Is Freudian Psychology a scientifically valid contribution to the Cognitive Sciences?

Short answer
Freudian Psychology is considered by many to be pseudoscience, but as pointed out in another answer, there have recently been increasing numbers of comparisons between psychoanalysis and other depth psychology schools (e.g. a long-term study of CBT vs psychoanalysis for depression, where CBT is not much effective) with results which show that

psychoanalysis is just as effective as CBT for many disorders,
it is more effective for certain disorders, and
it is less effective for others.

In other words, psychoanalysis and CBT are both appropriate for certain patients and disorders and that the decision between them has to be made case by case.
Background
Freudian psychology is still applied, and Freudian psychoanalysis is still actively used today and according to the Science Council, Science is...

...the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.

It is in the scientific evidence where the support of the Freudian approach is limited. However, Freud's ideas have never been extensively assessed scientifically. For instance, there is no unambiguous evidence that psychoanalysis works (Horgan, 1996) and supporters of Freud’s theories are believed to be influenced mainly on the confirming evidence, while they largely ignore the disconfirming cases (Shermer, 2011). Indeed, Sulloway (Dufresne, 2007) argues that...

The greatest failing of psychoanalysis is its blatant rejection of the
scientific method. Without such methods for critical thinking, a
discipline inevitably drifts from one pseudoscientific system of
belief to another.

It should be stressed, however, that the human psyche is extremely complex and largely not understood. Other theories that are generally regarded as valid science, such as the string theory in astrophysics have never been proven either, and the relativity theory of Einstein took about hundred years to be proven right.
Indeed, distinguishing between science and pseudoscience is problematic (Shermer, 2011). As covered in this answer to Does suppressing a desire make it more powerful?, Freud's work is derived from empirical evidence and backed up with high profile journal articles. Nonetheless, in the gray area between science and pseudoscience, according to eminent critics such as Karl Popper, Frank Cioffi, and Adolf Grünbaum, the theories of Freud are generally placed in the area of pseudoscience as they are seen as non-falisifiable.
Many authors assume that to be pseudoscientific, an activity or a teaching has to satisfy the following two criteria (Hansson 1996):

it is not scientific, and
its major proponents try to create the impression that it is scientific." (Hansson, 2008)

With regard to Hansson's first point, a PsychologyToday article (2016) points out that

psychology was defined by the application of scientific method(s) and psychologists conduct valuable research and have developed some key insights into animal behavior, cognition, consciousness, and the human condition.

Hansson, has since updated his definition of pseudoscience to an "improved version" (Hansson, 2013)
References

Dufresne, T. (2007) Psychoanalysis and Pseudoscience: Frank J. Sulloway Revisits Freud and His Legacy, Dufrense, T (Ed.) Against Freud: Critics Talk Back Stanford: Stanford University Press
Hansson, S. O. (1996). Defining Pseudoscience. Philosophia Naturalis, 33(1): pp. 169—176Still to find DOI/PMID reference
Hansson, S. O. (2008) Science and Pseudo-Science. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2017 Edition) [Online]
Hansson, S. O. (2013). Defining pseudoscience and science. In: Pigliucci, M. & Boudry, M. (Eds.) The philosophy of pseudoscience, Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press. pp. 61-77.
Horgan, J. (1996). Why Freud isn’t dead. Scientific American, 275(6), 106-111. or here
PsychologyToday (2016) The “Is Psychology a Science?” Debate [Online]
Shermer, M. (2011). What is pseudoscience?. Scientific American, 305(3), 92-92. or here

Supporting network posts

Is there anything in Freudian psychoanalytic theory that is scientifically sound?
Why did Karl Popper criticize Freud's theories?

Note
The community is invited to improve this answer. This question-and-answer is discussed here in meta.


Are words and ideas written in a distinctive font easier to remember?

I can't think of any information relating directly to distiction of letters in the english Alphabet, so instead I pulled out some stuff on our corrolations between shapes and long/short term memory:

Abstract
In four experiments, we examined the effect of pairing colors with either homogeneous or heterogeneous shapes on a short-term memory task. In Experiment 1, we found no differences in color memory for displays in which colors were each associated with different shapes, paired with individual homogeneous shapes, or paired with heterogeneous shapes. In contrast, in Experiment 2, we found that when participants were asked to remember the specific pairings of colors, memory was improved for heterogeneous-shape displays. The benefit for heterogeneous shapes appears to be memorial, rather than one that occurs at the time of encoding (Experiment 3) or retrieval (Experiment 4). The present study suggests that distinctive shapes can be used to help bind color associations in visual short-term memory.

However focusing more on shape I think this article by Ray Vellest, and particularly its section "Shapes", goes into a nice discussion of how logo's are designed to engage long term memory, and how by differntiating the type font, new meaning can be given to the letter.
This substantially answers your question by giving examples of how differentiating shapes, such as the type font, can make letters easier to remember.
For example:

(source: img03.mar.cx)
Clearly, just a small change to the shape of the letter makes it have a completley different meaning. In this case, the sort of letter you would find in your text book, and the one you immeadiately associate with McDonalds
Apllying this to fonts would involve similar logic, but I'm hoping someone can pull in some information more directly related to the Alphabet then shapes.
Besides that, I hoped this helped you out.
Mona

References
Delvenne JF1, Dent K. (2008). Distinctive Shapes Benefit Short-Term Memory for colour association, but not for colour. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18717388
Ray Vellest (2012). THe pychology of logo Design. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/08/the-psychology-of-logo-design/


How come we see a line when there isn't one in this picture?

I can't zoom in on the picture, but what I see is bleeding from one color into the next along the diagonals (most evident in the green to blue and purple to red transitions). Are you saying that they are not there when you zoom in? I would think that because there is a gradient in the color transition, the gradient has to be emphasized in an angled meeting, more pronounced the sharper the angle (e.g.if it were a triangle, the angle would be 120° as opposed to 90°). It's not an optical illusion.

In short, you see two transecting lines on the diagonal because they are strongly suggested. The mind sees this accurately and reads the suggestion.

It is kind of like asking, why, in the following picture, do I read all the dotted lines as lines, where only two of them are actually solid lines?

Or, if you will, why do I see curves here?

Because the color differences in the offset squares are really there, suggesting a familiar curve, though in this question, it would be fair to ask Why do the curves appear smooth? In fact, the curves are not smooth.

If you do want to see interesting optical phenomenons,

stare at the center of your image for 30 seconds, then scroll down to the blank area next to my diagrams. You will see squares of reciprocal colors not in your original (like a bright yellow.) Also interesting is that as the image fades, blinking will "refresh" it.
after staring directly at the center for a minute or two, switch the focus very slightly to one side then back; you'll be pleasantly surprised by bursts of vibrant color parallel to each other each time you change.

Edited to add: This may be an optical illusion, but if it is, I'm unsure of what type it is. Looking at the zoomed image, clearly the impression is that there is some bleeding, but that's not the reality. Sorry I can't help more on this one. But it does get much more intriguing!


Premise: I understand that the question is how to gauge (that is, to create a measure) or to assess expertise in something.

Answer 1.

Some criteria (very loosely translated from Hacker, 2005, pp. 381):

issue-specific knowledge;
general knowledge about the topic of expertise combined with problem-solving heuristics ranging across specific issues of this very topic;
knowledge of ideal courses of action;
conscious reflectiveness on the adequacy of task execution;
metacognitive ability (e.g. internalized, automated execution involving also motivation, emotional intelligence etc.);
ability to solve new kinds of problems related to the topic of expertise.

Answer 2.

No, there aren't any general numbers since it is not possible to define them without referring to both a specific topic of expertise and the predisposition of the person aiming to become an expert.

While I am not aware of any research to support this claim empirically, I maintain that a logical argument can suffice: How long will it take the same individual to acquire expertise as a surgeon compared to acquiring expertise at peeling potatoes?

Moreover, the development of confidence over time is closely tied to both the frequency and the quality of feedbacks about ones' success at doing something in the real world (Hacker, 2005).

Note: Unfortunately the cited work is written in German. A not as extensive English language replacement for it is Hacker (2003).

References

Hacker, W. (2003). Action Regulation Theory: A practical tool for the design of modern work processes? European Journal of Work & Organizational Psychology, 12(2), 105. https://doi.org/10.1080/13594320344000075

Hacker, W. (2005). Allgemeine Arbeitspsychologie: psychische Regulation von Wissens-, Denk- und körperlicher Arbeit. Bern: Huber.


Do antidepressants provide a permanent solution for depression and anxiety?

Your assumption that antidepressants works by "suppressing the thoughts" is not supported. Arguably it's quite the opposite. But let us not comment any further.

Now onto your question

Do anti depressant provide permanent solution for depression and anxiety?

At least for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), they normally do.

According to a brochure from the Boynton Health Service of the University of Minnesota:

  Once you respond to an antidepressant, we recommend that you
  continue to take the medication for at least six months. If you stop
  taking the antidepressant before six months have passed there is an
  increased chance that your depression will return. For depressions
  that have lasted a long time (a year or longer), or for a recurrent
  depression, longer periods of treatment should be considered. If you
  wish to discontinue your medication, we recommend that you do this
  during times of decreased demands, such as during breaks or during the
  summer months.

