# Question
Title: How does body temperature affect perception of time?
Does raising or lowering one's body temperature lead to different perceptions of time? And does this then control the virtual length of positive or negative emotions?

For example, individuals might drink cold beverages while watching a horror movie or sip hot tea while coding or making a plane model.

Do people drink different temperature beverages while doing certain things just because of their preference or unconsciously because it helps to get more of that certain feeling they're after?

# Answer
> 5 votes
It seems that there is a research literature on the topic of the relationship between body temperature and time perception.

**Weardon and Penon-Voak (1995)** present a literature review of the topic which would be worth reading if this interests you. The following quotes their abstract:

> Experiments investigating timing behaviour in humans under conditions where body temperature was raised or (much more rarely) lowered, dating from 1927 to 1993, were reviewed. These tested the hypothesis that humans possess a temperature-sensitive chemical or bio!g,gical internal clock. **Most studies used conditions in which subjects produced or estimated durations less than 100 sec long**, probably using chronometric counting, but other experimental paradigms were sometimes employed. Data from each study were expressed in a uniform fashion, as plots of changes in the rate of subjective time (estimated from changes in timing behaviour) against changes in body temperature. **In almost all cases, rate of subjective time increased when body temperature increased above normal, and decreased when body temperature was lowered below normal**, although observations of the latter type were rare. **The data also suggested a parametric effect of body temperature, with higher temperatures generally producing faster subjective time.** Some possible mechanisms for the effects obtained were discussed, with the most promising explanation probably being that the temperature manipulation produces changes in arousal.

**Aschoff (1998)** also summarises some of this literature and highlights the important distinction between time frames of time perception:

> From the point of view of a chronobiologist, human time perception can be divided into 2 distinct classes that differ in their interaction with the circadian system: short time intervals in the range of seconds (up to about 2 min) ... \[and\]... long time intervals, such as 1 h... The **production of short intervals shows a negative correlation with body temperature** and a positive correlation with the intensity of illumination, while the **1-h intervals are independent of both these variables**. For the short time intervals, the negative correlation with body temperature has often been documented (Aschoff and Daan, 1997; Francois, 1927; Hancock, 1993; Hoagland, 1933; Pfaff, 1968; Wearden and Penton-Voak, 1995), and 2 publications give strong evidence for a positive correlation with light intensity (Aschoff and Daan, 1997; Pöppel and Giedke, 1970). With regard to the 1-h intervals, an independence of light intensity is well supported (Aschoff and Daan, 1997).

**Hancock (1993)** summarised the literature and discussed the proposed mechanism:

> The general notion of a temperature influence on time perception may be traced to Pieron (1923,1945)\[1\] who suggested that "if the speed of organic processes are modified, by variation and temperature for instance, mental time will increase or decrease proportionally." It was Pieron's student Francois (1927 a, b), however, who conducted the original empirical evaluations of the proposition. Yet, it is Hoagland who is associated most frequently with this general effect, mainly because of his postulate of a chemical clock to control estimates of duration. Using both his own data and those previously collected by Francois, Hoagland (1933) proposed that estimates of duration were directly dependent on internal body temperature. He described this relationship through the Van't Hoff-Arrhenius equation, which describes the speed of a chemical reaction in relationship to its temperature in degrees Kelvin. In observing that the collective data provided a unitary slope value within this equation, Hoagland (1933) concluded that our judgments of time depend upon "an underlying chemical master reaction, implying an irreversible chemical mechanism controlling the consciousness of duration."

### References

* Aschoff J (1985) On the perception of time during prolonged temporal isolation. Human Neurobiol 4:41-52.
* Aschoff J and Daan S (1997) Human time perception in temporal isolation: Effects of illumination intensity. Chronobiol Internat 14:585-596.
* Aschoff, J. (1998). Human perception of short and long time intervals: its correlation with body temperature and the duration of wake time. Journal of biological rhythms, 13, 437-442.
* Francois, M. (1927a). Contribution a l'etude du sens du temps. La temperature inteme comme facteur de variation de l'appreciation subjective des durees. Annee Psychologie, 28,186-204.
* Francois, M. (1927b). Influence de la temperature inteme sur notre appreciation du temps. C. R. Soc Biology, 108, 201-203.
* Hancock, P.A. (1993). Body temperature influence on time perception. The Journal of general psychology, 120, 197-216. PDF
* Hoagland, H. (1933). The physiological control of judgments of duration: Evidence of a chemical clock. Journal of General Psychology, 9, 267-287.
* Pieron, H. (1923). Les problemes psychophysiologiques de la perception du temps. Annee Psychologie, 24, 1-25.
* Pieron, H. (1945). The sensations: Their functions, processes and mechanisms. London: Muller.
* Pfaff D (1968) Effects of temperature and time of day on time judgments. J Experimental Psychol 76:419-422.
* Pöppel E and Giedke H (1970) Diurnal variation of time perception. Psychol Forschg 34:182-198.
* Wearden JH and Penton-Voak IS (1995) Feeling the heat: Body temperature and the rate of subjective time, revis- ited. Quart J Exper Psychol 488:129-141

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Tags: emotion, physiology, arousal, time
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# Question
Title: Can scary movies trigger fight or flight and why can a person enjoy this while another does not?
Essentially, I understand the release of adrenaline can be addictive and that scary movies and events are a safe way of experiencing the drama without all the actual mess. but

However, if we are triggering our fight or flight response, then isn't suppressing it a separate chemical reaction, or at least an alternate one?

Is the release experienced more pleasurable for some people then others? Or is it a simple matter that staying in one's comfort zone is more enjoyable then the potential joy of a release?

# Answer
> 4 votes
I imagine individual differences in enjoyment derived from horror films would be multifaceted as with most preferences regarding consumption of different media. Some of the research mentions how males, teenagers/young adults, sensation seekers, and those who have a history of exposure to horror films (although this may be both cause and effect) tend to like horror films more.

**Sensation seeking**: You might want to look into the personality trait **sensation seeking**. To quote Wikipedia quoting the originator of the concept, Marvin Zuckerman.

> Sensation seeking is a personality trait defined by the search for experiences and feelings, that are "varied, novel, complex and intense", and by the readiness to "take physical, social, legal, and financial risks for the sake of such experiences." (Zuckerman, 2009). Risk is not an essential part of the trait, as many activities associated with it are not risky.

**Zuckerman** discusses the psychology of horror films in this video (see transcript here). He frames sensation seeking in terms of habituation. Thus, the more horror films that a person has seen, the more intense the horror would need to be in order to induce the same rewarding level of arousal.

Exploring the concept of sensation seeking may also move you more towards a more primary concept of why people seek such arousal inducing experiences. You could for instance read **Roberti's (2004)** literature review of the biological and behavioural correlates of sensation seeking. In particular, see section 4 on biological characteristics related to sensation seeking:

> Zuckerman (1994, 1996) has proposed a multi-level approach in which sensation is a product of interactions between neurotransmitter systems (Zuckerman, 1996). Agonistic and antagonistic interactions of biological correlates are related to sensation seeking. Biochemical mechanisms provide major support for the relation of sensation seeking and associated biological systems (Balada et al., 1993; Ballenger et al., 1983; Daitzman & Zuckerman, 1980; Dellu et al., 1996; Gerra et al., 1999; Netter et al., 1996; Piazza et al., 1993; Ruegg et al., 1997; Zuckerman, 1984, 1991a; Zuckerman et al., 1980).

**Tamborini and Stiff (1987)** studied the appeal of horror movies:

> A survey was conducted to determine the antecedents of the exposure to and appeal of horror films. Audience members leaving the theater after viewing Halloween II were interviewed using a questionnaire that contained measures of specific reasons for liking horror films as well as measures of several individual-difference variables. A model emerged from structural equation analysis indicating that **three important factors in the appeal of horror films are (a) the audience's desire to experience the satisfying resolutions usually provided in these films, (b) the audience's desire to see the destruction often found in these films, and (c) the sensation-seeking personality traits of audience members for these films**. In addition, age and gender were important predictors. **Horror films were enjoyed more by males and by younger viewers.**

**Tamborini, Stiff and Zillman (2006)** summarise existing research linking sensation seeking with horror film preference:

> Several studies have attempted to investigate the relationship between the attraction to horror films and sensation seeking. The first attempt to look at this issue was reported by Sparks (1984), who correlated his own 20-item scale measuring Enjoyment of Frightening Films (EFF) with the Sensation-Seeking Scale, and found an overall positive correlation between the two for both males (r= .22,p= .01) and females (r = .28, p = .01). A second study (Tamborini & Stiff, 1984) also found an association between the liking of horror films and a measure of sensation seeking computed from the combination of disinhibition, experience seeking, and thrill and adventure seeking scores (r= .14,p= .05). Finally, Edwards (1984) found a strong correlation between the entire Sensation-Seeking Scale and interest in horror movies (r = 51, p \< .001). Unfortunately, the articles by Sparks (1984) and Tamborini and Stiff (1984) do not report the correlations between the individual subdimensions of the Sensation-Seeking Scale and their measures of attraction to horror films. This information is of particular interest to us if we want to understand the appeal found in horror since these subdimensions are thought to be unique. The study by Edwards (1984) does provide information in this regard, however. According to Edwards, each of the subdimensions is correlated to interest in horror films with disinhibition having the strongest relationship (r = .54, p \< .001), followed by boredom susceptibility (r = .41,p \< .001), experience seeking (r= .39,p \< .001), and thrill and adventure seeking (r= .24, P \< .01).

