stage for communication by sound. *Brain and Language* 148(1): pp. 1—22
DOI: 10.1016/j.bandl.2015.05.003 PMID: 26184883

> **Abstract**
>
> Communication by sounds requires that the communication channels (i.e. speech/speakers and other sound sources) had been established. This allows to separate concurrently active sound sources, to track their identity, to assess the type of message arriving from them, and to decide whether and when to react (e.g., reply to the message). We propose that these functions rely on a common generative model of the auditory environment. This model predicts upcoming sounds on the basis of representations describing temporal/sequential regularities. Predictions help to identify the continuation of the previously discovered sound sources to detect the emergence of new sources as well as changes in the behavior of the known ones. It produces auditory event representations which provide a full sensory description of the sounds, including their relation to the auditory context and the current goals of the organism. Event representations can be consciously perceived and serve as objects in various cognitive operations.

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Tags: perception, hearing
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# Question
Title: Do violent videos and video games affect your behaviour?
So I've heard many people say watching violent videos affect your behaviour. But I myself don't observe any change in me.

**So does it truly affect anyone and if yes how exactly?**

Some of the sites that indicate this are:

1. Violence in the Media Psychologists Study Potential Harmful Effects - American Psychologigal Association
2. Violent and nonviolent video games produce opposing effects on aggressive and prosocial outcomes \- Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

# Answer
> 1 votes
An answer to the same question in Skeptics.SE, states that the scientific community is heavily divided on the subject and no clear consensus has been reached.

The information on Wikipedia has been updated with a new article since the Skeptics answer, but the result has not changed. **ALL linked articles below have links to further reading backing the claims**

> A common hypothesis is that playing violent video games increases aggression in young people. Various studies claim to support this hypothesis. Other studies find no link. Debate among scholars on both sides remains contentious and, as of yet, no clear consensus has been reached either for or against effects, whether positive or negative.
> (Source: Wikipedia)

In 2005, the APA even got involved and released an official statement referencing numerous articles backing their claims, saying:

> there appears to be evidence that exposure to violent media increases feelings of hostility, thoughts about aggression, suspicions about the motives of others, and demonstrates violence as a method to deal with potential conflict situations.

Some scholars however suggested that the APA's policy statement ignored discrepant research and misrepresented the scientific literature. (Bowman, 2014)(Ferguson, 2013)

> In 2015, the American Psychological Association released another review (APA, 2015) that found that violent video games caused aggressive behavior, with Mark Appelbaum, the chair of the task force that conducted the review, saying that "the link between violence in video games and increased aggression in players is one of the most studied and best established in the field." The same review found insufficient evidence of a link between such video games and crime or delinquency. However, controversies erupted over the task force conclusions, with concerns about perceived conflicts of interest among task force members, and methodological limitations of their review. (Wofford, 2015)

## References

APA. (2015) *Technical Report on the Review of the Violent Video Game Literature* \[PDF Online\]
Available at: http://www.apa.org/pi/families/review-video-games.pdf

Bowman, N. (2014) *UPDATE: Four Respond to 228, Responding to the APA: Dissent Within the Academy Regarding Media Violence (#ECA14 Panel)* \[Online\]
Available at: http://onmediatheory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/four-respond-to-228-responding-to-apa.html

Ferguson, C. J. (2013). Violent video games and the Supreme Court: Lessons for the scientific community in the wake of Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association. *American Psychologist, 68*(2), 57-74.
DOI: 10.1037/a0030597

Wofford, T. (2015) *APA Says Video Games Make You Violent, but Critics Cry Bias* \[Online\]
Available at: http://www.newsweek.com/apa-video-games-violence-364394

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Tags: behaviorism, behavior
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# Question
Title: Study claims that human brain does not produce new brain cells?
Neurogenesis is one of the most fascinating subjects to discuss. However, **it seems like scientific community has difference of opinion about whether neurogenesis is possible or not in adult humans**. The aim of my question is to gain insights about whether neurogenesis in adult humans is possible or not.

According to an article presented in Scientific American "The Birth of a Brain Cell: Scientists Witness Neurogenesis", Mirjana Maletic-Savatic, an assistant professor of neurology at Stony Brook University in New York State, *claims that neurogenesis is possible*. Her study is based on brain imaging and suggests that scientists "witnessed" neurogenesis and the birth of new brain cells in adult human brain.

However, on the other hand, there is a Californian study, reported on in ScienceNews "Study casts doubt on whether adult brain’s memory-forming region makes new cells", that *claims that neurogenesis in adult humans does not exist*.

***Analyzing the study contradiction***

These two studies contradict each other. One may try to reconcile these two studies by claiming that humans only produces new cells in only certain parts of the brain but not in other parts of the brain, including hippocampus. Hippocampus may not be able to produce more brain cells, but other parts of the brain may generate new brain cells. However, this explanation and the above mentioned study *directly* contradicts another study that was published by Berg D.A. et al., 2013:

> active adult neurogenesis is confined to two distinct locations: the subventricular zone (SVZ) of the lateral ventricles in the forebrain; and the subgranular zone (SGZ) of the dentate gyrus (DG) in the ***hippocampus***

We can see that the *Californian study contradicts the other study clearly when it comes to studying and analyzing neurogenesis in the hippocampus*.

