title: Is art therapy really effective?

text:
# Question
Title: Is art therapy really effective?
I read the whole Wikipedia article. But I still have doubts. Is art therapy effective? If so, in which ways has it been studied?

# Answer
Slayton, D'Archer, and Kaplan (2010) review 35 studies conducted from 1999-2007 about the efficacy of Art Therapy. Their review covers a variety of quantitative designs, as well as a few qualitative approaches.

There are some serious limitations to the research that they reviewed. There is little consensus about appropriate control groups, some studies rely heavily on anecdotal data (taking the form of a case-study more than an empirical investigation), and different studies use very different ways of measuring outcomes. The authors acknowledge these limitations in their discussion.

They do, however, find that "a small body of studies now exists in which art therapy as a treatment modality has been isolated, measured, and shown to be statistically significant in improving a variety of symptoms for a variety of people with different ages. The range of participants represented in our survey of studies was broad; it included young children, elders, and all ages in between. A range of treatment settings also was represented, including schools, outpatient clinics, day treatment centers, residential homes and treatment centers, hospitals, correctional facilities, and nonclinical settings." (pg. 115).

These studies typically focus on a very narrow set of behaviors or symptoms, and thus it's not clear if there is a general pattern indicating in what situations art therapy is effective.
> 7 votes

# Answer
*Hey, Alexandro. Nice to see you over here :-)*

As far as I know, there are only single-case studies showing the *application* of art therapy, but its *efficacy* for psychotherapy has not yet been the subject of an empirical study.

One reason for this is that creativity and creative processes are as yet not well understood by psychology, and that measuring them is therefore impossible (and measurement is a prerequisite for empirical studies). It is not enough to let the treatment group paint some paintings and let the control group not paint paintings, because we do not understand what the difference is. A person not painting a painting could be creative in some other way (e.g. daydreaming), or if the painting affects the disorder it could be caused not by the painting but by having something to do. And so on.

In institutionalised contexts such as psychiatric institutions or clinical psychological research instiutes, art therapy is not percieved and applied as an alternative to, for example, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Psychoanalysis. Art theray is not seen as a form of psychotherapy, but either as a module or method to be used within psychotherapy (similar to other modules such as psychoeducation, skills acquisition, or the interpretation of dreams), or one of the psycho-social recreational activities offered in the institutional context, on a par with sports or excursions. For example, in the psychatric ward in my university, patients can go rock climbing, (learn to) play instruments – or draw, paint, and sculpt.
> 3 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, reference-request, clinical-psychology
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# Question
Title: Does eye contact improve attention and learning?
I remember having read a article in The Economist's Science and Technology section that presented evidence to the effect that attention and learning benefits from some forms of eye contact. If I am not mistaken it cited some academic work where probands had to complete a cognitive task on a computer screen and results improved if they saw their friends' eyes on the screen as well.

Can somebody please point me to this missing article and the cited academic work?

# Answer
> 3 votes
This is a great question on a highly fascinating topic for which evidence seemingly abounds among many species. From the standpoint of an evolutionary approach, the fight or flight stress response would be informed based on eye contact and movement - gauging the level of activity present in a potential predator's facial attributes.

Here is a cool link on the evolutionary aspect: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938403001562

Here is one on social signal processing as per the specific structure in the brain: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/9/598.short

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Tags: social-psychology, learning, reference-request, educational-psychology, attention
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# Question
Title: How to read a neuron tuning curve graph?
I'm working through the tutorial of section 2.4 of "How to Build a Brain" and I've encountered this graph of a neuron tuning curve.

I understand the Y axis is the firing rate of the neuron, that each curve is the response of a single neuron (there are 100 neurons represented here) and that this plot shows a variety of "on" and "off" neurons, but what does the X axis represent? Is it the action potential input? Is X the value that the neuron represents by firing at that rate?

Please allow me to give some context around the tutorial. You first create a population of 100 neurons to represent an input that will vary from -1 to 1. You notice that this works well, but that the representation degrades when you exceed this range falls apart and you cannot represent anything the range past -2 to 2.

You then use a new population of neurons to build upon this newly acquired knowledge of how neurons can represent functions, to make them represent a 2-dimensional vector similar to the monkey-arm motor experiment performed by Georgopolous.

I could take the leap of faith here and just take for granted that neurons can represent functions and that the more neurons you have, the better approximation of the function you can get, but I feel like understanding these fundamental concepts are important.

# Answer
> 5 votes
From the comments:

I'm going to hazard a guess that these are neurons that are tuned to a particular direction in space and that the x-axis is the angle in multiples of π radians, particularly since these are related to the work of Georgopoulos and colleagues.

Since we know these are positionally tuned neurons, you can see some other examples in this Wikipedia page for some other examples.

> A typical population code involves neurons with a Gaussian tuning curve whose means vary linearly with the stimulus intensity, meaning that the neuron responds most strongly (in terms of spikes per second) to a stimulus near the mean.

So, as mentioned above, the independent variable here is the stimulus "intensity" (in this case abstracted by the quantity of direction) and the firing rate is the dependent variable, hence their positions on the axes in the plot.

For some of the more theoretical studies of this type of phenomenon, I would definitely check out the work of Emo Todorov, among many others, as well.

# Answer
> 3 votes
My answer is that you have the beginnings of a grasp of neuronal tuning.

But the point is not that neurons can represent functions. The point is generally that neurons contain information about certain experimental conditions.

Rather, neurons can represent functions, but in most cases they tend to represent something closer to propositions.

The seminal work of Georgopoulos et al. was about population encoding. Sure the neurons were cosine tuned, but certain neurons clearly represent certain movement positions more precisely than others. I prefer to think of the neuron as representing a belief that the animal is reaching in a particular direction. Here your "x" would be the angle of reaching.

This same intuition can be applied to V1 orientation tuning as discovered by Hubel and Wiesel. Here your "x" would be the orientation of light.

It's not to say that firing rate can't be used to represent a function. It's just more accurate, in my experience, to say that the neuron usually represents something more akin to its belief in the proposition that "I am reaching to the left" or "I am seeing a horizontal bar of light in the center of my field of vision."

# Answer
> 1 votes
Within the context of the tutorial referenced, this graph is showing the first principle of the NEF, which is that neurons approximate functions by encoding them with their firing rates. Here the input being represented it the range 1 to -1. What the graph shows is the firing rates of all the neurons given the value being represented. So say you have the value 0.5. The firing rates of all the neurons can be found by looking at their Y values at x=0.5.

For further information on encoding and decoding (how to get the information back out from a population of neurons), check out this NEF tutorial.

# Answer
> 1 votes
The model does not care what *x* is.

> You first create a population of 100 neurons to represent an input that will vary from -1 to 1.

That input, which varies from -1 to 1, is *x*. For sensory neurons, the variable *x* would likely represent a transformation of some aspect of the sensory stimulus (e.g., the visual angle, sound level, or temperature), but it can be whatever you want it to be.

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Tags: theoretical-neuroscience, computational-modeling, nef
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title: Definition of or research on fun

text:
# Question
Title: Definition of or research on fun
What does research have to say about defining "fun"--what it is or when it happens? I've found some research on whether or not people rate specific things as fun, and lots of misleading titles with the word "fun" in them, but very little on what fun is (cognitively, neurologically, affectively, socially) and when it happens. I also found a couple of cogsci.SE questions but the answers are either entirely unsupported or stray into other waters (motivation, addiction).

**Is there a cognitive or scientific definition of "fun"?<br>Is there a body of research on when fun happens?**

# Answer
> 2 votes
Oddly enough, the place where you find the most information about this topic is where there's a lot of money to be made from it. Facebook games or games in general. If you focus on "why do people like to play some games and not others", then you're asking more of an economical question, and there will be a lot more information on the topic.

Example: Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment (Human-Computer Interaction Series)

There's plenty of other works of this kind.

If you want things that are not related to games, I recommend Bruce C. Daniels's Puritans At Play: Leisure and Recreation in Early New England.

I believe both of these are available on Open Library.

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Tags: emotion, terminology, well-being
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# Question
Title: Name for awareness of the probability of an event increasing the probability of it happening
Before Christmas, NZ Police announced they would be enforcing a zero tolerance on exceeding the speed limit in December/January. Previously there was a 10kph grace unless a driver was obviously driving dangerously. The rationale would be that it would reduce the holiday road toll (deaths through motor vehicle accidents).

Unfortunately the road toll doubled over the previous year.

I'm aware that this could be an anomaly and is subject to many factors, however, is there a related psychological principal (perhaps something around 'suggestion') that states that if a person or population is made aware of a probability of an event, that the probability of that event happening is increased?

# Answer
I believe what you are describing is known as self-fulfilling prophecy and has been well-studied.

> Self-fulfilling prophecy are effects in behavioral confirmation effect, in which behavior, influenced by expectations, causes those expectations to come true. It is complementary to the self-defeating prophecy.

It is due to an uncontrolled, positive feedback loop between the expectations of a group of people and their behavior. It applies to a wide variety of situations, such as market panics and bank runs, to expectations of an individual's position in society.

In fact, your example describes a *self-defeating prophecy*.

> A self-defeating prophecy can be the result of rebellion to the prediction. If the audience of a prediction has an interest in seeing it falsified, and its fulfillment depends on their actions or inaction, their actions upon hearing it will make the prediction less plausible.

In essence, the people in your example didn't want the speed limit buffer to go away (in effect, making the speed limit lower) so the theory states that they purposely (if subconsciously) increased the rate at which they crashed to disprove the government's theory that lower speed would prevent crashes.
> 2 votes

# Answer
By definition, if the probability of an event increases, the probability of the event "happening" increases. Is not an event something that happens?