  Source: "Common Questions About Antidepressants" (2005) - page 2

According to an article available from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology healthcare service MIT Medical:

  Clinicians usually recommend that people continue taking
  antidepressants for about six months after they begin feeling better.
  Although it is tempting to stop taking the medication as soon as you
  feel better, abruptly stopping will greatly increase your risk of
  relapse.

  Source: "FAQ: Antidepressants" question #7: "How long should I continue to take antidepressants?"

From an article published by the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, doctor David Louis Dunner has this to say:

  According to the AHCPR Practice Guidelines(1) for the treatment of
  major depression, acute episodes of depression should be treated for
  almost a year and recurrent episodes should be treated somewhat
  longer.

However, Dr. John M. Zajecka states:

  Clinicians should perceive depression as potentially being a lifelong
  illness that may require treatment indefinitely in many patients
  rather than as an illness that can usually be cured with a single,
  short course of treatment like an antibiotic.

Dr. Michael Edward Thase notes:

  There is a difference between “forever” and “indefinitely.” In the
  future, treatments that target the altered pathologic mechanisms of
  recurrent depression may be available and may have a more curative
  effect than the present medications, which suppress illness activity.

While it's debatable whether all "present medications" simply suppress depressive symptoms, consider that this article was published in 2007.

--

Source: "Preventing Recurrent Depression: Long-Term Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder" - PMC 1911177. PMID 17388700.

References:

(1) Clinical Practice Guideline. Number 5: Depression in Primary Care, vol 2. Treatment of Major Depression. Rockville, Md: US Dept Health Human Services, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research; 1993. AHCPR Publication 93-0551.

Last but not least, from Wikipedia:

  Studies have shown that 80% of those suffering from their first major
  depressive episode will suffer from at least 1 more during their
  life,(1) with a lifetime average of 4 episodes.(2) Other general
  population studies indicate that around half those who have an episode
  recover (whether treated or not) and remain well, while the other half
  will have at least one more, and around 15% of those experience
  chronic recurrence.(3) Studies recruiting from selective inpatient
  sources suggest lower recovery and higher chronicity, while studies of
  mostly outpatients show that nearly all recover, with a median episode
  duration of 11 months. Around 90% of those with severe or psychotic
  depression, most of whom also meet criteria for other mental
  disorders, experience recurrence.(4)(5)

  Recurrence is more likely if symptoms have not fully resolved with
  treatment. Current guidelines recommend continuing antidepressants for
  four to six months after remission to prevent relapse. Evidence from
  many randomized controlled trials indicates continuing antidepressant
  medications after recovery can reduce the chance of relapse by 70%
  (41% on placebo vs. 18% on antidepressant). The preventive effect
  probably lasts for at least the first 36 months of use.(6)

  Those people experiencing repeated episodes of depression require
  ongoing treatment in order to prevent more severe, long-term
  depression. In some cases, people must take medications for long
  periods of time or for the rest of their lives.(7)

  References:

  (1) Fava GA, Park SK, Sonino N (2006). "Treatment of recurrent
  depression.". Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics. 6 (11): 1735–1740.
  doi:10.1586/14737175.6.11.1735. PMID 17144786.

  (2) Limosin F, Mekaoui L, Hautecouverture S (2007). "Stratégies
  thérapeutiques prophylactiques dans la dépression unipolaire
  [Prophylactic treatment for recurrent major depression]". La Presse
  Médicale. 36 (11–C2): 1627–1633. doi:10.1016/j.lpm.2007.03.032.
  PMID 17555914.

  (3) Eaton WW, Shao H, Nestadt G, Lee HB, Lee BH, Bienvenu OJ, Zandi P
  (2008). "Population-based study of first onset and chronicity in
  major depressive disorder". Archives of General Psychiatry. 65
  (5): 513–20. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.65.5.513. PMC 2761826.
  PMID 18458203.

  (4) Holma KM, Holma IA, Melartin TK, Rytsälä HJ, Isometsä ET (2008).
  "Long-term outcome of major depressive disorder in psychiatric
  patients is variable". Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. 69 (2):
  196–205. doi:10.4088/JCP.v69n0205. PMID 18251627.

  (5) Kanai T, Takeuchi H, Furukawa TA, Yoshimura R, Imaizumi T,
  Kitamura T, Takahashi K (2003). "Time to recurrence after recovery
  from major depressive episodes and its predictors". Psychological
  Medicine. 33 (5): 839–45. doi:10.1017/S0033291703007827. PMID
  12877398.

  (6) Geddes JR, Carney SM, Davies C, Furukawa TA, Kupfer DJ, Frank E,
  Goodwin GM (2003). "Relapse prevention with antidepressant drug
  treatment in depressive disorders: A systematic review". Lancet. 361
  (9358): 653–61. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(03)12599-8. PMID
  12606176.

  (7) "Major Depression". MedlinePlus. 10 March 2014. Retrieved 16
  July 2010.


Is it possible to create artificial thoughts in a childs mind

It's possible to instill a false memory, even a traumatic one, in an adult. Children have been known to be more susceptible to suggestion since the 19th century (Binet, 1900, 1905).

Here are some example references of memory implantation:

Porter, S., Yuille, J. C., & Lehman, D. R. (1999). The nature of real, implanted, and fabricated memories for emotional childhood events: Implications for the recovered memory debate. Law and Human Behavior, 23(5), 517-537.

Zaragoza, M. S., & Mitchell, K. J. (1996).Repeated exposure to suggestion and the creation of false memories. PsychologicalScience, 7, 294-300.

(specifically memory implantation in kids)

Loftus, E. F., Coan, J. A., & Pickrell, J. E. (1996).Manufacturing false memories using bits of reality. In L. Reder (Ed.), Implicit memory and metacognition (pp. 195-220). Mahwah, NJ:Erlbaum


What causes someone to frequently see particular patterns of digits when they look at a clock?

In general humans are excellent at seeing patterns in randomness.
It seems like you have attached special meaning to certain patterns. It seems similar to the way people form superstitions.

Checking the time may also be something that we do so regularly and automatically that we do not know how often we do it. And it may be that the pattern confirming cases rise up and appear to be of significance, whereas the many other non-conforming patterns go unnoticed.

We also have a fairly reasonable internal clock. And people also form habits. So it may also be that you have habituated to checking the time more frequently around these times.


Are emotions local or purely global? Can there be two inconsistent emotions in different parts of the brain?

There are two assumptions in this question it may be useful to make explicit. First, there's an assumption that words like "emotion" or "motivation" have meaning at different levels of analysis like organs, neurons, atoms, etc. If when we say emotion we mean the subjective experience, it's not at all clear that meaning exists at the neuronal level. This is related to a grand paradox (below), but even if we backed off from that, connecting subjective with objective creates thorny problems.

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

Second, the question sort of implies that cognitive functions are carried out by limited areas. This is looking less and less true; there is some evidence for specialized functions, but in general most complex operations (including emotion) are influenced from a complex forward-and-backward activation-and-inhibition cascades in multiple areas.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_specialization_(brain)

The experience of emotions appear caused by / related to / influenced by complex cascades of activity across the brain. It's not clear that the words we use to describe the feelings map onto such neuronal activation/inhibition patterns, but even if they did, there's no reason to assume that such patterns of neuronal activation wouldn't co-occur.

tl;dr: Yes.


What is the source and real meaning of "provisional living " concept and is there an equivalent term?

The English Analytical Psychologist H. G. Baynes first described the provisional life in a chapter of his book "Analytical Psychology and the English Mind". For a good comprehensive description see http://web.archive.org/web/20150403145822/http://jungiancenter.org/essay/jung-provisional-life

  The Provisional Life. The dictionary defines “provisional” as “for the time being; temporary; conditional.” Something
  “provisional” is not lasting. It depends—on conditions, situations,
  people doing specific things. It is uncertain, more or less up in the
  air. Given a particular set of circumstances, a committee makes a
  “provisional” recommendation, in the understanding that things could
  change. A man undertakes a course of action, provided certain
  conditions are met. The essence of the word is transience.
              In Jungian psychology the concept of “provisional life” embodies the transient nature of “provisional.” The English Jungian
  analyst H.G. Baynes coined the term “provisional life,” and regarded
  it as a form of neurosis, for its resistance to living responsibly in
  temporal reality. The Jungian analyst, James Hollis, described the
  “provisional life” as an “…assemblage of behaviors, attitudes and
  reflexive strategies [that] constitutes our ‘false self,’…” Jung
  himself described the provisional life as “… the modern European
  disease of the merely imaginary life,…” Daryl Sharp provides a
  succinct definition in his C.G. Jung Lexicon: “A term used to describe
  an attitude toward life that is more or less imaginary, not rooted in
  the here and now, commonly associated with puer psychology.”


What is restriction of range correction formula when you don't know standard deviation of unrestricted group?

