# Question
Title: What is the neural adaptation underlying the habituation to reversed visual images?
When a person wears glasses that reverse the image upside-down, it is possible to adjust your vision in a matter of days. What are the suggestions behind the neurological process?

# Answer
**Short answer**
From what I know from the literature, adapting to prism glasses mainly finds it origins in adaptation of behavioral motor control.

**Background**
The adaptation to wearing prism glasses is often ascribed to the adaptation of the proprioceptive system, i.e., subjects adapt their motor behavior to compensate for the visual field shift (e.g., Richter *et al*. (2002), Hatada & Rosetti (2006)), or through shifts in their egocentric reference frame. Admittedly, some subtle, short-lasting after-effects do seem to occur in the visual domain (Hatada *et al*., 2006), but gross adaptation is mainly centered on behavioral adaptations of motor control, at least as far as I am aware.

In four human subjects that wore prism glasses for about 36 days it was shown that after a week or two, also their ipsilateral visual cortices were activated, while normally only the contralateral cortex is activated (Miyauchi *et al*., 2004). So there is a definite visuo-neurophysiological correlate of wearing prism glasses. Nonetheless The authors conclude that...

> \[The\] changes observed \[in\] adaptation to left–right reversing may be associated with the process of \[...\] strategic **perceptual-motor control**. \[...\]. For example, when the subjects wearing left–right reversing goggles pick up an object located in the left visual field, they have to use their right hand which is normally located in the right visual field \[...\].

Note that the link you provide describes mainly anecdotal reports from a single researcher. Above studies included multiple subjects.

<sub>**References**
**-** Hatada *et al*., *Exp Brain Res* (2006); **173**(3): 415–24
**-** Hatada *et al*., *Exp Brain Res* (2006); **174**(1): 189–98
**-** Hatada & Rosetti, *Exp Brain Res* (2006); **169**(3): 417–26
**-** Miyauchi *et al*., *J Physiol - Paris* (2004); **98**: 207–19
**-** Richter *et al*., *Exp Brain Res* (2002); **144**(4): 445–57</sub>
> 2 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, vision, perceptual-learning
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# Question
Title: How does the human brain store motor skills for long term?
The way I understand it, memory goes through calcium influx induced LTP (Long Term potentiation) for short term storage. Long term storage requires protein synthesis. (#1).

However, a meta-analysis (#2) shows that:

> a procedural memory may never become fully stable and instead remains vulnerable to interference. When exposed to task B, participants may have retrieved the procedural memory associated with task A and modified it, ‘overwriting’ the memory for task A with information relevant to task B............ It implies that learning a new skill leads to the automatic destruction of another skill. It would never be possible to have skill in more than one task! Our ability to acquire multiple skills may depend upon having contextual cues available to signal the switch from one task to another.

This indicates that procedural memory never goes through protein synthesis. The problem is, procedural memory can be divided into three parts: 1. Motor, 2. Perceptual, 3. Cognitive (#3). We all know that motor skills are not volatile after being practiced. Only something like Parkinson's disease can damage motor skills (#4) while perceptual skills seem even more secure. Cognitive procedural memory alone seems very vulnerable, but I don't know why this is an exception.

Is there any theory that explains how our brain can store motor skills without any apparent LTP and protein synthesis phases?

---

#1. Biopsychology by John P. J. Pinel 6th ed. P. 285

#2. http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(04)00937-6.pdf

#3. http://medicalfinder.jp/doi/abs/10.11477/mf.1416100315

#4. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01688639008400978

# Answer
I second the comments on the question that the question-post looks kind of convoluted. But it seems it all boils down to the question:

> How does our brain store motor skills without any apparent long-term potentiation or protein synthesis?

I personally think the question premise, *i.e.* "*LTP and protein synthesis are not involved in motor learning*", is incorrect to start with.

* Firstly, motor learning has been linked to **long-term potentiation** in the primary motor cortex (Avinzino *et al*., 2015);
* Secondly, **protein expression** is involved in motor learning as well. **Fos expression** has been used for decades as an immunohistochemical protein marker for neural activation. Fos expression in the motor cortex has been linked to motor learning, alongside synaptogenisis processes (Kleim *et al*., 1996).

<sub>**References**
**-** Avinzino *et al*., *Front Behav Neurosci* (2015); **9**:105
**-** Kleim *et al*., *J Neurosci* (1996); **16**(14): 4529-35</sub>
> 2 votes

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Tags: procedural-memory, ltp, cognitive
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# Question
Title: Can we learn to adapt to image-reversal when being intermittently exposed to them?
I know that human vision can get accustomed to reverse vision when wearing reverse glasses for several days. But does it work when we see the reverse image just in certain moments throughout the day? Would it be easier or more difficult for humans to learn use a reverse mirror?

# Answer
Wearing prism glasses needs adaptation of behavior. That takes time. Wearing them during all waking hours speeds up the process as it forces the wearer to adapt in everyday life. If the subject does not adapt quickly, it's going to be a very hungry, un-showered, immobile and eventually a very unhappy subject, because tasks of daily living become pretty much impossible without adapting to the prisms.

Putting them on for an hour or so per day will not force the subject to cope with it. And even if a training regimen is commenced in that hour, when the subject puts them off the learning process stops. Eventually they may get there, but it is certainly not as effective.
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, vision, perceptual-learning
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title: How to record mouse-pointer fixations?

text:
# Question
Title: How to record mouse-pointer fixations?
I'm planning an experiment in which participants will respond to a stimulus by using a mouse to click somewhere on a computer screen. I'm interested in analyzing the strategies participants use to generate their responses.

On theoretical grounds, I expect the main strategies to be associated with a particular type of mouse movement trajectory, in which the mouse moves through a sequence of "fixations" prior to the final click. By "fixation" I mean a mouse movement to a certain spot (or small area) for purposes of "marking" the spot in the participant's mind. I expect fixations to be associated with the mouse cursor pausing or stopping within a small area (though it might not stop entirely), or by a sudden sharp change in direction without a pause.

**How can I extract a succession of such "fixations" from the raw mouse cursor trajectory (i.e., positions & time stamps)?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
I think the key term here is **dwell time**. There is abundant literature on this. For example, Sample *et al*. (2008), go into quite some detail as to how to calculate this. In a nutshell, it basically boils down to defining a cluster of pixels around the mouse pointer tip. If the mouse cursor stays within those bounds, the clock should start ticking. A certain time-based cutoff criterion (say a few hundred milliseconds) could mark it as a dwell.

<sub>**Reference**
**-** Sample *et al*., *Geospatial Services and Applications for the Internet* (2008), Springer</sub>

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Tags: measurement, methodology, experimental-psychology, experimental-neuroscience
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# Question
Title: What is the correlation between grit and Big 5 conscientiousness?
There's been quite a bit of talk about "grit", lately. And the first response of many was to ponder whether it is different from big 5 conscientiousness.

Thus, I was wondering what the correlation is between "grit" and Big 5 conscientiousness?

# Answer
There is some discussion on Wikipedia

> A meta-analysis \[by Crede et al\] found that the grit was functionally a measure of conscientiousness

A study by Mayer and Skimmyhorn (2017) using two large military cadet samples (i.e., samples of approximately 1000 in each) obtained measures of Grit (12 item measure, Duckworth, et al 2007) and IPIP 20 item conscientiousness. They obtained correlations between conscientiousness and grit of .75 and .74 in the two samples. The reliability of conscientiousness was close around .90 for conscientiousness and .80 for grit. Thus, the correlations suggest that almost all of the meaningful individual differences are shared across the two scales.

### References

Mayer, J. D., & Skimmyhorn, W. (2017). Personality attributes that predict cadet performance at West Point. Journal of Research in Personality, 66, 14-26.

Crede, Marcus; Tynan, Michael; Harms, Peter. "Much Ado About Grit: A Meta-Analytic Synthesis of the Grit Literature.". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/pspp0000102. PMID 27845531
> 3 votes

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Tags: personality
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# Question
Title: Are males more likely to view homosexuals as mentally ill than females?
It's generally accepted that males tend to have a more negative attitude toward homosexuality than females:

> Three studies conducted with students at six different universities revealed a consistent tendency for heterosexual males to express more hostile attitudes than heterosexual females, especially toward gay men. (Herek 1998)
>
> Men were more negative than women toward homosexual persons and homosexual behavior, but the sexes viewed gay civil rights similarly. Men's attitudes toward homosexual persons were particularly negative when the person being rated was a gay man or of unspecified sex. (Kite, Whitley Jr. 2009)

There's research into finding explanations as to why there is this distinction (e.g. Whitley Jr. 2001), but it does not seem to cover my specific question:

**Q**: Are heterosexual males more likely to view homosexuality as a mental illness (or as some kind of a "sickness") than heterosexual females?

The homophobia scales I've looked at (Szymanski and Chung 2008, Wright Jr., Adams, Bernat 1999, Raja, Stokes 1998, and Bouton et al. 1987) don't ask questions about whether or not homosexuality is considered a mental illness, but do ask if it's considered a "sin" or "disgusting".

# Answer
Craig Waldo (1999) is the only study I can find at the moment which sheds any light on the subject.

> Although negative social attitudes toward gay men and lesbians are often referred to as *homophobia*, several authors have argued that the term *heterosexism* is a more appropriate and inclusive concept (e.g., Herek, 1989; 1992; Lorde, 1984; Neisen, 1990). The distinction is an important one, as it focuses on the normalizing and privileging of heterosexuality (rather than merely a fear of homosexuality) and calls attention to the prejudice and social stigma, both institutional and interpersonal, faced by GLB people. In contrast to homophobia, heterosexism includes a wide range of experiences of discrimination not limited to those related to phobias or violent episodes, and it conceptually includes prejudice toward bisexual men and women as well.