But I think I know what you're trying to get at. Here's my analysis.

First, let E be the event in question. I think you are trying to express something to the tune of:

```
P(E) < P(E|P(E))

```

Taken at face value, P(E) is the probability of the event. P(E|P(E)) is the probability of the event given that we know the probability of the event. This is a situation that is somewhat analogous to stock market dynamics - the more certain the market is that a stock will reach a low price before a certain time, the more they will sell, thus increasing the probability that the low price will be reached before the specified time.

The problem with this formalism is that P(E) is not a random variable. It is a number. E is a random variable. It is therefore associated with some distribution. Perhaps the event has a 30% chance of happening and a 70% chance of not happening. Then drawing values from E will take on one value 70% of the time and another value 30% of the time (however you want to represent happening and not happening - 0 and 1 are always nice).

Now let's suppose P(E) was a random variable. Then the above equation is not expressable. P(E) is not subject to the \< operator because it does not represent a single value.

Therefore what I think you are looking for is a bit more Baysian.

Suppose there is a concept Ev(E) which is the evidence that E will occur. This is a proposition, not a random variable. As Ev(E) goes to infinity, P(E) goes to 1. Let P(E) = 1/2 represents the proposition that the *you have equal evidence for and against the event happening*. You have a certain amount of evidence for it, as represented by Ev(E), and your evidence determines the state of your belief. What you are suggesting is that knowing the value of Ev(E) increases it. Let's make that another proposition:

```
K = 'I know the value of Ev(E)'

```

Now consider the statement

```
Ev(E) < Ev(E|K)

```

Now,

```
P(E) < P(E|K).

```

What I think you are asking about is really a statement about the change in the amount of evidence you have and its effect on your belief. In the Baysian framework, probabilities are equivalent to beliefs, which is why concepts like this can be addressed a bit more... naturally.

To answer your question, the name for

```
"awareness of the probability of an event increasing the probability of it
 happening"

```

is equivalent to

```
"awareness of your belief of an event (happening) increasing your belief of that it
 will happen"

```

This phenomenon is called:

```
 Second guessing your beliefs.

```

Or more accurately in this case, as you explicity use the word increasing:

```
 Becoming more confident in your beliefs.

```

Perhaps the take away here is that probabilies are not real. They require infinite data to construct and would only be "true: if you could roll back time to collect the exact same data again an again. And if you believe in a deterministic world, then you wouldn't need a probability in the first place. You'd just know. If you believe in a random world and you have the power to roll it back over and over again, and then relive the situation, you get to choose the probability.

That silliness is one of the reasons why probabilities are best understood as represent a state of belief. And if your awareness of your own belief changes it, well that's just questioning yourself and thus reassessing your beliefs.

If you believe in a true probability of an event happening, then your awareness of that probability could not change it, as your awareness is already factored into the true probability of that event happening.

If you're feeling mathy, give this a try: Evidence
> 0 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology
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# Question
Title: How to use Mechanical Turk for longer studies (i.e., 30 minutes+)?
I'm interested in using Mechanical Turk as a means of recruiting participants for online psychology studies. I have never used it for any research. However, many of my studies take around 30 minutes to an hour to complete. A typical study might involving answering a set of questionnaires using Inquisit. My impression is that Mechanical Turk works best with short studies (i.e., one to five minutes).

* Is it possible to use Mechanical Turk for longer studies?
* Are there any important tips for effectively using Mechanical Turk for longer studies?
* Are there any tutorials or case studies which document successful methods for using Mechanical Turk for longer studies?
* Or alternatively are there better systems for recruiting paid participants for longer online studies?

In general I appreciate that longer studies would require much more remuneration probably more than just a multiple of the amount of time. I also imagine that there would be additional issues of quality control.

# Answer
*I've just started reading up on Mechanical Turk. This is a summary of some of the tips that I've found. Admittedly, most of it applies generally to psychological experiments, and not specifically to longer ones.*

David Sharek discusses his workflow which explicitly includes studies in the 30 minute range. Thus, this post is one of the most relevant for dealing with the issue of longer studies.

### Assorted resources

Here are some other assorted resources; see also the references at the bottom.

Assorted blogs relevant to Mechanical Turk mentioned by Buhrmester

### Configuring external surveys

The general model seems to be to have a link to an external site (make sure it opens in a new tab or window) where the survey is delivered and a box for the completion code to be entered.

Buhrmester discusses various completion code systems and opted for the relatively low tech option of getting participants to make up a 4 or 5 digit number and enter it both into the survey and into the mturk. He then uses time stamp data to verify the original completer.

### Payment

Mason and Suri state

> However, recent research on the behavior of workers (Chilton et al., 2010) demonstrated that workers had a reservation wage (the least amount of pay for which they would do the task) of only \\$1.38 per hour, with an average effective hourly wage of $4.80 for workers (Ipeirotis, 2010a).

In terms of the relationship between payment and quality of worker they cite studies suggesting that there is an initial positive relationship that levels off at a certain point such that at a certain point additional payment does not improve performance. Masson and Suri then suggest:

> Consequently, it is often advisable to start by paying less than the expected reservation wage, and then increasing the wage if the rate of completed work is too low.

Similarly wages up to a point should increase the speed of data collection.

### Rejection of hits

Regarding rejecting hits, Michael has simply accepted all hits. This may be simpler than trying to work out which hits are legitimate. This also made sense given that he was often only paying 10 cents per participant for 10 minute experiments. It also has the benefit of not damaging your reputation.

### Quality assurance

There are two issues here. Did the participant complete the study at all? And did they complete the study in an appropriate manner (e.g., trying on performance task; reading instructions properly; etc.)?

A general approach is to incorporate additional means to usual for detecting dodgy data. If it's simple to filter out such participants then they don't corrupt the final dataset.

A few ideas:

* item level reaction time measures
* response patterns to negative and positively worded items
* repeat items which should yield identical responses
* performance measures
* Include very simple true-false questions (e.g., 2+2; Who is the president of the United States); Mason and Suri mention that in 500 responses only six got it wrong and three didn't answer.

Buhrmester makes the causal observation that the quality of responses may vary based on the country of responders, so for example limited participation to US participants is one coarse means of filtering for quality.

### Managing reputation as a requester

Buhrmester mentions accepting all hits both for simplicity and managing reptuation.

Mason and Suri (2012) discuss how reputation is discussed and monitored on external sites.

> Turkopticon is a site that allows workers to rate requesters along four axes: communicativity, generosity, fairness, and promptness. Turker Nation is an online bulletin board where workers routinely comment on requesters and communicate about individual HITs. It is strongly encouraged that new requesters “introduce” them- selves to the Mechanical Turk community by first posting to Turker Nation before putting up HITs.

### References

* Rand, D. G. (2012). The promise of Mechanical Turk: How online labor markets can help theorists run behavioral experiments. Journal of theoretical biology, 299, 172-179.
* Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S.D. (2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A New Source of Inexpensive, Yet High-Quality, Data? Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3-5.
* Mason, W., & Suri, S. (2012). Conducting behavioral research on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Behavior research methods, 44(1), 1-23.
* Berinsky, A. J., Huber, G. A., & Lenz, G. S. (2011). Using Mechanical Turk as a subject recruitment tool for experimental research. Submitted for review.
* Berinsky, A. J., Huber, G. A., & Lenz, G. S. (2012). Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon. com's mechanical turk. Political Analysis, 20(3), 351-368.
> 3 votes

# Answer
You may want to take a look at SurveyComet.com and TurkPrime.com. Both offer a pretty nice set of tools to run externally hosted surveys (like on Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey) and allow you to create follow up surveys, exclude previous workers, have specific demographic Panels and much more.

A long survey can be broken into two parts. Launch part 1 and later part2 as a follow up which will only be open to those who took part 1.

Disclaimer: I am part of the software development team and am currently working on those sites.
> 2 votes

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Tags: methodology, internet, mechanical-turk
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# Question
Title: Is there any standardized test / questionnaire to measure frustration?
I'm looking for a well-established standardized test to measure frustration (level) of humans. Is there such an instrument? I'm looking for a relatively short test that assesses frustration level at the point in time when the participant completes it.

# Answer
Frustration is measured in various ways. In psychology, frustration is seen as occurring when an anticipated reward or outcome is blocked (Berkowitz, 1989). The block can be either internal (the person’s lack of skill, knowledge) or external (environment, situation) (Shorkey & Crocker, 1981). Some papers and measures focus on the block itself (Dollard et al, 1939), while others focus on the individual’s reaction to the block (Amsel, 1958). Others focus on frustration tolerance, which is the degree to which a person can tolerate being frustrated and persist in that situation. Frustration tolerance is more trait-like (measuring a consistent way someone handles challenging situations, which is stable over time), and from your question it sounds like you’re more interested in something that measure state frustration (emotional reaction in the moment). Unfortunately, there are more validated instruments that assess frustration tolerance than “in the moment” frustration, though some might be adapted for your purposes. Options for both are summarized below:

**Frustration Tolerance**

* Harrington’s Frustration Discomfort Scale assesses frustration intolerance beliefs using four subscales: discomfort intolerance emotional intolerance, achievement frustration, and entitlement (Harrington, 2005). Each subscale consists of 7 items which are answered on a 5 point Likert-type scale ranging from “absent” to “very strong.” Items are designed to tap “common thoughts and beliefs people may have when they are distressed or frustrated.” Questions are phrased to refer to general reactions, not a specific situation. A five-subscale version also exists, though the four-subscale version appears to have been used more often (Jibeen, 2013; Stankovic & Vukosavljevic-Gvozden, 2011; Wilde, 2012).
* Wright, Lam, & Brown (2009) – The five item Frustrative Nonreward Responsiveness Scale seems to assess the likelihood an individual will quit or lose interest in a task when they cannot meet their goal, but does not seem to tap the emotion of anger. (This is a good reminder that the frustration “block” can precede many emotions such as anger, sadness, and boredom). Items are answered on a four point scale ranging from “very true for me” to “very false for me.” Questions are phrased in a way that asks the person to predict how they will respond to a frustrating situation.
* The Frustration Scale consists of 3 items asking how frustrating a particular job or task has been; items are answered on a 7-point Likert scale, with higher scores indicating more frustration (Peters, O’Connor, & Rudolf, 1980). Questions are asked in the past tense, *but if administered immediately following the task, this may meet your needs.*