***The question***

This theory and the *Californian study* does not explain why people who suffer from memory loss in some parts of their lives regain memory and perform much better on memory tests.

**If the hippocampus does not make new brain cells, then how do people regain memory by eating the right diet and exercising? Is neurogenesis possible in the hippocampus region of the brain?**

<sub> Berg, D. A., Belnoue, L., Song, H., & Simon, A. (2013). Neurotransmitter-mediated control of neurogenesis in the adult vertebrate brain. Development, 140(12), 2548-2561. </sub>

# Answer
> 8 votes
**The hippocampus does make new brain cells, especially after aerobic exercise; there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for this claim** (Erickson, Voss, et al., 2011; Firth, Stubbs, et al., 2017; Patten, Sickmann, et al., 2013). I was unable to find the California study published or peer-reviewed anywhere, and the abstract presented at the conference contained no indication of the sample size used in the study or a justification for why those specific types of neurons were studied. **Therefore, it is unclear whether this single study was correctly conducted**, and the article discussing the abstract is appropriately cautious about interpreting the results.

There's many different reasons why this study might contradict the scientific literature on hippocampus. One might have to do with a neurogenesis marker they used, doublecortin (DCX). One study notes that DCX levels may be dependent on specific brain regions and can be affected by age, although this is uncertain (Balthazart and Ball, 2014). Another study also warns that DCX reading levels should be interpreted with caution because they can exist at relatively high levels outside of neurogenesis (Kremer, Jagasia, et al., 2013).

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Tags: memory, neurogenesis
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title: Is belief a choice?

text:
# Question
Title: Is belief a choice?
I have come across a lot of discussions where people end up calling belief a choice. Of course, I always ask them to believe that it's not, and they can't.

But it might help if I have a better psychological argument, or if there is psychological theory and evidence that says that belief is a choice, I would like that too. Theories could be about the nature of how beliefs are constructed in the brain, how the brain and body respond to stimuli which attack the beliefs, etc.

**Clarification**

I am not asking for opinion on free will or anything like that. I am asking for **scientific** theory and evidence, on the ability to actively change one's own beliefs, cognitive defense mechanisms against belief change, etc.

# Answer
> -2 votes
No, I don't think belief is a choice. A belief is simply your interpretation of reality and your interpretation is not something you choose.Your reality and consequently your beliefs are simply the conclusions you come up with after cognitively processing some information. For example I simply cannot believe that I am the president of the United States no matter how hard I try. This is because when I process what is real and what is not, then it becomes clear to me that I am not the president. I can lie to myself as much as I want that I am the president but I will never be able to truly believe it. People tend to think that by lying yourself you can believe anything, however this in not true. In order to believe something you must really be able to interpret it as the reality. For example people who give the advise " believe in yourself" is really nonsense.Believing in yourself and your capaabilities is not something you can choose, In order to believe in yourself and your capabilities you must really prove it to yourself.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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title: Clinical pathology of schlemielism

text:
# Question
Title: Clinical pathology of schlemielism
In the 1964 book, Games People Play, by psychiatrist Eric Berne, the author describes a psychopathic phenomena he calls the *schlemiel*, after the Jewish folk stereotype. According to Berne, the schlemiel does deliberately destructive acts and sabotage and disguises them to look like accidents. The purpose of this is to elicit sympathy and compassion in those he has duped, called *schlamazels*. In other words, it is a game with a purely psychological payoff, but damaging real world effects. According to Berne schlemiels often end up as criminals, playing their "game" with judges and police officers after they have outgrown parents and teachers.

This psycho-type seems to be unique to Berne's book and I have not been able to find any other clinical discussions of the phenomenon. Was this idea invented by Berne and purely unique to his book, or has the idea been studied by other researchers in the cognitive sciences?

# Answer
> 3 votes
The short answer is that there is no such mental disorder as *schlemielism* and the characteristics of a *schlemiel* described in *Games People Play* (Berne, 1964) are part of Eric Berne's description of Transactional Analysis (TA) and how it comes into play in life and within therapy.

> As an arbitrary categorisation of human behavior lacking in empirical evidence, TA is often considered a pseudoscience and a pop psychology fad. (RationalWiki, 2016)

For more about Pseudoscience within Psychology, see this meta post and Hansson, S. O. (1996)

*Schlemiel*, as pointed out by both you in your question and within comments by others, is a Yiddish term meaning "unlucky bungler" or "chump", or fool.

For more on these games, there are some videos on ericberne.com (Berne, 1966) from a 1966 National Educational Television broadcast in which Dr. Eric Berne was interviewed.