My Answer
In this scenario, the unrestricted group is the population of individuals who are in the selection process. For example, Held and Foley (1994, Table 3) https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/116989/v18n4p355.pdf shows the consequences of different selection ratios on validity coefficient estimations.
To summarize, the unrestricted group is the entire pool of applicants who take your test. The restricted group is the ones who are selected based on your selection criteria.
Alternative
Any cognitive ability test should have a manual, and that manual should contain validity information, including SD of the population. Many of them are normed in such a way as to make it simple (e.g., the SD of WAIS is 15, the SD of Stanford-Binet is 10). Obtain and use the values in the test manual.
However, I don't think this should be done in practice. The population of concern here isn't all working-age adults in the world/region, the population is all working-age adults in the world/region who have applied to work at the organization.


Are there any modern mechanistic theories of motivation?

Motivation is a massive topic, and it's difficult for me to know what would count as a 'theory' of motivation as it's currently construed.  For instance, at one level, we might consider motivation to be the processing of incentive salience on perceived stimuli: you see a cheeseburger, something makes you want it, and so you pursue it.  One way of talking about what it means to want this cheeseburger is called incentive salience; see Berridge 1998 for a great review on this topic with a focus on the contentious role of dopamine, and some pretty amazing experiments that pry apart wanting from liking.

Coming from the opposite direction, Carver and Scheier's cybernetic model has proved quite influential in describing motivation, and its hedonic consequences, in terms of progress during goal pursuit.  This goal-centrality dovetails with some of the achievement goal theoretic constructs, one of which (mastery) you mentioned with regard to Pink's book; Andrew Elliot did a nice review here.  For an even more meta computational formulation, Juergen Schmidhuber has for years been proposing an  all-encompassing model that might be grand enough for your tastes, although it is woefully untested by empirical work and, from what I can tell, seems to be considered kind of fringe.

I could go on, but suffice it to say that theories of motivations -- or pieces of theories -- are nearly as numerous as the stars.  The real trick is in unifying them in a coherent system that makes sense at multiple levels of abstraction and isn't just some hodgepodge collection.


There is some evidence of a moderate correlation between response times (on very simple tasks) and intelligence constructs like IQ. Here are two relevant papers and their abstracts:
Deary, Der, & Ford (2001)

The association between reaction times and psychometric intelligence test scores is a major plank of the information-processing approach to mental ability differences. An important but unavailable datum is the effect size of the correlation in the normal population. Here we describe the associations between scores on a test of general mental ability (Alice Heim 4, AH4) and reaction times using a ‘Hick’-style device. The sample is 900 people aged 56 years who are broadly representative of the Scottish population. AH4 Part I total scores correlated −.31 with simple reaction time, −.49 with four-choice reaction time, and −.26 with intraindividual variability in both reaction time procedures. The correlation between AH4 scores and the difference between simple and four-choice reaction time was −.15. Separate analyses were conducted after partitioning the total group according to sex, educational level, social class grouping, and number of errors on the four-choice reaction time task. None of these factors significantly altered the effect sizes. This is the first report of reaction time and psychometric intelligence in a large, normal sample of the population. It provides a benchmark for other studies and suggests larger effect sizes than the majority of present studies, which are dominated by young student samples.

van Ravenzwaaij, Brown, & Wagenmakers (2011)

Research in the field of mental chronometry and individual differences has revealed several robust regularities (Jensen, 2006). These include right-skewed response time (RT) distributions, the worst performance rule, correlations with general intelligence (g) that are more pronounced for RT standard deviations (RTSD) than they are for RT means (RTm), an almost perfect linear relation between individual differences in RTSD and RTm, linear Brinley plots, and stronger correlations between g and inspection time (IT) than between g and RTm. Here we show how all these regularities are manifestations of a single underlying relationship, when viewed through the lens of Ratcliff’s diffusion model ( Ratcliff, 1978 and Ratcliff et al., 2008). The single underlying relationship is between individual differences in general intelligence and individual differences in “drift rate”, which is just the speed of information processing in Ratcliff’s model. We also test and confirm a strong prediction of the diffusion model, namely that the worst performance rule generalizes to phenomena outside of the field of intelligence. Our approach provides an integrative perspective on intelligence findings.

To summarize: the first paper demonstrates a moderate correlation between faster reaction times and the AH4 test, which measures "general mental ability." The second paper shows that these differences, and many others reported in the literature, and predicted by increasing the drift rate in a drift-diffusion model. The drift rate is generally associated with faster information processing.


Too lazy to paraphrase right now, so quoting from a newsletter

  Brehm [the guy how introduced the notion Psychological Reactance--my note] has made but one remark about why people seem to behave as his theory describes. He wrote that the reactance-emotion may have “survival-value” (Brehm 1966, p. 1-2). This explanation seems quite plausible. People and other organisms who are frequently in situations in which they can choose between different behavior alternatives are likely to have evolved a capacity for choosing what is most often best for their fitness. Moreover, creating, defending and restoring situations in which the individual is free to make a choice may in itself enhance fitness. Therefore, natural selection probably favored individuals who not only perceive when their freedom is threatened, but also act so as to defend that freedom. Brehm has described the psychological mechanism by which people (and probably many other species) are motivated to defend their freedom. That is, the attractiveness of behaviors varies with the freedom an individual perceives to possess.

As with most evolutionary hypotheses of behavior, it's probably hard to test.

I tried to find papers on animal models of reactance, but (unlike say for learned helplessness) there don't seem to be any. A recent review doesn't mention any such models either. It does however say some things that contradict your assumption that's just a negative outcome:

  reactance can produce both undesirable and desirable outcomes. It has been found, for example, that the experience of reactance can elicit heightened achievement motivation (Steindl & Jonas, 2014). Recent studies have also shown that the experience of reactance can be associated not just with negative feelings, such as anger, but also with activating positive affect, such as feeling strong and determined (Steindl, Jonas, et al., 2015). We invite future research to investigate the desirable motivational side of reactance in order to make use of its energizing probabilities.


Why do we come to like some songs after re-listening to them a few times?

The phenomenom you describe is called Mere-exposure effect :

The mere-exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people
tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are
familiar with them. In social psychology, this effect is sometimes
called the familiarity principle. The effect has been demonstrated
with many kinds of things, including words, Chinese characters,
paintings, pictures of faces, geometric figures, and sounds.
The mere-exposure effect has been explained by a two-factor theory
that posits that repeated exposure of a stimulus increases perceptual
fluency which is the ease with which a stimulus can be processed.
Perceptual fluency, in turn, increases positive affect.

The perceptual fluency is explained in detail by the article in @mrt comment.


I have two different IQs; which one is the real one?

Actually both these scores are telling you the same thing. They can both be interpreted as Very Good Results, and any finer level of detail is chasing noise. Some minimal google scholar searching suggests that WAIS correlates with itself somewhere between .7 and .9, and that a correlation of .8 across different kinds of test is considered 'very good'. This means discrepancies of the size you describe are not super rare. There's another factor working against you too, because you're in the tail of the distribution, and those agreement numbers are overall! The test-retest consistency inevitably gets worse as you get out into the tails.

There's a nice longer discussion here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/27/against-individual-iq-worries/

Key quotes:
"...population averages of thousands of IQ estimates [are] valuable and useful research tools. It just means you shouldn’t use it on yourself."

"...even if you avoid the problems mentioned above and measure IQ 100% correctly, it’s just not that usefully predictive."

"After investing so much work debunking IQ denialists, I feel like this is really – I don’t know – diluting the brand. But I actually think it’s not as contradictory as it looks... If you really understand the idea of a statistical predictor"


Effectiveness of recalling information in the same location it was learned

According to the tradition expressed in a well documented (references at the end) popular science book about memory, Moonwalking with Einstein in which the author trains himself from zero to become the American memory champion, the memory palace technique (also known as the method of loci where loci is place in latin) is the one used by most competitive memory practitioners. It consists in recalling random facts (your question 1) by staging them into an imaginary location. Other aspects of the technique involve imagining an actor or agent in these places, but this element is used as a reminder for the type of information involved: the place itself is the key to memorising. Therefore the answer to question 2 is that details of an event are much easier to remember at the location where they occurred, when recalling this location.


"Cure" is a very risky word here. If I stick to it, the answer is no, because no treatment is 100% successful; not in all cases. Let's talk about significant outcomes.

CBT is not the only therapy that science has proven to have aceptable outcomes in depression treatment. Also Interpersonal Therapy, CBASP or even electroshock therapy.

Also, the recent research in the field of antidepressants is surprisingly questioning their real outcomes.You can research the works of Irving Kirsch, who found that antidepressants weren't statistically better than placebo in the treatment of depression. He found out that the research that had been done till the moment was not completely double-blinded, as antidepressants have noticeable side effects and people "knew" when they were having the drug and not the placebo... the ones having side-effects improved. It seems that the more side effects, the more effective a substance was in major depression, either being an antidepressant, an opiate, synthetic thyroid hormone... etc. You may read further here.

This recent paper has also interesting results that apply to your question:

Driessen E, Hollon SD, Bockting CLH, Cuijpers P, Turner EH (2015) Does Publication Bias Inflate the Apparent Efficacy of Psychological Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of US National Institutes of Health-Funded Trials.