As you said, men generally are less tolerant to those in the LGBTQIA community than women and Waldo suggests that it may be down to tolerance for hetrosexism.

> This study represents the first examination of a model of the process of heterosexism in the workplace, demonstrating that organizational factors such as tolerance for heterosexism contribute to its prevalence and that it is associated with undesirable job-related, health-related, and psychological sequelae. As such, this study provides insight into not only the costly effects that can be expected in workplaces that tolerate heterosexism, but also possible ways to counter it. By preventing heterosexism in the first place, both organizations and individuals alike will prosper.

---

## References

Waldo, C. R., 1999. *Working in a majority context: A structural model of heterosexism as minority stress in the workplace* In: Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol 46(2): pp 218-232.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.2.218
> 2 votes

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Tags: sexuality, attitudes, gender
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# Question
Title: Why the brain region with less activity is not more responsible for some action?
From my naive understanding, it seems that when people try to find correlations between a human action and a certain pattern of activity in the brain, they measure the brain activity with some device designed for that while a group of people perform that action. It seems that it is usually deduced that the brain region that shows more activity is more responsible for the action under investigation.

What is the proof that the relation is not inversed? That is: Why the region with less activity is not actually more responsible for the action under investigation?

# Answer
> 8 votes
The thing neuroscientists do is look at the differences in brain activity. They thus don't see "a high activity in brain area X". Instead, they see, between condition A and B, a difference in activity in brain area X. These differences can be both positive and negative, and each may receive it's own explanation.

There must thus always be some kind of reference. This references can be done in different ways:

1. Brain activity during a task is compared to some resting state activity. Before or after the experiment the subject is asked to sit still, often look at a fixation cross and do nothing. The assumption is that, while doing nothing, the brain is in some sort of neutral state. Every difference in activity you then find, could be attributed to the brain processes necessary to perform the experimental task.
2. A control task is performed. In a study to emotional responses (Moser et al., 2006), for example, they show pictures. Some pictures contain emotion eliciting content, other pictures are perceived as emotional neutral. The reason a control task would be performed is to eliminate unknown variance in the data. If you are interested in an emotional response to pictures, and would compare that to a resting activity, as described above, you do not know for sure whether the difference in brain activity is caused by an emotional response, or by the fact that you presented a picture. By presenting emotion-full pictures and comparing brain activity with activity during presenting neutral pictures, the only difference is the emotional content in the picture. Not the type of task.
3. You could perform one task and make a distinction based on behavioral results you obtained. In the following fMRI study (Drummond et al., 2005), subjects performed a psychomotor vigilance task (a simple reaction time (RT) task). The long RT-trials were seperated from the short RT-trials, and then brain activity is compared. This way, everything is the same in the experiment, but the behavior of the subjects.

---

**References**

Drummond, S., Bischoff-Grethe, A., Dinges, D. F., Ayalon, L., Mednick, S. C., & Meloy, M. J. (2005). The neural basis of the psychomotor vigilance task. Sleep, 28(9), 1059-1068.

Moser, J. S., Hajcak, G., Bukay, E., & Simons, R. F. (2006). Intentional modulation of emotional responding to unpleasant pictures: an ERP study. Psychophysiology, 43(3), 292-296.

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Tags: neuroscience, neuroimaging
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# Question
Title: Is it true that stimulants make neurons fire more often, and depressants make them fire less often?
Is it true that stimulants and the neurotransmitters they mimic, push into the synapse, or keep in the synapse (e.g. dopamine, norepinephrine, acetylcholine) make neurons fire more often, while inhibitory depressants (e.g. GABA) make them fire less often?

# Answer
**Short answer**
Generally spoken, yes.

**Background**
Excitatory neurotransmitters lower the firing threshold, inhibitory neurotransmitters raise the firing threshold (Fig. 1).

For example, **glutamate** is the principle excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system (contrary to what you pose in your question!). Glutamate (Glu) has multiple receptors associated with it. Each and every one of them has an excitatory effect on the postsynaptic neuron. For example, **NMDA receptors** are ligand-operated cation channels and binding of Glu causes the channel to open. Influx of Na+ depolarizes the neuron and increases the likelihood it will reach firing threshold. Likewise, **AMPA receptors** lower firing threshold by opening of Na+ channels, as does acetylcholine abundant in the peripheral nervous system. Note that the metabotropic Glu receptors have other, indirect effects on the cell.

Inhibitory neurotransmitters like **GABA**, being the principal counterpart of Glu in the central nervous system operates by opening Cl- channels associated with the GABAA receptor. Influx of negative charge hyperpolarizes the neuron and hence increases firing threshold and hence causes the postsynaptic neuron to fire less often. Dopamine receptors are of the metabotropic class and have more indirect effects.

Fig. 1. Excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitter responses. source: Study Blue
> 5 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: Is it appropriate to do a study using only one trait from a larger personality inventory (e.g., Extraversion)?
I'm looking to gather peer reports and self reports of extraversion. Can I send out an item inventory that only has extraversion related items?

# Answer
Yes. It is quite common to do a study that measures just one personality trait. There are many variations in this and reasons for doing this. Here are some examples:

* You measure the Big 5, but you want to incorporate some other personality trait not captured as well by the big 5 (e.g., honesty/humility from HEXACO; dark triad, etc.)
* Personality is a minor component of the study, so you just measure the one or two dimensions of interest.
* You are specifically interested in the facets of a particular dimension so for example, you measure conscientiousness as well as many different facet scales of conscientiousness.

In these cases, items are often taken from a larger inventory. E.g., you take just the extraversion items from a measure of Big 5.

There are legitimate reasons for why you might want to only measure one personality trait. That said, if length is not a major issue, I would strongly encourage you to measure a broader set of traits. In particular, there are many benefits to getting a complete measure of the Big 5 (or perhaps HEXACO). You can then examine correlations in context and provide a much more complete picture.
> 2 votes

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Tags: personality, methodology
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# Question
Title: Do we all look at pictures from left to right?
Because in western culture, writing and reading is from left to right, while arabic writing/reading is the opposite, chinese is from bottom to top and left to right (correct?) I don’t know about others. Also being left or right handed may be considered, I am left handed and I know it. Is it there a relation?

# Answer
When reading you are performing a trained or learned skill, so if your instruction taught you to follow certain order that's what you do. There is a **transfer** of this behavior ( *or any other learnt one for that matter* ),into other types of images and situations,but the degree at which it is transferred depends on both context,cues, and expertise to name a few.

So in one way, yes if you are presented with mainly a text based image you are expected to follow your training to some degree.

This is but half the picture, the human visual system has evolved to notice and extract things ( *or features* ) in a picture or real life, things that move, things with edges, moving things, things that were once important, the whole thing and on an on.

So in order to analyze an image, there seems to be a complex interplay of attention from both your innate visual skills as well as features from the image that due to their novelty or other feature demand your attention, and sometimes even before that, you are making a decision as to what the image is and how to analyze it.

**So which direction then ?**

Your eyes analyze an image through voluntary and involuntary saccades,(directional eye movements) which due to the above explanation can be directed everywhere depending on a number of things, an interesting feature could be the starting point, or also a random one, and from there on you will keep analyzing the scene based on where your attention is at, here are 2 images being analyzed:

The resulting lines represent patterns of fixation and are called **Scan Paths**.They differ from one observer to another and from one image to another, as well as depending on which task the observer is given and context.

I am not aware of the same type of studies made with text and mostly text based images and predominantly left right handed subjects, that would probably give us the definite answer, but it is not too far fetched to expect some jumping around the page with periods of directional fixation based on your preferred reading method.

**Sources/Notes**

* Patterns of Fixation were pioneered by the Russian psychologist Yarbus (1965)
* **Vision Science (Palmer)** *11.2 visual selection: eye movements and attention.* A whole chapter that goes into detail.
* The nefertiti image is from Yarbus, A. L. (1967) Eye Movements and Vision. Basil Haigh (trans.). New York: Plenum Press. The face one ( not sure about the methodology ) from the wiki on saccades.
> 4 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, perception, behavior
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# Question
Title: Calculation of d'prime in forced choice experiment
I am working on psychtoolbox and in my experiment I have given two images containing two roads (one is shortcut and other is longer way). In one image, the longest way is safe and in the other the shortcut way is safer. The images appear randomly. Students have to press left arrow key of laptop if longest is safe and right key for shortcut way.

I am confused in this whether it come under forced choice or 2AFC (alternative forced choice)?

# Answer
It sounds like you are struggling with the terminology. The terminology is not particularly clear.

As it sounds like you are forcing them to respond with either the left or right arrow key, I would describe the task as forced choice. If you ask subjects to rate how likely the longest path is safe with the 0-9 keys, I would describe it as a rating, despite them being forced to give an answer on every trial. If you allowed them to skip trials with the space bar, some people would not call this a forced choice task. Things are messy though since you could think of the left arrow as 0, the space as 5, and the right as 9. In terms of $d'$, what matters is that there are two choices.

The two most common paradigms with exactly two response choices are typically called the yes/no paradigm and the 2AFC paradigm. Despite it's name, the yes/no paradigm can have any response labels, including left arrow and right arrow. In the typical setup, in addition to both paradigm having 2 responses, both paradigms have exactly two stimulus classes (e.g., signal and noise, or in your case long and short). The defining characteristic that differentiates a yes/no paradigm from a 2AFC paradigm is that in a yes/no paradigm each trial (and hence response) is based on a single presentation of one of the stimulus classes while in the 2AFc paradigm there is a single presentation of both stimuli classes (either concurrently or sequentially). This difference is critical for calculating $d'$ and a $\sqrt{2}/2$ scale factor is needed to correct for the fact that in the 2AFC paradigm there is more information.