**In the Moment Frustration**

* Scime and Norvilitis (2006) presented children with a challenging task (blindfolding them and asking them to complete a 15 piece puzzle). They assessed frustration by having children report their frustration level on a 4 point scale (“a lot” to “not at all”) and whether they were more likely to quit and more likely to get frustrated than other children on a 5 point scale (“a lot more” to “a lot less”). They also asked the children to describe (open response) how they knew they were frustrated and how they manage frustration.
* Other studies have measured frustration by a combination of direct survey questions (similar to those used by Scime & Norvitilis, 2006, typically limited to 1-2 items) and physiological data such as heart rate, strength of grip or speed of use of a computer mouse or lever, or the electrical impulses from facial muscles (Douglas & Perry, 1994; Hazlett, 2003; Reynolds, 2001)
* Hoppmann (2009) describes the use of think-aloud techniques (having the participant narrate their experience out loud) in order to identify rising frustration and the “tipping point” of frustration.

On a side note, as a psychologist I typically conceptualize emotions as a single word or image, and cognitions as full sentences. Many validated symptom or personality trait measures seek to capture the person’s experience over a certain period of time (a week, a month), because you can capture many instances of the emotion and come up with a cohesive assessment. However, if I were to clinically ask a client about a particular emotion “in the moment,” as is done in some anxiety or trauma therapies (e.g., how angry/frightened/anxious are you right now), I would do so in a single question. If I wanted to understand why they felt that way, I would ask more questions and start tapping into cognitions.

* Amsel, A. (1958). The role of frustrative nonreward in noncontinuous reward situations. *Psychological Bulletin, 55*, 102-119.
* Berkowitz, L. (1989). Frustration-aggression hypothesis: Examination and reformulation. *Psychological Bulletin, 106*(1), 59-73.
* Dollard, J. Doob, L., Miller, N., Mowrer, O., & Sears, R. (1939). *Frustration and Aggression*. New Haven: Yale University Press.
* Douglas, V. I., & Perry, P. A. (1994). Effects of reward and nonreward on frustration and attention in attention deficit disorder. *Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 22*(3), 281-302.
* Hazlett, R. (2003). Measurement of use frustration: A biologic approach. CHI EA ’03 Extended Abstracts in Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM, New York, New York, 734-735. Doi:10.1145/765891.765958
* Harrington, N. (2005). The Frustration Discomfort Scale: Development and psychometric properties. *Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, 12*, 374-387.
* Hoppmann, T. K. (2009). Examining the ‘point of frustration.’ The think-aloud method applied to online search tasks. *Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, 43*, 211-224. DOI 10.1007/s11135-007-9116-0
* Jibeen, T. (2013). Frustration intolerance beliefs as predictors of emotional problems in university undergraduates. *Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 31*(1), 16-26. Doi: 10.1007/s10942-012-0154-8.
* Peters, L. H., O’Connor, E. J., & Rudolf, C. J. (1980). The behavioral and affective consequences of performance-relevant situational variables. *Organization Behavior & Human Performance, 25*(1), 79-96. doi: 10.1016/0030-5073(80)90026-4
* Reynolds, C. J. (2001). The sensing and measurement of frustration with computers. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, (*unpublished Master’s Thesis*). Cambridge, MA. Retrieved from: http://vismod.media.mit.edu/tech-reports/TR-559.pdf
* Scime, M., & Norvilitis, J. M. (2006). Task performance and response to frustration in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. *Psychology in the Schools, 43*(3), 377-386.
* Shorkey, C. T., & Crocker, S. B. (1981). Frustration theory: a source of unifying concepts for generalist practice. *Social Work, 26*(5), 374-379
* Stankovic, S. & Vukosavljevic-Gvozden, T. (2011). The relationship of a measure of frustration intolerance with emotional dysfunction in a student sample. *Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 29*(1), 17-34. DOI: 10.1007/s10942-011-0128-2.
* Wilde, J. (2012). The relationship between frustration intolerance and academic achievement in college. *International Journal of Higher Education, 1*(2), 1-8. DOI: 10.5430/ijhe.v1n2p1
* Wright, K. A., Lam, D. H., & Brown, R. G. (2009). Reduced approach motivation following nonreward: Extension of the BIS/BAS scales. *Personality and Individual Differences, 47*(7), 753-757. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2009.06.015
> 10 votes

# Answer
Frustration discomfort scale developed by Harrington 2005 with the items and work motivation scale
> -1 votes

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Tags: emotion, measurement, test
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# Question
Title: Do Big 5 or BIS/BAS personality theories propose that combinations of personality traits are meaningful?
Personality traits tend to correlate. That is, the factors 'reward seeking', 'fun seeking' and 'drive' of the BIS/BAS scales are inter-correlated and similary in the Big 5 theory, the factor Neuroticism negatively correlates with Extraversion and Conscientiousness. (In the general population.)

I was wondering, does either of the personality theories (or any other personality theory) propose that there exists a balance between personality traits? Or that certain combinations of traits are meaningful. For example would high Neuroticism and high Extraversion describe some subgroup and be predictive in any way?

# Answer
Here are a few ways of thinking about this:

* **Regression modelling - Main effects:** When we predict an outcome of interest from multiple traits (e.g., the Big 5), we often get multiple significant parameters. For example, when predicting life satisfaction, low neuroticism and high extraversion tend to provide the strongest predictors, but there are also typically positive coefficients for the other factors. Thus, the coefficients imply a way of forming a personality composite to maximise prediction of an outcome.
* **Regression modelling - Interaction effects:** You can examine interaction effects of multiple traits (e.g., is there a neuroticism by extraversion interaction in predicting life satisfaction). This is typically examined by including both the raw variables and the product of the two interacting variables. The significance of the product is used test for an interaction effect. That said, my general sense is that these kinds of interactions tend to be very small in comparison to the size of the main effects.
* **Type-based research**: There are various conceptions of personality such as Type A and Type D personality. They often define a categorically distinct personality in terms of status on a number of traits. For example, Type D is defined as high negative affect and high social inhibition. Such type based approaches implicitly assume that it is useful and ideally meaningful to talk about such clusters of traits.
* **Higher level traits**: Another way of thinking about correlated traits is in terms of an underlying higher level trait. This is proposed explicitly in hierarchical measures of personality such as the NEO-PI where there are 6 facets for each of the Big 5. Thus, the six conscientiousness facets are in some sense combined to form the overall conscientiousness factor (see facet versus factor prediction). In a less explicit, we can also see discussion of the Big 1 (a proposed higher level factor explaining some shared variance in the Big 5) as an implicit way of combining the Big 5.
> 4 votes

# Answer
I can answer my own paper to some extent.

Yes, there exists research that finds specific combinations of factor scores predictive. For example: "High Extraversion and Openness and low Neuroticism and Agreeableness predicted fearless dominance, whereas high Neuroticism and low Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted impulsive antisociality". \[1\]

Hoewever, it is unclear if 'personality theorists' a priori propose that such combinations of traits exist. In addition, personality research is a very productive field \[2\], with personality measurement (like the Big Five) being used to predict anything from educational success, to leadership, to health behaviour etc. It therefore seems unlikely there will be a review titled: "Combinations of Personality Dimension Scores and what they predict: a review of 40 years of research" (a book i would definately like to leaf through)

\[1\] Ross, Scott R., et al. "Factors of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory: Criterion-related validity and relationship to the BIS/BAS and Five-Factor models of personality." Assessment (2008).

\[2\] Allik, Jüri. "Personality psychology in the first decade of the new millennium: a bibliometric portrait." European Journal of Personality 27.1 (2013): 5-14
> 1 votes

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Tags: personality
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# Question
Title: What is the relation between fun and motivation? Are they the same?
Are 'having fun in doing something' and 'being motivated to do something' the same thing?

If not, how are fun and motivation related? Is there any formal definition on this? Would it be possible to be motivated to do something without having fun in it?

# Answer
As a temporary answer, and based on the comments, I will say that:

Motivation is related to the long term cost and revenue (in the broadest sense) for an activity, i.e. more extrinsic. If the long term revenue is higher than the cost, you might be motivated to undertake the activity.

Fun is related to the short term cost/revenue for an activity, i.e. intrinsic. If the short term revenue is high enough than a certain treshold you will say the activity is fun.

Improvements welcome :-)
> 3 votes

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Tags: motivation
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# Question
Title: What is the scientific definition of "brain training"?
A lot of companies are selling products under the heading of "brain training", and "brain exercises", "brain games" such as Nintendo DS Brain Training, Lumosity, and a host of other companies.

I'm highly sceptical that such exercises have any generalised effect beyond improving the task that is being practiced and possibly some very limited form of generalisation. Nonetheless, I was curious about what makes an exercise or a program of activities "brain training".

* **What is the scientific definition of "brain training"?**
* **Alternatively, what definitions have been proposed by researchers or very popular providers of brain training?**

Such a definition would presumably make clear how daily living is different to brain training. It would also hopefully clarify whether daily cognitive activity like doing a crossword, answering a question on stack exchange, making a shopping list, or playing a computer game is brain training or not.