### References

* Balada, F., Torrubia, R., & Maria Arque, J. (1993). Gonadal hormone correlates of sensation seeking and anxiety in healthy human females. Neuropsychobiology, 27, 91–96.
* Ballenger, J. C., Post, R. M., Jimerson, D. C., Lake, C. R., Murphy, D., Zuckerman, M., & Cronin, C. (1983). Biochemical correlates of personality traits in normals: An exploratory study. Personality and Individual Diﬀerences, 4, 615–625.
* Daitzman, R. J., & Zuckerman, M. (1980). Disinhibitory sensation seeking and gonadal hormones.
* Dellu, F., Piazza, P. V., Mayo, W., Le Moal, M., & Simon, H. (1996). Novelty-seeking in rats: Biobehavioral characteristics and possible relationship with the sensation seeking trait in man. Neuropsychobiology, 34, 136–145. Personality and Individual Diﬀerences, 1, 103–110.
* Gerra, G., Avanzini, P., Zaimovic, A., Sartori, R., Bocchi, C., Timpano, M., Zambelli, U., Delsignore, R., Gardini, F., Talarico, E., & Brambilla, F. (1999). Neurotransmitters, neuroendocrine correlates of sensation-seeking temperament in normal humans. Neuropsychobiology, 39, 207–213.
* Netter, P., Hennig, J., & Roed, I. S. (1996). Serotonin and dopamine as mediators of sensation seeking behavior. Neuropsychobiology, 34, 155–165.
* Piazza, P. V., Deroche, V., Deminiere, J. M., Maccari, S., Le Moal, M., & Simon, H. (1993). Corticosterone in the range of stress-induced levels possesses reinforcing properties: Implications for sensation seeking behaviors. National Academy of Science, 90, 11738–11742.
* Roberti, J.W. (2004). A review of behavioral and biological correlates of sensation seeking. Journal of research in personality, 38, 256-279. PDF
* Ruegg, R. G., Gilmore, J., Ekstrom, R. D., Corrigan, M., Knight, B., Tancer, M., Leatherman, M. E., Carson, S. W., & Golden, R. N. (1997). Clomipramine challenge responses covary with tridimensional personality questionnaire scores in healthy subjects. Biological Psychiatry, 42, 1123–1129.
* Tamborini, R. & Stiff, J. (1987). Predictors of Horror Film Attendance and Appeal An Analysis of the Audience for Frightening Films. Communication Research, 14, 415-436.
* Tamborini, R., Stiff, J. & ZILLMAN, D. (2006). Preference for graphic horror featuring male versus female victimization. Human Communication Research, 13, 529-552.
* Zuckerman, M. (1984). Sensation seeking: A comparative approach to a human trait. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 7, 413–471.
* Zuckerman (2009). "Chapter 31. Sensation seeking". In Leary, Mark R. & Hoyle, Rick H.. Handbook of Individual Differences in Social behavior. New York/London: The Guildford Press. pp. 455–465.
* Zuckerman, M. (1991a). Psychobiology of personality. New York: Cambridge University Press.
* Zuckerman, M. (1994). Behavioral expressions and biosocial bases of sensation seeking. New York: Cambridge Press.
* Zuckerman, M. (1996). The psychobiological model for impulsive unsocialized sensation seeking: A comparative approach. Neuropsychobiology, 34, 125–129.
* Zuckerman, M., & Neeb, M. (1980). Demographic inﬂuences in sensation seeking and expressions of sensation seeking in religion, smoking and driving habits. Personality and Individual Diﬀerences, 1, 197–206.

# Answer
> -2 votes
I would speculate that the answer lies within mirror neurons. By watching the film, our mirror neurons are firing, so we have that empathatic connection to the film.

When you see a person throwing darts, at the same time, your mirror neurons are firing, and the part of your brain that would control your hand movements (ie, thorwing a dart) are activated, although the signal doesn't actually go to the muscles in your hands to start moving....

When we watch a horror film, and we see a person in the movie feeling tremendous fear, our mirror neurons fire up, and we feel that same emotion, to an extent.

Not to mention that often times, when watching a movie, we enter a hypnotic state, which in of itself is a "flight" mechanism.

So, when we watch the horror films, we are subconsciously experiencing the emotions portrayed, and depending on how deeply engrossed we are in the movie (you can read that as "depeding on how deeply hypnotized we are while watching the movie") it can trigger a fight/flight response.

The second part of your question, why can one person enjoy this and another person does not... That is a more complex question, as there are too many variables. What, specifically, do they like?

For example, let's take coconuts. Some people love coconuts. Why do they love coconuts, but others cannot stand them? What memories are triggered by the scent, taste, feel of the coconut? For me, I cannot stand the texture, and the taste is not exciting, so in general I do not like coconuts, and I avoid food that has coconut. But my friend absolutely LOVES coconuts. Why does he like coconuts?

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Tags: emotion, motivation, physiology
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# Question
Title: How effective is the  NLP Reverse Movie Technique in dealing with traumatic experiences?
The Reverse Movie Technique (also konwn as The NLP Fast Phobia/Trauma Cure) is named as such because it involves playing a traumatic event backwards through your head.

1. Is the technique effective at dealing with traumatic events?
2. In particular, is it more effective than playing the event forward through your head?

# Answer
The Reverse Movie Technique (RMT) is a particular form of what is sometimes called exposure therapy, or prolonged exposure therapy or imaginal exposure therapy. It seems like "Reverse Memory Technique" is a niche term that isn't used in the scientific literature (e.g., 0 hits on Google Scholar). So, if you are wanting to get a scientific answer to your question, I'd check out the literature on "imaginal exposure therapy" (195 hits at time of posting) or imaginal exposure therapy without quotations.

More generally, there are a few links in the Wikipedia PTSD article to evaluations of psychotherapeutic interventions.

To take one example of evaluation research, Taylor et al (2003) compared the efficacy of exposure therapy, EMDR and relaxation training on 60 participants with long term PTSD. They found all three techniques were effective when comparing pre- and post- intervention scores, although for some symptoms (i.e., reexperiencing and avoidance symptoms) exposure therapy was more effective. You might also find the literature review in the article useful.

### References

* Taylor, S., Thordarson, D., Maxfield, L., Fedoroff, I., Lovell, K., and Ogrodniczuk, J. (2003). Comparative efficacy, speed, and adverse effects of three ptsd treatments: Exposure therapy, emdr, and relaxation training. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 71(2):330. FREE PDF

*Note that this is not my area of expertise, so anyone reading this, don't see it as clinical advice.*
> 2 votes

# Answer
The NLP technique known as the "Fast Phobia Cure" works by dissociaton. The practitioner would have the client imagine themselves in a large movie theatre, watching a movie of themselves having the phobic experience. Watching it in fast motion, forward, then backward, etc. This is the first dissociation -- They are watching themselves on that screen.

Next, the client is asked to go into the projection room, and look down at themselves in the theatre, watching the movie. Same thing, watching it in fast motion, forward then backward. This is the second dissociation (watching themselves in the seat watching the movie)

Finally, the client is asked to visualize the movie theatre, watching it from a distance, watching themselves in the projection booth watching themsevles in the seat, watching themselves on the screen. This is the third dissociation.

This is all happening subconsciously, and disssociates themselves from the reaction to the phobic event.

Source: I am a hypnotherapist, and NLP practitioner, and I use this technique in my practice. It
> -2 votes

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Tags: psychiatry, ptsd, neuro-linguistic-prog
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# Question
Title: Any work being done on Perception, Action, and/or Cognition in Video games?
Call it a nerd crossover, but I've always been curious about how we play games on a mechanistic level. However, even coming from a rational viewpoint video games seem like a fruitful domain of study, since data collection is simple and complete, environmental variables can be easily manipulated, and the task is far richer than typically used in cognitive psychology experiments.

So, have any psychological theories been formed by/applied to in this domain? It seems like eye-tracking and cognitive modeling approaches are both particularly well suited to this domain, but any work in cognitive science on the phenomena involved here would be interesting to see.

The only things I've found are the interesting experimental work on semantic actions in Tetris, and some modeling work done on unreal tournament within the ACT-R community. It should be noted however, that the latter example uses a video game environment as decent simulation of reality and thus models an *agent inside the game*, whilst the former focuses on the game from the *player's point of view*. This might be a personal bias, but the latter seems much more fruitful and more in line with the spirit of my question.

# Answer
> 12 votes
Video game training has long been shown to influence perceptual-motor skills, but also visual selective attention,(1) although it might well involve a mix of pre attentive and attentive processing. I have no difficulties imagining there are some key studies on fastest adaptation in children as compared to older people, where effects are probably expressed differently depending on culture and/or early exposition to new technologies. However, I've noticed that video game were successfully introduced in rehabilitation service (e.g., Drew & Waters, Video Games: Utilization of a novel strategy to improve perceptual motor skills and cognitive functioning in the noninstitutionalized elderly, *Cognitive Rehabilitation* 4(2):26, 1986) as well, which means that such positive effects extend beyond childhood

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(1) Green and Bavelier also authored a chapter, The Cognitive Neuroscience of Video Games, in *Digital Media:Transformations in Human Communication* (Messaris and Humphreys, ed., 2006, ISBN 978-0820478401).

# Answer
> 16 votes
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Video Games (C. S. Green, D. Bavelier, 2004) is a good if somewhat dated overview of cognitive research on video game players. They note that ordinary video game users show a number of differentiated and improved mental skills:

> Video game play has been shown to dramatically enhance visuo-motor skills. In particular, video game players have been shown to possess decreased reaction times, increased hand-eye coordination and augmented manual dexterity. Video game play has also been shown to improve spatial skills such as mental rotation, spatial visualization and the ability to mentally work in threedimensions. In addition, video game play has been shown to enhance numerous aspects of visual attention including the ability to divide and switch attention, the temporal and spatial resolution of visual attention, and the number of objects that can be attended.