## Background

Developed in the late 1950s by Eric Berne (1958), Transactional Analysis (TA) is mainly humanistic, but is an integrative method of therapy combining psychodynamic and humanistic approaches. On the difference between TA and other theories, Eric Berne said

> I think most other therapies . . . talk about thinking and feeling. Our question to the patient is not what do you think or how do you feel, but what are you going to do about it? (Berne, 1966)

In TA, the concept is that interactions – transactions – between different people in a given situation when communicating with each other, can be different and changing; and using TA you can analyse these transactions to give you and insight into what is happening. The philosophy behind TA is that

1. **People are ‘OK’** – We may not like or agree with other’s behaviour, but we can accept them as worthy individuals.
2. **People can think** for themselves and it is there responsibility to do so.
3. **People make decisions that decide their destiny and these decisions can change**.

## TA in action

Whilst practicing TA, there are four theoretical foundations to look at individually

1. **Ego States**
There are structural and functional ego states (Short & Thomas, 2015).
**Structural** – Parent/Adult/Child
**Functional** – Controlling Parent/Nurturing Parent/Adult/Free Child/Adapted Child
Parent is an exteropsyche or exteropsychic state (e.g. identificatory), adult is a neopsyche or neopsychic state (e.g. data-processing), and child is an archaeopsyche or archaeopsychic state (e.g. regressive) (Berne, 2015).
2. **Scripts**
On-going psychological processes, in which meaning is given to life experiences
3. **Transactions**
Exchanges between two or more people
4. **Games**
Emotional and relational patterns learnt in childhood re-enacted as adults without adult awareness, such as ‘See What You Made Me Do’ or ‘Why Don’t You – Yes But…’ (Berne, 1964)

No.4 here is what we are talking about with the question on *schlemiel*.

Although Berne defined transactions long before he published *Games People Play*, his description of transactions in Games is the most easily understood:

> The unit of social intercourse is called a transaction. If two or more people encounter each other… sooner or later one of them will speak, or give some other indication of acknowledging the presence of the others. This is called transactional stimulus. Another person will then say or do something which is in some way related to the stimulus, and that is called the transactional response. (Berne, 1964)(Berne Calcaterra, n.d.)

Dr. Thomas Harris stated in *I’m OK – You’re OK* that in Transactional Analysis,

> we have found a new language of psychology. (Harris, 1995)(Berne Calcaterra, n.d.)

## The Game of 'Schlemiel'

This is described in ericberne.com with the following — numbers representing the transaction number and W and B representing each person in the game (White and Black):

> The moves in a typical game of “Schlemiel” are as follows:
>
> 1W. White spills a highball on the hostess’s evening gown.
>
> 1B. Black (the host) responds initially with rage, but he sense (often only vaguely) that if he shows it, White wins. Black therefore pulls himself together, and this gives him the illusion that he wins.
>
> 2W. White says “I’m sorry.”
>
> 2B. Black mutters or cries forgiveness, strengthening his illusion that he wins.
>
> 3W. White then proceeds to inflict other damage on Black’s property. He breaks things, spills things and makes messes of various kinds. After the cigarette burn in the tablecloth, the chair leg through the lace curtain and the gravy on the rug, White’s Child is exhilarated because he has enjoyed himself in carrying out these procedures, for all of which he has been forgiven, while Black has made a gratifying display of suffering self-control. Thus both of them profit from an unfortunate situation, and Black is not necessarily anxious to terminate the friendship.

The breakdown of this game scenario is that All the way through the game, **White** is in the structural ego state of **child** and Black initially entered either as **child or parent** with the rage response, but then quickly adjusted to **adult**.

Both can be seen to have won the first 2 transactions of the game, as well as the 3rd transaction. However, depending on your standpoint, with the 3rd transaction, White could be seen to have won whilst Black has lost because he/she hasn't controlled the child within White.

## References

Berne Calcaterra, N. (n.d.). *Transactional Analysis - ericberne.com*. \[Online\]
Available at: http://www.ericberne.com/transactional-analysis

Berne, E. (1958). Transactional analysis: A new and effective method of group therapy. *American Journal of Psychotherapy*, 12(4): pp. 735—743.
PMID: 13583264

Berne, E. (1964). *Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships*. London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Berne, E. (1966). *Games People Play – The Theory Video*. \[Online\] Available at: http://www.ericberne.com/videos

Berne, E. (2015). *Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry*. United States: Martino Fine Books.

Harris, T. (1995). *I’m OK – You’re OK*. London: Arrow Books Ltd.

Hansson, S. O. (1996). Defining Pseudoscience and Science In:*Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem* Pigliucci & Boudry (Eds.) Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press

RationalWiki (2016) *Transactional Analysis* \[Online\]
Available at: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Transactional\_Analysis

Short, F. & Thomas, P. (2015). *Core Approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy*. Hove: Routledge.

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Tags: abnormal-psychology
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# Question
Title: Priming people with self-image/social-image concerns
I have a hypothesis that if you prime people with self-image or social-image concerns, they will behave less anti-socially and more prosocially. For example, they litter less, they discriminate less against racial minorities, etc.

Are there any such studies examining this? If not, how can I prime people with self-image or social-image concerns?

# Answer
Your hypothesis is true, priming can affect human behavior in many different ways. Specifically pro-social behavior can be encouraged by simply displaying an image of a pair of eyes.