# Answer
I think in most scientific contexts, "brain training" refers to working memory training. Scott Barry Kaufman wrote a nice article entitled *In Defense of Working Memory Training*. Hulme and Melby-Lervag wrote a meta-analysis about working memory training. They note that these exercises would not generalize to other mental skills such as reading comprehension, word decoding, and arithmetic. However, they did find that these exercises did improve short term verbal and visuospatial spatial working memory skills.

Kaufman argues that one should not dismiss working memory training as not improving intelligence. It may improve one aspect of intelligence (i.e. working memory). Note that according to may researchers, intelligence is comprised of many facts. Also, the age of people participating in brain training should be taken account. For example, very young people and very old people may benefit more than "normal age" people. Likewise, personality traits such as conscientiousness and neuroticism should be taken into account.

Kaufman also notes that mindfulness meditation and other "whole body" exercises would be more beneficial than specific working memory training exercises.

**Sources**

Is Working Memory Training Effective? A Meta-Analytic Review by Monica Melby-Lervåg and Charles Hulme. Developmental Psychology © 2012 American Psychological Association 2013, Vol. 49, No. 2, 270–291.

A Dynamical Model of General Intelligence: The Positive Manifold of Intelligence by Mutualism by Han L. J. van der Maas et al. Psychological Review 2006, Vol. 113, No. 4, 842–861.
> 6 votes

# Answer
Brain training has to do with targeting the building blocks of inteligence/reasoning, in fact all the brain skills we need in our culture/education, and which are measured on IQ tests. This includes abstract logical reasoning, verbal and mathematical ability. Brain trining has also to do with helping the brain in understanding relations, such as more than, less than, opposite, same, before, after, here-there, amongst others as this is crucial for intellectual development in just about every sphere.
> 0 votes

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Tags: terminology, brain-training
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title: Cognitive Dissonance

text:
# Question
Title: Cognitive Dissonance
Given the following hypothetical situation:

An individual discovers that his girlfriend has cheated on him, but decides to continue to date her after she assures him that she will not do it again. Upon reading messages on her phone he becomes suspicious and begins to believe that she will cheat on him again. He simultaneously believes he should break up with his girlfriend but also doesn't want to break up with her despite having absolutely no support for anything but monogamy.

Is that a good example of Cognitive Dissonance?

# Answer
Wikipedia: cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

So yes it is an example of Cognitive Dissonance.

Belief number 1. "I trust my girlfriend."

Belief number 2. "My girlfriend is not trustworthy"

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Belief number 1. "I like my girlfriend and I don't want to break up with her."

Belief number 2. "My girlfriend cheated on me, THEREFORE I should break up with her."

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The first set is based on the individual's comfort with his girlfriend being monogamous. His girlfriend has displayed capability and desire to not be monogamous. Loving relationships are usually based on openness and trust- e.g. that both know the conditions and stick to them and discuss any changes. It looks like this initial understanding is missing and the preconceptions of monogamy have now be called into question.

The second set is based on a cognitive framework of how relationships should work that logically says that cheating means breaking up.
> 1 votes

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Tags: cognitive-psychology, cognitive-dissonance
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# Question
Title: Can repetitive sports-related head injuries make a person senile many years later?
Would repetitive football injuries to the cranium show up decades later, causing symptoms resembling mild retardation, OCD, etc.? What is the best way to determine this in terms of imaging, testing, etc.?

# Answer
yes, here is a nice paper which shows evidence : http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131017/srep02972/full/srep02972.html

from the paper : " a report commissioned by the National Football League (NFL), showed that retired players between the ages of 30–49 were 20 times more likely, at a rate of 1.9%, to receive a diagnosis of dementia, Alzheimer's disease (AD), or other memory-related impairments11. Over the age of 50, the proportion diagnosed with one of the above rose to 6.1%, compared with only 1.2% In the general population11. Overall, neurodegenerative mortality of NFL alumni is 3 times greater than that of the general population, with AD and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) estimated at 4 times as high '
> 3 votes

# Answer
It's hard to say just, because it depends on the location of the head injury and how severe the head injury is. The brain is composed of several lobes which all have a different functions. Depending on the location and severity of the brain injury, the symptoms show up.

For example, when you get brain injury in the frontal cortex, and this is severe enough, a person can become somewhat antisocial. With antisocial I mean saying whatever they think of. This causes awkward social situations. The impulse brake is gone then.

Let's say you have a hemorrhage. The location of the hemorrhage is key to predicting which kind of symptoms you are going to show if the hemorrhage is severe enough. Some people who have had an hemorrhage experience a change in personality and likes and dislikes. Other people who have had an hemorrhage experience trouble in their motor skills, like dressing themselves.

To answer your question: it depends on the severity and location. A brain injury, repetitive or not, can cause a variety of symptoms, but you can't experience a mental illness like schizophrenia when you get brain injury, because the base genetic predisposition towards schizophrenia is already there when you are born, just like OCD. Brain injury which is not already there when you are born is called Acquired Brain Injury, or in Dutch, N(iet) A(angeboren) H(ersenletsel).
> 0 votes

# Answer
A neurodegenerative disorder that appears in boxers after repeated hits on the head is called Dementia pugilistica. I have heard some people call it punch-drunk disease. It manifests as Dementia but often involves paranoia. There is an article on wikipedia about it.
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, cognitive-neuroscience, neurology, brain-injury
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# Question
Title: Participant / Subject Pool Management Solutions
I am searching for a subject pool management system for human subject research. Almost all institutions appear to use Sona-systems. Do any alternatives exist?

# Answer
here is an open source project: http://www.goeritz.net/panelware/

With a paper: http://www.goeritz.net/panelware/BRM4.pdf

Might be a little outdated but still work ...
> 2 votes

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Tags: methodology, software, teaching-of-psychology
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# Question
Title: Evidence that positive rewards are learnt faster than negative rewards?
Its folk psychology wisdom that its easier to reward positive behavior than punish negative behavior (e.g. any book on parenting or dog training), but is there any evidence in the cognitive science literature that this is indeed the case? And if so, then have possible mechanisms for this phenomena been proposed?

For some context, I'm asking this because coming from a computational perspective this doesn't really make sense. The typical reinforcement learning algorithm tries to maximize the expected discounted cumulative reward of behavior, and it makes no difference if that entails avoiding negative rewards or seeking out positive rewards.

# Answer
> 8 votes
This is a great question.

**Short answer:** No, the evidence does not suggest that positive reinforcement is universally more effective than negative reinforcement or punishment. However, there are still good reasons to focus on rewards over punishment in real-life training/learning situations.

**Long answer:**

The trouble for folk psychology began with Skinner's somewhat unfortunate choice of terminology... While Skinner advocated positive reinforcement over negative reinforcement or punishment, it seems to have remained an industry secret that what he meant by those terms is not what the general public thinks he meant.

The modern view of positive and negative reinforcement is that they are essentially synonyms. They are different ways of looking at the same thing, like describing a glass of water based on how full or how empty it is. Computationally, as you say, learning algorithms that assign positive values to targets or negative values to non-targets are mathematically equivalent.

Although they are often confused with positive and negative reinforcement, rewards and aversives are different terms with different meanings. Testing whether one is more effective than the other is tricky, as in practice they are usually *qualitatively* different. For example, is ice cream or spanking more effective for getting your kid to do their homework? The answer is: It depends - how much ice cream, how much spanking...? Surely we can find a ratio of ice cream to spanking at which they are equally effective. The type of research that examines this question is interested in determining where that boundary is (here is an example). Thought experiment: How can qualitatively different feedback mechanisms be applied in machine learning?

Research more likely to answer your question compares positive and negative feedback that is arguably qualitatively equivalent. For example, compare gaining money to avoiding loss of money, reducing risk to avoiding increase in risk, and it's even possible to compare the effects on animals that are trained in a token economy. In recent years, the folk psychology idea that positive feedback is universally superior to negative feedback has been called into question by such research. A few examples:

Neurological reasons for the difference in effectiveness between positive and negative feedback have been proposed - for example by Eveline Crone in the study cited above.

Training using rewards is preferred for animal trainers, parents, and teachers in most practical situations:

* There is usually a much wider range of undesirable behaviour to punish than desirable behaviour to reward. Animals and young children have difficulty determining what the desirable behaviour is with only clues about what behaviours are undesirable. Adults are easier to work with because you can explain the desirable behaviour in words.
* Punishment must be applied to all undesirable behaviour to be effective, while reward need only be applied to desirable behaviour, and even then only intermittently, to be effective.
* Due to classical conditioning, subjects may attribute punishment to factors unrelated to their behaviour, such as the trainer or the classroom. They may learn to avoid the trainer, or avoid getting caught, rather than the desirable behaviour.
* Notice how none of these points apply to machine learning, where the process is structured, constrained, and automated.

John Maag summarizes reasons to promote positive reinforcement in schools: Namely that teachers often find it convenient and effective (in the short-term) to administer punishment and are overly reliant on it in many situations where positive reinforcement would be more effective and desirable.

Nice video on the topic.

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Tags: reinforcement-learning
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title: Classification of Attachment Styles

text:
# Question
Title: Classification of Attachment Styles
The concept of attachment and different attachment styles has a long tradition in developmental psychology. Mary Ainsworth developed a classification for three different attachment styles that she called *secure*, *insecure-resistant* or synonymously *insecure-ambivalent* and finally *insecure-avoidant* (Main, 1996). Assessment of these styles is done with the Strange-Situation-Test. Later, a fourth style called *insecure-disorganized-disoriented* was introduced to account for a number of children that would not have been classifiable otherwise (Main & Solomon, 1990).