So to answer your question, it is not clear from your description if you need to scale $d'$ by $\sqrt{2}/2$.
> 2 votes

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Tags: perception, cognitive-neuroscience, emotion
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# Question
Title: What happens to someone missing teenage years of development?
Hypothetically, let's say a person were to fall into a coma as an adolescent for several years, until they were a physical adult.

Would that person, assuming the brain was still fully functional upon awakening, still maintain the immaturity and impulsiveness of a teenager, and if so, could it be corrected by just trying to emulate adult life (effectively skipping teenage years of development), or are the experiences of a teenager still necessary to progress to an adult state of mind (aka, they would still need to have those experiences now in order to mature emotionally/mentally/etc.)?

# Answer
Whilst typing this answer, I upvoted this question as it points to very interesting theories of drive, motivation, and personal development.

## Short Answer

If you take on board the theories surrounding life-span human development, there is an element of truth in your hypothesis. Elements of immaturity and impulsiveness can still linger for various reasons and supposing there are no physical reasons for development delays, the reasons for the stagnation in cognitive development would need to be addressed through therapy in order for the person to be able to successfully move forward in life.

## Long Answer

Although there is **an element** of opinion expressed in the underlying theories I am about to outline, the theories can easily be demonstrated in many different ways.

When looking at developmental issues, there are 5 spectrum models of development, which theorists – and people in general – often disagree. (Miller, 2010; Sigelman & Rider, 2012):

1. **Goodness vs. Badness of Human Nature**
Humans are innately good, bad, or neither
2. **Nature vs. Nurture**
Genes, biology, and maturation vs. experiences, learning, and social influences
3. **Activity vs. Passivity**
Humans shape their environments vs. environmental forces shape humans
4. **Continuity vs. Discontinuity**
Changes are gradual vs. dramatically through life
5. **Universality vs. Context Specificity**
Development is similar between people and cultures vs. considerable differences between people and cultures

First of all, we need to look at how the theory has been developed.

The prime theories of development which play a part in answering this question lay in Psychodynamic theories initially developed by Sigmund Freud and developed further with adjustments to his theories by Erik Erikson.

### Sigmund Freud's Drive Theory and Stages of Development

**Drive Theory**

Sigmund Freud argued on the debate of Nature vs. Nurture and Good vs. Bad, especially when he wrote his 2 essays *Thoughts for the Times on War and Death* around 6 months after the outbreak of World War 1. I am not sure where Freud stood on the other spectrums, although I would say that he stood on the universality side of Universality vs. Context Specificity, as I believe he saw everyone had the same motivational drives, and therefore everyone would react to situations in the same way.

With Sigmund Freud, a lot of people get hung up on the sexual elements of his theories when really, Freud’s theories centres on his motivation and **drive theory** and they centre on all sorts of pleasure. We are motivated towards whatever brings pleasure and are motivated away from pain, difficulty, destruction, confusion, etc.

With drive theory centring on Eros and Thanatos along with the elements of the self (id, ego and super-ego), he is explaining resistance and why people use avoidance tactics through ego-defence mechanisms such as repression, denial etc. The Freud Museum’s website explains this too, along with topics such as the Oedipus Complex (Freud Museum London, n.d.).

I have seen Freud’s drive theory in play in many different ways. People who I have been supporting after being assaulted often display these characteristics. Although not always, they will avoid at all costs, anything they feel will put them in the same situation again, even if that means sacrificing personal and social interactions.

Some will also seek other forms of pleasure, either just for the pleasure they gain from it, or for the purposes of blocking out bad feelings, memories and emotions they are suffering from due to the past experiences haunting them through flashbacks etc.

Even those who have not experienced assault display drive theory traits when you look at the effects of commercialism in society. Everyone looks for the things that will give them pleasure, whether it is the latest mobile phone, laptop or computer; or if it is a future holiday or bigger home. The increase in readily available loans such as payday loans also make things more accessible and those who find difficulty paying them back avoid looking at the letters of demand, burying their head in the sand in the hope that they can deal with it later or it will just go away.

**Stages of Development**

The stages of development are a central element of Freud's Drive Theory. Each of the stages:

* Oral (Birth - 1 year approx.)
* Anal (1 – 3 years approx.)
* Phallic (3 – 6 years approx.)
* Latency (6 – puberty approx.)
* Genital (Puberty–death approx.)

is associated with a particular conflict that must be resolved before the individual can successfully advance to the next stage.

### Erikson’s Life Stages

Erik Erikson’s 8 life stages of man, originally put together in 1950 in his book Childhood and Society, reframes Freud’s life stages and expands them. Each stage is a dilemma, and the resolution of each dilemma results in either a positive or a negative outcome. (Roche, 2009)

In Erikson’s life stages, Freud’s oral stage is the stage of trust vs. mistrust, the anal stage is autonomy vs. shame and doubt, the phallic stage is initiative vs. guilt, the latent period is industry vs. inferiority, and the genital stage is identity vs. role confusion.

Later, Erikson split the genital stage and labelled the puberty period of genital stage as identity vs. role confusion, and the later part of genital stage is intimacy vs. isolation (Erikson & Erikson, 1998).

There were 2 other stages – Generativity vs. Stagnation (or Fertility vs. Sterility (Roche, 2009)) and Ego integrity vs. despair – whilst a 9th stage was added in 1998 as the Eriksons came to believe that, “the role of old age needs to be reobserved, rethought” (Erikson & Erikson, 1998: p. 62).

In the ninth stage (around the 80s/90s), all first eight stages go in reverse quotient order. For example, intimacy vs. isolation becomes isolation vs. intimacy – years of intimacy and love often give way to isolation and deprivation. Relationships become “overshadowed by new incapacities and dependencies”.

Looking at how issues have affected people I have spoken to, the first 8 life stages are to me more like stages of assimilation of fact, which can advance and recede at different times in life. Different facts will be at different stages of assimilation.

Take, for example, identity vs. role confusion. You can feel very secure in your identity within society, but then something can happen, which can shake that sense of identity to the point where you start to question it again. Using this “life-stage” as an example, if you speak to a man who has been raped, for many different reasons he may have questions surrounding his sexual identity, which he didn’t have before.

He could then misinterpret the situations he was in and re-evaluate and re-introject his sexual identity in the wrong way, which when revisiting the past in therapy can then cause more pain and anguish having to yet again re-evaluate his sexual identity.

When looking at this theory in the context of life stages and not stages of assimilation, the Eriksons’ revisiting of the life stages in 1998 highlights how you also need to look at these stages in the context of time-frame in which it was written. They were originally put together in the late 40s and put into a book in 1950. Expectations of children and adults were different then, and so the timeframes of each stage may need to be adjusted and re-evaluated. However, the stages still hold as being valid.

---

## References

Erikson, E. H. & Erikson, J. M., 1998. The Life Cycle Completed. New York: W.W. Norton.

Miller, P. H., 2010. Theories of developmental psychology. New York: Worth.

Roche, D., 2009. Mapping the Human Phenome. \[Online\] Available at: http://thewayitis.info/thewayitis/inhumandev/epigenetics/mapphenome/p71.html \[Accessed 16 March 2017\].

Sigelman, C. K. & Rider, E. A., 2012. Life-Span Human Development. 7th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Freud Museum London, n.d. Are Freud's Theories All About Sex?. \[Online\] Available at: https://www.freud.org.uk/education/topic/10567/subtopic/10571/ \[Accessed 16 March 2017\] Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20160121182526/http://www.freud.org.uk/education/topic/10567/subtopic/10571/
> 7 votes

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Tags: developmental-psychology, psychology
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title: Why is depression a diagnosable issue?

text:
# Question
Title: Why is depression a diagnosable issue?
To me, it seems strange that something such as depression, which anyone can feel at any given time, is diagnosed and treated medically as if it is a mental disorder. I believe depression should be treated with constructive sessions, communication and through giving people a sense of meaning.

**Why is depression being treated as if it is a medical problem when it's a problem of thought?**

In my opinion, diagnosing a person as being depressed may re-enforce their negative ideas, while the more obvious approach would be to positively re-enforce this person?.

# Answer
"Depression" is a symptom or state of being, one that everyone can experience.

"Major Depressive Disorder," however, is a diagnosable medical disorder for many reasons. The following list is by no means exhaustive:

* Major Depressive Disorder runs in families, and a genetic component is well established by family and twin studies.
* Anyone who experiences a major depressive episode is at increased risk compared to the general population.
* Major Depressive Disorder costs the US $200 billion per year in medical treatment and workplace costs.
* There are many specific ways in which functioning in the brain is altered in depressed patients. Decreased functioning in the prefrontal cortex (executive functioning) is a good example.
* Contrary to belief common in the 80s and 90s, clinical depression is much more complicated than "a deficiency in serotonin" - the neurology is multifactorial and still poorly understood. However, clinically depressed patients (usually) respond to SSRIs in a manner different from healthy individuals. Prozac is not a "happy pill" if you are not depressed.

"A problem of thought" is one *aspect* of depression. Most individuals have some combination of cognitive, behavioral, neurochemical, and genetic elements.

I agree with you that telling people "you have a disease" is not always helpful and can be counter-productive in many instances. I too am a fan of positive psychiatry, and I think most individuals could benefit from caring for their mental wellbeing in the same way that healthy people benefit from exercise. On the other side of the coin, it is a *serious issue* that many patients do not take seriously enough, and non-compliance to medication and therapy is common and can have very serious adverse consequences.