BrainHex: Preliminary Results from a Neurobiological Gamer Typology Survey is a study that mapped personality types to "gamer archetypes":

> The model presents seven different archetypes of players: Seeker, Survivor, Daredevil, Mastermind, Conqueror, Socialiser, and Achiever. We explain how each of these player archetypes relates to older player typologies (such as Myers-Briggs), and how each archetype characterizes a specific playing style. We conducted a survey among more than 50,000 players using the BrainHex model as a personality type motivator to gather and compare demographic data to the different BrainHex archetypes. We discuss some results from this survey with a focus on psychometric orientation of respondents, to establish relationships between personality types and BrainHex archetypes.

Their archetypes present an interesting insight into personality types as mapped to certain kinds of gamers.

# Answer
> 12 votes
Playing action video games improves performance in subitizing and multiple object tracking, both of which are abilities involving attending to multiple objects at once. Note that it's a causal relationship; people who don't play action video games show improvements in those two abilities after playing for a while.

More generally, playing action video games is associated with perceptual learning, suggesting that "avid video game players are better able to form templates for, or extract the relevant statistics of, the task at hand".

# Answer
> 12 votes
This is not my research field, but I'm also very interested in this topic. As far as I know there has not been much research done but two articles of interest are:

# Answer
> 12 votes
The whole of the research on this topic has some very, very serious methodological flaws, which mean there is currently surprisingly little evidence that video games or expert gamers are somehow 'special'. In particular, there are serious concerns regarding demand characteristics.

Don't just take my word for it, take a look at the extremely comprehensive and detailed paper by Boot et al. (2011). It's open access, too!

Here's a choice quote:

> One possible factor that could lead to the spurious conclusion of gaming beneﬁts on cognition is differential expectations for experts and novices. If gamers are recruited to a study because of their gaming experience, they might expect to perform well because of their expertise, and a belief that you should perform well can inﬂuence performance on measures as basic as visual acuity (Langer et al., 2010). Imagine that you are recruited to participate in a study because of your gaming expertise, and the study consists of game like computer tasks. If you know you have been recruited because you are an expert, the **demand characteristics** of the experimental situation will motivate you to try to perform well. In contrast, a non-gamer selected without any mention of gaming will not experience such demand characteristics, so will be less motivated. Any difference in task performance, then, would be analogous to a placebo effect.
>
> Almost all studies comparing expert and novice gamers either neglect to report how subjects were recruited or make no effort to hide the nature of the study from participants. Many studies recruit experts through advertisements explicitly seeking people with game experience, thereby violating a core principle of experimental design and introducing the potential for differential demand characteristics (Boot et al., 2008;Colzato et al., 2010;\[Karle et al., 2010). The problem is ampliﬁed because gamers often are familiar with media and blog coverage of the beneﬁts of gaming, so they expect to perform better when they have been recruited for their gaming expertise.

 Boot, W. R., Blakely, D. P., & Simons, D. J. (2011). Do action video games improve perception and cognition?. Frontiers in psychology, 2.
Boot, W. R., Kramer, A. F., Simons, D. J., Fabiani, M., and Gratton, G. (2008). The effects of video game playing on attention, memory, and executive control. Acta Psychol. (Amst.) 129, 387–398.
Colzato, L. S., van Leeuwen, P. J. A., van den Wildenberg, W. P. M., and Hommel, B. (2010). DOOM’d to switch: superior cognitive flexibility in players of first person shooter games. Front. Psychol. 1, 1–5.
Karle, J. W., Watter, S., and Shedden, J. M. (2010). Task switching in video game players: benefits of selective attention but not resistance to proactive interference. Acta Psychol. (Amst.) 134, 70–78.

# Answer
> 10 votes
I and other colleagues have published a paper on the cognitive impacts of MMORPGs:

Link to full text here

The work also reviews some of the literature regarding the psychology of computer games and a new framework for the understanding of cognition in the digital age.

I hope this helps.

Abstract:

> The present paper attempts to empirically study the cognitive impacts of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) in uncontrolled contexts in light of the Cognitive Mediation Networks Theory, a new model of human intelligence that aims to explain cognition as the result of brain activity combined with the information-processing done by external structures such as tools, social groups and culture. A sample of 1280 students Brazilian high school students answered a form inquiring about socio-demographic information plus the use of computer games, and also was submitted to a short knowledge exam and a mini psychometric test. The ﬁndings indicated that, due to their underlying structure and sociocultural nature, MMORPGs are associated to a greater level of insertion into the Digital Age, higher levels of logical-numerical performance, and better scholastic ability. Finally, suggestions are made for future studies on the subject.

### References

* Campello de Souza, B., De Lima E Silva, L.X. & Roazzi, A. (2010). MMORPGS and cognitive performance: A study with 1280 Brazilian high school students. Computers in Human Behavior, 26, 1564-1573.

# Answer
> 8 votes
Just like brain training research - see this great recent study by Owen et al. 2010 \- there is little good evidence to show any causal long term and generalisable effects of playing video games.

However, to answer the original question: I found that video game players had higher speed and reasoning ability in a small sample paper based on my PhD research developing computer-game-like ability tests. (McPherson, J., & Burns, N. R. 2008)

People who like playing games might be good at things required for playing games. Just like people who really like and are good at certain sports might often have the right skills and body type to be good at it.

The research showing training effects often involves short term improvements and tasks very similar to the training tasks - this is important. Short term non-generalisable improvements are not the same as psychological traits.

 Owen, A. M., Hampshire, A., Grahn, J. A., Stenton, R., Dajani, S., Burns, A. S., ... & Ballard, C. G. (2010). Putting brain training to the test. Nature, 465(7299), 775-778.
McPherson, J., & Burns, N. R. (2008). Assessing the validity of computer-game-like tests of processing speed and working memory. Behavior research methods, 40(4), 969-981.

# Answer
> 6 votes
A few tasks that come to mind:

* Space Fortress by The CogWorks Lab, an *"action video game that requires constant shifts of attention, memory retrievals, visual tracking, fine motor control, and dynamic decision making..."*:
    + There was a whole program of research built around this game: see the Google Scholar results and a discussion here(Mane, & Donchin, 1989).
* Kanfer-Ackerman Air Traffic Control Task:
    + see Google Scholar links
    + A number of researchers have done cognitive modelling using this simplified air traffic control simulator. It's not a commercial video game, but a lot of the ideas around rules and points are the same.

# Answer
> 5 votes
It depends on what you mean by "recent". I assume you know of the following?

Green CS, Bavelier D. (2003) Action video game modifies visual selective attention. Nature. 2003 May 29;423(6939):534-7, free pdf.

To quote the abstract:

> As video-game playing has become a ubiquitous activity in today's society, it is worth considering its potential consequences on perceptual and motor skills. It is well known that exposing an organism to an altered visual environment often results in modification of the visual system of the organism. The field of perceptual learning provides many examples of training-induced increases in performance. But perceptual learning, when it occurs, tends to be specific to the trained task; that is, generalization to new tasks is rarely found1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Here we show, by contrast, that action-video-game playing is capable of altering a range of visual skills. Four experiments establish changes in different aspects of visual attention in habitual video-game players as compared with non-video-game players. In a fifth experiment, non-players trained on an action video game show marked improvement from their pre-training abilities, thereby establishing the role of playing in this effect.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Nick Yee in Palo Alto is doing a lot of work with second-life and other virtual worlds looking at mostly social psychological questions. He seems to be making use of the full range of data available in the virtual world as you suggest above.

Google Scholar search: author:yee "second-life"

# Answer
> 4 votes
although this is self promotion in a sense, I completed a PhD in which I tried to look at all the research linking computer game performance to other cognitive abilities. The last paper published1 as a result of this summarises some of the research I found and also what I found in using computer-game-like cognitive tests.

This is a fascinating area and I think we will some great work in the near future on this. I'd love to hear of any other work out there too.

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1 McPherson J., Burns NR. (2008) Assessing the validity of computer-game-like tests of processing speed and working memory

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, perception, video-games
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# Question
Title: Why do people regret actions they didn't take when looking back on their lives?
* Is it true that individuals often regret recent actions (i.e., last few months) but when they look back on their lives, they tend to regret things that they have not done (or lack of actions) ?
* If so, what causes this?

# Answer
The classic reference for exactly what you are describing is Gilovich & Medvec, 1995 (LINK), the primary thesis of which is that **"Actions, or errors of commission, generate more regret in the short term; but inactions, or errors of omission, produce more regret in the long run"** (from the abstract). The authors explain that there are many factors that contribute to this general pattern; these factors are actually summarized quite nicely in their Table 3 below:

For a more complete description of these factors and a discussion of the relevant evidence, see the link I posted above to the Gilovich & Medvec paper.

### References

* Gilovich, T. & Medvec, V.H. (1995). The experience of regret: what, when, and why. Psychological review, 102, 379. PDF
> 9 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, developmental-psychology, emotion, decision-making, well-being
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# Question
Title: How good are people at guessing the ages of their respective ethnic group?
I have a Chinese friend and she says that she has a much harder time guessing Western people's ages than Eastern people's ages. No particular surprise here. For me it's the opposite. I have the feeling that Eastern people look younger longer and then "suddenly" look older.

To have a comparison, I wonder if there is a study on "*Western* people guessing *Western* people's ages" vs. "*Eastern* people guessing *Eastern* people's ages".

# Answer
### Cross-race effect in facial processing

As @analystic has noted, there is substantial research documenting what is sometimes called the "cross-race effect":

> Cross-race effect (sometimes called cross-race bias, other-race bias or own-race bias) is the tendency for people of one race to have difficulty recognizing and processing faces and facial expressions of members of a race or ethnic group other than their own.

For an overview of research see the meta-analysis by Meissner and Brigham (2001). To quote parts of the abstract:

> Data were analyzed from 39 research articles, involving 91 independent samples and nearly 5,000 participants. Measures of hit and false alarm rates, and aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion were examined, including an analysis of 8 study moderators. ... Overall, results indicated a "mirror effect" pattern in which own-race faces yielded a higher proportion of hits and a lower proportion of false alarms compared with other-race faces.