A corresponding classification has also been developed for attachment styles in adults. The four styles here are called *secure-autonomous*, *dismissing*, *preoccupied* and *unresolved-disorganized* (Main, 1996). Assessment is done using the Adult Attachement Interview.

Recently I have read a couple of papers that investigate the association between attachment styles and various forms of stress reactivity, that used the terms *attachment anxiety* and *attachment avoidance* (Selcuk et al., 2012; Ben-Naim et al., 2013; Ein-Dor et al., 2011). The authors explain what is meant by these terms. Those two *attachment orientations* as they are called are asses with the *Experience in Close Relationships Scales* (ECR, Fraley et al., 2000). I am confused as to how these terms fit into the picture of the attachment styles.

**Is this another classification of attachement styles?**

References:
<sub> Ben-Naim, S., Hirschberger, G., Ein-Dor, T., & Mikulincer, M. (2013). An experimental study of emotion regulation during relationship conflict interactions: The moderating role of attachment orientations. Emotion, 13(3), 506–519. doi:10.1037/a0031473
Ein-Dor, T., Mikulincer, M., & Shaver, P. R. (2011). Attachment insecurities and the processing of threat-related information: Studying the schemas involved in insecure people’s coping strategies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(1), 78–93. doi:10.1037/a0022503 PDF
Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 350–365. doi:10.1037/0022- 3514.78.2.350 PDF
Main, M. (1996). Introduction to the special section on attachment and psychopathology: 2. Overview of the field of attachment. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 64(2), 237.
Main, M., & Solomon, J. (1990). Procedures for identifying infants as disorganized/disoriented during the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Attachment in the preschool years: Theory, research, and intervention, 1, 121–160.
Selcuk, E., Zayas, V., Günaydin, G., Hazan, C., & Kross, E. (2012). Mental representations of attachment figures facilitate recovery following upsetting autobiographical memory recall. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(2), 362–378. doi:10.1037/a0028125 PDF </sub>

# Answer
**Background:**

There is abundant research linking childhood attachment styles and adult attachment styles. This doesn't mean that an individual's attachment style is set in stone for life; it is a good indicator of how a child will fare as an adult.

**The advent of Attachment theory:**

A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research R. Chris Fraley | University of Illinois

> ... Bowlby postulated that these attachment behaviors, such as crying and searching, were adaptive responses to separation from with a primary attachment figure--someone who provides support, protection, and care. Because human infants, like other mammalian infants, cannot feed or protect themselves, they are dependent upon the care and protection of "older and wiser" adults. Bowlby argued that, over the course of evolutionary history, infants who were able to maintain proximity to an attachment figure via attachment behaviors would be more likely to survive to a reproductive age. According to Bowlby, a motivational system, what he called the attachment behavioral system, was gradually "designed" by natural selection to regulate proximity to an attachment figure.

John Bowlby was the father of Attachment Theory; Mary Ainsworth tested and developed this theory.

> ... John Bowlby formulated the basic tenets of the theory. ...
> Mary Ainsworth’s innovative methodology not only made it possible to test some of Bowlby’s ideas empirically hut also helped expand the theory itself and is responsible for some of the new directions it is now taking.

THE ORIGINS OF ATTACHMENT THEORY: JOHN BOWLBY AND MARY AINSWORTH, INGE BRETHERTON Developmental Psychology (1992), 28, 759-775.

John Bowlby - Attachment Theory

It is difficult to separate more recent attachment theory from its progenitor; as this is the source from which all attachment theory has evolved.

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**Attachment style categorisation:**

Any style of attachment, that is not a healthy or **secure attachment style** is classified as an **insecure attachment style** or an **attachment disorder.**

This answer here addresses attachment disorders, in particular, ambivalent attachment disorder in detail.

Maryland's Source for Attachment Disorder Related Information
*Note I've added bold for emphasis.*

> **AVOIDANT ATTACHMENT DISORDER**
>
> The predominant emotion internally, in Avoidant AD {AvAD} children is sadness. However, the world sees little or none of their sadness. AvAD children believe their sadness is infinite, and should they lapse into it, they see no exit. Hence, they go to extraordinary lengths to avoid any expression of it, and usually effectively shield themselves from even recognizing their sadness. Their internal shields work so well that they often truly do not think they are sad. What AvAD children do feel is an anxious edge in quieter moments. They rarely relax, lest their sadness “creep up” on them. Their hypervigilance is more about deflecting anything that might activate their sadness rather than simply scanning for direct hostile threats. As physical / emotional closeness carries a high potential for triggering their sadness, AvAD children avoid it. Attitudinally, AvAD children are contemptuous of sadness- they define it as the “stuff of sissies”. AvAD children present themselves as omnipotent and without need for others. About half of these children lie somewhere along the spectrum of depressive disorders.
>
> **ANXIOUS ATTACHMENT DISORDER**
>
> The primary emotion Anxious AD {AxAD} children feel is **anxiety** ...
>
> **DISORGANIZED ATTACHMENT DISORDER**
>
> The characteristic emotion of children with Disorganized Attachment Disorder {DAD} is overwhelming and unmanageable **anxiety**.

**A cross over of avoidance and anxiety attachment disorders:**

> **AMBIVALENT ATTACHMENT DISORDER**

*Note: my answer gives a more comprehensive overview of Ambivalent Attachment Disorder and how it is classified as an Reactive Attachment Disorder.*

> Reactive attachment disorder
>
> **What is reactive attachment disorder?**
>
> In reactive attachment disorder, DSM-IV considers two basic types of behavior. Representative of the hindered type of attachment disorder, is a child who “constantly refuses to initiate or respond to social activity, as it is expected of children in his age and level of development. It’s expressed in too depressed, too sensitive or highly controversial reaction, for example, a child may respond differently to the teacher: to avoid and refuse caress or to express increased vigilance (“frozen vigilance”).

Highlights of Changes from DSM-IV-TR to DSM-5

> **Reactive Attachment Disorder**
> The DSM-IV childhood diagnosis reactive attachment disorder had two subtypes: emotionally withdrawn/inhibited and indiscriminately social/disinhibited. In DSM-5, these subtypes are defined as distinct disorders: reactive attachment disorder and disinhibited social engagement disorder. Both of these disorders are the result of social neglect or other situations that limit a young child’s opportunity to form selective attachments. Although sharing this etiological pathway, the two disorders differ in important ways. Because of dampened positive affect, reactive attachment disorder more closely resembles internalizing disorders; it is essentially equivalent to a lack of or incompletely formed preferred attachments to caregiving adults. In contrast, disinhibited social engagement disorder more closely resembles ADHD; it may occur in children who do not necessarily lack attachments and may have established or even secure attachments. The two disorders differ in other important ways, including correlates, course, and response to intervention, and for these reasons are considered separate disorders

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A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research R. Chris Fraley | University of Illinois

> Recent research on adult attachment has revealed some interesting complexities concerning the relationships between avoidance and defense. Although some avoidant adults, often called fearfully-avoidant adults, are poorly adjusted despite their defensive nature, others, often called dismissing-avoidant adults, are able to use defensive strategies in an adaptive way. For example, in an experimental task in which adults were instructed to discuss losing their partner, Fraley and Shaver (1997) found that dismissing individuals (i.e., individuals who are high on the dimension of attachment-related avoidance but low on the dimension of attachment-related anxiety) were just as physiologically distressed (as assessed by skin conductance measures) as other individuals. When instructed to suppress their thoughts and feelings, however, dismissing individuals were able to do so effectively. That is, they could deactivate their physiological arousal to some degree and minimize the attention they paid to attachment-related thoughts. Fearfully-avoidant individuals were not as successful in suppressing their emotions.

This figure from Attachment as an Organizational Framework for Research on Close Relationships Cindy Hazan Cornell University, Phillip R. Shaver University of California, Davis; shows the basis of cause and effect underlying attachment.

**Attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance.**

This figure shows how this cause and effect is classified into attachment styles. Defensiveness leading to avoidance, fear leading to anxiety.

**Attachment orientations**

This figure taken from A Brief Overview of Adult Attachment Theory and Research gives a nice representation of how defensiveness and fear translate into attachment styles or attachment orientations.

These diagrams also give a good representation of childhood cause and adult attachment style affect.

images courtesy of Attachment Styles By Kendra Cherry, About.com Guide

The Experiences in Close Relationships-Revised (ECR-R) Questionnaire Fraley, Waller, and Brennan (2000) - *Iive added emphasis within this quote.*

> Scoring Information: The first 18 items listed below comprise the **attachment-related anxiety scale**. Items 19 – 36 comprise the **attachment-related avoidance scale**. In real research, the order in which these items are presented should be randomized. Each item is rated on a 7-point scale where 1 = strongly disagree and 7 = strongly agree. **To obtain a score for attachment-related anxiety**, please average a person’s responses to items 1 – 18. However, because items 9 and 11 are “reverse keyed” (i.e., high numbers represent low anxiety rather than high anxiety), you’ll need to reverse the answers to those questions before averaging the responses. (If someone answers with a “6” to item 9, you’ll need to re-key it as a 2 before averaging.) **To obtain a score for attachment-related avoidance**, please average a person’s responses to items 19 – 36. Items 20, 22, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, and 36 will need to be reverse keyed before you compute this average.
> 7 votes

# Answer
In the introduction to their study, Conradi et al. (2006) give a brief and very good overview over the different approaches to classify and measure attachment styles. I encourage everyone, who is interested in the subject to read it. However, since it is the answer to my question, I will summarise it here.