Your question is a good one, and a common one. Thank you for asking. Be aware, though, that it may come off as insensitive and offensive to some who have it bad.

To use rationalist terms: depression and suicide has been a large problem for many people throughout human history. From that, you can assume that 1) many people care very deeply about it, and 2) it is a *difficult problem*. Given those facts, any statement along the lines of "All it requires is \____", someone will likely take offense.
> 7 votes

# Answer
As @user30133 pointed out,

> Not everyone who feels depressed some time \[is\] diagnosed with depression. Depression is not simply feeling sad. It has specific diagnosis criteria which you can find in \[the\] DSM

The DSM is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, of which the most recent edition is the 5th edition (DSM-5) which also links to ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems 10th Revision).

NICE (The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) states in this 64 page document outlining recognition and management of depression

> Depression is a broad and heterogeneous diagnosis. Central to it is depressed mood and/or loss of pleasure in most activities. Severity of the disorder is determined by both the number and severity of symptoms, as well as the degree of functional impairment. A formal diagnosis using the ICD-10 classification system requires at least four out of ten depressive symptoms, whereas the DSM-IV system requires at least five out of nine for a diagnosis of major depression (referred to in this guideline as 'depression'). Symptoms should be present for at least 2 weeks and each symptom should be present at sufficient severity for most of every day. Both diagnostic systems require at least one (DSM-IV) or two (ICD‑10) key symptoms (low mood,\[1\] loss of interest and pleasure\[1\] or loss of energy\[2\]) to be present.
>
> Increasingly, it is recognised that depressive symptoms below the DSM‑IV and ICD‑10 threshold criteria can be distressing and disabling if persistent. Therefore this updated guideline covers 'subthreshold depressive symptoms', which fall below the criteria for major depression, and are defined as at least one key symptom of depression but with insufficient other symptoms and/or functional impairment to meet the criteria for full diagnosis. Symptoms are considered persistent if they continue despite active monitoring and/or low-intensity intervention, or have been present for a considerable time, typically several months. (For a diagnosis of dysthymia, symptoms should be present for at least 2 years\[3\].)
>
> It should be noted that classificatory systems are agreed conventions that seek to define different severities of depression in order to guide diagnosis and treatment, and their value is determined by how useful they are in practice. After careful review of the diagnostic criteria and the evidence, the Guideline Development Group decided to adopt DSM-IV criteria for this update rather than ICD-10, which was used in the previous guideline (NICE clinical guideline 23). This is because DSM-IV is used in nearly all the evidence reviewed and it provides definitions for atypical symptoms and seasonal depression. Its definition of severity also makes it less likely that a diagnosis of depression will be based solely on symptom counting. In practical terms, clinicians are not expected to switch to DSM-IV but should be aware that the threshold for mild depression is higher than ICD-10 (five symptoms instead of four) and that degree of functional impairment should be routinely assessed before making a diagnosis. Using DSM-IV enables the guideline to target better the use of specific interventions, such as antidepressants, for more severe degrees of depression.
>
> \[1\] In both ICD-10 and DSM-IV.
>
> \[2\] In ICD-10 only.
>
> \[3\] Both DSM-IV and ICD-10 have the category of dysthymia, which consists of depressive symptoms that are subthreshold for major depression but that persist (by definition for more than 2 years). There appears to be no empirical evidence that dysthymia is distinct from subthreshold depressive symptoms apart from duration of symptoms, and the term 'persistent subthreshold depressive symptoms' is preferred in this guideline.
> 5 votes

# Answer
**Short answer**
The current understanding is that depression is related to a neurochemical imbalance in the depressed brain. Pharmacological treatment to shift and correct that imbalance may therefore be an effective approach.

**Background**
Basically you are saying depression is a state of mind and should be treated with counselling rather than tagging a person as mentally ill and medicalizing the care.

As pointed out in the other answers, diagnosis of clinical depression happens through rational guidelines using questionnaires and inventories. Basically, the goal is to extract the clinical, chronic depression from the other group that only shows some, but not all the symptoms of clinical depression. Normal life events can trigger a depression, but that doesn't mean that person needs medical treatment.

In contrast, clinical depression, while being a mental disorder, has correlates in the neurochemical balance in the brain. From a neuroscience perspective, the depressed brain is physically different from a non-depressed brain.

Early medical treatments, and more recent accepted classes of anti-depressants show important correlates to dysfunctional **mono-aminergic neurotransmission**. A rough timeline of the various anti-depressants shows the neurotransmitter systems that are targeted by these drugs (Ferguson 2001):

Without going into their specific mechanisms of action, the point I wish to make is that decades of research in anti-depressants has strongly indicated that a monoamine (MA) neurotransmitter imbalance (most notably 5HT), and specifically a **reduced** MA neurotransmission is one of the leading factors to a depression (Muñoz & Alamo, 2009). While counseling may help, the underlying disorder may perhaps be treated effectively through treatment with antidepressants.

Regarding your statement that a diagnosis may enforce depressive thoughts - I disagree. **Acknowledgement** of the depressed state as a serious and debilitating illness is a necessary first step to recovery. Instead of the "*oh it's just all between your ears - here are some positive words for you*", depressed people are taken seriously and receive the appropriate medical care they deserve. This counts for pharmacological interventions and counseling alike. The first and likely the most crucial stage is acknowledging the problem - for the patient, the care providers, as well as for friends and family.

**References**
**-** Ferguson, *Prim Care Companion J Clin Psychiatry* (2001); **3**(1): 22-7
**-** Muñoz & Alamo, *Curr Pharm Des* (2009); **15**(14): 1563-86
> 4 votes

# Answer
Not everyone who feels depressed some time diagnosed with depression. Depression is not simply feeling sad. It has specific diagnosis criteria which you can find in **DSM-V**. Diagnosis of a mental disorder is needed to help the patient, not to label them or to reenforce any idea. That's why in psychiatry, the term 'diases' is not used. Moreover, with the same way of thinking in your question, none of the psychiatric disorders could be defined. Because psychiatry is based on ways of feelings and thoughts.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: neuroscience, depression, psychopharmacology, positive-psychology
---


# Question
Title: in R : How to check RT's for ex-gaussian fit with the fitdistrplus package
I have several response times from participants in a mental rotation task. I'm really puzzled how to get the best distribution model to fit my data. I had checked several ones with the fitdistrplus::fitdist function and have two good candidates (log-normal & gamma).

I would like to check for an ex-gaussian distribution fit (GAMLSS package), but the fitdist function ask for "start" parameters and I have no idea how to get them: any help would be much appreciated.

# Answer
> 3 votes
I did a quick google and found the `mesgauss` function in the `retimes` package. I give a simple example of estimatinat ex-gaussian parameters from sample data.

```
library(retimes)
rtdata <- c(.5, .7, .3, 1, 2, .5, .55)
retimes::mexgauss(rtdata)

```

This returns:

```
       mu     sigma       tau
0.2838158 0.2668972 0.5090413

```

Regarding starting values, typically these just need to be ball-park estimates of what the parameters might be.

# Answer
> 4 votes
To answer the question relating to start values for the parameters for use with `fitdist`:

> I would like to check for an ex-gaussian distribution fit (GAMLSS package), but the fitdist function ask for "start" parameters and I have no idea how to get them: any help would be much appreciated.

Where possible, knowledge of the behavior of similar reaction times can be used. This might be particularly helpful when the sample skewness (see below) is not suitable for obtaining starting values, since skewness in particular might be anticipated to reasonably similar across different but related circumstances.

As Jeromy says, start values generally just need to be rough ballpark estimates, so if you have some experience of fits you may be able to supply suitable guesses. But if you don't have any suitable idea, there's still something you can do.

The Wikipedia page on the ExGaussian distribution offers some possibilities.

Firstly, it gives method-of-moments-related estimators based on the sample mean, variance and skewness (labelled $m, s^2$, and $\gamma\_1$ there):

$${\displaystyle {\hat {\mu }}=m-s\left({\frac {\gamma \_{1}}{2}}\right)^{1/3},}$$

$${\displaystyle {\hat {\sigma }^{2}}=s^{2}\left\[1-\left({\frac {\gamma \_{1}}{2}}\right)^{2/3}\right\],}$$

$${\displaystyle {\hat {\tau }}=s\left({\frac {\gamma \_{1}}{2}}\right)^{1/3}.}$$

The main thing to note there is that the $\tau$ (scale) parameter there is the same as the $\nu$ parameter in the `GAMLSS` function `exGAUS` (and is the inverse of the $\lambda$ rate-parameter in the definition of the distribution at the top of the Wikipedia article). The easy way to do this is by starting with $\hat{\tau}$:

$${\displaystyle {\hat {\tau }}=s\left({\frac {\gamma \_{1}}{2}}\right)^{1/3}.}$$

then

$$ \hat {\mu }=m-\hat{\tau}$$

$$\hat {\sigma}^{2}=s^{2}-\hat{\tau}^2\\,.$$

However, you need to be careful that you don't end up with implausible values for the parameters which might happen if the sample skewness were negative (leading to an impossible value for $\tau$) or if the sample skewness were very large (perhaps leading to issues with the other two parameters, such as a negative variance) -- this must be checked.

On the other hand problems here should also be seen as a warning; if those things happen with the method of moments, there's strong potential for the likelihood function to not behave nicely as well.

The article also mentions the range of the nonparametric skew (a skewness measure based on the second Pearson skewness), which relates the mean, median and standard deviation. This might be used in place of the moment-skewness (with some suitable modification) to obtain an estimate of the scale parameter of the exponential component.