Note that the effect is probably related to degree of interaction with the racial group. Thus, it is not so much a fixed genetic difference, but rather that in many societies we tend to interact more with our own racial group.

It would not be surprising if part of the cross-race effect would be reflected in poorer performance in rating the age of people from a different race relative to one's own race.

### General skill in estimating ages

You can find a nice review of the age estimation literature in Rhodes (2009). The author suggests that a general in group bias may exist in skill in age estimation. I.e., that prediction is not just better for the same race but also for people of similar age.

> Taken together, data on group biases in age estimation must be regarded as suggestive that in-group age estimation is superior to that of out-group age estimation. This may include more accurate age estimates for individuals of one’s own ethnicity or age group (but see Burt & Perrett, 1995). However, given the dearth of data, the full range and impact of group biases on age estimation has yet to be explored.

### Estimating ages of own versus other race

I also found a specific study by Dehon and Bredart (2001) which specifically looked at accuracy in cross-racial age estimation.

Citing the abstract:

> In the present study, we investigated whether this finding extends to age perception. Caucasian and African participants were asked to estimate the age of Caucasian and African faces. The main result of this experiment was a significant race of 'subject $\times$ race of face' interaction showing that Caucasian participants performed better at evaluating Caucasian faces than African faces. However, African participants performed equally with both type of faces. This result is explained by the Africans' time of residence in Belgium

They used 72 Caucasian and 72 African photographs as stimuli. Actual ages of faces ranged between 20 and 45 years. In terms of absolute deviation in years between actual age and estimated age, thy found that:

> Caucasian participants were better at estimating the age of Caucasian faces (mean = 6.35 years, SD=3.13 years) than African faces (mean= 7.79 years, SD= 2.96 years) whereas the performance of African participants did not differ with the kind of face (mean =6.98 years, SD =3.25 years and mean = 6.79 years, SD= 2.86 years for Caucasian and African faces, respectively).

Note of course that these differences in age accuracy are not that large.

### References

* Dehon, H. & Bredart, S. (2001). An 'other-race' effect in age estimation from faces. Perception, 30, 1107-1114.
* Meissner, C.A. & Brigham, J.C. (2001). Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review.. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 7, 3. PDF
* Rhodes, M.G. (2009). Age estimation of faces: A review. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 23, 1-12.
> 9 votes

# Answer
This is probably an example of the "cross-race effect", in which people of one ethnic group (you're talking ethnicity, not culture here) have trouble distinguishing between members of another ethnic group.

It comes down to familiarity basically - if we are more familiar with the features of a white face (for example) then we'll be able to notice minor variations on similar features more easily. In all likelihood, this carries over into judging ages, as minor changes (a few wrinkles here and there) may be missed in other groups.

Of course, there may be some top down sort of processing going on too here, which may indeed have something to do with culture. From a social psychology standpoint, it seems likely that there are signs that we pick up on (consciously or otherwise) which cue us as to the age of a person (see studies on priming for example). These cues may involve the way that others treat an individual, the way they talk, mannerisms, certain phrases etc.

These sorts of factors are likely culturally determined - for example, we might speculate that older Asian people may maintain more contact with younger generations due to social structures which encourage extended families to live together. As a result we might suggest that they may maintain more current attitudes, mannerisms and communication styles for longer, until cognitive decline eventually catches up with them. While all of that is highly speculative, it is a potential mechanism through which culture may induce the aging pattern you describe.
> 5 votes

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Tags: perception, aging, cross-cultural-psychology
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# Question
Title: Comprehensive encyclopedia of nootropics for medical researchers and practitioners
Is there a **clinically-researched** and **tested** encyclopedia (or similar resource) covering all available nootropics currently known?

The Wikipedia article was a helpful first stop; but I'm searching for something more comprehensive and specifically for medical professionals.

The closest I could find was the Encyclopedia of Mind Enhancing Foods, Drugs and Nutritional Substances, by David Group.

# Answer
> 2 votes
Edit (09/14) -- Two years after writing this answer, I need to alter it slightly. Examine.com is a website dedicated to aggregating information on nootropics and other supplements/chemicals. It is often incomplete, but having a singular hub for academic/industrial research is nearly indispensable. I don't know if it satisfies what you're looking for, OP, but if you haven't, take a look at it.

---

I am not a "medical professional", but honestly I strongly doubt something like this exists.

`"clinically-researched and tested"` would require huge amounts of money and time in a coordinated fashion. This isn't something often performed for 'nutritional supplements'. Ever seen the warning on vitamin bottles, something along the lines of "These statements have not been verified by the FDA"?

That's only for the supplements.

For newer pharmaceuticals, the process is HUGELY complicated. Multiple animal trials, regulatory approval, multiple courses of human trials, more regulatory approval, and even more hoops to jump through before it can be sold by pharmacies (this process is easier in Countries will more lax regulation - hence why, for example, Modafinil is obtainable in a number of countries outside the US; well, that and lax patent laws).

Moreover, nootropic supplements are more touchy/personalized than most drugs. For example, we don't exactly know how SSRI drugs work, yet we prescribe them by the millions (if not billions). We know even less how some nootropics work.

And finally, we have not reached a point of diagnostic science to be able to say, "You could use a course of DrugA and DrugB, but stay away from DrugC and Foods fA, fB, and fC".

Until we're closer to that point, it's all a guessing game.

(one last thing - from my understanding, a lot of doctors have no idea of the deeper details of the drugs they prescribe; they're given all the 'info they need to know' by the pharma reps - another reason why a comprehensive compendium doesn't exist)

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Tags: reference-request, intelligence, psychopharmacology
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# Question
Title: How can the success of Bayesian models be reconciled with demonstrations of heuristic and biased reasoning?
In recent years, Bayesian models of cognition have been used - with considerable success - to explain human reasoning in a variety of inferential tasks (Chater, Tenenbaum, & Yuille, 2006). These models represent a "probabilistic approach" that seeks to derive the optimal solutions to inferential problems, and the success of these models is often interpreted as evidence that intuitive reasoning is fundamentally rational. Other successful research traditions, however, adopt a starkly different view of human rationality. Researchers interested in judgment and decision making, for example, often assume that intuitive inference is heuristic, error-prone, and subject to biases (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982; Gilovich, Griffin, & Kahneman, 2002).

**How is it possible that the probabilistic and heuristic-and-biases approaches have *both* been successful while adopting fundamentally incompatible views of rationality?** I suspect that many psychologists have thought about this question, but so far as I can tell, these approaches have only been directly compared on a few inferential tasks, and there are still fewer (published) attempts to derive any general answers to this question.

---

### References

* Chater, N., Tenenbaum, J.B., & Yuille, A. (2006) Probabilistic models of cognition: Conceptual foundations. *Trends in Cognitive Sciences* 10(7): 287-291. \[pdf\]
* Gilovich, T., Griffin, D., & Kahneman, D. (Eds.) (2002) Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgement. *Cambridge Univ. Press.*
* Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1982) The psychology of preferences. *Scientific American* 246(1): 160-173.

# Answer
Your question is predicated on the assumption that Bayesian modeling has been successful in all domains. I think this is a stance that many (except hardened Bayesians) would disagree with. For instance, consider the classic Tversky & Shafir experiments on the violation of the sure thing principle:

What are popular rationalist responses to Tversky & Shafir?

The above approach can be reconciled with standard rationalism, but you are in fact building theories of heuristics-and-biases to do so; that is how Kahneman & Tversky arrived at their models. Similarly, you can build very awkward Bayesian models for these sort of tasks (other difficult tasks are ones that show an order effect) but it is hard to say how these models are different from heuristics. For a more general treatement:

What tasks does Bayesian decision-making model poorly?

However, in the domain where Bayesian modeling is a good fit, the reason it works well to reconcile with heuristics-and-biases is because it has the perfect mechanism for modeling bias: the initial prior distribution. In fact you can use the prior distribution in the bayesian approach to quantify bias.

To summarize, you can model heuristics-and-biases with the bayesian approach. For bayesians **heuristics are how the task is modeled/represented** and **biases are the intial prior distributions**
> 7 votes

# Answer
In a paper published recently (actually, today) by myself and my 2 advisers, we analyze results of an auditory perceptual discrimination task, and show that the Bayesian model can be used to explain some aspects of behaviour, but not others. We provide a simple heuristic model that accounts for a wider range of phenomena in that task, such as the imperfect adaptation to non-standard conditions.

This result supports the more general claim that **the brain employs heuristics rather than exact Bayesian computations**. However, these heuristics are not chosen at random. They are probably developed during evolution, which may explain why, at least in most cases (under common, or 'normal' conditions) perform in a way that may seem optimal, and perform as the Bayesian analysis would suggest an optimal observer/decision-maker should.

---

### Reference

Raviv O, Ahissar M, Loewenstein Y (2012) How Recent History Affects Perception: The Normative Approach and Its Heuristic Approximation. PLoS Comput Biol 8(10): e1002731. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002731 Full text link
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, rationality, bayesian, bias
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# Question
Title: What is the name of the phenomenon whereby someone steps-up and others follow?
**Example**: In class, when a teacher proposes some unreasonable assignment, students hesitate to express their objection until someone steps-up and then others find courage to talk.

I've tried searching for the term for this phenomenon but I don't know what I'm looking for exactly.

# Answer
> 3 votes
One related term I found is the bandwagon effect.

> In layman’s term the bandwagon effect refers to **people doing certain things because other people are doing them**, regardless of their own beliefs, which they may ignore or override.
>
> The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with "the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have already done so". (Colman, Andrew 2003) As more people come to believe in something, others also "hop on the bandwagon" regardless of the underlying evidence.