> We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.

Also in a similar study the following results are found.

> We also found that images of watching eyes reduced littering, although contrary to previous findings this was only when there were larger numbers of people around. With regard to our central aim, we found no evidence that litter on the ground interacted non-additively with images of eyes to induce increased littering behaviour. Our data therefore support the hypothesis that images of eyes induce more pro-social behaviour, independent of local norms. This finding has positive implications for the application of eye images in combating anti-social behaviour.
> 1 votes

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Tags: priming
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# Question
Title: Is there any correlation between n-back level and short-term memory?
I've been reading on n-back's non-transferable working memory training, but if it's just used as a method of measuring the subject's working memory is it a good measurement? Personally, I have a poor working memory, easily forgetting what I was just speaking, how the arguments arrive at certain point, what I was just thinking that is important like a few seconds ago. Currently I've been playing n-back from time to time, and I am stuck on dual 3-back forever, never really able to pass through dual 4-back. Typically I don't have a habit of remembering stuff because I can always look up from search engines, and I take digital notes.

# Answer
Yes. *n*-back performance correlates with short-term memory capacity as measured by standard tests. However, there is no standard implementation of the *n*-back task, which is why the literature is fairly inconsistent. Because it is not administered in a standardized fashion, it is not a good **test** that is comparable between studies. However, it is often used in working memory **training**.

Here is a paper that is critical of the *n*-back task. To be fair, although there is scientific consensus that there is insufficient evidence that "brain training" is effective, this is a publication from one of the more skeptical (which is a good thing) research groups. In this regard my example is somewhat biased, but I am open to discussing other perspectives. The group has also published some quite excellent criticism of how training experiments are not always well-designed, but I digress...

In cognitive training, it is important to distinguish between tasks that are optimized for testing and tasks that are optimized for training. A test task should optimally not vary in performance. The **retest reliability** should be high, while a training task should optimally improve performance over time and induce neuroplasticity in a consistent manner.

It is still open what makes a training task efficient. Some suggestions have been made, but criticized to an equal degree. One such concept is adaptive tasks. This describes when a task adapts the difficulty to the user depending on the user's previous performance. In summary, different *n*-back tasks vary in design and thus may vary in efficiency.

The problems of far and near transfer remain. Sometimes a battery of different tasks are administered simultaneously, but in such cases it becomes more difficult to attribute improvement on performance to specific tasks.
> 0 votes

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Tags: working-memory
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title: Do hallucinogenics affect chronic pain?

text:
# Question
Title: Do hallucinogenics affect chronic pain?
As noted in a previous question, hallucinogenics, such as psilocybin, have been used to treat depression with some success. Chronic pain is affected somewhat by a top-down process from the brain, as shown in neurofeedback treatment via EEG. Have hallucinogenics been shown to be an effective treatment for chronic pain?

# Answer
> 2 votes
According to the National Institute for Drug Abuse

> Some hallucinogens interfere with the action of the brain chemical serotonin, which regulates:
>
> * mood
> * sensory perception
> * sleep
> * hunger
> * body temperature
> * sexual behavior
> * muscle control
>
> Other hallucinogens interfere with the action of the brain chemical glutamate, which regulates:
>
> * pain perception
> * responses to the environment
> * emotion
> * learning and memory

Morphine is a hallucinogenic and

Morphine is used to treat chronic pain

The NHS has also provided proof **with links to articles** that opiates are useful for chronic pain

Other hallucinogenics known to help with pain include Peyote (unreferenced)

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Tags: psychopharmacology, pain
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# Question
Title: Is epigenetic the study of environment/genome interaction?
I have troubles understanding epigenetic: to me it seems like the study of environmental factors that change the expression rate of some genes. Therefore, it seems that it is the study of environment/genome interaction.

Is it a correct interpretation or is my reasoning flawed?

Thank you so much in advance!

# Answer
> 1 votes
Epigenetics is the study of changes in gene function, from parent to offspring, that do not involve changes in the DNA sequence. (Source: Wikipedia)

> In the original sense of this definition, epigenetics referred to all molecular pathways modulating the expression of a genotype into a particular phenotype. Over the following years, with the rapid growth of genetics, the meaning of the word has gradually narrowed. Epigenetics has been defined and today is generally accepted as "the study of changes in gene function that are mitotically and/or meiotically heritable and that do not entail a change in DNA sequence. (Dupont, 2009)

The term "epigenetic" has also been used in developmental psychology to describe psychological development as the result of an ongoing, bi-directional interchange between heredity and the environment. (Source: Wikipedia)

Within Psychology and Psychiatry, epigenetics covers areas of early life stress, addiction, anxiety, depression and fear conditioning.

Caspi et al. (2003) demonstrated that in a robust cohort of over one-thousand subjects assessed multiple times from preschool to adulthood, those who carried one or two copies of the short allele of the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism exhibited higher rates of adult depression and suicidality when exposed to childhood maltreatment compared to long allele homozygotes with equal early life stress exposure.