An alternative would be to look at quantile-matching (such as a calculation based on a high, low and middling quantile) or at estimates from quantile-based measures of location, scale and skewness, but the quantiles are not in general simple functions of the parameters; the existence of quantile and cdf functions in `GAMLSS` make this potentially viable as a strategy, however. This would be more complex but more likely to lead to feasible values of the parameters, at least in the case where the skewness is very large.

---

The notion of finding a "best" distribution -- and in particular searching for one with a given set of data -- is not especially useful. No simple distribution will be a perfect fit (no simple model will be exactly correct). Models are useful representations rather than perfect descriptions. If one has a simple model which usually fits fairly well and has some theoretical basis by which its parameters and relationships between distributions based on different estimates can be understood, that's a good reason to use it. We should not be overly concerned about a "best" model for a particular data set so much as an adequate model across a variety of data of similar kinds.

In relation to the title -- fitdist (from package fitdistrplus, or fitdistr in MASS) will give parameter estimates for a fitted distribution but doesn't really tell you whether the fit is good enough for some particular purpose or other (i.e. it doesn't really check the quality of the fit in a practical sense).

---
Tags: statistics
---


# Question
Title: What role do circular network structures play in neural networks?
I'm developing small virtual neural networks and for the most part, the networks have remained feed-forward. When I create circular structures, it becomes a challenge to find a balance with the neural refactory period, stopping neurons from firing again for a period of time, giving them high action potential thresholds, then reducing that back down to fire again -it's tough to find a balance that stops infinite feedback loops but allows circular structures to play a role in processing.

I've done some reading on this and my vague idea so far is that circular structures perhaps allow the network to react to information based on its pattern, react to the information over time, so the C in an input series of A, B, C can be handled differently than the C in input series A, A, C.

Is that accurate, basically? What's the role of circular connection structures in a neural network? I'm asking not only about multi-neuron circular structures like N1 =\> N2 =\> N3 =\> N1 but also about neurons that connect to themselves (N1 =\> N1) (which from my reading is something that happens if I understand correctly, but I'm unsure whether it achieves a similar affect as a larger scale circular structure).

<sub> (=\> represents a neural connection) </sub>

# Answer
In contrast to artificial neural networks, which are almost all feed-forward architectures, networks in biological brains are highly recurrent. In the networks of cortex, the majority of synaptic inputs a neuron receives come from nearby neurons in the same area of cortex (Binzegger et al. 2004). These are the "circular" connections that you are referring to.

So recurrent connectivity is the rule, and simple feed-forward (or feed-back) projections between cohorts are the exception. The networks that result are therefore highly dynamic, and respond in complex ways to inputs changing over time. In general there is no one "reason" why recurrent connections exist. But there are guidelines about how connections between excitatory and inhibitory neurons are made.

The patterns of connections which define a network determine the computational properties of that network. At a first level, the strength and connectivity between excitatory and inhibitory neurons control the overall stability of the network (e.g. Wilson & Cowan 1973; Tsodyks et al. 1997). It's certainly possible to have self-connections and high recurrence, and still keep the network stable.

Secondly, changing the rules by which neurons connect to each other (Ko et al. 2011; Cossell et al. 2015; Lee et al. 2016; Wilson et al. 2017) changes the computational properties of the resulting network (Muir & Mrsic-Flogel 2015).

In general, biological neural networks are highly recurrent dynamical systems which bear only passing relationship to the acyclic networks that we use to think about feed-forward and feed-back connections in the brain.
> 8 votes

# Answer
I'm not sure if this offers you any help, but I'll give it a shot.

I work with certain programs that allow me to create virtual networks. What these programs have in common is that they fire neurons one by one. So if you have a perceptron with size `{input: 1, hidden: 5; output: 1}` it will activate the input, then it will activate the hidden neurons chronologically and then the output.

For more complex feed-forward networks, neurons still get activated one by one using Topological sorting.

---

But in circular neural networks, or networks which have connections going backward, neurons still have to be activated one by one. So say I have the following neural network.

So the order of activation in this neural network is `in, in, a, b, c, d, e, out`. But as you might see, there is an error pointing from **d backwards to b**.

So how can `b` be influended by `d` when b gets activated first? Because neurons **store** their activation.

So if I run this neural network the first time, the influence from `d` on `b` is 0, because `d` has no activation yet. But after this first activation, `d` gets a value. **So next time you run the neural network, `b` will be influenced by the *previous* value of `d`!**

So arrows pointing backwards are also called memory connections; they make the previous activation values have influence on the next activation.

I hope this is somewhat clear O.O. LSTM networks use these connections.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Since this question is in the Cognitive Science category, I'm assuming you're asking for ideas supported by neuroscience evidence, and not artificial neural networks. Naturally, this makes things much more theoretical and difficult to get everyone on the same page.

> ...so the C in an input series of A, B, C can be handled differently than the C in input series A, A, C.

If I understand your example correctly, you are asking what the role of "circular" network connections is in processing series that vary over time, and with respect to the temporal context of the inputs. This is a very clever thing to ask and has many important applications to AI.

Conceptually, the brain does do this by having a mechanism to distinguish between inputs based on context. In your example, you are right in thinking that the C should be handled differently in ABC than it should in AAC. The ability to understand C in a way that is unique to the events leading up to it is a powerful one.

Contextual time series analysis is something that Jeff Hawkin's Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) model of intelligence (based loosely on biologically inspired ideas) tries to accomplish, and it may be relevant to you. However, it does not incorporate feedback connections from higher (more abstract) regions to lower ones. Keep in mind that HTM still has its pitfalls in contextual time series analysis and so the actual way the brain does it is much more robust. I offer this merely as an anecdote.

From a biological perspective, you have to understand the word "circular" to mean the feedforward and feedback connections between neurons of different levels, as opposed to lateral connections between neurons within the same level. Neurons within the same level receive connections from the same inhibitory neurons (which are overwhelmingly local connections). You mentioned that neurons connect to themselves (N1 =\> N1), but this is not a very commonly studied thing in biology and probably has a role in error correction, boosting its own activity, or some other kind of activity modulation.

What seems to be happening in all parts of the brain, and even the retina, is that a level's excitatory neurons will send their feedforward signals to the next higher region's inhibitory and excitatory neurons. The inhibitory neurons will laterally inhibit the least active excitatory neurons within the same level. Some excitatory neurons will then send connections to the next higher region (feedforward) and the same process repeats. Other excitatory neurons will send connections to the lower region that connects to it (can consider these connections feedback), but will generally connect in a way to inhibit the excitatory neurons of the lower region by activating the inhibitory neurons (which work locally, thus only within that region).

With many more details excluded, this leads to a self-stabilizing framework where very little fine-tuning of arbitrary parameters is required (which apparently is a problem that you are well aware of in trying to find that balance). However, a circular network is just one substrate that is in use by the brain to understand context in time series. Unfortunately, circular connections actually have very little to do with contextual time series. Lateral connections seem to have much more to do with that than feedforward and feedback connections. With that said, there is much to be gained in combining the HTM's contextual time series analysis approach with a valid feedforward and feedback connection scheme between levels.

Feedforward connections mainly serve to make input signals much more abstract. Feedback connections serve as a way to fine-tune the lower levels and "tell" those levels which activations it is allowed to have.

If you want to learn more about circular connections and their role, I strongly recommend you study the retina. It is simpler than understanding the cortex and subcortical components, and we know much more about its cognitive processing than we do of the brain. Furthermore, the retina is actually an extension of the brain. It even comes complete with neurons that process signals in complex ways. You find the circular connections of which you speak in there, inhibitory/excitatory neurons, distinct hierarchical levels, and the higher cells even demonstrate characteristics of context-dependent input series on very small timescales.
> 1 votes

# Answer
The Neural Engineering Framework uses Principle 3 to describe these "circular" or "recurrent" connections as dynamical systems similar to those used in control theory. However, the only reason it's able to do this is it's focus on spiking neurons and modelling their dendrites as filtering, so I'm not sure how much this applies to your case, but I thought it might still be a helpful hint on a different approach if you're interested.
> -1 votes

---
Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, neural-network
---


# Question
Title: Mental Health Optimisation and the Macro Environment
*I'm studying the below questions. I appreciate they're rather broad - the purpose of this post is to get guidance on where I might start. I'm hoping someone can provide more focused examples of related studies which will help me move forward.*

**To what extent does a high level sense of direction weigh on day to day mental health optimisation?**

In other words...

**How is the economy relevant to mental health optimisation and does progression at such a macro level support individual psychological health progression?**

By 'high level sense of direction' I mean the level of optimism in our environment - whether that be from growing financial markets, an evolving political landscape, levels of world conflict etc. (I'm talking vision/risk appetite/optimism. Perhaps there is an academic term within the cognitive sciences for this? Behavioral Ecology?)

I'm looking to analyse how our global connectivity and processing of world news/events which highlight sometimes far-removed changes in our environment, directly impact our mental state.

```
Ideas:

```
* Have there been any studies into the relationship between economic performance and anxiety? Maybe the psychological outlook of Millenials who experienced a very difficult economic environment during 2007 to 2013 (credit crisis) whilst trying to enter the workforce? Many didn't and lived with parents longer, haven't bought houses etc..
* Perhaps the relationship between proliferation of social media news services and psychological health?

*Please provide reading suggestions and advise if I'm not using terms recognised in the realm of cognitive science/psychology. Please add relevant tags to my question as not sure where this fits in; looking to bridge two worlds here.*

# Answer
> 2 votes
For a high-level overview, I usually start with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a peer-reviewed, community-contributed, comprehensive source of high-level information. The user community has already done the work for us of aggregating large volumes of primary and secondary source material, digesting it for the reader, keeping it up to date, and ensuring a balanced approach. so it should meet your needs as a starting point of "where the most up to date/popular/most respected views" might be. Wikipedia also provides links to related articles, and reference source materials that you can follow up on to dig deeper. Any similar online encyclopaedia-style wiki would be fine too (eg, Scholarpedia) if you prefer.