  "The efficacy of psychological interventions for depression has been
  overestimated in the published literature, just as it has been for
  pharmacotherapy. Both are efficacious but not to the extent that the
  published literature would suggest."

Then, first of all, CBT can alleviate any kind of depression, but not only CBT.

Second, it can be the case that someone has great results only with medication but usually they're not long term ones (there is also research that seem to point out that antidepressants worsen the long-term course of depression).

And third, different kind of depressions have greater outcomes with different approaches. For example, it's well known that antidepressants don't work with dysthymia but learning social skills is usually very useful and leads to good results; that light therapy can alleviate a Seasonal Affective Disorder to the same extent as CBT, or that the best treatment for psychotic depression is electroshock therapy.


What's the difference between simultanagnosia and neurological extinction?

In extinction the patient may be able to get attention to an object in the contralesional field if it is the only salient object. If there is a competition from another object the patient won't draw attention toward the contralesional field (opposite side of the lesion; generally right parietal lobe).

Simultagnosia is described as the inability to perceive more than one object at a time in each visual field. It is consequence of bilateral damage to the parietal lobe

References

E. Bruce Goldstein-Sensation and Perception-Wadsworth (2010)


Is it ethically appropriate for a client to buy their psychologist a gift?

Here you can find an essay that discusses role of gifts in psychotherapy in great detail and from many different angles.

Focusing on US, Canadian, and Australian ethics codes of professional societies, the author concludes that

  Despite the prevalent belief to the contrary, there are no code of ethics or guidelines of major organizations that specifically ban gifts in therapy.

A synopsis of all the reviewed ethics codes can be found here.

In a summary of the ethical and therapeutical implications of gift giving during therapy he emphasizes that (small and appropriate) gifts may actually have a place in therapy and that therapists who rigidly decline them may endanger therapeutic success:

  Giving gifts is an ancient and common way to express gratitude, appreciation and love. Gifts in psychotherapy and counseling are very common and often take place around the holidays, in termination, at an important junction of therapy and with children-clients. Therapists have not only received gifts but have also been regularly engaged in gift giving to clients. Usually this involves symbolic gifts, greeting cards, transitional objects, souvenirs from vacations or educational material, such as books, audiotapes or CDs. While traditional psychoanalysis has frowned upon gift giving in therapy and many therapists are reluctant or afraid to talk about it, the fact is that most therapists practice it regularly and find it acceptable and helpful as long as the gifts are symbolic, nor too expensive and appropriate. Unlike commonly held beliefs, appropriate gift giving in therapy is neither unethical nor constitutes dual relationships. Uncritical and rigid across-the-board rejection of all gifts or putting in place "No gift policies" are likely to make clients feel rejected and humiliated, harm the therapeutic alliance and interfere with the therapeutic progress.


Is there a less colloquial term for the phenomenon known as "brain zaps"?

Short answer
Brain zaps are a colloquial term for certain symptoms of antidepressant discontinuation syndrome.

Background
'Brain zaps' are associated with sudden shakes, or vibrations, tremors, jolts, electric shocks, or 'zaps' of the head and/or brain. As SydneyMaples rightfully commented, these are scientifically recognized as symptoms of

  Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome, or Antidepressant withdrawal syndrome

Withdrawal from a wide range of antidepressants, including the tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs), monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) can produce somatic and psychological distress, influenza-like syndromes, gastrointestinal adverse effects, arrhythmias, anxiety, sleep disturbances, movement disorders, mania or hypomania, panic attacks and delirium (Lejoyeux et al., 1996).

Reference
- Lejoyeux et al. CNS Drugs (1996); 5(4): 278–92


Performance of a group solving a cognitive task: How does it scale?

It's a big topic. The relationship between group size and performance on a cognitive task is going to vary by several factors.

Here are a few thoughts:

The form of interdependence adopted by the group on the task will matter. When everyone can just work independently (e.g., taking calls in a call centre), then it makes sense that output would increase almost linearly with increasing group size, in the absence of motivation or learning issues.
In the context of project teams, software teams, and so forth, I imagine the issues would be a lot more complex and that in some situations increasing group size might even reduce performance of the team. There a few articles cited here that discuss this.
A classic study in the context, albeit from a motor task, of the relationship between group-size and group performance is that by Ringelmann (see the wikipedia article) that looked at rope pulling power as a function of group size. The basic finding was that average pulling power declined with group size. This has been interpreted as evidence of social loafing, but their are also coordination issues as well.
Some tasks are heavily influenced by the performance of the weakest or strongest member. For example, a musical group will often sound bad if only one member plays poorly. Or other tasks it will be strongest member, as you say if you have are playing at a trivia night, and you have one person with all the right answers on the table.


Is an autistic person's brain different from a non-autistic one?

Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital compared raw EEG data from 430 children with autism to data collected from 554 control subjects, all ages 2 to 12. They found that children with autism displayed consistent EEG patterns which indicate altered connectivity between brain regions. They found evidence of altered connectivity throughout the brains of children with autism. Most remarkably, they found a pronounced reduction in connectivity in regions of the left hemisphere controlling for language areas of the brain. Young children with autism showed increased connectivity between brain regions that were farther apart, suggesting they may have developed a compensation mechanism for other connectivity problems.

http://unpa.pro/Articles?mode=PostView&bmi=985722

References

Duffy, F.H. & Als, H. (2012). A stable pattern of EEG spectral coherence distinguishes children with autism from neuro-typical controls-a large case control study. BMC Medicine, 10, 64. PDF


Actually some if not all of your question can be answered fairly succinctly by quoting from a fairly recent meta analysis cited in the Wikipedia page on the topic:

  The longitudinal stability of personality is low in childhood but increases substantially into adulthood. Theoretical explanations for this trend differ in the emphasis placed on intrinsic maturation and socializing influences. To what extent does the increasing stability of personality result from the continuity and crystallization of genetically influenced individual differences, and to what extent does the increasing stability of life experiences explain increases in personality trait stability? Behavioral genetic studies, which decompose longitudinal stability into sources associated with genetic and environmental variation, can help to address this question. We aggregated effect sizes from 24 longitudinal behavioral genetic studies containing information on a total of 21,057 sibling pairs from 6 types that varied in terms of genetic relatedness and ranged in age from infancy to old age. A combination of linear and nonlinear meta-analytic regression models were used to evaluate age trends in levels of heritability and environmentality, stabilities of genetic and environmental effects, and the contributions of genetic and environmental effects to overall phenotypic stability. Both the genetic and environmental influences on personality increase in stability with age. The contribution of genetic effects to phenotypic stability is moderate in magnitude and relatively constant with age, in part because of small-to-moderate decreases in the heritability of personality over child development that offset increases in genetic stability. In contrast, the contribution of environmental effects to phenotypic stability increases from near zero in early childhood to moderate in adulthood. The life-span trend of increasing phenotypic stability, therefore, predominantly results from environmental mechanisms.

(emphasis mine) And since the abstract is somewhat devoid of figures... later in the article the contributions are quantified:

  Heritability tends to be high and accounts for the large majority of variance in infancy. Heritability declines substantially in early childhood and somewhat more slowly thereafter, resulting in roughly 40% of variance in personality attributable to genetic influences throughout adulthood. Environmentality displays the opposite pattern. Corrected for measurement error, environmentality shows a similar upward trajectory with a peak of accounting for over 40% of variance in personality. [...]  By midlife, genetic and environmental effects were found to contribute almost equally to phenotypic stability.

That half-and-half figure may be somewhat easy to misinterpret though. That's because environment doesn't necessarily mean present environment, i.e. someone's personality may be substantially affected by past events that are not easy to "undo" (counter-effect). More recent research has put the combined figure of stable influences affecting personality (e.g. genes, past environment, considered as a whole) to 83%. That sounds fairly consistent with voluntary attempts at changing one's personality having relatively small effect.


Is there anything called Genetic Anxiety?

Predisposition to anxiety can be inherited:

  Genetics and family history (e.g., parental anxiety) may predispose an
  individual for an increased risk of an anxiety disorder, but generally
  external stimuli will trigger its onset or exacerbation. Genetics
  accounts for about 43% variance in panic disorder and 28% in
  generalized anxiety disorder.

Treatment for anxiety disorders is not generally modified for genetic component, so therapies such as conditioning or CBT may be used regardless.  All anxiety disorders are assumed to involve an environment (non-genetic) trigger that can be addressed through therapy.

Research by Dias & Ressler (2013) suggests that this is not necessarily the case in mice, where epigenetics alone (with no environmental trigger) can cause a purely genetic anxiety.  (Layman version)


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.


Does similar writing style tell us the writers are similar with respect to some measure/perspective?

To me the most obvious similarity factor would be culture/schooling. And that also creates a large confounder for the things you ask about (personality etc.)

A bit of searching did find a paper from 1981 by Ruffner & Burgoon, but it has very few citations. It also uses a pretty antiquated personality test (the Omnibus Personality Inventory). The climax of the paper is predicting various stylistic aspects using personality and education aspects:


Which is the scientific name of stubbornness?

A few bits of useful jargon come to mind...