One study suggested that traumatic experiences might produce an epigenetic signal that is capable of being passed to future generations. Mice were trained, using foot shocks, to fear a cherry blossom odour and the investigators reported that the mouse offspring had an increased aversion to this specific odour. (Dias & Ressler, 2013)

Addictions can arise from transcriptional and neuroepigenetic mechanisms. (Robison & Nestler, 2011)

There is caution to be made however, when looking at literature on epigenetics. Some literature has been found to be pseudoscientific as some authors have made unfounded claims that a person's genes and health can be manipulated by mind control. (Gorski, 2013)

Also, several criticisms were reported on the Dias & Ressler study, including the study's low statistical power as evidence of some irregularity such as bias in reporting results (Francis, 2014). The authors also did not indicate which mice were siblings, and treated all of the mice as statistically independent:

> The statistical tests in the paper, both for the behavioral measurements as well as for the size of the M71 glomeruli , use as n, number of samples, the number of F1 and F2 individuals. This would be fine if the individuals were actually independent samples. However, they arise from a presumably small number of FO males. The numbers of FO males are not given in the paper. This is a major concern given that there is a lot of variability in the levels of expression of olfactory receptors in these mice that might be inheritable. As an example, for Figure 1a, the authors compared 16 F1-Ace-C57 mice with 13 F1-Home-C57 mice and find a p value of 0.043, with 27 degrees of freedom . But these 29 mice could have been originated from a very small number of FO mice. The actual n that should be used for the statistics in the whole paper are not the individual number of F1 or F2, but it should be the number of founding F0, for both groups. So the actual p values are larger than reported. Without the information about the size of the F0 populations used in each figure panel, it is hard to interpret the results. (Source: PubMed Comment by Gonzalo Otazu)

## References

Caspi, A. et al. (2003). Influence of Life Stress on Depression: Moderation by a Polymorphism in the 5-HTT Gene. *Science* 301(5631), 386–389
DOI: 10.1126/science.1083968. PMID: 12869766.

Dias B. G. & Ressler, K. J. (2013). Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations. *Nature Neuroscience* 17, 89–96
DOI: 10.1038/nn.3594

Dupont C., Armant D. R. & Brenner C. A. (2009). Epigenetics: definition, mechanisms and clinical perspective. *Seminars in Reproductive Medicine* 27 (5): 351–357. DOI:10.1055/s-0029-1237423 PMCID 2791696 PMID 19711245.

Francis, G. (2014). Too Much Success for Recent Groundbreaking Epigenetic Experiments. *Genetics* 198(2), 449–451
DOI: 10.1534/genetics.114.163998

Gorski, D. (2013). Epigenetics: It doesn’t mean what quacks think it means. *Science-Based Medicine* \[Online\]
Available at: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/epigenetics-it-doesnt-mean-what-quacks-think-it-means

Robison, A. J. & Nestler, E. J. (2011). Transcriptional and epigenetic mechanisms of addiction. *Nature Reviews Neuroscience*. 12(11), 623–637.
DOI: 10.1038/nrn3111 PMCID: 3272277 PMID: 21989194

# Answer
> -1 votes
Epigenetics is the study of how genes are expressed. The expression of a gene is influenced by a lot of things, and environment is generally the source of those things. Everything from what you eat, what you come into contact with, and what you do influences what genes are activated and silenced. So yes, you're correct in thinking that epigenetics is the study of environment/genome reaction.

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Tags: genetics
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# Question
Title: Can a person be subjected to long term physical pain as a result of psychological abuse
Can psychological abuse in the past lead to long term physical pain in the present?

Pain will usually become less severe as the injury heals, but what about pain not resulting from physical injury? How does that happen and how can it be sorted out?

# Answer
The subject area regarding this question is psychosomatic disorders and problems like what you describe can be difficult to deal with.

First of all it is imperative that **all physical and neurological causes of the pain are ruled out, including neuropathic problems, through medical examinations and tests**.

Psychosomatic medicine involves diverse specialties including psychiatry, psychology, neurology, internal medicine, surgery, allergy, dermatology and psychoneuroimmunology.

Whenever any physical pain arises without physical injury, **it is important to see your doctor** to get the source of the pain checked out. If you jump to the conclusion that it is all psychological without seeing your doctor first, you could cause serious problems now and further along in time.

It is possible that it could be psychological, but **only if medical examinations and tests have found no physical cause and the source is not anything but psychological or psychiatrical**.

When a diagnosis is made that the pain is psychological, it doesn't mean that the pain is "all in your head". The pain being felt is very real and in some cases can be debilitating. You cannot just tell yourself it isn't real in order to stop the pain from being felt.

If the pain has a psychological cause, then therapy will be needed to deal with it. The therapy will enable you to discuss the issues affecting you and enable you to live your life the best you can.

If the problem is not psychological, although psychological therapy will not deal with the pain, therapy can also help with pain management if the problem has been a long term problem and causing stress, depression, anxiety or other psychological problems. There are also complementary therapies which may help with both psychological and non-psychological problems.
> 0 votes

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Tags: pain
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# Question
Title: Do twin studies overestimate heritability?
Do twin studies overestimate heritability (for instance by putting the interaction between environment and genome under the label "heritable")? If so why? Would you have any research papers to point me to?