As I said in my question, research on attachment styles started with the classification by Ainsworth and Main, who were concerned with the infant-caregiver relationship. Later, an adult attachment focus was established by Hazan and Shaver. The paper then goes on to say that "after that, a bewildering variety of adult attachment typologies, adult attachment-related constructs, and measurement instruments" were developed. Within the adult attachment tradition, Bartholomew then "returned to Bowlby's original conceptualization of two working models", the *model of self* and the *model of other*. From these two bi-polar dimensions, the four attachment styles I mentioned in my question emerge.

Brennan and collegues "collected all adult attachment self-report scales known at that time", administered them to a sample of 1086 psychology students and found two underlying factors, which they call *attachment avoidance* and *attachment anxiety*. The 18 items with the highest loadings on each of the two factors were the combined to two subscales which form the *Experiences in Close Relationships Questionaire (ECR)*.

So, yes, the distinction between *attachment avoidance* and *attachment anxiety* is a different way of of studying attachment. The ECR (or the revised versions of it) seems to be a promising method for further study, because, as Fraley et al. (2000) mention, research has not supported a categorial model of attachment styles.

References:

<sub> Jan Conradi, H., Gerlsma, C., Duijn, M. V., & Jonge, P. D. (2006). Internal and external validity of the experiences in close relationships questionnaire in an American and two Dutch samples. *The European journal of psychiatry, 20(4)*, 258-269. HTML
Fraley, R. C., Waller, N. G., & Brennan, K. A. (2000). An item response theory analysis of self-report measures of adult attachment. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78,* 350–365. doi:10.1037/0022- 3514.78.2.350 PDF </sub>
> 3 votes

# Answer
Please consider the work of Dr. Patricia Crittenden; "Dynamic-Maturational Model (DMM) of Attachment & Adaptation". Based on the theoretical work of Bowlby, as a doctoral student, Dr. Crittenden, in concert with Dr. Ainsworth, began the foundational work of the DMM. The classification system appears to address the problem of "D" (e.g. "cannot classify", disorganized) by building out on the "A" and "C" classifications with an "AC" classification indicative of psychopathology. There are several papers and books which are accessible through the various internet booksellers, her papers are available in scholarly journals but some of her papers can be accessed through the Family Relations Institute website and the International Association for the Study of Attachment. Her work appears to have been neglected in the United States until recently. Consider her text, co-authored with Dr. Landini, "Assessing Adult Attachment" (2011, Norton Press). The DMM builds on the work of Bowlby and Ainsworth by incorporating the scientific developments in the cognitive neurosciences and proposes the "maturation", variation and change, of attachment over the lifespan. Drs. Ainsworth and Crittenden, early on (Crittenden and Ainsworth, 1989) in Crittenden's work stated, the classification of "D" (e.g. disorganized or cannot classify) "...if it occurred, would be transient and replaced by a context-adaptive strategies ..." (Crittenden and Landini, 2011).
> 0 votes

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Tags: terminology, developmental-psychology
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# Question
Title: What is the difference between a biological and behaviorist perspective in psychology?
I was recently reading through a textbook and was unable to clearly identify the differences between the two due to a vague definition of both. Can someone provide an in-depth explanation of the two and perhaps provide examples?

# Answer
**Behaviorism** is the idea that psychology should be limited to what it can directly observe: behavior and the stimuli that drive behavior. A behaviorist approach to studying a psychological phenomenon would be based on studying observable behaviors and the observable things that cause those behaviors. Behaviorist explanations of the phenomenon would not rely on descriptions of internal processes, like thinking, since those are not directly observable.

**Biological psychology** takes the perspective that pyschological processes (e.g. thinking) are rooted in biology, and focuses on how biological processes cause and interact with psychological processes. Techniques like measuring neural activity through EEG or fMRI are common, as are (non-human animal) studies that involve more invasive manipulation of neural tissues. A biological psychology approach to studying a psychological phenomenon might identify particular patterns of brain activity that are related to the phenomenon, genetic correlates, or neural mechanisms that give rise to the phenomenon.
> 3 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, behaviorism
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# Question
Title: Can fMRI and EEG signals be generated from NEF models?
The basic function of the NEF is to map the outside world onto neurons, using the firing rates of the neurons. It also supports various neuron models. Have these firing rates been used to create EEG and fMRI signals to replicate experimental data before? If so, how?

# Answer
> 5 votes
Replicating fMRI signal was first used in the Tower of Hanoi task as seen in section 5.8 of "How to Build a Brain":

> There is strong evidence that dendritic processing, driven by neurotransmitter usage, underwrites the BOLD signal (Logothetis & Wandell, 2004). It is that BOLD signal that is actually measured by MRI machines. Consequently, MRI measures neurotransmitter usage, not neural activity (i.e., spiking of neurons) in a brain area. Neurotransmitter usage is actually determined by neurons that project into the measured area, not the neurons in the area itself. Here we predict fMRI data by filtering neurotransmitter usage in the model. This filter is determined by a fixed model of how neurotransmitter fluctuations demand energy and give rise to the blood-usage-based BOLD signal.

Replicating EEG signals would be possible as well. You would just have to figure out the potential contained in each neuron as a result of it's activities and then pass the resulting signal through a scalp filter.

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Tags: neuroscience, eeg, fmri, nef
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# Question
Title: Benefits of using more complicated neuron models in NEF models
The NEF allows you to use almost any neuron model as long as it has an equation for it's activity and it's spikes in some way. Usually, a simple leaky-integrate-fire (LIF) neuron model is used, but even in the software Nengo there are various neurons available for modelling, such as adaptive LIF neurons and Poisson neurons. What are the benefits of using these more complex neurons and how have these benefits been leveraged in the past?

# Answer
As seen in "Neural Engineering" by Eliasmith et al. Chapter 4, complicated neuron models have greater computational abilities and match neural data more realistically.

# Computational Capabilities

As seen in the following table (taken from Neural Engineering) Adaptive LIF neurons, by virtue of their temporally varying firing patterns (i.e. a constant input will cause different spike patterns over time) encode more information per spike:

As seen in this table, there's a trade-off between the complexity of the information represented by the neuron and it's computational cost. However, this cost is calculated on traditional Von-Neumann CPUs. It is possible to create neuromorphic hardware to minimize this cost while maximizing computational ability. For more information, see "Nonlinear synaptic interaction as a computational resource in the Neural Engineering Framework" which shows how non-linear dendrites can allow for powerful forms of computation with minimal additional neuromorphic hardware cost.

# Matching Biological Data

The aforementioned temporal variance of the Adaptive LIF is also used to matching neural data as seen in this model of working memory, which would have not been possible with regular LIF neurons. Using even more complicated models can allow for matching the effects of drugs, as shown in "Effects of Guanfacine and Phenylephrine on a Spiking Neuron Model of Working Memory".
> 2 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, theoretical-neuroscience, nef
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# Question
Title: Why is sensory substitution not that successful?
By successful, I mean made it out to the large world market or being massively funded. After looking online it seems that the most relevant research is the one done by Bach-y-Rita about the seeing with tongue in the 70's. Since then there were no significant breakthroughs. Is there a reason for that? Did someone prove that brain plasticity is limited?

# Answer
Bach-y-Rita's Tactile Vision Substitution System (TVSS) project was initiated in 1963 and he has since been regarded as the founding father of **sensory substitution**. The concept of sensory substitution refers to the process of obtaining information about the world from a functional sensory system (e.g. touch) that would normally be obtained from a lost sensory system (e.g, vision in the blind).

Bach-y-Rita developed various devices, but his most cited one consisted of 400 vibrotactile solenoids mounted in the back of a dental chair. Camera images were converted into binary ("black and white") tactile representations onto the back of a subject ('seeing with the 'skin') (Bach-y-Rita 1969):

The results obtained with the TVSS were very promising: after sufficient practice (20 – 150 hours), blind subjects were able to perceive movement, recognize shapes and objects, and even identify faces. It also enabled the appreciation of more abstract concepts quite unfamiliar to the blind, such as shadow, depth, looming, zooming and parallax (Bach-y-Rita, 2003). A face projected onto the skin would have felt like something like this (photo of an oscilloscope image representing the voltage stimuli sent from the camera to the vibrotactile display).

However, as the first figure shows, the TVSS was large and bulky. Moreover, it was noisy and power hungry and simply not very useful outside the laboratory. Although various portable variants were constructed, they too suffered these limitations in various degrees:

Bach-y-Rita's work has been extended into *electrotactile* approaches and the company Wicab is currently marketing the BrainPort V100 device in Europe. It features a head-worn camera to scan the environment and translates these images onto a grid of electrodes that stimulate the tongue to elicit electrotactile sensations (much like a sip of champagne or a soda would do):

It uses electrodes instead of bulky vibrotactors which greatly reduces power consumption and this approach has made a portable application feasible. Electrodes, however, need a moist surface or very high voltages are necessary. A straightforward approach was to apply the electrode grid onto the tongue. The tongue is moist and has excellent resolution. The BrainPort currently features 400 electrodes and is able to provide graded voltages to present gray scale images onto the tongue.

The BrainPort has been marketed fairly recently in Europe (2013) and an FDA study in the US has just been finished. As far as I know they are busy with commercializing there as well.

Regarding your **brain plasticity** question: There is a wealth of information available on neuroplastic changes in the brain due to the use of the BrainPort or other sensory substitution approaches (VoiCE, EyeMusic etc etc). Basically it has been shown that the deafferented visual cortices are recruited for tactile information processing (e.g. Sadato, 2002), and hence, the brain actively adapts to the new source of information. So **no**, plastic changes are **not** the limiting factor.