The article on "Causes of mental disorders" has a section on environmental factors. Some highlights:

> ... environmental causes are stressors that individuals deal with in everyday life. These stressors range from financial issues to having low self-esteem. ... The lower the socioeconomic status of an individual the higher the risk of mental illness. Impoverished people are actually two to three times more likely to develop mental illness than those of a higher economic class. ... there is a strong association between poverty and substance abuse. ... Problems in communities or cultures, including poverty, unemployment or underemployment, lack of social cohesion, and migration, have been associated with the development of mental disorders.

You may also be interested in the reverse effect - of mental health on the economy. You can also use Wikipedia to research specific disorders, such as the effect of the economy on major depressive disorder (depression). It's important to pay attention to cause and effect when doing this. For example:

> Depression is often associated with unemployment and poverty. ... prevalence is in groups with stronger socioeconomic factors i.e. homelessness.

Read this carefully, as it doesn't mean that a bad economy causes depression, only that poverty and depression co-occur - it's equally likely that depression causes poverty than the other way around. Having said that, there is strong evidence that economic health does affect rates of depression:

> Although reverse causation—poor mental health leading to lower earnings—is present, it is no longer considered the primary mechanism behind the association between income and health. Several longitudinal studies have specifically examined the relationship between depression and socioeconomic status and concluded that the causal direction runs from socioeconomic status to depression.

I hope that this is what you were looking for to get started.

---
Tags: io-psychology, health-psychology
---


# Question
Title: What's the psychological issue name of fear of people?
With the issue of being afraid of doing anything before people, one has to work hard on self control to prevent the body shaking on every tiny action, like hold a pen, drink water, etc, and when there's many people looking at him/her, it becomes almost impossible to hold shaking, to speak normally, or to think. This person is subconsciously in fear of people unhappy(?) with his actions, even though he knows there's nothing wrong with his behavior.

Is this a typical case in Psychology? Is there a name for it?

## Scenario for some background information

his mother died when he was very young, his father don't like him, never talked to him except call everyone dinner, never smiled to him, never spent time with him, never gave any recognition even he got full marks, curse and beat him on whatever excuse when not in good mood.

He lived in a room with a big window in the wall next to the living room(a request for curtain was rejected), he had no idea why father dissatisfied with him (he's always one of the best in his class during student period and never asked for anything from his father, if exclude care), but been used to keep an ear out on his father all the time when at home, for whenever his father step into the living room where he would be seen through the window, he could sit as straight as he can before his desk and try not to move a bit, he didn't want to give him any excuse to curse, to beat.

# Answer
> 4 votes
The general symptoms (NOT the background scenario) may point to a psychological disorter called social phobia :

> Social anxiety disorder (SAD), also known as **social phobia**, is an anxiety disorder characterized by a significant amount of fear in one or more social situations, causing considerable distress and impaired ability to function in at least some parts of daily life.
>
> ...
>
> **Physical symptoms** often include excessive blushing, excess sweating, trembling, palpitations, and nausea. Stammering may be present, along with rapid speech.
>
> ...
>
> The first line **treatment** for social anxiety disorder is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) ... . The cognitive and behavioral components seek to change thought patterns and physical reactions to anxiety-inducing situations. ... . Prescribed medications include several classes of antidepressants: selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)
>
> ...
>
> It is the most common anxiety disorder with up to 10% of people being affected at some point in their life

---
Tags: cognitive-psychology, social-psychology, psychology, diagnosis
---


# Question
Title: Are social intelligence and emotional intelligence the same thing?
Emotional intelligence and EQ are often used as phrases for social intelligence.

Are they really the same? Would social intelligence always imply emotional intelligence and vice versa?

# Answer
These terms are defined by the underlying theory of Intelligence. For example:

1. Social Intelligence (SI) comes from a definition by Edward Thorndike in 1920.
2. Emotional Intelligence (EI) (or EQ - Q=Quota) first appeared in a 1964 paper by Michael Beldoch, later by Goleman.
3. Then there is Interpersonal & Intrapersonal Intelligences from Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligence theory.

Generally speaking, they pertain to similar concepts with some overlap from theory to theory. When speaking of this type of intelligence it is often recommended to cite the theory the discussion is based on.
> 5 votes

# Answer
Emotional Intelligence encompases Social Intelligence as you can see below: \- Self-Awareness, \- Self-Management, \- Social Awareness \- Relationship Management.

http://www.teleosleaders.com/howwedoit/emotional.php
> -2 votes

---
Tags: social-psychology, emotion, intelligence
---


title: Family happiness Vs Career happiness

text:
# Question
Title: Family happiness Vs Career happiness
Common knowledge accepts that there are two conflicting types of happiness, one attained through a good family and a second one attained through a successful career. These paths of happiness, since they require the same resources, are conflicting and somebody must choose the one over the other. This point is best illustrated through the movie The Family Man. Of course there are exceptions where both types of happiness are combined very well.

Please can you provide research or theories that can facilitate the clarification of the following questions:

Do we really have two different types of happiness?

Are the two happiness qualitatively different from each other?

And the most important question, **is one of them much more superior than the other type?**

# Answer
I've looked into some papers about life happiness , and how work hapiness and familly hapiness can affect it.

A quick google search lead me to 2 articles : Work, family, and happiness

Job Satisfaction and Family Happiness: The Part-time Work Puzzle

I don't have the time to read them all , but from what I saw "work hapiness" and "family hapiness" are both parts of "life hapiness" but it seems like you could include as much hapiness sources as you want like "sport hapiness" , etc... (the last part is a personnal thought)

One important point seems to be that they're both different for men and women and are not exclusives.

For more details I'll invite you to reader the papers I linked you.

From what I've read I can tell that :

* > Do we really have two different types of happiness? No , we don't. Hapiness is hapiness as a whole , but it comes piece by piece from everything you enjoy in your life.
* > Are the two happiness qualitatively different from each other? Hapiness is formed from everything you enjoy in your life , so the quality of everything forming your hapiness is realy personnal. Though , the studies points that men and women react differently to the work/familly hapiness balance but here again everyone builds his hapiness his own way.
* > Is one of them much more superior than the other type ? One could argue that familly , having kids , etc is the beautifulest thing in life , and so the best source of hapiness but as I said , it's a realy personal thing and I have no trouble imagining housewifes can be as happy as women working a lot and loving their work.
> 1 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, emotion
---


# Question
Title: Can you become "mentally" bilingual after 8?
Is it possible to learn a second language good enough to be able to think in it the same way we think in our first language after the critical language learning period?

# Answer
Anecdotally speaking yes, I moved to another country where I couldn't practice my native one and after some years I started thinking in the once foreign one. I am now back to my original country and the process is playing out in reverse with some interesting quirks, I translate words rather than retrieve the original ones, something that at one point I did in the foreign language.

Strictly speaking, my understanding of how speech and language works in the context of thinking, is that word selection is heavily influenced by both internal and external cues, ( this goes in line with how memory and conditioning work), further, models of speech generation ( both internal and external) support the idea of a general store of meaning (semantic meaning, syntactic rules,cadence,etc) generally dispersed around the NC and more locally near speech producing areas and a separate but heavily connected speech generating system (lateral sulcus: Wernicke- Broca Area).

While speaking a foreign language, working memory areas are conceivably recruited ( this is my speculation ) to translate and then produce speech, something that takes a perceivable time and is noticed by native speakers and sometimes the speaker.

With time and due to plasticity, foreign speech networks get strengthened to the point of not needing any more translation and both internal (what you might call thinking) and external speech are more efficiently generated.

Native speech networks can also face extinction due to the competing foreign language and disuse, but thankfully are still available ( what was once learned is easier to re-learn) so retaking or even thinking in both languages is possible.

As for age, there is a marked advantage of being young due to known efficiencies that happen earlier in life as well as possibly being primed for foreign languages. Still,due to how plastic the brain is even into adulthood, you can become mentally bilingual at practically any age but at a different rate.

Sources:

* Kemmerer, D. (2014). Cognitive neuroscience of language. Psychology Press.
* Gluck, M. A., Mercado, E., & Myers, C. E. (2013). Learning and memory: From brain to behavior. Palgrave Macmillan.
> 3 votes

---
Tags: cognitive-neuroscience, learning, language, linguistics
---


# Question
Title: Can color blindness be treated with image filtering technology?
Using image color-filtering techniques we can simulate the way colorblind people see:

The aim of this question is to know whether the opposite process could be possible, namely can a colorblind person experience normal trichromatic vision using a vision enhancement device? Could the deficit in the cones be corrected via this system?

Taking this one step further, if this process is possible, is it possible that humans could experience multi-cone vision as the 16-cone vision of the mantis shrimp?

# Answer
**Short answer**
Lost spectral sensitivity in bichromats or monochromats cannot be made up for by technology. The only thing technology can do is to process the visual image and shift its spectral content such that it falls outside the deficient region in the color-deficient spectrum. Likewise, trichromats can never match the spectral sensitivity of a dodecachromatic shrimp simply because we cannot generate visual acuity *de novo*. Mantis shrimp can detect UV light and additional cones enhance the spectral reslution in the visible spectrum too. This cannot be emulated with a trichromatic system.

**Background**
Removing colors from RGB images such that it alludes to the way color-vision impaired people perceive the world is trivial, as the image shows in the question and see Figs. 1 & 2.