# Answer
It seems likely that some percentage of twin studies would fail to account for all the systematic environmental variables that connect their twins. In this case, the effects of these variables would still cause a correlation, which would be attributed to heritability. "A second look at twin studies" by Lea Winerman discusses examples of these types of variables.
> 2 votes

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Tags: behavior, genetics, twin-study
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to imitate two way communication between a brain and a limb?
Human muscles are controlled by action potentials that travel along the nerves. Below is an image of a train of action potentials that are decoded by the brain into a sensation or interpreted by a muscle group as a command.

**I'm interested if it is possible to record such action potential sequence and then "play it back" for that person.** For example, a person is moving a leg, a recording of action potentials is made. Can such recording be transferred back to the nerves to create an illusion of movement or repeat the muscle movement?

# Answer
**Short answer**
Mimicking action potentials is possible, but not the most practical approach.

**Background**
In general, stimulation of neural tissues occurs through placing electrodes in the vicinity of the target tissue and applying short current pulses, *e.g.* think cardiac pace makers, cochlear implants, retinal implants (Rao & Chiao, 2015), as well as muscle stimulators.

Long-term electrical stimulation of tissues in humans are accomplished by means of biphasic pulses, such that one phase reverses the current injected by the other. Such alternative current stimuli are called charge-balanced pulses, and are used because direct current (DC) stimulation may damage neural tissues (Bahmer & Baumann, 2013). In animals and short-term applications other asymmetric and unbalanced pulse shapes may be applied.

Secondly, external electrical stimuli induce electric fields such that neurons are depolarized and start firing their own action potentials. Mimicking action potentials doesn't make much sense therefore. It is a more straightforward approach to activate the system externally and let things develop physiologically thereafter to maintain normal neuronal processing.

But of course, in the end you could stick a needle electrode inside neurons and attempt to mimic the voltage changes over time like that in an action potential train, for example through the application of **voltage clamp** techniques. Nonetheless, I would rather stick to state-of-the-art applications and apply external biphasic pulse trains and leave the details to the neuronal tissue.

<sub>**References**
**-** Bahmer & Baumann, *Hear Res* (2013); **306**:123-30
**-** Rao & Chiao, *IEEE Microwave Magazine* (2015); **16**(2): 54-64</sub>
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, experimental-psychology, cognitive-modeling, neurophysiology, electrophysiology
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# Question
Title: What is the cause of differences that are too small to see?
Consider two identical pieces of paper.

*Scenario 1:* On both something is drawn in black ink. If the difference between the areas covered in black ink is sufficiently small, I cannot see the difference between the two drawings.

*Scenario 2:* Now imagine that the same parts are covered with ink, but their color differs. Again, if the difference is sufficiently small, I cannot see the difference.

**Firstly:** what causes this? I am aware of the terminology of just-noticeable differences/limina, but do not understand precisely what causes them. Is there some discretization of continuous signals going on that causes \`nearby signals' to be treated the same way?

**Secondly:** one person may have better vision than another, but are there physical constraints that are the same for any two persons and that imply that if the difference in scenario 1 or 2 is sufficiently small, no two persons will be able to see a difference?

Addenda: I phrased the question informally by not defining what a \`small difference' is, trusting/hoping that this does not lead to confusion. If desired, such statements can be made precise by adopting appropriate distance functions. In scenario 1, one way to measure distance between two areas covered in ink could be to use the Hausdorff distance; likewise, one way to measure the distance between colors in the second scenario could depend on the difference in responsiveness of the three types of cone cells.

# Answer
> 2 votes
The spatial resolving capacity of the visual system is called visual acuity, namely the ability of the eye to see fine detail. There are various ways to measure and specify visual acuity, depending on the type of acuity task used.

Visual acuity is limited by

* diffraction,
* aberrations and
* photoreceptor density in the eye.

The **photoreceptor density** allows a resolution that by far exceeds the limitations imposed by the other two.

Diffraction of light is an important factor limiting acuity. This is caused by optical limitations of the eye, mainly the light scattering by the cornea and other structures (Fig. 1). Raleigh’s criterion is used to calculate the resolution of the eye for stimuli that are degraded by the optics of the eye: two points or lines are just resolved if the peak of the point spread function lies on the first trough of the other point spread function (Fig. 2).

Aberrations also are an important source of image degradation on the retina. These include the well known spherical aberrations that lead to **near- and far sightedness**, as the retinal image becomes out of focus. These can be corrected well with glasses and lenses (Berrio *et al*., 2010).