Low cognitive complexity may lead to simplistic and absolutist thinking, which one may also refer to as splitting or "black-and-white" thinking (because there's no recognition of "grey areas").

Need for closure and low openness to experience may lead to resistance to change, which is a somewhat less pejorative alternative to "stubbornness". "Mental rigidity" is a little more subtly pejorative, in that you'd probably feel a little offended if someone called you mentally rigid, but clinical literature sometimes uses these terms nonetheless. Hence it has more pathological connotations than "stubborn", which I think people recognize as more normally applicable – i.e., you can be stubborn without being psychologically abnormal or clinically dysfunctional, but you probably won't feel proud of it, and would prefer more euphemistic terms like "assertive" or "traditional"...which differ in literal meaning from stubbornness.
I guess that's the sort of cognitive distortion that you'd expect to result from self-serving bias: "I'm not stubborn! I just happen to be right!" Then again, if I were to say that, I might not be biased; I might actually be right! How's that for self-serving bias? :)

Confirmation bias differs somewhat from these. Its effects appear when actually seeking to confirm a belief (or hypothesis in a research context, wherein which we're probably most familiar with it), as opposed to when simply stating an absolute, simplistic belief, or refusing to question it at all. If I actually engage in argument and ignore your counterpoints, then you could say I'm demonstrating confirmation bias, but if I simply "tell you how it is" or tell you that you're wrong and refuse to change, that's really not a matter of confirmation bias per se.


Is there a waterfall visual after-effect with discrete inputs?

The waterfall after-effect is an illusion falling into a broader class of visual illusionary apparent movements caused by watching a constant motion for an extended period of time. The motion after-effect can be explained by adaptation of visual neurons that respond selectively to movement. Motion-sensitive visual neurons are tuned to a specific direction. Exposure to a continuous motion in one particular direction fatigues specifically those visual neurons that are tuned to that direction as they continuously fire. When the visual stimulus stops, it alters the balance of activity in favor of cells tuned to the opposite direction, as these are the least fatigued by the stimulus and this causes the after-effect (Mather et al., 2008).

The motion-after effect does work well with more discreet stimuli too.

To start with, here is an example of a more standard waterfall effect illusion (see Fig. 1 for a related impression still image).

Fig. 1. Waterfall. source: Carlos Vasquez

And in this video an example is shown of the waterfall after effect with more discreet stimuli. Not particularly your standard marquee sign but it comes close and there's a definite motion after effect observable (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Movie still from this video

However, I think your question is specifically whether a motion after-effect occurs with chase-lighting as often seen in Marquees signs (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Marquees sign showing illusionary apparent motion. source: Old Turnpike School

The chasing-light stimulus in itself is a visual illusion, as there is no true motion involved. Instead, it is generated by using electronic circuitry to activate lights serially with a certain time delay in-between activations. Because there is no motion involved as such, I believe the after effect will not occur, or very weakly. At least, I couldn't observe an after effect after watching several chase lightings for a while. For example, the chase lightings in Fig. 1 become ambiguous when I look at it a while, i.e., the lights actually spontaneously reverse their direction when staring at it for a while. The only thing I see when I look away, personally, is a colorful blob, and no motion after-effect.

Reference
- Mather et al., Trends Cog Sci (2008); 12(12): 481-7


How to analyze event-related fMRI data with missing fMRI trigger in logfile?

I can see one case in which you still might analyze the data.

This only works under three conditions:

your paradigm has no variable durations of either stimulus presentations or breaks or others (or you can determine all the times retrospectively) AND
all your fmri scans have timestamps in their header information (which I think is always the case, at least in the raw
file) AND
the pulse sequences and the presentation were always
started at the same time (or the logfile has at least a starting time and the difference between both starts was consistent).

I guess you can answer immediately whether the first condition is met. For the second one, any appropriate software for opening the raw files should be able to show you the timestamps if they exist. For dicom files there are timestamps for study time, series time and acquisition time where the acquisition time is different for every single file (according to this help site from the AFNI program). The third one you might also immediately know but if not you could look into the timestamps of the subjects where you do have the triggers in the logfile and compare it with the starting time of the logfile (if that exists). If you calculate that difference for all subjects and it's always the same you are lucky and can calculate the trigger times for the subjects where they are missing.


Is there a (evolutionary) purpose of self-pity?

Short answer
Self-pity may not have any evolutionary benefit, but may instead be part of the social capabilities allowing to feel empathy. Empathy in turn is a crucial component in social interactions. The development of strong social skills in early Hominids is believed to have paved the way for evolution of Homo sapiens, arguably the most successful species to roam the world today.

Background
For a trait to be evolutionary beneficial, it should increase reproductive success. Indeed, self-pity may not have a lot of benefit in that regard, especially when depressive thoughts arise. Note that Mr. Munger, who claims that self-pity is disastrous and paranoid, is a business man and may associate such feelings more from the impact it can have on productive human capabilities rather than re-productive ones.

However, self-pity may be a[n unwanted] side-effect of being able to feel compassion, i.e., the feeling of distress in connection with another person's suffering. In general, self-pity may be the collateral result of being able to allow man to feel empathy, i.e., the experience of understanding another person's condition from their perspective.

The thing is, being a parent, that kids do not feel a lot of empathy. Especially young kids (<2 years) lack the empathy we see in most adults (barred those with e.g. autism spectrum disorder). Kids do, however, feel a lot of self-pity :) Self-pity seems to be an inborn, relatively unsophisticated emotion. Later, when they grow up, they will develop these egocentric feelings into empathy, by projecting their own emotion (self-pity) onto other people (feeling sorry for someone else). These emotions have to be developed and nurtured through social interactions. Admittedly, I am not a psychologist or evolutionary biologist, but I do reckon that feelings of self-pity are a precursor for feelings of sympathy and compassion and, on a grander scale, for feelings of empathy.

Empathy is believed to be a critical factor in enabling humans and other primates to socially interact with each other (De Waal, 2012). In turn, the social behavior in humans is considered to have been a crucial trait that lead to the success of the human species (Byrne & Whiten, 1989). Social interactions likely helped our ancestors to form social groups, such as extended families and coalitions that promote higher rates of survival and reproduction. Enhanced social structures allowed for the sharing of knowledge across generations. The increasing size of such social groups in turn entailed further social brain development, ultimately giving rise to the present form of the highly social brain of humans (source: Huffington Post). Frans de Waal has written extensively about the mechanisms and benefits of empathy in primates.

References
- Machiavellian Intelligence, Oxford Science Publications (1989)
- De Waal, Science (2012); 336(6083): 874-6


Dreams and sleep phases, and duration of dreams

I don't think what you're describing is that unusual. I read about dreams and dreaming in Jaak Panksepp's "Affective Neuroscience" some years ago, and here is what I remember:

First, it is not entirely accurate to say that dreams happen only during REM sleep. What is unique to REM dreams is visual imagery. NREM sleep, also called slow wave sleep, also contains dreams, but they are just a series of thoughts - not very different from when you think about things while awake.

Second, even if you are describing visual dreams: REM sleep is more shallow than slow wave sleep, i.e. outside noises will wake you up more easily than during the other sleep stages.

Third, it's very standard to dream about things that are currently going on in your life.

Fourth, dreams are extremely fragile, they evaporate from memory very quickly unless you actively do something mental with them, and it is easy confabulate some new details into them while trying to keep them from slipping away. It could be that you are reconstructing the content or duration of your dreams a little bit while you are trying to compare them to your thoughts before sleep.


Can fMRI and EEG signals be generated from NEF models?

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.


What is the maximum number of objects an average human being can recognize at once?

The ability to enumerate objects without counting is known as subitizing.
Most studies suggest that we can subitize up to about 3 or 4 items (e.g. Starkey & Cooper, 1995). Enumeration of a small number of objects (i.e. subitizing) yields consistent response times regardless of the quantity of objects. Enumeration of larger quantities (i.e. counting) yields response times that increase linearly with the number of objects. This is taken as evidence that the two processes are computationally distinct.
Further studies in both neuropsychology (Dehaene & Cohen, 1994) and neuroimaging (Piazza et al., 2002) have supported the idea that separate neural substrates underly the two computational processes.
References

Dehaene, S., & Cohen, L. (1994). Dissociable mechanisms of subitizing and counting: Neuropsychological evidence from simultanagnosic patients. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance, 20(5), 958-975. PDF
Piazza, M., Mechelli, A., Butterworth, B., & Price, C. J. (2002). Are subitizing and counting implemented as separate or functionally overlapping processes?. Neuroimage, 15(2), 435-446. PDF
Starkey, P., & Cooper, R. G. (1995). The development of subitizing in young children. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13(4), 399-420.


What are the neurobiological factors associated with intelligence in animals?

Title question: See below
Question 1: Sort of.
Question 2: Yes.
Question 3: Yes.

The wrinkly outer layer of the human brain, the neocortex, is an anatomical feature found only in mammals. It is largely responsible for our ability to process sensory information in great detail, and plays a large role in memory formation, recognition, and higher thought.