Hence, the BrainPort (and other sensory substitution approaches like the SonicGuide etc.) is useful, portable, and not less importantly, the brain *actively adapts* in using the alternative visuo-tactile input by recruiting the visual cortex for processing visuotactile information. **Why then haven't sensory substitution approaches conquered the world of visual rehabilitation of the blind**"? There are a number of important downsides to sensory substitution devices (SSDs):

* SSDs **substitute** vision (by tactile or acoustic information), they do not **restore** it;
* The **limited resolution** of SSDs does not allow for detailed target analysis, i.e., discerning the difference between a fork and a knife will be very difficult;
* Instead, **relying on well-established coping mechanisms** and sticking to their usual routines may be far more effective in everyday life. For example, simply touching the fork or spoon will immediately tell them the difference, while scanning them with a SSD takes them ages (i.e., SSDs are not very practical);
* The restricted resolution of state-of-the-art SSDs also aids little in orientation and mobility (O&M). In other words, it does not help blind folks to go about. Instead, **established methods such as the guide cane and guide dog are far more effective for O&M**;
* Learning to use a SSD effectively takes *a lot of time*. **Not many people are willing to undergo an arduous rehabilitation program**;
* In case of the BrainPort - it is very visible to the outside world and **not very discreet** when a blind person is using it. It is known that 29% of consumers with disabilities abandon the use of assistive devices for reasons unrelated to device performance (Phillips and Zhao, 1993).

**References**
**-** Bach-y-Rita 1969. *Nature* 221:963-4
**-** Bach-y-Rita 2003. *JHCI* **15**:285-95
**-** Philips & Zhao 1993. *Assistive technology* **5**:36-45
**-** Sadato 2002. *Neuroimage* **16**:389-400
> 10 votes

# Answer
Chris gave an excellent answer for visual-to-tactile sensory substitution devices. I will not argue about the extent to which sensory substitution is successful, but the most widespread sensory substitution system for the blind is nowadays The vOICe, a class of visual-to-auditory sensory substitution devices that is available globally. Its Android version has been installed over a quarter million times in the last few years, and there are a number of recent peer-reviewed scientific publications based on use of its Microsoft Windows version, covering various aspects of brain plasticity. Upcoming augmented reality glasses are likely to improve convenience of use. But yes, like Chris stated, learning to use a SSD effectively takes a lot of time.
> 3 votes

# Answer
Tadoma is a method of communicating used by some deaf blind individuals. The system was developed prior to 1967 and predates TVSS, although there is no hardware involved. I think this video demonstrates the extent to which the approach is successful, and hence not limited by brain plasticity. Tadoma has fallen out of favor because it is difficult to learn and teach. There has been some research into vibrotactile hearing aids and there are some commercially available.
> 0 votes

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Tags: neuroscience, perception, vision, sensation, plasticity
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# Question
Title: How many dendrite connections vs axon terminals does a multipolar cerebral neuron have?
I find countless places stating that neurons have tens of thousands of "connections" or "synapses" and **one axon**.

Do neurons have tens of thousands of dendrite connections, and a few axon **terminals**; or a few dendrite connections and tens of thousands of axon terminals; or tens of thousands of each?

When a neuron's action potential is triggered, how many other neurons does it affect?

# Answer
> 7 votes
**Multipolar neurons** have multiple inputs (dendritic connections), and one output (the axon).There are also **bipolar cells** in the retina, these have one dendrite (input) and one axon (output) (Nelson & Connaughton, 2012).

Regarding **dendrites**: A striking example are the Purkinje cells in the cortex. These cells have elaborate dendritic trees making 100,000 to 200,000 connections, but still there is just one axon. Hence they integrate massive amounts of (sensory) information and funnel it into one output signal (Purves *et al*., 2002).

Hence, dependent on the cell type, neurons can have **one or as many as 200k** dendritic connections.

Regarding **axon terminals**: As far as I am aware, **all neurons have just one axon**. The axon can target neurons along the way (*en passant*) and the axon can terminate in multiple terminals contacting various cells. Some neurons contain one terminal (e.g. bipolar cells), others as many as **thousands of terminals** (Brady *et al*., 2012).

The only situation where multiple axons arise from one cell is when the axon bifurcates along the way, sending one or more *collaterals* from the axon off back to the cell. Basically, the neuron has still just one axonal output, but collateral regulatory info is sent off back to the cell.

There are situations where multiple axons arise, but that occurs only in neurons that have been tinkered around with genetically.

**References**
**-** Brady *et al*., *Basic Neurochemistry*. 8th ed (2012)
**-** Nelson & Connaughton, Bipolar Cell Pathways in the Vertebrate Retina. In: *Webvision* (2012)
**-** Purves *et al*. (eds), *Neuroscience*. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
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title: best book for cognitive science

text:
# Question
Title: best book for cognitive science
I am computer science student and I have a limited knowledge about cognitive science.

What books would give me a good introduction to the area?

# Answer
For a neuroscience focused overview I enjoyed:

"Making up the Mind" by Chris Frith

For a psychology textbook ( I think this is used in undergraduate level):

"Psychology 2nd Edition" by Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert, Daniel M. Wegner
> 2 votes

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Tags: reference-request
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# Question
Title: Is it conceivable to transmit all sound information in the tactile modality?
You may have heard of Evelyn Glennie, an acclaimed solo virtuoso percussionist. She has been profoundly deaf from the age of 12, but learned to differentiate pitch tactilely. She had absolute pitch, which obviously helped. She plays bare feet in order "to hear".

She can also help accoustical engineers, as she can sense the air pressure.

In her TED talk, she describes that she hears music like everybody. There seem to be no doubts that she has the same perception of music than any other great musician when the sound information, in the form of vibration, can be treated by her musical brain.

This seems to show that musical information can be accurately transmitted through tactile vibration. My question : is it conceivable to transmit all sound information in the tactile modality ? Are tactile detectors sufficiently sensitive to let through all/most of the sound information ?

I guess language is very particular and it would be impossible to differentiate words directly from sound vibrations, but maybe the sound signal could be modified in a way to make speech sounds more distinguishable.

If possible, I guess it could have great applications, helping deaf people, and maybe enabling communication in noisy environment.

# Answer
First of all, interesting question, and thanks for sharing the video!

Secondly, you write:

> There seem to be no doubts that she has the same perception of music than any other great musician...

I have to disagree. She may be able to sense vibrations, but it can never match normal hearing. This, because the human ear is better equipped to analyze acoustic sounds than the tactile system. Acoustic frequencies can be heard between 20 Hz and 20 kHz and maximum sensitivity is at 4 kHz. The tactile sense has a lower minimum, but its optimum lies at 250 Hz, and the maximum at approximately 500 Hz. Hence, the human ear exceeds the tactile system by 5 octaves. More importantly, however, is the exquisite sensitivity of the human ear that outperforms the tactile system in orders of magnitude.

In effect, the musician can acoustically feel only tones of low frequency of high loudness. What she can pick up is the tactile sensation from playing the instrument, however.

Note that Beethoven was deaf, and composed master pieces. Importantly, both Beethoven and Glennie were not congenitally deaf, but lost their hearing later in life. Hence, their sense of acoustics was already shaped, and my guess is both relied heavily on their memory of hearing.

To translate the acoustic dynamic range into a vibrotactile one, one would have to *compress* the acoustic dynamic range onto the vibrotactile dynamic range. Frequency compression is exactly what has been done in vibrotactile devices that substituted hearing for touch. One example of such an approach is the TickleTalker. This device was designed as a vibrotactile hearing aid to increase speech recognition in the profoundly deaf. Although the idea worked, it never became a success (Cowan *et al*., 1990). In general, sensory substitution approaches suffer important drawbacks (see why-is-sensory-substitution-not-that-successful).

An important factor with the TickleTalker is that the frequency range as well as the frequency resolution of the ear is much better in the ear than in touch. In turn, the quality of vibrotactile hearing is inferior to acoustic hearing.

However, the biggest factor in the case of vibrotactile hearing substitution not being successful is the fact that cochlear implants are very effective in **restoring** sensorineural hearing loss. Cochlear implants directly stimulate the auditory nerve, thereby bypassing the defective hair cells, the most common cause of deafness. Note, however, that brain stem implants and cortical implants are used as well, that together cover nearly all causes of deafness. Hence, these devices actually **restore hearing in deaf patients**. The resolution is not too great (7 effective frequency channels, give or take), but speech understanding scores in cochlear implants users is overall remarkably good. Some are even able to talk over the phone.

**Reference**
**-** Cowan *et al*., Australian Journal of Audiology (1990)

**Further Reading**
**-** why-is-sensory-substitution-not-that-successful
> 8 votes

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Tags: perception
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# Question
Title: Are there cultures in which leadership/hierarchy does not exist?
> Unproven statement: Human cultures depend on the concept of leadership/hierarchy.

All the cultures I've seen until now depend on this concept. But I may be mistaked: It might be possible that my intuitive understanding of leadership/hierarchy is wrong. This addendum has the sole purpose of pointing the poorness in my idea (which might be important somehow).

> Question: Are there cultures in which leadership/hierarchy does not exist?

# Answer
You may look for an answer in some anthropological works about hunter-gatherers, e.g. Christopher Boehm's Hierachy in the Forest. Basically, he describes what he calls a "reverse dominance pyramid", which can be observed in many hunter-gatherer tribes. Individuals who are aggressive, bossy, try to behave like alpha-males are mocked, then warned, shunned, and finally killed or left alone when the tribe moves forward (which also ends with death).

James Woodburn (Egalitarian Societies, James Woodburn, Man, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 3. (Sep., 1982), pp. 431-451. here it is) concludes that all of such societies/tribes are profoundly egalitarian and relationships between people are based on sharing, without any long-term dependencies. All distinctions – of wealth, power and status – are systematically eliminated.

This could lead to the following answer: there are non-hierarchical cultures, but they are limited to hunter-gatherers. All known human sedentary cultures are hierarchical and there is some leadership in them, as far as I know.