Other sources that affect acuity are:

* The size of the pupil; Large pupils reduce diffraction, but aggravate aberrations of the eye. A small pupil reduces optical aberrations, but resolution will be diffraction limited. Therefore, a mid-size pupil of about 3 - 5 mm is optimal as a compromise between diffraction and aberration limitarions
* Illumination: photopic vision allows the cones to operate and that yields higher acuities than rod-mediated vision (Kallioniatis & Luu (2012).
* For the same reasons the area of the retina stimulated affects acuity - the cones are clustered in the center of the retina, called the fovea. Foveal acuity is much higher than peripheral vision (Kallioniatis & Luu (2012).
* Time of exposure of the target causes adaptation. If the cones are adapted to the timulus, they may become less responsive and acuity drops (Kallioniatis & Luu (2012)
* Eye movements degrade visual acuity as a stable retinal image is needed (Kallioniatis & Luu (2012).

**References**
**-** Kallioniatis & Luu, Visual Acuity. In: *The Organization of the Retina and Visual System*, 2012
**-** Berrio *et al*., *JOV* (2010); 10(14)

Fig. 1. Resolution limit eye. source: Kallioniatis & Luu (2012).

Fig. 2. Reigheigh criterion. source: Kallioniatis & Luu (2012)

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Tags: perception, measurement, vision, neurophysiology, sensation
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# Question
Title: Is it possible to condition oneself to not be bothered by distressing sounds?
It is my (layman's) understanding that a domestic cat learns to meow in a specific tone (I've even read that it can resemble a human baby crying) in order to get the owner's attention.

Regardless of the factual accuracy of this specific claim (which is referenced here, here and was even challenged in Skeptics.se), the fact is that an attention-seeking cat's meowning can be really unsettling.

Again, speaking as a layman - and to give a practical example -, when I'm trying to concentrate on something and my cat meows two or three times (even at a great distance), it is more than enough to disrupt my attention completely.

*(More context - can be skipped)*

> My strategy to deal with this has been mixed: Sometimes I'll ignore him for a moment - which is incredibly hard; sometimes (if it won't stop) I'll yell (not too loud, but very firmly): STOP. And it works.
>
> As of lately I've been interested in dealing with the root cause. Precautions have been taken to assure that the cat is getting enough food, water, grooming, and indeed, enough attention.\* I've been struggling to not scream (because a) it makes me feel bad, and b) it sure reinforces the cat's behavior).
>
> (\*) *While this could be debated, because one would think that the cat wouldn't meow if he didn't need to, I'm quite sure he's getting at least the most attention I can provide. From my research it should be more than enough. And it is enough for my \_other\_ cat, as a matter of fact.*

*(End "more context")*

To be pragmatic, while the cat's behavior cannot be effectively resolved, it is of my utmost interest to learn if **the owner** can "recondition" him/herself not to be bothered by the sound of the meowning so much.

I'm wondering if a person can be made to simply "observe" the distressing sound, like a Zen Master observes the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of a tree, without her brain generating an immediate distress signal like it does.

Or, maybe, some tones are just "hardwired" to always trigger such reaction, no matter how much cognitive effort a person puts in?

# Answer
> 4 votes
**Short answer**
Meditation may be key to block out distracting noise.

**Background**
One study has shown that during meditation, expert meditators with over 19,000 h of meditation experience show less brain activations in regions associated with discursive thoughts and emotions (prefrontal regions, basal ganglia, and subthalamic nuclei), and more activation in regions related to response inhibition and attention (ventral prefrontal cortex and intraparietal lobule).

The authors used neutral (restaurant background noise), positive (cooing baby) and negative sounds (a screaming lady).

However, meditation is probably not the conditioning training you are after for use in everyday life, but since the question has been silent I thought to start off with this lead.

<sub>**Reference**
**-** Brefczynski-Lewis *et al*., *PNAS* (2007); **104**(27): 11483-8</sub>

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, hearing, conditioning
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# Question
Title: What is the frequency range of electrotactile stimulation?
I have been trying to find out what the (human) electrotactile frequency range is. Since this is a much more experimental method (and more unpleasant) than the traditional vibrotactile method, the research is more limited.

*E.g.,* for vibrotatctile I could find in Sonar and Paik (2016)

> The mechanoreceptors responsible for vibrotactile sensation are the rapidly adapting (RA) and Pacinian corpuscle (PC) receptors with perceptible frequencies ranging from 3 to 100 and 100 to 400 Hz, respectively (Choi and Kuchenbecker, 2013).

Actually that seems to contain a typo or misquote of the paper they cite, which puts the PC at 10-500 Hz:

Anyhow, for electrotactile I could only find what some researchers have used in some of their devices, e.g. Okpara et al., 2007:

> Based on our prior unpublished work, the four levels of frequency were set at 100, 35, 15 and 10 Hz.

That suggests a lower range perhaps of only 10-100 Hz. But is that the full range range that can be felt using electrotactile stimulation?

It's been suggested to me that it may be exactly the same as for vibrotactile, but a set of slides comparing various methods says about electrotactile:

> Stimulate receptors and nerve endings with electric charge passing through the skin

Since there's some suggestion it may bypass receptor (in part), perhaps the results can be different.