Unlike the thalamus or cerebellum, the shapes of which could be characterized as 'lumps', the neocortex can be thought of as a sheet; a larger surface area is related a larger neocortex, which translates directly to a greater supply of computational resources. Thus the wrinkly nature of the exterior of the human brain shows its usefulness; more wrinkles means more surface area.

It may be useful to keep in mind with regard to humans that our own accomplishments, often attributed to our intelligence (and rightly so), have depended on much more than our brain. Our physical ability to speak, which allows us to quickly share ideas and learn from one another, is not a feature shared with other animals (See reference 1). Moreover, our ability to manipulate objects allows us to record information, enabling us to much more easily stand on the shoulders of the giants who have preceded us. Were we lacking in either of these abilities, or both, we may not appear as intelligent as we do.

Diagrams:

Here is a diagram of the brains of various animals including both mammals and non-mammals: http://www.neurocomputing.org/Images/Brain_Introduction/Comparative_Neuro/brainpicts.gif
Unfortunately, I'm new and don't have the reputation score sufficient to post more than two links

Notes for further reading:

Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence"
Although more perception-specific, the topic of cortical magnification is a handy topic to know

References:

http://www.mpi.nl/q-a/questions-and-answers/why-cant-apes-speak
On Intelligence, by Jeff Hawkins


Difference between thoughts and sensations

Short answer
Sensations are different from thoughts and are separated in the spatial and temporal domain. The distinction between thoughts and perceptions, however, is less well defined, but can still be dealt with experimentally.

Background
A description of sensation is as follows:

  The physical process during which our sensory organs [...] respond to
  external stimuli. [...] During sensation, our sense organs are
  engaging in transduction, the conversion of one form of energy into
  another. Physical energy such as light or a sound wave is converted
  into a form of energy the brain can understand: electrical
  [impulses generated in neurons].

Sensation precedes perception, which includes the process of processing stages higher up in the brain, during which we become aware of the sensations and make sense of it all (integration).

More concisely, sensation is the detection of physical stimuli by low-level, peripheral neural processes. Perception is the processing of sensations that lead to becoming aware of the sensation, the latter mediated by higher cortical processes.

Thoughts are generated centrally in the brain, without the need for external input. So to answer your question - thoughts are generated in the central nervous system in the brain, while sensation occurs peripherally, e.g., in the eye (detection of light by the retina), skin (detection of touch by mechanoreceptors), the ear (setection of vibrations by the mechanoreceptors in the cochlea), etc. Electrophysiologically, a sensation hence will occur at an anatomically different place and will precede the activity in the brain in time. These two processes are separated both in the spatial and temporal domain. Note that thoughts can not activate peripheral sensory systems.

Perhaps you were more after the distinction between perception and thoughts? Here, the distinction becomes less well-defined, as imagery of sensory input may activate sensory brain areas in much the same way as the factual perception of a physical stimulus (e.g., Aleman et al., (2001)). For example, brain imaging studies in late-blind folks (people that lost their eye sight later in life) and even in the congenitally blind, can be complicated because of this. When brain activation is tested in a blind person using a vision aid (e.g. BrainPort) when looking at visual stimuli, the activation pattern can be dictated or compromised, because they can imagine the stimulus to be there based on early memories when they still had functional vision. Hence, the distinction between thoughts and perceptual phenomena is less distinct. Nonetheless, perceptual phenomena are preceded by sensation, while imagery is not. Hence, this causality of the former can distinguish it from the latter.

Reference
- Aleman et al., Neuroreport (2001); 12(11): 2601-4)


Relation of confidence and problem solving ability

Quick answer:

A brief Google search show cases where this occurred. For example, it seems that a study on medical students showed a significant relationship between confidence and ability after training, although not before training (Clanton et al., 2014). This being said, the Dunning-Kruger effect always comes to mind when such questions come up…

References

Clanton, J., Gardner, A., Cheung, M., Mellert, L., Evancho-Chapman, M., & George, R. L. (2014). The relationship between confidence and competence in the development of surgical skills. Journal of Surgical Education, 71(3), 405–412. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2013.08.009


Why does suicide risk increase just after starting an antidepressant?

This comes from talking to a psychiatrist about the issue:

One of the effects of depression is a loss of motivation.  In some suicidal individuals, this has the result that they want to die, but can't work up the motivation to do anything about it.  Once they start taking antidepressants, however, the lack of motivation goes away before the depression does, creating a short period of increased suicide risk.


Both schizofrenia and depression are linked to a genetic predisposition and life events. Individuals with no genetic predisposition may become depressed when the trigger is sufficiently intense, while individuals with genetic predisposition may become depressed in the absence of clear life events triggering the depression (Kendler et al, 1995).

Reference
- Kendler et al, Am J Psychiatry (1995); 152(6): 833-42


Increasing pitch perception of the same auditory stimuli

Ignoring your pictures for a second, it sounds like what you are referring to is pitch circularity. Diana Deutsch was a pioneer in this area. The key is that generating these sounds is tricky and that unless you inspect the "correct" dimensions of the stimuli you will not see the differences.


What is the current gold standard in double locked storage of therapeutic records?

I cannot find a defined "Gold Standard" within the US, but there is ISO27001:2013 here in the UK and the European Union. More can be found from this IT Governance website.
There is also suggestion that you should also follow ISO27018:2014 if you are storing data in public cloud systems.
In absence of any defined "Gold Standard", you can choose to follow these standards, and if you are not following the "Gold Standard", you need to be able to justify your data protection procedures to any governing body who may be auditing you for compliance with their rules and regulations or when investigating any data breach.
Some say that just following a "Gold Standard" is not enough.
The one thing you should do is regularly review your procedures to ensure you are doing everything reasonably practicable to ensure personally identifiable data is kept secure from unauthorised access. Do you have a copy of your data protection policy and procedures which you personally follow and regularly review and sign off as reviewed? If not, I would put one together and sign it off regularly at review as that would demonstrate your commitment to protecting client's personal information.
One major key point you need to remember with data protection is that you must protect the data from unauthorised access at all points of access.
The following is in response to your individual questions.

Is it enough to put the electronic storage device (laptop, hard drive, flash drive, whatever) inside a locked room in a locked house?

When reviewing your data protection policy and procedures, you should ask this question to yourself along with who has access to the keys to the locked room?
If anyone not authorised to access the personal data has access to the keys then the answer in my view is that it is not enough. Otherwise, how are you going to prevent unauthorised access by others who have access to the keys to the locked room?

Is it enough to password protect the storage device, and put it in a locked building

With regard to locking the storage device in a building, that is covered in the previous question. Password protection can add further protection, but is it enough? This goes with your 3rd question

Is it enough to password protect the storage device, and password protect the folder/file

This is not straight forward to answer and will depend on many different factors.
If the password is strong, the storage device remains in the one room, and is always locked away when unattended then passwords will provide extra protection but will it be enough protection from theives who might break in and steal the storage device?
Windows 10 provides device encryption, but not Windows 10 Home it needs to be Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise. Encryption will prevent data from being read if the harddrive was removed and transferred to another computer.
There is 3rd party software available for device encryption and each one is different to the other on strength of encryption, security and cost.
If you are talking about files such as Microsoft Word documents or Excel files, you can password protect the file from being read, and in this case, Microsoft Office encrypts the file. If stored on an encrypted device, this double encrypts the file from access.
These are things to think about.

And what about files in the cloud?

In response I would ask Do you really need to store the data in the cloud?
If so, then I would be very picky as to what cloud service you choose to use.
Ask yourself:

Who can access your data in the cloud?
Can the cloud service provider(s) access the data?I only know of one cloud service provider who has no access to your data. With them, the files are encrypted their end and if you forget your password, you have lost access to your data for good. There may be others but I don't know them if there are.
If the cloud service provider can access your data, what is their policy with regard to Privacy and Data Protection? Is it in line with yours? - Keep an up-to-date copy with your policy and procedures.
Is the data encrypted in the cloud?
Is the data transfer encrypted end-to-end when transferred between the cloud server and your storage device, and if so, how strong is that encryption?

These are just some questions you will need to find the answers to, and there may be others you feel need addressing.
Protection of digital data is not straight forward but if you think things through thoroughly and seek professional advice where needed you can devise a robust protection procedure which can be justified to any governing body.
Links to sources provided in this answer

https://www.waterstons.com/articles/achieving-the-gold-standard-in-information-security
https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/iso27001
https://www.iso.org/standard/61498.html
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/18/protect_your_digital_enterprise_iso_27001_explainer
https://www.howtogeek.com/195430/how-to-create-a-strong-password-and-remember-it
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4028713/windows-10-turn-on-device-encryption


Is there a "base set" of feelings used to classify images?

I am pleased to see the interest that this question has aroused.  I have eventually managed to find one scientific article on the subject - http://www.imageemotion.org/machajdik_hanbury_affective_image_classification.pdf.
which provides me with a decent starting point.  I would be most grateful to pointers to any other research in the field.


According to Yalom, what mental disorders are caused by inefficient anxiety coping strategies?