<sub> Colman, Andrew (2003). Oxford Dictionary of Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 77. ISBN 0-19-280632-7. </sub>

# Answer
> 4 votes
Your example of no student willing to object until one objects is analagous to Asch's conformity experiments. To quote the Wikipedia article:

> In a control group, with no pressure to conform to an erroneous view, only one participant out of 35 ever gave an incorrect answer. Solomon Asch hypothesized that the majority of participants would not conform to something obviously wrong; however, when surrounded by individuals all voicing an incorrect answer, participants provided incorrect responses on a high proportion of the questions (32%). Seventy-five percent of the participants gave an incorrect answer to at least one question. ...
>
> The unanimity of the confederates has also been varied. When the confederates are not unanimous in their judgment, **even if only one confederate voices a different opinion, participants are much more likely to resist the urge to conform (only 5–10% conform) than when the confederates all agree**.

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Tags: social-psychology, terminology, prosocial-behavior
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# Question
Title: Disappointment When Goal Fulfilment is Delayed
I am wondering if there's a term in psychology for a situation where you want something really bad, but you are not able to get it for the moment (or a goal that you are not able to achieve) and when you eventually do achieve the goal or get that "thing", you feel unhappy, it's a really bad feeling because you're maybe too late on something.

Here are two case scenarios that might be unrealistic, but I'm sure you will get my point:

**1st case scenario:** your dream is to buy a convertible car to go to the beach with your college friends, you spend 10 years saving for that car, and when you buy it you realize you're not in college any more and all your college friends got married, now you're not happy and have this bad feeling in your stomach; you wish you had the car 10 years ago.

**2nd case scenario:** a new gadget is released, all your friends buy it and mess with it, your dad tells you that he will get it for you next year when you get good grades (or for any other reason). Next year comes and you got good grades, your dad gets you the gadget, but nobody is talking about it any more, you're still unhappy although you have the gadget.

# Answer
I can think of a term, but it's not psychology-specific: `unmet expectations` (that and `lack of attention`). Your two case studies are basically the same in these aspects.

Unmet expectations are just that: we expect a certain emotional state when a situation is achieved (like buying a new car) - if that state isn't fully reached (which it rarely is - life is so rarely as clean cut as our minds would have it), our expectations are unmet and we are left 'to make up the difference', so to speak - disappointment, anger, frustration, all of these are possible, and more.

How important we rate the outcome is also important - and unmet expectation isn't a big deal emotionally if the outcome isn't very important to us. This is similar to reading a book and then going to the movie adaptation of it: if you have a mental picture of how the movie 'should' look, then you may be disappointed with how the actual movie turns out.

The other half, not enough attention, is also quite straightforward: if we are paying attention (the right attention, of course) we can see that material possessions rarely bring lasting happiness (this is actually a function of a remarkably adaptive human physiology, but I don't understand it well enough to explain it over the internet, sorry). And with attention, we know that while we may enable more experiences, fun or lasting experiences, with material possessions, pursuing the thing itself as the end, rather than the means to the end, will inevitably result in dissatisfaction.

Lastly, there are a lot of popularized articles about expectations. Here are a few:
Psychology Today article
NCBI Paper: The effect of unmet expectations among adults presenting with physical symptoms.
Tiny Buddha: Unmet expectations

Most of these were found by Google Search for phrase `unmet expectations`, so there's a lot more where those came from.
> 3 votes

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Tags: terminology, social-psychology
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# Question
Title: Attention Theory: is it impossible to avoid distraction?
I remember reading at some point in the literature that humans are unable to avoid distraction from a certain primary task if this task isn't using up close to all available 'resources' - basically meaning that everytime the human brain has cognitive resources left, they'll be allocated to one thing or another.

Is that right? If not, at what point is my understanding wrong? Can you give a relevant reference concerning this question?

Edit: I'm referring to distraction in the context of traffic from the perspective of the individual driver.

See `Hancock, P. A., Mouloua, M., & Senders, J. W. (2009). On the philosophical foundations of the distracted driver and driving distraction.`

# Answer
I think you probably need to more clearly define what you mean by distraction - what sorts of events or objects in the world distract, and what does it mean to be distracted? - but between subjects differences in susceptibility to distraction have been noted in the literature on field dependency at least http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1965.20.3.805
> 3 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, reference-request, cognitive-modeling, attention
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# Question
Title: Can thought be shifted between subconscious and conscious awareness?
While awake, can thought activity be transferred between the subconscious and conscious awareness, by will?

# Answer
> 5 votes
I don't think the scientific literature would necessarily describe the process as "shifting thought between subconscious and conscious awareness" but putting exact definitions aside, obviously this does occur.

When I recall information, in some sense information is being moved from the unconscious to the conscious part of my mind. By focusing on a different task I am able to switch my attention to something else. Thus, what was previously the focus of my consciousness no longer is.

You could think about top-down versus bottom up processes of allocating attention, where top-down refers to where attention is driven more by the individual and bottom-up refers to when attention is driven more by environmental cues.

There are also many other psychological constructs that are concerned with self-regulation of conscious experience. See for example thought suppression and avoidance coping strategies.

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Tags: perception, consciousness
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# Question
Title: How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer?
As a computer programmer, I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: If I am stuck on a particular problem in my work, often if I stop thinking about the problem and do something else, the answer will suddenly come to me.

Is there a name for this phenomenon? How does this work? Has any research been done on this? How is it that taking a break from a problem sometimes allows you to figure out the answer?

**Edit:** I remember now where I heard about this phenomenon: on the Charlie Rose Brain Series, Eric Kandel of Colombia University says (at 43:20 in)

> \[The unconscious\] can do many processes at the same time. You can either focus on one thing or another, you can't focus on two or three things at the same time. Because consciousness is very limited in what it can do; unconsciousness is much broader. And although we know very little about the true nature of creativity, one emerging theme that comes out of this is that, if you're trying to solve a mathematical problem... if you're trying to solve any intellectual problem... you keep on focusing at it, you may get stuck. Taking a break, taking a shower, going for a walk, playing golf, you come back refreshed. And often doing the other activity, *boom*, the idea will come to you.

But then they change the subject! What is the concept he's talking about, and where can I read more about how it works?

# Answer
It sounds like you're talking about a classic example of **Incubation**.

> Incubation is defined as a process of unconscious recombination of thought elements that were stimulated through conscious work at one point in time, resulting in novel ideas at some later point in time.

Here's a great article by John F. Kihlstrom: Intuition, Incubation, and Insight: Implicit Cognition in Problem Solving. Basically it is believed that Incubation or stopping conscious thought on a problem allows one to find more creative solutions to a problem:

> In these cases, Wallas argued, thinkers enter an incubation stage in which they no longer consciously think about the problem. Wallas (1926) actually distinguished this phenomenon between two forms of incubation: "the period of abstention may be spent either in conscious mental work on other problems, or in a relaxation from all conscious mental work" (p. 86).
>
> Wallas believed that there might be certain economies of thought achieved by leaving certain problems unfinished while working on others, but he also believed that solutions achieved by this approach suffered in depth and richness. In many cases of difficult and complex creative thought, he believed, deeper and richer solutions could be achieved by a suspension of conscious thought altogether, permitting "the free working of the unconscious or partially conscious processes of the mind" (p. 87).1 In either case, Wallas noted that the incubation period was often followed by the illumination stage, the "flash" (p. 93) in which the answer appears in the consciousness of the thinker.

Kihlstrom's references contain many good experiments backing up the claims made.

A reason incubation may work is because it releases "**fixation**"; that case of being "stuck" which is a sort of mental rut which prevents one from thinking of new answers or methods of solving a problem.

We become stuck on an idea that we believe *should* work but doesn't, which may hold us back from thinking of a different solution which actually does work, one we may have previously not considered or disregarded.

A great dissertation by Bo T. Christensen covers both ideas of Fixation and Incubation in depth: Creative Cognition: Analogy and Incubation.
> 142 votes

# Answer
Emotions are a very powerful problem solving blockers. Here is why:

Strong emotions (when you are upset, stressed, etc) disconnect partially your frontal lobe from the rest of the brain. Your frontal lobe is responsible for fonctions such as problem solving.

Moving away from the source of the emotion reduce it, and you get reconnected.

There is an interesting paper about problem solving and emotions.

> Performance and data from some cognitive models suggested that emotions, experienced during problem solving, should be taken into account. Moreover, it is proposed that the cognitive science approach using both theoretical and experimental data may lead to a better understanding of the phenomena. A closer investigation of AC T-R cognitive architecture (Anderson 1993) revealed some properties analogous to phenomena known from the activation theory of emotion. A model of the classical Yerkes-Dodson experiment was built to test the predictions. The study explained such psychological phenomena as arousal, motivation and conﬁdence within the mathematical notation. The inﬂuence of changes in these motivational states, controlled by emotion, on information processing has been investigated and it is shown that the dynamics corresponds to the well-known optimisation methods, such as best-ﬁrst search and simulated annealing.

Other potential problems that prevent you from solving a problem:
> 41 votes

# Answer
Check out the book The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg. Originally published in 1971 it was recently produced in a Silver Anniversary version. I own an original copy and read it again about every five years. Weinberg and Glenford Myers both wrote amazing texts which will be useful forever.

In Weinberg, the situation you are describing is specifically addressed, and his explanation says it is the result of knocking down preset pathways cognitively, then when you have to reestablish them you have cleared some cognitive assumptions placed there in the initial thinking of the problem. He also identifies the simple event where you begin to explain the problem to another only to suddenly discover the solution whereas it eluded you for hours before. This, again, results from employing different neuronal circuitry when we speak out loud versus when we are doing slow thinking (a la Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow). Weinberg's work is **full** of fun explanations and examples of how weird software engineering psychology can be.
> 29 votes

# Answer
The phenomenon's called the incubation effect. Wikipedia operationally defines the incubation effect as any benefit of a break during problem solving. In Wallas’ (1926) four-stage model of innovative problem solving or creativity, the incubation stage is the stage in which one takes some time away from the problem (the stages are: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification).