**What is the frequency range of electrotactile stimulation?**

# Answer
**Short answer**
Stimulus frequency does not matter too much for electrical neural stimulation.

**Background**
The frequency of electrical stimulation does not need to be in the same ball park as the physiological stimulus impinging normally on a tactile skin receptor. This, because the normal route of stimulation is bypassed and the axons can be activated directly (Kajimoto *et al*., 1999). In contrast, physiological tactile stimulation typically involves the deformation of a specialized dendritic region of a mechanoreceptors (Fig. 1). The effectiveness of mechanoreception depends highly on the physical properties of the dendritic sensory region in terms of responsiveness to various stimuli, including frequency selectivity, as you nicely illustrate in your answer. For electrical stimuli, all the dendritic mechaoreceptive selectivities are simply bypassed and pretty much *any* electric stimulus will do.

To give an example: a single jolt of direct-current electricity from a 9 Volt battery evokes a clear tactile sensation on the tongue. The BrainPort device, which is a sensory substitution device that aims to provide visual function to blind patienbts, relies on electrical stimulation of the tongue to provide the user with tactile images of the field of view as recorded by a head-mounted camera. The BrainPort uses a pulse rate of 200 Hz, which clearly electrically stimulates the tongue (Danilov *et al*., 2007). Hence, whether you provide a single jolt, or a continuous pulse train of 200 Hz doesn't really matter for perception, at least as far as I know.

**References**
**-** Danilov *et al*, *J Vestib Res* (2007); **17**(2-3): 119-30
**-** Kajimoto *et al*., *ICAT* 1999
Fig. 1. Skin receptors. source: Lumen.
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, neurophysiology, sensation, stimulation
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title: systems of thinking - how to relearn

text:
# Question
Title: systems of thinking - how to relearn
According to Daniel Kahneman (*Thinking, Fast and Slow*), we have two types of thinking:

```
I. fast, instinctive and emotional
II. slower, more deliberative, and more logical

```

I found interesting Kahneman's remark that IQ score represents a person's **System II** ability (it does not measure **System I** nor the subject's ability to apply them appropriately).

I *assume* that it is possible to prioritize the **System I** early on in one's life because it is a fast way to the end. (Example: In elementary/high school Maths, many tasks can be solved somewhat intuitively since they are simple reoccurring problems. And instead of real deep understanding of the rules, the problems can be solved by application of problem-solving patterns. This applies especially to situations when competition is promoted, thus speed is rewarded.)

Now, Is it possible (how?) to (re)train oneself to apply more of the **System II**?

# Answer
2) Yes, I think so. If you think of your systems as a pattern recognizer, and continuously exposing it to more complex patterns and associated solutions, you can literally invoke your system 2 more easily, for example, in higher level math, you can prove properties and theorems in certain way that is efficient and effective, which depends on experiences to know what's the best method. Proving is certainly an act of system 2, it's complex and logical. Another example, meditation can be used to identify negative thoughts, once you recognize that you are being bothered by your own thoughts, you can immediately ignore them, this takes training of recognizing the pattern and let your system 2 focus your attention on other more important things than the negative thoughts brought up by your system 1. One more example is recognizing your own logical fallacies and cognitive biases. The key is to know the existence of the patterns, repeatedly recognize patterns, and correct/solve the patterns.
> -1 votes

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Tags: problem-solving
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# Question
Title: Is there difference between a memory of a dream and memory of waking experience?
I'm very interested in dreaming and have pretty good dream recall. This makes me able to recall and distinguish hundreds of experience within my memory and label them as "dreams". **I'm trying to understand if there's indeed some feature of a dream memory that makes it different from an ordinary waking memory?**

Upon reflection on my personal experiences, it appears to me that **when I recall a waking life memory**, typically the process is two fold and sequential - first recall the scene then recall the action and combine the two. For example: *I was sitting in a room at a local hackerspace + I was talking to fellow hackers there.* I can then proceed to try to recall pieces of that conversation. This process seems sequential to me.

However, **when I recall the dream memory**, it seems that I recall both place and action at the same time, together, with a typically longer sequence of events all recalled much quicker. For example: *I was locked in a room with no exit and has created a portal in the wall to escape from the room, flying out of a portal in some other location.* These events are recalled all together, in less than a second, and are clearly identified as a dream along with the recall. The content of that dream, although clearly non-real is similar to a video game called "Portal" that I played on a computer in the waking life. I can recall the waking life expeirence of playing that game, although in a linear fashion.

**Has there been any brain imaging studies or other evidence that supports the idea that the recall of dreams is different from the recall of waking life experiences?**

# Answer
Daytime conscious experiences come from our sensory organs. At any given moment, these organs split the incoming information between millions of neurons which then transport the info back to the brain. The info is processed in the sensory cortices, and then REASSEMBLED. This explains your "divided" experiences during the day. At night the conscious dream experiences come from memory where most of the information is already reassembled (consolidated). THAT is, I believe the difference.The other difference is in the attention we pay to the experiences. During the day whatever we pay the most attention to- is remembered best. At night, we are not making conscious attentional choices.
> 1 votes

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Tags: memory, sleep, dreams, neuroimaging, long-term-memory
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