The scope of Yalom's mainstream branch is pretty much the same as that of existential psychotherapy, and psychodynamic therapy in general.  According to Yalom (p. 9-10):

  The dynamic existential approach retains the basic dynamic structure
  outlined by Freud, but radically alters the content.  The old formula
  of DRIVE -> ANXIETY -> DEFENSE MECHANISM is replaced by AWARENESS OF
  ULTIMATE CONCERN -> ANXIETY -> DEFENSE MECHANISM. Both formulas assume
  that anxiety is the fuel of psychopathology;

Psychoanalysis is focused on psychological symptoms, such as neurosis:

  There are many different neuroses: obsessive–compulsive disorder,
  obsessive–compulsive personality disorder, impulse control disorder,
  anxiety disorder, hysteria, and a great variety of phobias. ...
  anxiety, sadness or depression, anger, irritability, mental confusion,
  low sense of self-worth, etc., behavioral symptoms such as phobic
  avoidance, vigilance, impulsive and compulsive acts, lethargy, etc.,
  cognitive problems such as unpleasant or disturbing thoughts,
  repetition of thoughts and obsession, habitual fantasizing, negativity
  and cynicism, etc. Interpersonally, neurosis involves dependency,
  aggressiveness, perfectionism, schizoid isolation, socio-culturally
  inappropriate behaviors, etc.

and psychosis, but exclusive of known biological causes:

  Medical and biological laboratory tests should exclude central nervous
  system diseases and injuries, diseases and injuries of other organs,
  psychoactive substances, toxins, and prescribed medications as causes
  of symptoms of psychosis before any psychiatric illness can be
  diagnosed.

As per Yalom (p. 12):

  *In this discussion, as elsewhere in this text, I refer to
  psychologically based disturbance, not to the major psychoses with a
  fundamental biochemical origin.

This is similar in scope to all forms of psychotherapy, except that where the underlying cause is not known to be physiological or medical in nature, it is assumed to be subconscious (rather than say, behavioural, cognitive, or functional).  For psychodynamics:

  Psychodynamic therapies depend upon a theory of inner conflict,
  wherein repressed behaviours and emotions surface into the patient’s
  consciousness; generally, one's conflict is subconscious.

and specifically, for existential psychotherapy (in Yalom's words p. 8):

  ... a conflict that flows from the individual's confrontation with the
  givens of existence.

This also means that the scope of therapy may change over time, as knowledge is gained regarding the root causes of mental disorders.

Pretty much all other mental disorders are fair game, including mood disorders such as anxiety, personality disorders such as psychopathy (ASPD), and thought disorders such as schizophrenia.  For example, in chapter 4 (p. 147) of his book - under the "Death" concern - Yalom discusses schizophrenia patients who:

  clings to his or her denial of death with a fierce desperation

Note: In cases where some biological factor is assumed, it is common practice to treat disorders with both medication and psychotherapy, as the overall efficacy is improved.  In such cases, psychotherapy focuses on the psychological components of the disorder.  Even in cases where the role of psychology may seem secondary, such as dementia, learning disability, and autism, psychotherapy may be used to augment treatment.  However, psychodynamic therapy is not popular for such disorders, because of the reliance on talk-therapy, that is highly constrained in these cases, so they are unlikely to be discussed much in existential therapy circles.


Why are mind maps recommended for study and recap?

An excellent question! A 2011 paper in Science by Karpicke and Blunt in the Cognition and Learning Lab at Purdue University gets at this issue. They offer that:

  "Concept mapping is considered an active learning task, and it serves
  as an elaborative study activity when students construct concept maps
  in the presence of the materials they are learning. Under these
  conditions, concept mapping bears the defining characteristics of an
  elaborative study method: It requires students to enrich the material
  they are studying and encode meaningful relationships among concepts
  within an organized knowledge structure."

They go on in their paper, however, to demonstrate that concept mapping is far less efficient than an even simpler technique: repeated retrieval (e.g., self-testing). Practicing retrieval, they argue, "enhances learning by retrieval-specific mechanisms rather than by elaborative study processes."

Reference:

Karpicke, J.D., & Blunt, J.R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science, 331, 772-775.


To the question "what is happening exactly when brain centres get damaged?". The answer is: When any tissue, including neural tissue, in the body gets damaged, the body will try to repair them. The process of reparation involves many distinct processes, such as the process to get rid of the damaged tissue and the process to regenerate new tissue. But compared with other tissues, such as skin, mucosa, and connective tissue in general, neural tissue has a much more limited capability to regenerate, yet it is not zero. Also, in the nervous system, neural plasticity, which is the adaptation of other neural tissue to perform the function that is impaired or lost, plays the role in the process of reparation too. The following articles may help explain this matter in more details: ref1 and ref 2,  and ref3. And some animal studies of neural plasticity: ref4 and ref5.


First of all, asymmetries in apparently symmetric creatures (of which most are) are actually quite typical.  However, in most cases of hand dominance, there is no population-wide hand dominance.  In other words, the population is split 50/50 between left and right handers.  In humans, however, a lack of hand dominance is often associated with cognitive deficits.

In humans, population-wise, we are right-hand dominant (9:1).  There are exceptions to a genetic influence, such as strict schools disciplining children into using their right hand, or an indirect consequence of developmental brain trauma or genetic diseases, but for the most part the right-hand dominance is thought to be a genetic outcome based on the emergent effects of several interacting genes.  That is, there's no particular reason why nature "chose" right over left, just that having a dominant hand allows for more specialization with respect to tool-using which could possibly have given humans with this mutation a competitive edge over their ambidextrous competitors.

A single-gene theory (Corballis, 2009) proposes that there is a dextral and a chance allele of a particular gene and that people born with the dextral allele are likely to be right-handed while people born with the chance allele have equal chance of being left or right-handed.

Francks, C; DeLisi, LE; Fisher, SE; Laval, SH; Rue, JE; Stein, JF; Monaco, AP (2003). "Confirmatory evidence for linkage of relative hand skill to 2p12-q11". American journal of human genetics 72 (2): 499–502. (PDF)
Van Agtmael, T; Forrest, SM; Williamson, R (2002). "Parametric and non-parametric linkage analysis of several candidate regions for genes for human handedness". European journal of human genetics : EJHG 10 (10): 623–30.
Warren, Diane M.; Stern, Michael; Duggirala, Ravindranath; Dyer, Thomas D.; Almasy, Laura (2006). "Heritability and linkage analysis of hand, foot, and eye preference in Mexican Americans". Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition 11 (6): 508–524.
Scerri, T. S.; Brandler, W. M.; Paracchini, S.; Morris, A. P.; Ring, S. M.; Richardson, A. J.; Talcott, J. B.; Stein, J.; Monaco, A. P. (2010). "PCSK6 is associated with handedness in individuals with dyslexia". Human Molecular Genetics 20 (3): 608–614.
Michael C Corballis. (2009) The evolution and genetics of cerebral asymmetry.  Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 12, 364 (1519): 867-879


Does self-rated performance predict objective performance over and above other-rated performance?

I don't know of a study that tries to answer your specific question but you might want to have a look at illusory superiority, "a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others" (wikipedia).

I can especially recommend the paper by Dunning and Kruger (1999): Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments (also the winner of the ignoble price for psychology, 2000). In this paper the authors show that people who are competent in a certain domain are pretty accurate in predicting their performance in this domain (compared to objective standards). On the other hand, people who are incompetent typically overestimate their performance (i.e., predict to perform good, whereas they perfom poorly). This overestimation is mainly driven by their lack of knowledge about that domain. If they are taught that they are poor performers, their prediction goes in line wit their actual performance.

These results could explain your observation of self-other discrepancy, as others might have more knowledge about how to accurately predict performance than the poor perfomers who over-rate their performance.

Reference:

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121


Amount of noise in (the recognisable definition of) an ERP

Averaging does not perfectly remove the noise. Assuming the signal is perfectly correlated across repetitions/sweeps/trials and the noise is independent, than doing from 1 to 2 sweeps will increase the SNR by 3 dB (i.e., decrease the noise by 1/2), Every doubling in the number of sweeps increases the SNR by 3 dB so that after 1024 sweeps the SNR has improved by at most 30 dB. This means that after averaging there is a minimum magnitude required for a peak/notch to be considered statistically reliable. Any ripples with smaller magnitudes are ignored since they are not statistically reliable.


If 10 words are presented at the same time, is it still considered a 'free recall' test?

Free recall refers to not being given exemplars during the retrieval task. For example, multiple choice would be called recognition here, not recall. The format of the presentation such as simultaneous vs. serial, or format of the recall in terms of ordering or grouping, would not affect the term free recall.


how does our brain know how to provide the right instructions to pronounce words?