I too oftentimes experience this phenomenon while programming.

To start answering your question about how the incubation effect works, I'll point to Segal's attention withdrawal and returning act hypotheses presented in the (2004) paper entitled Incubation in Insight Problem Solving.

> To solve an insight puzzle \[or a programming problem that one's stuck on\], the solver must escape from the mental activity governed by the false assumption inside the deficient problem space. That could be achieved by a delicate mental condition that allows, on one hand, a withdrawal of the attention governed by the false assumption, and, on the other hand, some level of activation of the problem’s elements in the solver’s mind. The presence of the problem’s elements in the mind—not anymore constrained by the relations forced by the false assumption—provides the solver an opportunity to apply another structure to these elements, this time governed by a different assumption that may lead to the right solution. (p. 143)

I'll then refer you to this essay of mine for an exposition and critical analysis of the above-mentioned ideas, and for much much more. Feedback on the essay is welcome.

To address the quote from Kandell in the OP, here are some (paraphrased) point-form notes from PSY370 at University of Toronto on November 17, 2011. (Parts of the following might be difficult for you to understand; read some research, and take the class! :p).

> • Is creativity just insight?
>
> > • If yes and we can explain insight, then it would make creativity scientifically tractable.
> >
> > > o Weisberg wants to make that move.
> >
> > • Bowden proposes that there’s nothing to creativity other than insight prob solving. Computational model of creativity.
>
> • Bowden: a person is creative when they solve a problem that they couldn’t solve before (because they misframed it).
>
> > • Creativity is whatever reconstrual allows you to do something or solve some problem you couldn’t solve before.
> >
> > > • Individually/personally creative.
> >
> > • Historically creative if individual comes up with a way of solving the problem that humans couldn’t do before.
> >
> > > o Solution that feeds into distributed cognition.
> > >
> > > o E.g. Einstein.
> > >
> > > o The more an act is historically creative, the more creative we tend to find it.
> >
> > • Both historical and personal creativity are just insight.
>
> • (One of) Vervaeke's insight(s) about problem solving:
>
> > • Maybe creativity’s more about problem finding. We value both (problem finding and problem solving) for different reasons. There's a difference in how we’re motivated and valuing. Maybe to get at what’s different about creativity, we have to get at motivation and valuation. Insight: cognitive work. Creativity: cognitive play. The difference between work and play isn’t so much what we’re doing, but the context of motivation (what goals we’re pursuing). This is a fundamental difference between insight and creativity.

...

> • In one sense, insight and creativity are fundamentally the same, but in another sense they’re fundamentally different.
>
> > • In insight we do learning-to-learn for the sake of improving creativity. In creativity, we put ourselves in a learning situation for the sake of improving learning-to-learn.
>
> • Capacity for creativity is specific improvement for our insight.
>
> > • Ability to think projectively.
>
> • No extra machinery to creativity other than insight.
>
> > • But different purpose.
> >
> > > o Instead of learning-to-learn for the sake of learning, we put ourselves in a learning context for the sake of learning-to-learn.
> >
> > • Therefore, we can explain creativity with the theoretical machinery of insight but also explain the purpose of creativity.
> >
> > • Explain mutual reinforcement of creativity and insight, like wake-sleep \[re: Hinton\] reinforcement.

As for an explanation of what insight is and how it works, I begin by endorsing Stephen and Dixon’s (2009, p. 94; italics mine) account.

> We propose that the theory of open, nonlinear systems (see Ebeling & Sokolov, 2005; Hilborn, 1994; Klimontovich, 1991 for further discussion of this theory) is of utmost relevance to problem solving. It provides a compelling account of the unfolding of cognition in action and the phenomenon of insight. The exchange between an open, nonlinear system and its environment leads to complex interactions and energy flows. These interactions and flows amount to perturbations with which the system must cope. The solution to such perturbations is the self-organization of new steady states. Action is the complex interface at which the cognitive system and environment meet. The self-organizing steady states are cognitive structures that emerge as a result of exchanges between the cognitive system and environment. *Insight is thus emergent structure forged amidst the nonlinear interactions of cognition, action, and the environment.*

The dynamical systems phenomenon of self-organizing criticality (discovered by Bak, Tang, and Wisenfeld, 1987, 1988) can ground the theory of self-organized steady states in neural dynamics (Vervaeke, PSY370, Nov. 10, 2011; cf. Irving, Vervaeke, and Ferraro, 2010). This grounding greatly increases the plausibility of Stephen and Dixon’s (2009) account. The grounding of self-organized steady states, combined with acceptance of Stephen and Dixon’s (2009) account and acceptance of Schilling’s “small-world network model of cognitive insight” (2005, p. 1), leads to the claim that “insight is a process of self-organizing criticality that affords re-construal” (Vervaeke, PSY370, Nov. 10, 2011), since the process of self-organizing criticality helps to make small-world networks that cause re-construal by shifting back and forth between synchronous and asynchronous firing.

Insight is not computation. It’s a dynamical self-organizing system that makes small-world networks that cause reconstrual. We're now past the search-inference framework and the gestalt framework. Insight is developmentally running between perception and action: termed enaction. It's a dynamical system running on perception and action through recursive internal mutual modelling. The cerebellum is running on parts of brain that are acting and perceiving. (Vervaeke, PSY370, Nov. 10, '11).

I'm going to hand-wave and just say that good arguments for the cerebellum being integral to both insight and creativity were presented in that class.

See my essay for references.
> 18 votes

# Answer
What you are describing is a mental bottleneck (or that is the term coined by David Rock Anyway - I actually wrote about it (in the context of Dual N Back training in this blog post \- to quote myself

> A bottleneck happens when you can't solve a problem because you can't remove a bad thought from your brain. A bad thought is something you know doesn't work, but you keep thinking about anyway, simple because your brain lacks the energy to get rid of it and replace it with something new.

Essentially by taking a break from the problem you are allowing the bad thoughts to leave your brain, quite similar to rebooting a computer. Once the bad thoughts are gone you can load everything fresh and your brain is no longer burdened by inhibiting the bad thoughts, so you can devote more brainpower to solutions.
> 12 votes

# Answer
I believe that this excellent answer can shed some light on why you might be unable to figure out the problem. The answerer described it as mental exhaustion, mental fatigue or mental stress. This, though does not explain why you will suddenly see the solution, but I would guess that the tired part of the brain will continue working on the problem in some way.
> 9 votes

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Tags: terminology, problem-solving, unconscious, creativity
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# Question
Title: Is the Neanderthal Theory of Autistic brain a reasonable scientific theory?
I've recently learned about The Neanderthal Theory, that explains autistic (and especially Asperger's) brain functioning as the effect of genetical similarity with Neanderthals.

The author gives a great number of examples of differences between **modern** and **Neanderthal** human, that in the same fact are strongly **correlated** to **differences** between **neurotypical** and **autistic** brain. Most of them greatly applies to me, which biases me towards accepting that theory:

* Neanderthals have **less developed social life**, so their social skills were less developed too, so are the social skills of autistic people
* most primates **avoid eye contact** as the sign of aggression, modern humans (neurotypicals) are the exception, both Neanderthals and autists are not
* Neanderthals have **bigger brains**, and the proportion of brain size to body size was bigger, that could mean they were more intelligent, people with Asperger Syndrom are typically more intelligent than neurotypicals
* by Neanderthals **women were dominating** and were taking **sexual initiative**, autistic people find it especially difficult to adapt to sexual model of neurotypicals, where males are sexually dominant, increased tendency to behaviours such as exhibitiosm can also be explained by neanderthal genes, since among Neanderthals such behaviours were actually accepted as normal and dominant
* Neanderthals were **meat-eaters** (for me meat is the best diet)
* Neanderthals **prefer cold** to heat (I like when it's cold and hate when it's hot)

This all makes sense, however, I'm aware, that it's quite easy to find a theory that will exactly match the known facts, so each theory must be proven by new facts and experiments. So I ask for any **facts and scientific articles** that would either **support** or **reject** that theory.

# Answer
I don't know if it's a reasonable scientific theory, but here's some more info:

Autism: The Eusocial Hominid Hypothesis

ASDs (autism spectrum disorders) are hypothesized as one of many adaptive human cognitive variations that have been maintained in modern populations via multiple genetic and epigenetic mechanisms. Introgression from "archaic" hominids (adapted for less demanding social environments) is conjectured as the source of initial intraspecific heterogeneity because strict inclusive fitness does not adequately model the evolution of distinct, copy-number sensitive phenotypes within a freely reproducing population.

Evidence is given of divergent encephalization and brain organization in the Neanderthal (including a ~1520 cc cranial capacity, larger than that of modern humans) to explain the origin of the autism subgroup characterized by abnormal brain growth.

Autism and immune dysfunction are frequently comorbid. This supports an admixture model in light of the recent discovery that MHC alleles (genes linked to immune function, mate selection, neuronal "pruning," etc.) found in most modern human populations come from "archaic" hominids.

Mitochondrial dysfunction, differential fetal androgen exposure, lung abnormalities, and hypomethylation/CNV due to hybridization are also presented as evidence.

A short video introduction
> 13 votes

# Answer
I don't think this is a serious scientific theory at all. The "theory" makes many assumptions about the supposed behaviour of Neanderthals that are not based on evidence, e.g. that they preferred cold to heat. Archaeological evidence indicates that they used fire. There is also a lack of evidence that their social skills were on par with those of autistic people. Here is a good blog article debunking the theory.
> 12 votes

# Answer
Sounds no more dubious than the pop-psychological view of Neandertals in general. One should be aware that the real picture of what Neandertals were, and how various modern human populations are related to them, has changed very rapidly in recent years. I doubt the claims you include about Neanderthal society.