Trichromats have three cones: red, green and blue cones, inferring normal RGB vision. **Cone opsins** are responsible for capturing light and they have overlapping sensitivity spectra (Fig. 3). Dichromats have only two types of cones and lack one cone type. People suffering from protanopia are unable to perceive any ‘red’ light, those with deuteranopia are unable to perceive ‘green’ light and those with tritanopia are unable to perceive ‘blue’ light (source: Colour Blind Awareness). However, while they are said to be color blind, they do not lack the ability to see that one color; in fact they cannot perceive a specific section of the normal visible spectrum.

The most accepted way in which we perceive color is the **Hering theory of spectral sensitivity**. Basically it states that we perceive color through two opponent systems: a red-green and a yellow-blue opponent system. Without going into detail on this (it's another story...), it's important to realize its consequences. Because of the spectral overlap of the red and green cones and the red-green opponent system in Hering's model, the outcome of either missing the red cones or the green cones is pretty similar. Hence the collective term **red/green color blindness**, because people with red and green deficiencies **see the world in a very similar way**. Protanopes and deuteranopes both live in a world of murky greens, where blues and yellows stand out. Browns, oranges, shades of red and green are easily confused. Both types will confuse some blues with some purples and both types will struggle to identify pale shades of most colors. For example, a person with deuteranopia sees red as a shade of green and people with deuteranomaly often misclassify brown as red (source: Colour Blind Awareness).

Now - we cannot regenerate that missing cone with image filtering; removing data from an image is simple (Fig. 1). However, adding it back in is impossible. How can a person without red cones perceive red? It's simply impossible.

To draw an analogy here - when a person at old age is missing the sensory cells in the basal end of the cochlea due to the steady degenerative processes of the hair cells and cannot perceive high frequency tones of, *e.g.,* 8 kHz and up (presbyacusis), it's over. We can amplify with everything we got, but the person simply can't hear it. What we *can* do, however, is a process called frequency **compression**. Basically what you do is squeeze the higher frequencies at the front end into the lower frequencies and amplify that through a hearing aid. In this case the person still can't perceive the frequencies, but the information is yet contained in the signal.

Back to your question - what Robin Kramer alluded to is the Chroma device: like the hearing aid example above, this device uses signal processing tricks. Basically it can do three things for you; 1) identify colors, 2) enhance contrast 3) detect edges. Identifying colors can help by replacing reds and greens in red/green color blinds with yellows and blues. Enhancing contrast can be done in red/green color blinds by shifting the red/green spectrum towards the blues and the yellows, much like our acoustic-frequency compression scenario in the hearing aid above. Edge detection can help to improve object detection etcetera in murky images in color blinds. But all it can do is **optimally use the limited color information available to the color deficient person**. It can **not restore normal trichromatic vision in any way**.

Then to the mantis shrimp. Six of the additional cones are dedicated to UV vision, which is outside the visible spectrum of ours. The other ones add spectral detail. Extra cones within the visible spectrum add spectral detail. They do not add additional colors as such. UV vision cannot be inferred by technology. What you can do, however, is compressing UV wavelengths into the visible wavelengths. But still we would not be able to 'see' it as such. Further, spectral detail cannot be added by technology either.

Fig. 1. color blindness simulated pictures. source: Vision Salud

Fig. 2. Color blindness. source: Tanuwidjaja *et al*., 2014

Fig.3. Spectra sensitivity of the cones and the rods. source: wikipedia

**Reference**
**-** Tanuwidjaja *et al*., Ubicomp 2014, September 13–17, Seattle, WA, USA
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, vision, neurophysiology, color
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# Question
Title: Can drawing a duck define a person's hemispheric dominance?
When I was on 7th grade, our math teacher asked every one of us to draw a duck. In the class of 34 students, a large portion of the students drew a left-facing duck.

The teacher said that it’s a simple test to figure out if a person is either right or left-brain dominant. So the people who drew a duck facing to left is a right-brainer, and *vice versa*. Apparently this Duck-test was quite popular in middle school.

Some even say, people who often draw a duck who faces left side is a left brain (instead of right). Although some says it's just muscle memory/ tendency.

My question is- is this mini test legit? Can you get a glimpse of someone's brain dominance by drawing a duck?

# Answer
What is the dominant hemisphere in the first place? I found the following definition (source: Medical Dictionary):

> \[The\] dominant hemisphere \[is\] \[t\]he left half of the brain in almost all right-handed people and 85% of left-handed people. This is the hemisphere concerned with **language** and **logical thought** and containing the **motor areas for voluntary use of the right side of the body**. In 15% of left-handed people, the right hemisphere is dominant and subserves speech.

Now, your ducks facing left or right hardly seem to reflect either language, logic, motor lateralization or handedness. Instead, often questionnaires or inventories are used, for example to tease out whether a person is logical, rational and verbal (left-sided); or emotional, manipulative/spatial and creative (right-sided). However, the meaning, relevance, and possible use of hemispheric dominance is debated.

Note that brain lateralization is certainly true for a number of functions, including speech and motor control, but the more dramatic examples of brain lateralization should be interpreted with caution, and I quote from Corballis (1980):

> Since ancient times, right and left have been associated with different fundamental classifications, including male and female, good and evil, day and night, straight and crooked. \[...\] Interpretations of cerebral asymmetry that emphasize a **fundamental duality in cognitive processing** between the two sides of the brain, or that locate **consciousness in the left side only**, are probably modern manifestations of the age-old **mythology** of left and right.

**Reference**
**-** Corballis, *American Psychologist* (1980); **35**(3): 284-95
> 3 votes

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Tags: personality, test, lateralization, brain
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# Question
Title: Where can I find experimental data supportive of the Hick-Hyman law?
The Hick-Hyman law states that in a reaction-time experiment, the average reaction time of a human subject is a linear function of the average information $\sum -p \log p$, i.e. the entropy, contained in the stimulus. \[Hyman 1953\]

Where can I get data supporting this? Data from Hyman’s paper would be great!

EDIT: more precisely, I'm looking for a complete, *trial-by-trial* dataset; not just averages.

# Answer
In Hyman (1953) the following data is shown (Fig.1). The bits of information were the number of choices in an AFC task, where 1 to 8 alternatives corresponded to 0, 1, 1.58, 2.00, 2.32, 2.58, 2.81, and 3 bits of information (the 2log of the N alternatives).

Fig. 1. RT as a function of bits of info. source: Hyman (1953)

**Reference**
**-** Hyman, *J Exp Psychol* (1953); **45**(3): 188-96
> 1 votes

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Tags: data, psychophysics
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title: PTSD based on false memories

text:
# Question
Title: PTSD based on false memories
Memory is not just static snapshots or video on a harddrive, but an active process. As such, it is possible to construct false memories (Brainerd & Reyna, 2005). Some of these false memories can be very traumatic (Loftus, 1996).

There is a lot of research of false memories and PTSD, but most of it is concerned around the accidental implantation of false memories during therapy (for example, see discussion in Hyman et al., 1995), or asking if PTSD-patients are more prone to forming false memories (for example, Jelinek et al., 2009).

Are there any case studies of patients who did not initially have PTSD (and were neuro-typical or 'healthy' in other regards, too) nor experienced any events usually associated with PTSD, but developed PTSD based on a false memory?

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### References

Brainerd, C.J., & Reyna, V.F. (2005). The science of false memory. *Oxford University Press*.

Hyman, I. E., Husband, T. H., & Billings, F. J. (1995). False memories of childhood experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9(3), 181-197.

Jelinek, L., Hottenrott, B., Randjbar, S., Peters, M. J., & Moritz, S. (2009). Visual false memories in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). *Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry*, 40(2): 374-383.

Loftus, E. (1996). The myth of repressed memory: False memories and allegations of sexual abuse. Macmillan.

# Answer
An answer I provided before on the possibility of recalling forgotten memories briefly talks about False Memory Syndrome and PTSD. As stated in the answer,

> Memory is not fixed as it is very plastic

and as pointed out in the article you referenced (Hyman, et al., 1995), people are susceptible to creating false memories.

To answer your question on whether non-sufferers of PTSD can develop PTSD from false memories, MyPTSD.com states that false memories can be traumatic and Psychology Today mentions an article (Southwick, et al., 1997) which reported that false memories increased PTSD in war veterans; however, I cannot find any definitive study on non-PTSD sufferers developing PTSD from false memories. I would say that this is for the reasons @ChristianHummeluhr pointed out in his comment

> ...for methodological and ethical reasons...

For the reason that false memories can be traumatic and has increased symptoms in PTSD sufferers, I would say that it is **highly plausible** that false memories **could** lead to PTSD.

As @memebrain pointed out in his answer — although not correctly termed — there are are various forms of trauma that counsellors, psychotherapists, etc. can suffer from as a result of their work, and the US National Centre for PTSD (part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs) has an article about it.

The secondary PTSD mentioned by @memebrain is actually Secondary Traumatic Stress which

> produces symptoms similar to PTSD.