Your question is also problematic, for two reasons. First, leadership and hierarchy are necessarily the same - we can easily imagine human groups in which we can have a voluntary leadership, but which is only ad-hoc and does not depend on any permanent hierarchy. Second, the phrase "culture depending on the concept of x" can also be read in many ways. Your question does not contain it, but the unproven statement that you propose at the beginning does. So be careful in proceeding from an answer to the question to the validation of this statement. You must add something to the mere observation that all cultures have an element of hierarchy in order to establish a fact that they depend on it - we might just observe such correlation in the world. Maybe they were some selection pressures at work at some moment during the last 10k years (warfare?).
> 4 votes

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Tags: social-psychology, sociology
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# Question
Title: What is so "potential" about action potentials?
When an action potential is propagating through a neuron, it seems to me that the time for "potential of action" is over, and that we are now just in a state of "action". Why don't we just call action potentials "action"? Where is the potential for action when the neuron itself is undergoing action? In fact, when a neuron is at rest, it is said to have a "resting potential". To me this seems more like a "resting state" and an "action state". So what is so potential about "action potentials"?

# Answer
> 5 votes
There are other meanings of "potential" than the regular meaning "*having or showing the capacity to become or develop into something in the future*" (source: Google Translate).

In case of "*resting potential*" it refers to the **voltage difference** across the cellular membrane. Every cell maintains a voltage difference across the membrane (see a related question here: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/17840/resting-and-action-membrane-potential). The voltage difference is used for various purposes, including the transport of nutrients and ions, and it is crucial for action potentials to occur.

In case of "*action potential*" it refers to a series of **successive changes in the voltage difference** across the membrane, which occurs when an excitable cell is triggered (see a related question here: https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/91/how-do-the-brain-and-nerves-create-electrical-pulses/110#110).

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Tags: neuroscience, neurophysiology
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# Question
Title: Are there third party providers of Mechanical Turk psychology experiment services?
For various reasons it can be difficult to run a Mechanical Turk experiment (i.e., you don't have the technical expertise, you don't reside in the United States, etc.)

**Have any third-party providers arisen with the express purpose of managing the delivery of psychological experiments using Mechanical Turk?**

**Update:** Ideally, I'd like to know not just about how to get around the United States restriction. I'm also interested in services which manage the process and are specifically set up with behavioural science experiments in mind or at least offer a suite of services, one of which is tailored to behaviour science experiments.

# Answer
> 5 votes
I would like to acknowledge the contributors to this post on stackoverflow.
Using Amazon MechanicalTurk if location != US?.

This question was posted a few years ago, but this answer is current.

Houdini is a third party platform for MTurk, designed for non US users.

This question also leads to Houdini enabling non-US based businesses accessing mTurk.

At this stage, I have not found other providers, let me know if you'd like me to investigate further.

I have provided a link of crowdsourcing services similar to mTurk.

# Answer
> 2 votes
TurkPrime.com offers many features for using MTurk through a web interface. You can exclude and include workers, email them, restart survey and more. You can also create an account with SurveyComet.com if you do not reside in the US to find workers for surveys that you want to run. You can limit the workers by demographic which I have found to be extremely useful and cost effective.

I and my colleagues have used both sites for a while and just love them.

# Answer
> 1 votes
I found Cognilab. At time of posting they are in beta.

It appears to be specifically marketed at academic social and behavioural scientists.

They appear to aim to handle participant recruitment:

> **Crowdsource your research experiment using Amazon Mechanical Turk:** Cognilab uses an online crowdsourcing marketplace to recruit from over 500,000 participants. Within days, hundreds of people will be completing your experiment.

But they also seem to encourage using their experimental interface:

> **Quickly create experiments using our drag-and-drop interface:** Forget about complicated code or hiring programmers. Our drag and drop interface allows you to create academic-quality experiments within minutes and without having to write a single line of code!

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Tags: methodology, internet, sampling, mechanical-turk
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# Question
Title: What is the support for a global personality factor?
The Big 5 is a popular framework for describing major factors of individual differences in personality. More recently, I've been hearing people talking about the utility of conceptualising personality in terms of a single factor of personality. The idea might be to map the Big 5 on to one global factor with high conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness combined with low neuroticism.

### Questions

* How has such a global factor been conceptualised?
* How much variance is typically explained by this factor relative to other factor models such as the Big 5 using personality test items?
* To what extent does such a global factor reflect true personality variance versus social desirability bias or an artefact of questionnaire item measurement?
* What are the major authors or references advocating the global personality factor?

# Answer
**Digman (1997)** performed higher order factor analysis on several Big 5 intercorrelation matrices and proposed that the Big 5 could be partially explained in terms of two higher order factors: Alpha (Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability) and Beta (Extraversion, Openness).

**Musek (2007)** presented evidence for a Big 1 factor of personality. Musek and others observe that while the Big 5 factor structure was based on orthogonal rotations, Big 5 scales based on items tend to intercorrelate. With regards to interpretation, Musek states that "\[it seems plausible therefore to assume that, beyond the connections with semantic factors and social desirability, The Big One is substantially related to the basic dimensions of emotionality (affect), personal well-being, and self-esteem."

To empirically test the Big 1, Musek presented results from three datasets. Results showed that (a) the first factor of a factor analysis of the Big 5 explained approximately 40 to 50 percent of the variance (b) a reasonable amount of variance in test items was explained by the first factor, (c) several confirmatory factor analytic models indicating reasonable fit for a hierarchical model of the Big 5 that includes the two higher order factors proposed by Digman subsumed under a global personality factor.

**van der Linden et al 2010** extend the work of Musek (2007) by presenting a meta-analysis of Big 5 intercorrelation matrices in order to assess the evidence for a General Factor of Personality. Table 2 shows the meta-analytic average scale intercorrelations for the big 5 measures included in the meta-analysis. It shows how across a wide range of measures and measurement procedures, the Big 5 scales moderately intercorrelate. The average absolute unadjusted correlations between the Big Five was 0.23.

They then show how across a range of Big 5 measures, measurement procedures, and samples that a single factor accounts for between 42 and 78 percent of variance in the Big 5 scale scores.

With regards to interpretation the van der Linden et al present various views on what the factor represents including views that see it as a statistical or measurement artefact and views that see it as a meaningful construct. One interpretation is that it is a general goodness of character factor or perhaps a social adjustment factor. The authors conclude with the following:

> The existence of a higher-order GFP does not invalidate the clinical, vocational, or theoretical importance of lower-order factors. It is an empirical and practical question as to which level provides the best predictor for a given criterion. Since the personality facets that exist below the Big Five factors lie closest to the behavior expressed, they are often more diagnostic or better predictors than higher order traits (Sackett & Lievens, 2008).

**Concluding thoughts:** It seems that there is a meaningful higher level factor. While it may reflect social desirability, such a characteristic may reflect as much true variance in social desirability as it does a response style. As an aside, I have noticed that in experiments where people are asked to persent themselves in a positive way for a job, the big 5 intercorrelations increase dramatically. In broad terms the global factor of personality also reflects broadly the sign of meta-analytic correlations of Big 5 with job performance (i.e., positive correlations for extraversion, openness, emotional stability, etc.).

I have pondered to what extent measures of the Big 5 are unnecessarily loaded to see various poles as socially desirable. For example, a quick look at this IPIP measure of the Big 5 shows quite clearly how positive aspects of for example introversion are lacking (e.g., the item is "I have little to say" rather than something like "I enjoy my own company") and negative aspects of extraversion are lacking (e.g., the item is "I am the life of the party" rather than "I like to dominate social situations").

I'd also like to see more item-level analyses and the relative support for the Global personality factor.

Clearly, a lot of detail is lost in the reduction from the Big 5 to the Big 1, but it also seems to reflect a useful summary of personality for some predictive purposes.

### References

* Digman, J. M. (1997). Higher-order factors of the Big Five. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 1246–1256.
* Musek, J. (2007). A general factor of personality: Evidence for the Big One in the Five-Factor Model. Journal of Research in Personality, 41, 1213–1233.
* van der Linden, D., te Nijenhuis, J., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). The general factor of personality: A meta-analysis of Big Five intercorrelations and a criterion-related validity study. Journal of Research in Personality, 44(3), 315-327. PDF
* Sackett, P. R., & Lievens, F. (2008). Personnel selection. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 1–32.
> 12 votes

# Answer
For anyone still interested in this question, I would refer you to the following article:

Gnambs, T. (2013). The elusive general factor of personality: The acquaintance effect. *European Journal of Personality, 27*(5), 507-520.

Given the potential social desirability bias involved, it is important to examine whether the GFP is present when both self-ratings and observer-ratings of the Big Five are acquired.

The author finds that the GFP (indexed by the correlation between the two higher order factors) gradually diminishes as the length of acquaintance between the informant and the person being rated increases. In other words, we find the GFP when we obtain informant ratings from people who have been acquainted with the person rated for a short time but not from those who have known them for a long time.
> 4 votes

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Tags: measurement, personality, social-desirability
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# Question
Title: Do people with ADHD have reasoning abilities and mathematical abilities just like normal people?
Do people with ADHD have reasoning abilities and mathematical abilities just like neurotypical people ?

# Answer
> 1 votes
Alright- neurodiversity vs neurotypical label aside, here is the definition of ADHD

http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html

Here is the best example I could find which demonstrates effect of ADHD on mathematical reasoning:

http://ldq.sagepub.com/content/16/1/6.short

Here is a comparison between learners who are nonverbal, who have aspergers, and then those who have ADHD

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87565641.2010.494747#.VM1Cynvwo-g

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Tags: adhd
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