We have no idea about to what degree a Neanderthal would have 'eyeballed' someone he was interacting with, whether within in a primitive society or a modern Western one.

Meat-eating and the avoidance of overly crowded areas are both just expressions of 'the good life'- arguably environmental rather than genetic.
> 9 votes

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Tags: evolution, autism, aspergers
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# Question
Title: What kinds of math to learn for understanding dynamic systems in cognitive science?
A current trend in cognitive science is to view the mind as a dynamic system (e.g., *Continuity of Mind* by Spivey, in which cognition is understood as a "continuous and often recurrent trajectory through a state space"). Although I'd like to critically evaluate this trend, I've never taken even a basic calculus course.

I don't intend to build dynamic systems models myself. What is the bare minimum of math learning that I need to accomplish in order to understand dynamic systems in the context of psychology? I don't intend to build dynamical systems models myself. Remember, I'm a total novice!

# Answer
> 7 votes
Unfortunately, in psychology and cognitive sciences (and some parts of neuroscience) absolutely no mathematical training is given beyond the highschool level (intro stats, basics of linear algebra in $\mathbb{R}^2$ and $\mathbb{R}^3$, and intro calc; see also this answer). To make this relatable, I will compare understanding dynamics sytems to literature, where you have 3 levels: (1) being able to read, (2) being able to assess, (3) being able to write.

1. Reading level: a basic course in dynamic systems should be enough. If you understand math at the level of Strogatz's "Nonlinear dynamics and chaos" (usually used in a first undergrad course on dynamic systems), then you know how to read a paper on dynamic systems in cognitive science.
2. Assessment level: you need to achieve the **basics of math** that everybody in the 'hard' sciences or (non-software) engineering has: linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, introductory PDEs (at the level of calc 3 or 4), logic, and introductory discrete math. More importantly, you would need the extremely vague notion of **mathematical maturity**. Unfortunately, it is hard to explain how to achieve this. I don't know of any equivalent concept in the cognitive sciences. There is no shortcut to achieving mathematical maturity, and it is not domain specific. Mathematical maturity is something you reach from doing lots of different kinds of basic math and proofs.
3. Writing level: the step from (2) to (3) is not as big as from (1) to (2), all you need is creativity and breadth of reading in the relevant domain: i.e. cognitive science. The lack of a large gap from (2) to (3) is why you often see mathematicians and theoretical physicists cross domains and start contributing to the theory branches of various fields (biology, neuroscience, psychology, etc).

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Tags: cognitive-modeling, mathematical-psychology
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title: Do lucid dream eyemasks work?

text:
# Question
Title: Do lucid dream eyemasks work?
There seems to be a few eyemasks available that claim to help the wearer achieve lucid dreaming. For example:

> The NovaDreamer lucid dream mask works by detecting Rapid Eye Movement (REM) while you are asleep and dreaming. The mask then flashes a series of lights through your closed eyelids; a stimulus which becomes incorporated into your dream. \[...\] This is your cue to recognize that you are dreaming and become lucid. -- NovaDreamer

Another examples is Remee.

**Is there peer-reviewed evidence (or even preliminary data) that lucid dream eyemasks can promote lucid dreaming in a laboratory?**

There doesn't seem to be much material about these outside of sales material and news items (which makes me suspicious).

# Answer
> 12 votes
I will take a stab at this question, because lucid dreaming is somewhat of an area of expertise of mine.

The first thing that you will notice as you explore the lucid dreaming is that the phenomenon is poorly recognized by modern sleep science. There are hundreds of articles that use scientific methods to study sleep disorders, like sleep apneas, restless leg, delayed sleep phase, etc. But I've yet to find a scientific, peer reviewed article that has touched upon lucid dream induction with external devices.

Outside Dr. LaBerge and another scientist whose name escapes me at the moment, **the majority of lucid dream induction research is done by independent agents**, like myself. Such people have very little formal scientific education, poor access to tools, and are unlikely to publish papers to scientific, peer reviewed journals. Did I mention that a night of laboratory sleep study with Polysomnography costs somewhere around 3000$ ?

There's a lot of anectodatal evidence and other first hand accounts of what works and what does not, but if science is a subject to publication bias, then such self reported experiences are *extremely* affected by the desire to find an approach that works.

This is why you hear a lot about methods that worked once or twice, but cannot be demonstrated to work reliably over extended periods of time, and for different people.

Lucid Dreaming Masks are a good example of technology that was developed outside the mainstream science. It uses primitive methods of detecting rapid eye movement sleep, which are still effective, but are disconnected from the data analysis tools. I'm not aware of any sleeping masks that log data, so the user cannot even look at when the signaling took place to adjust the signaling. It is like stabbing blindly with random patterns and hoping that something will happen.

**But detecting REM sleep is only the first part of the equation**, the good thing is that REM detection is getting to be practically free with iPhone and inexpensive lucid dreaming masks. The second part is that **a stimulus must be found** that is effective at "inducing a lucid dream".

My own experiments can hardly be called laboratory, and most of them use iPhone actigraphy. I can tell you that I tried various types of audio, light and vibration cues, which were delivered as close to REM as I could manage. As much as I wanted to say that they work, they don't. My lucid dreaming smartphone apps have been published to the app store and have tens of thousands of users.

For all the customization options that I included in the apps, **I've yet to hear a single "Yes**, I'm absolutely certain that an external cue has triggered a lucid dream for me" from the users.

Occasionally there may be some connection noticed or something that happens in a dream may be linked to the external cue playing in the real world. But **the majority of lucid dreams that are experienced by the device users can just as well be linked to the fact that a user is more interested and aware of the phenomenon of lucid dreaming**.

If you read about first hand experiences with lucid dream inducing masks, then you will find out that the statements above are echoed many times - **once in a while there's something that flashes in a dream, but it is very difficult to recognize**. This is what people who spent 500$ on a mask say over and over again.

To conclude, I'd say that regardless of what you look at - Remee, NovaDreamer, REM Dreamer or various iPhone/Android apps for lucid dream induction, **there's nothing currently at the market** that can put a novice into a state of lucid dreaming on the first night, without training.

I would love to test them in a real lab though.

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Tags: sleep, dreams
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# Question
Title: Closure, an actual psychology term relating to filling in information?
I'm currently reading a book called "Understand Comics" and a term has come up called *closure*. I've understood this concept before and **the book describes closure as the process the brain goes through to fill in the missing information to formulate some conclusion**.

To give a little more detail, the books describes it as observing the parts, but perceiving the whole. Everything that we perceive about the world is through our senses, but most of the time our senses can only reveal a world that is incomplete or fragmented so we depend on this idea of closure to draw conclusions.

**Is this process called closure in the psychology?**

# Answer
> 3 votes
The more common psychological and probably everyday use of the term *closure* refers to a desire for information that may resolve an issue or situation (e.g., see closure psychology).

I think that the form of closure you describe comes from the Gestalt school of psychology. To quote the wikipedia article on Gestalt Psychology regarding Law of closure:

> The law of closure states that individuals perceive objects such as shapes, letters, pictures, etc., as being whole when they are not complete. Specifically, when parts of a whole picture are missing, our perception fills in the visual gap. Research has shown that the purpose of completing a regular figure that is not perceived through sensation is in order to increase the regularity of surrounding stimuli. For example, the figure depicting the law of closure portrays what we perceive to be a circle on the left side of the image and a square on the right side of the image. However, there are gaps missing from the shapes. If the law of closure did not exist, the image would depict an assortment of different lines with different lengths, rotations and curvatures, but with the law of closure, we perceptually combine the lines into whole shapes.

More generally, what you describe on is touched on by a number of psychological theories covering different phenomena. For example, there is filling-in describing the process by which visual perception is filled-in over the physiological blind spot and scomata.

Furthermore, most models of cognition would construe perception as the interaction of external stimuli, our cognitive architecture, and existing representations. For example, if you look at job satisfaction data, responses are often as much a function of the individual as they are of the work environment. Or to take another example, models of learning suggest that whether a stimuli is perceived as a threat depends on our prior experience with the stimuli.

It seems that the book that you are reading is extending the perceptual idea of closure to incorporate a broader cognitive component.

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, terminology, gestalt-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between confidence and overconfidence?
People say there is a very small difference between confidence and overconfidence.

* How can knowledge of psychology help someone know whether they are are confident or overconfident?
* What is the state of mind when someone is overconfident?

# Answer
Usually, confidence is based on experience; proven results with regards to a task or ability increase one's belief that the task can be completed a second time. Notice that this has nothing to do with what others believe you can do - it's about what *you* believe you can do.

Overconfidence is bravado - false posturing to fool or mislead others; most often used to hide an actual lack of confidence. This is all about getting *others* to believe that one is capable of a task.

There are a lot of non-scientific articles related to the difference between the two concepts:
Here is a "10 characteristics of" page from Hindustan Times
while here is an article from National Geographic talking about narcissism and overconfidence.

These were found with a Google Search for 'overconfidence vs confidence'. I'm sure you would get more scientific results if you dig some digging, or tried Google Scholar.
> 3 votes

# Answer
There are different perspectives that you could take on your question.

An **objective perspective** could seek to quantify the true probability that a person is correct in their belief. This would be compared with the person's subjective belief that they are correct. Over confidence could then be defined as the situation when the subjective probability is greater than the objective probability. In this objective sense, having absolute confidence removes the possibility of being under-confident, and having absolutely no confidence removes the possibility of being over-confident.

A **social perspective** could focus on the displays of confidence in an interpersonal setting. In such settings displays of confidence can be used to achieve social goals, such as admiration, access to job opportunities, convincing others to follow a course of action, etc. Furthermore, social norms regarding displays of confidence influence how such displays are perceived. In some situations, a display of confidence may be perceived as arrogance, whereas in others it may be seen as an admirable leadership trait.