We as counsellors and psychotherapists are trained to be careful not to create false memories in their clients and

## Research Article References

Hyman, I. E., Husband, T. H., & Billings, F. J. (1995). *False memories of childhood experiences* In: Applied Cognitive Psychology, 9(3), pp 181-197.
DOI: 10.1002/acp.2350090302
**Free PDF available** at ResearchGate

Southwick, S. M., Morgan III, C. A., Nicolaou, A. L., Charney, D. S. (1997). *Consistency of Memory for Combat-Related Traumatic Events in Veterans of Operation Desert Storm* In: The American Journal of Psychiatry 154(2) pp. 173-177.
DOI: 10.1176/ajp.154.2.173
> 3 votes

# Answer
NPR had a report on the abuse and dangers of suggestive hypnosis by psychologists trying to find abuse in their patient's past. Suggesting abuse to their patience in a hypersensitive and vulnerable state inadvertently ended up "suggesting" events that fostered creating false memories into their patients. The piece on the radio also discussed the consequences of how these false memories had destroyed familial relationships: The subjects who had undergone suggestive hypnosis now swore abuses had occurred and could "never forgive" (as was quoted by the journalist) their parents or family members who had been suggested in their state of hypnosis as a potential perpetrator of a suggested crime. According to the piece, what really got the professional world's attention to examine the practice as abusive by psychologists, dealt with a psychologist suggesting ritual sacrifice and murders that never occurred. The super sensitive state of suggestion in hypnosis allowed the psychologists to create false memories. The damages in those cases far outweighed the benefits, and apparently that case in Philadelphia changed the practice of how psychology dealt with the practice of hypnosis.
> 0 votes

# Answer
I am gay. I have been diagnosed with PTSD twice, once in 1999 and again in 2011. The PTSD relates to 2 aspects of something that happened to me in 1972. In 1972 I saw my boyfriend die in a road accident. I was depressed for a long time before a mental breakdown in 1998 led to me being treated for PTSD as a result of this death. I received a 40 sessions of therapy to help me come to terms with my boyfriends death.

All was relatively well until I had another breakdown in 2010. It was during psychotherapy that I broke through a blockage in my mind and I realised that I did not in fact see my boyfriend die, it was a false memory.

This false memory/image manifested itself into my brain as a result of receiving (at age 18) very painful electric shock therapy designed to stop me loving my boyfriend. My brain decided the only way to stop this barbaric treatment was to invent his death. The therapy then stopped. There are reasons that I never saw my friend again, even though he didn't die until 1983.

The people who carried out my torture were more interested in stopping me being gay than they were in my future life.

One of my present therapists (I am receiving EMDR) has asked me if she can use me as a case study and I said yes, so maybe when my case is presented it will confirm that PTSD can be based on a false memory.
> 0 votes

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Tags: abnormal-psychology, memory, ptsd
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# Question
Title: Does the brain's reward system also work when the reward comes before the experience?
Here's how I understand how the brain rewarding system works, as described by behaviorism:

When I eat a chocolate after learning, there's a chance that I'll connect the learning with the pleasurable experience of eating chocolate, which can eventually make me love learning.

Does this mechanism work even when I eat the chocolate *before* the learning? Is the brain connecting of cause and effect time-dependent?

# Answer
> 3 votes
**Short answer**
Operant conditioning through positive reinforcement is always established by applying a stimulus *after* the behavior. Negative reinforcers can, however, be deployed before the wanted behavior is initiated.

**Background**
The reward system can be seen as **positive reinforcement**.

In experimental paradigms (and everyday life in general), reinforcement is established by a certain stimulus presented after a certain behavior, termed operant conditioning. There are various forms of operant conditioning (Fig. 1). Without exception, the stimulus *always* follows the behavior.

Your example of the chocolate is an example of positive reinforcement: If you want your dog to sit on command, you may give him a treat every time he sits for you. The dog will eventually come to understand that sitting when told to will result in a treat. This treat is reinforcing because he likes it and will result in him sitting when instructed to do so.

Now, if we reverse the traditional operant conditioning process from behavior-reward to reward-behavior, then *any* behavior would lead to a reward because the reward has already been given. So also *no behavior at all* or, even worse, *adverse behavior* (the dog starts ripping apart the trainer) would be reinforced in this way. By definition, **reinforcement is always given after the behavior**, otherwise **there can be no link established between stimulus and associated behavior**.

Note, however, that ***negative reinforcement*** can be established with the stimulus starting before the wanted behavior has been shown. The familiar example here is the nagging parent that the kid should finally clean up its room. When done, the nagging finally stops. So a negative reinforcer can be started before the behavior. But also here, the change in the stimulus switches only *after* the intended behavior has been evoked.

Fig. 1. Operant conditioning. source: wikipedia

**Further reading**
1. Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective, Sixth Edition, Dale H. Schunk: Page 81 (Section: Informational Variables: Pavlov believed that stimuli non-pairing would extinguish the conditioning. Giving the reward before the conditioned behavior in the question seems a lot like unpairing stimulus and behavior)

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Tags: learning, behavior, reinforcement-learning
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# Question
Title: What is the term of having a high perceived confidence while having limited knowledge?
What is the term of the state in which one acts to be very experienced even though he does not appear to know everything. And, because of his confidence, is able to persuade people that he/she is right?

The person may think that his/her knowledge is enough, but actually the world is much bigger than his experience.

# Answer
> 6 votes
I think you are referring to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It describes the relationship between experience one has in a particular topic and his/her confidence about being an expert.

Dunning and Kruger argue that when people know nothing, they also know that they know nothing. However, after learning only a little bit, people seem to be very confident that they understand everything of the subject.

With more studying, one realizes that there is more to it and might feel insecure even. However, after studying more and more and more and people become an expert, people begin to realize that they do know a lot, but that it is impossible to understand everything.

Both the x- and y-axis have no scales because the Dunning-Kruger effect is only conceptual. The following image, does nicely present the train of thoughts through the graph:

**References**

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121.

Pictures taken from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dunning-kruger-effect-confidence-vs-over-confidence-harshil-rastogi

# Answer
> 4 votes
Another theory/study by Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil, is the illusion of explanatory depth.

> This powerful but inaccurate feeling of knowing is what Leonid Rozenblit and Frank Keil in 2002 termed, the illusion of explanatory depth (IOED), stating, “Most people feel they understand the world with far greater detail, coherence, and depth than they really do.”

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Tags: terminology, confidence
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# Question
Title: Why do people get addicted to things like TV, Facebook, games?
I am studying for exams but there's a TV series I couldn't get enough of.

Is there any explanation to all addiction thing that happens with our brain?

**EDIT** I'm not talking about procrastination but generalized addiction about non chemical(drugs) things that happens with us.

# Answer
At least two phenomenons can be found here :

1. The drive to wath the TV series is higher than the drive to study.
2. The TV series are structured in such a way to attract and hook viewers.

I will try to answer the second :

TV series i.e. soap operas, Lost TV series etc mostly use two components to create addiction to viewers : curiosity and emotionally charged stories.

> **Curiosity-drive theory** relates to the undesirable experiences of "uncertainty". The reduction of these unpleasant feelings, in turn, is **rewarding**. This theory suggests that people desire coherence and understanding in their thought processes. When this coherence is disrupted by something that is unfamiliar, uncertain, or ambiguous, it is curiosity-drive theory that attempts to gather information and knowledge of the unfamiliar to restore coherent thought processes once again.

...

> British psychologist Edward B. Titchener (1867–1927) might have argued that we become glued to complex, **emotionally-charged stories** because of our ability to recognize the feelings of others. A newly identified phenomenon at the time, Titchener coined the term empathy in 1909. In addition to identifying others' discomfort or elation, "cognitive empathy" examines how humans can also adopt others' psychological perspectives, including those of fictional characters.
> 5 votes

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Tags: addiction
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# Question
Title: Cultural psychology: Japanese culture and meaning systems
I'm writing a paper for my cultural psychology course. The paper is about Japanese child care, focused on the moral and cognitive development of Japanese children from their own traditional/cultural perspective. It is mostly an archival research on Japanese culture which I am supposed to write up and present as a realist ethnography.

1. Is there any place online where I can conduct an interview with Japanese people who reside in Japan and are familiar with their own culture.
2. How can I identify actions, activities, and goals of the culture in order to construct a meaning system so as to understand and interpret the relationship between the actors (culture), tools (*e.g.*, appraisal of the child's actions), activities, scripts, and goals?
3. Do you have any tips on how to write an ethnography?

# Answer
First off - this question is really broad and its scope could probably fill libraries. I will therefore limit the answer to generalized pointers in answer to your three sub questions.

> Is there any place online where I can conduct an interview with Japanese people who reside in Japan and are familiar with their own culture.

**Culture** is a difficult concept. What I can say here is that every Japanese person is aware of their culture, because every Japanese is a part of their culture. Japanese culture is created by the Japanese inhabitants; it's what shapes them, it is the very air they breath. Conducting interviews is something that needs to be established and anthropologists often dive into the community of interest and spend considerable amounts of time to familiarize themselves with the culture, build a network and go from there. Understanding people, let alone their culture is not something that can be done easily from behind your computer screen I'm afraid.

> How can I identify actions, activities, and goals of the culture in order to construct a meaning system so as to understand and interpret the relationship between the actors (culture), tools (e.g., appraisal of the child's actions), activities, scripts, and goals?

The first step is to develop a specific **research question** and subsequently **operationalize** it. I am reading diverse questions and here's just an excerpt from your comments:

> ...pinpointing some activities and understanding some of their goals. \[...\] Why is the expression of negative emotions discouraged in a Japanese society? What do mothers do to cultivate their child's cognitive development? Do they encourage verbal communication, eye contact, exploration, etc... Do they breastfeed? How long and why that long? How do they discipline their child?

You seem to be struggling with a lot of questions lacking the necessary research focus. Especially an undergrad study should be meticulously defined and most of all **restricted** to make it **operable** in the **short time window available**.

> Do you have any tips on how to write an ethnography?

Libraries are filled on this topic. I can refer you to Clifford & Marcus, 1986.

<sub>**Reference**
**-** Clifford & Marcus, Writing Culture. The poetics and politics of ethnography. UC Press (1986)</sub>
> 1 votes

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Tags: methodology, psychology, cross-cultural-psychology, anthropology
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