The concept of self-efficacy is particularly relevant to your question. It refers to a person's belief that they can succeed on a particular task in a given situation. In general self-efficacy is seen as a good thing. It is associated with self-esteem, persistence on tasks, and many other positive psychological states. However, often there is lack of discrimination between objective efficacy and a person's particular bias in their perception of their efficacy. In some cases accurate self-efficacy leads to better decisions, however in other cases, a slight positive bias may lead to greater persistence and offer psychological protection.

In terms of psychological interventions for increasing accuracy of confidence judgements, the following are some ideas:

* Seek out objective sources of feedback
* Create group environments where differences of opinion and views are encouraged
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, personality
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# Question
Title: Should always selecting the same response on the IOWA Gambling Test result in a good value?
I was taking the Iowa Gambling Task. I examined what happens when the same option is selected on every run. To my surprise I got a pretty good value when choosing options C and D (\\$4500) in every run and a pretty bad one ($-500) with options A and B.

**Is this intended by the test or is it a bug / feature of my downloaded program?**

(I got $4700 when mixing some A's among plenty of C's)

# Answer
> 4 votes
In the standard version of the task there are "good" decks (overall positive payoff) and "bad" decks (overall negative payoff), so the optimal strategy is to figure out which ones are the good decks and stick with those. In principle, which deck is which should be randomized, but I don't know if your version implements that. There are also many variations that manipulate amount of gain/loss (e.g., rare big gains vs. consistent small gains) or change the payoffs in the middle, so the optimal strategy can vary.

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Tags: test
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# Question
Title: How do people visually recognize their own reflection?
**I'm interested in how the brain processes and recognizes the image of the person's own face.**

A bit of background: A while ago I've developed an overlay-camera like app for iPhone that allows me to combine two pictures. One picture, is a static image taken from the internet. It can be any person, young or old, male or female. On top of this picture is overlaid a semi-transparent live camera feed from an iPhone. The camera feed can be resized and repositioned to align the facial features of two images.

Once the person using the app aligns two images - the live camera image(like a reflection) and the static image, the person is looking at a combined reflection.

Because the camera is live, and the person can blink, smile and otherwise contort facial muscles, it appears that the person is looking at his/her own reflection, while the brain sees a combined picture. This produces an interesting experience, where **the brain is tricked into accepting the combined image** as one's own. The degree of "difference" between two images can be adjusted with the transparency slider, and the magic number is somewhere around 45-55% transparency, where the brain accepts the combined image. Lower values are seen as the web image, while higher values are seen as the camera image.

Consider this image of Hugh Laurie

Here's an image of my own camera reflection superimposed on the image, there's almost perfect match in facial features due to transparency setting. Notice how the headphones and the sweater can be seen, but there are no major differences in facial features (because the beard hides my chin)

By adjusting the transparency of two images, I was able to get close to a point where the image is no longer recognized as self, and is instead seen as a new image. Additionally, my brain sharply recognized the emotion written on the other person's image. Once the two images are blended - the wrinkles around the eyebrows, mouth, and the shape of the mouth become very obvious, and appear to give an **emotional "gloss"** to the image, which cannot be as easily recognized in the image alone, and is not present in the live camera feed.

I'm wandering if the mechanism by which we have facial familiarity and recognize faces is somehow related to this one: Neil Burgess: How your brain tells you where you are

**Does the brain "Map" different parts of the visual image to different neurons and have neurons fire more or less intensely as the image is recognized or not** recognized?

I appreciate your input!

# Answer
The brain does map different parts of the visual image to different neurons. It's called topography and is a fundamental feature of all sensory neurons.

The next part of your bolded questions jumps upstream. Some fMRI studies found "Jennifer Anniston" cells- cells that only respond to the image of Jennifon Anniston. Italian researchers found neurons in awake primates that increased firing in response to another monkey doing something. The researchers called these mirror neurons.

So, there may be single neurons in humans that bind visual perception and recognition. However, it is more likely, that interacting groups of neurons change their activity relative to each other or the omnipresent local field oscillations. This mechanism appears in other places in the brain and, theoretically, it is also more robust to injuries.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, vision, sensation
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# Question
Title: Does introducing an element of play, hunt, or competition make feeding more rewarding?
I have limited experience feeding wildlife, and while it's fun to watch and I'm sure fun for the wildlife too, I'm interested in just how much fun. Is there's any noticeable difference in the following scenarios?

* Scenario A: a bird **is given a "pile" of food**, and can eat it at any pace.
* Scenario B: an element of play or competition is introduced. The bird has to seek out seeds that are **scattered on the ground**, or has to compete with other birds. Alternatively, a challenging bird feeder is used.

The end result is that there's **enough food to satiate the bird in either case**. It seems that in scenario B, it would take longer for the bird to get full. In scenario B, the bird has to hop from one cluster of seeds to the next, picking out the ones that the bird wants. There may be additional birds, also competing for the tastiest seeds. Alternatively, the bird has to balance on the birdfeeder, and coordinate precise movements to retrieve a seed from the feeder.

If the bird is observed over the next X minutes or hours following the feeding, **is there any noticeable difference in the overall demeanor, activity pattern, etc., between the two scenarios?**

UPDATE: I originally thought that this question does not apply to humans - we all sit at a table and eat meals from dishes, etc. I couldn't ask a question about kids throwing pie, which is what I thought of when I think "play with food". But this evening, as I was deseeding a pomegranate, I realized that **humans may like "Playing" with difficult fruit too**

* Pomegranate
* Citrus (oranges/grapefruit)
* Pineapple

Getting to the best parts of these fruit can be turned into a game too. For example, deseeding pomegranate can be done with the minimum amount of juice splashing, while an orange peel can be removed in many ways as well.

The scenarios above can be modified to be easily applicable to humans too:

* **Scenario A:** Given unlimited supply of whole pomegranates to deseed
* **Scenario B:** Given an unlimited supply of pomegranate seeds on a plate

**Which person will leave the table feeling better?**

To get a sense of how people may play with the fruits above, search google for "Peel an orange", and you will find very varying screenshots.

# Answer
Yes. See **contra-freeloading** or (for humans) **ikea effect**.

> **Contrafreeloading**: (verb) The behavior in which animals offered the choice between eating food provided to them for free or working to get that food would eat the most food from the source that required effort. This term was created in 1963 by animal psychologist Glen Jensen. Jensen ran a study on 200 male albino rats where the end result was the rats ate more from the food source where the rats had to press on a bar to get the pellet rather than the dish of pellets where they didn’t have to do anything at all. Jensen then studied the behaviors of gerbils, mice, birds, fish, monkeys and chimpanzees. In fact many have studied contrafreeloading since then with similar results, except for the domestic cat – which likes to be served. This 1963 study’s results were surprising because it would be more logical, from an evolutionary point of view, to not expand energy to get food when food is freely available. Why do pet bird people care about this? Birds seem to want to work for food, which is a wild instinctual behavior. Avian behaviorists recommend that pet bird owners encourage contrafreeloading behavior with foraging setups and bird toys within the pet birds’ cages and that pet bird owners engage their parrots by training commands like Step up or tricks such as the eagle, and then use a treat reward system. This keeps pet birds busy, active and healthy.

From http://www.birdchannel.com/bird-words/contrafreeloading.aspx
> 7 votes

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Tags: motivation, animal-cognition, gamification, feeding
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# Question
Title: Is a safe driving record correlated with any psychometric test scores?
A few years ago I was interviewing for a position with a subdivision of a large company in New York City. One of the things that hit me as odd about this interview was that the recruiter was interested in my driving record and wanted to know if I have any traffic violations.

**Is there any connection between a safe driving record and personality traits or other psychometric test scores?** Can anything about a person's personality (e.g., agreeableness, neuroticism, or "lawfulness") be understood by looking at the person's driving record?

In this context, "safe driving record" only refers to the absence of recorded infringements. For example, a person who engages in unsafe driving but for whatever reason does not get caught, would still have a "safe driving record".

# Answer
> 2 votes
A lot of organisations are concerned about work place safety and integrity. Some jobs require driving as part of the job. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions personal injury that results from accidents that occur while commuting to work are covered by workers compensation. Thus, in some cases, driving behaviour is directly relevant to the job. In other cases, asking such a question could be seen as an example of a biodata item.

It seems reasonable to me that, in general, frequency of getting driving infringement notices would be a rough and approximate measure of a general tendency to drive safe. No doubt there would be many other factors that would contaminate the measure (e.g., people who drive more are more likely to et a ticket; some jurisdictions or areas enforce speeding, drink driving, etc. more rigorously).

Research has correlated personality with various dimensions of driving behaviour. Oltedal and Rundmo (2006) provide one example based on a sample of 1356 Norwegians. The table below shows the correlations between various measures of personality and driving related variables. Excitement-seeking, anxiety and agression were all taken from the NEO (i.e., a typical measure of personality). Risky driving behaviour was a composite measure that incorporated self-reported levels fo speeding, driving rule violations, and self-assertiveness. Accident involvement measures were obtained were binary measures based on whether the participant had ever been in such an accident.

These results suggest that there are correlations between several personality traits and self-reported risky driving behaviour, particularly excitement seeking and low anxiety. These measures seem less related to actual accident incidence. However, the accident measure has a number of issues (accidents are uncommon; they are confounded by amount of time a person has spent driving; many accidents are not the fault of the driver).

Anyway, if you are interested in learning more, have a read of some of the many articles returned by a search on Google Scholar for "personality driving behavior".

### References

* Oltedal, S., & Rundmo, T. (2006). The effects of personality and gender on risky driving behaviour and accident involvement. Safety Science, 44(7), 621-628.

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Tags: measurement, performance, io-psychology, selection-recruitment
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