Children experiment and practice. They produce sounds and then listen to their own sounds as well as those produced by others around them.
Part of this experiment and practice is the stage of language development referred to as babbling. During babbling, infants work towards producing sounds specific to the language they've been exposed to and gradually develop more and more sophisticated sounds that still (mostly) lack meaning. Infants select and repeat those sounds they make that replicate the language they hear from others.
Periods during development when certain skills are learned preferentially are called critical periods. There are early critical periods in language development after which it is more difficult (but not impossible!) to learn to pronounce new syllables because the practice/experimentation phase is passed.

de Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. M. (1991). Adaptation to language: Evidence from babbling and first words in four languages. Language, 67(2), 297-319.
Hallé, P. A., De Boysson-Bardies, B., & Vihman, M. M. (1991). Beginnings of prosodic organization: Intonation and duration patterns of disyllables produced by Japanese and French infants. Language and speech, 34(4), 299-318.
Oller, D. K., Wieman, L. A., Doyle, W. J., & Ross, C. (1976). Infant babbling and speech. Journal of child Language, 3(1), 1-11.


Term for being unable to see how hard something is because you already understand it

I'm not sure if this is an exact answer, but several topics come to my mind to describe this phenomena, mainly these ones:

Expertise (e.g. Expertise reversal effect),
Schemas and mindsets,
Availability heuristic (or other biases and fallacies that influence expectations).

It might depend on the aspect or scientific field from which you want to describe it. For example, there might also be some learning-based justifications from neuroscience perspective (e.g. reinforcement learning models for synaptic plasticity).


Extra-classical receptive fields are surprising, but retinal ganglion receptive fields are not. Why?

The difference is that ganglion neurons are responding directly to phenomena in their receptive field. That is, the on-center, off-surround ganglion cells are directly connected to the photoreceptors at the center and in the surround. The explanation for off-surround is that photoreceptors at the periphery will directly hyperpolarize the ganglion cell.

Extraclassical receptive field effects are about explaining how a neuron (e.g., in V1) responds to phenomena outside its receptive field. That is, it is possible to map the entire portion of the visual field that it is hooked up to, e.g., by passing a stimulus across the visual field and noting all regions where spike trains are evoked by the stimulus. This portion of the visual field is known as the classical receptive field. It turns out that V1 neurons can be influenced by stimuli outside their classical receptive field. Unlike "end-stopping" in retinal ganglion neurons, this cannot be explained by hyperpolarizing input at the periphery of the receptive field, because the stimulus causing the end stopping is not in its receptive field in the first place.


Why does autism sometimes impede the ability to produce speech?

Difficulties with language is not actually a symptom of autism. Autism Spectrum Disorder involves difficulties in social communication and interaction, as well as restricted and repetitive interests or behaviours (DSM-V, 2013). The term "social communication" is referring to difficulties in the social aspects of language and other communication, such as matching verbal and non-verbal behaviour, rather than difficulties in language.

The language difficulties as described in the question sound like they could be related to the age-equivalence of the individual, although of course physiological hearing difficulties can't be ruled out until it is assessed. All children progress through a sequence of language development (Tager-Flusberg et al., 2010):

Pre-Verbal

Babbling, gestures
Typically developing children aged 6-12 months

First Words

Non-imitated, spontaneous single words
Some of the speech is intelligible, and uses consonant sounds typical in babble
Typically developing children aged 12-18 months

Word Combinations

2 and 3 word combinations, including nouns, adjectives and verbs
Typically developing children aged 18-30 months

Sentences

Children create sentences, now using plurals and prepositions
Typically developing children aged 30-28 months

Complex Language

Language for a range of topics, using complex grammar, in different discourse contexts
Pre-school aged typially developing children

Tager-Flusberg et al. (2010) have a great table (Table 1) in their article outlining their proposed benchmarks for each of these phases. As the child progresses, their phonology (speech sounds) improves as well as their vocabulary, grammar, etc. Thus, your brother may be imitating the sounds he hears as best he can within his level of language development.


identifying scale of measurement for the dependent variable

I understand Dependent and Independent Variables as:

The Independent variable: What you Manipulate, in this case gender, and to a lesser degree the stimulus (word, nonsense syllable, size of nonsense syllable, etc)

The Dependent variable: A measure of performance, in your case if you are testing for word or nonsense syllable recall (I suggest the later as to avoid familiarity issues), how many they could remember after X time period, which you could turn into recall probability.

Source:

Tulving, Endel, and Fergus IM Craik. The Oxford handbook of memory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Additional variations on dependent variables &tests targeting short term memory and variations are mentioned in various chapters, see page 20 for instance and the chapters on short term memory


TLDR version: some common generic names include "business matrix" and "quadrant analysis", but these are mostly used in business. The former seems a little more general as it has been applied to 3x3 partitions a well. Social sciences in a general seem to lack a common term for this type of graph. But "quadrant chart" or "four-quadrant chart" is probably not too wrong (for the 2x2 case) even though you can't easily find explicit definitions of these terms. "Nine box" grid/matrix/chart seems used for the 3x3 case, again usually without an explicit definition.

The divisions in your first three examples are called quadrants in math.

In business, Gartner is somewhat [in]famous for their "magic" quadrants. A more generic term is "quadrant analysis", as marketing book lets us know:

  Quadrant analysis is a variation of cross-tabulation in which response to two rating scales questions are plotted in four quadrants of a two-dimensional table.

Also "quadrant chart" or "four-quadrant chart" is sometimes used to denote these although almost nobody bothers to define what those terms mean. An IBM piece of software (Cognos) defines them as a type of bubble chart (with quadrants highlighted), but surely others use them without bubbles.

The information visualisation book of Harris genericized this as "business matrix".

  When a chart or graph is divided into four generally small sections, it is sometime described as having four quadrants. Two widely used applications are the business matrix, shown on the left and the traditional graph format on the right. In some cases the quadrants are numbered, as in the graph on the right. In other cases the quadrants are identified by word description as in the business matrix. Because four quadrants are formed does not mean that all four will be used.

  -- R.L. Harris, Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference, Oxford University Press, 1999

There is at least some software that uses the same term and I found two more books that call the generic form of Gartner's graph by same generic "business matrix" name. The first one only exemplifies the notion with an "export matrix" (strength/weakness X threats/opportunities)  The second book is a bit more elaborate:

  Two of the classic strategic development tools are business matrices – the market growth/market share and strength/attractiveness matrices – also known as the BCG (figure 100) and GE matrices.

  The business matrices, sometimes called portfolio matrices, graphically display
  the overall competitive standing of a portfolio of businesses. Each matrix positions
  the company and its business units according to two dimensions (axes).

  -- N. Adler, Tools for Project Management, Workshops and Consulting:  A Must-Have Compendium of Essential Tools and Techniques, Wiley 2011

The "portfolio matrix" synonym suggest by this latter book also seems to have some traction, but Wikipedia uses it to refer just to the  BCG-matrix (which takes its name from the Boston Consulting Group)... which also goes by quite a few other names. As you can probably tell from the Wikipedia BCG example, sometimes a third dimension is plotted using circle radii. Adler also mentions this:

  You can plot ‘bubbles’ around the points to indicate the relative market size of each business unit.

So those may or may not be strictly the kind of graph you look for. But he also shows a 3x3 business matrix (more like your last D&D example).

The latter 3x3 seems to be called the "GE-McKinsey Matrix" in other places, sometimes with a "nine box" designation added. Actually "nine box matrix" seems a genericized version of this, potentially with other things on the axes, e.g. leadership potential vs performance.

There's one presentation that has 10 of these variations used in business, but it just calls them "useful matrices" as an umbrella term. Some of the examples given there don't clearly have obviously ordinal axes though, e.g. the Ansoff matrix , but I suppose one can quantify newness. Other examples include the risk (management) matrix and Covey's time management matrix, the latter being a derivative of the Eisenhower method/matrix/box.

As far as I can tell, outside business neither is the word "quadrant" nor the word "matrix" really used to refer to this kind of chart, but the chart has a more specific name, e.g. political "compass" (which you gave as an example); the version of that with center zone is called a Nolan chart, but it's probably not a term used outside politics.

An example of a chart like Nolan's but from organizational/negotiation psychology is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (TKI):

And a perception-related Nolan-like chart, somewhat based on the Aristotelian system of the four elements
:

I don't know if anyone has come up with a remotely generic name for this center-separating quadrant-chart variation.

Math-wise if you use more than the four quadrants, you're doing some arbitrary partitioning of a plane although the term "plane partitioning" has a different meaning (in combinatorics); instead space partitioning is the term used for the partitioning of Euclidean spaces, such as the plane. A non-orthogonal example of the latter is the Voronoi diagram

Also if the scores (plotted on the axes) are bounded, you're not really using/partitioning the whole plane, but just a region thereof.

Probably the most complex example I know of a Voronoi-like diagram that that is reasonably widespread use is the USDA NRCS "soil textural triangle", itself a (barycentric) ternary plot, i.e. it's actually a projected tridimensional plot.

This example is, of course, very remote from your original question. See also piper diagram for another partitioned plot similar to that USDA triangle, but used in water chemistry.

Also, I should mention that a reason that you probably don't see these more often in psychology is that even the (now dated) MBTI personality had 4 dimensions. Although its proponents often drew the 16 (extreme) combinations in boxes, it's not easy to put these on explicit axes in a plane figure.  MBTI diagrams often use just colors or letters for the dimensions. The more modern psychological personality theories have 5 (Big Five aka FFM) or 6 (HEXACO) axes, which makes any graphing even more difficult.

The latter also shun "boxing" just based on extreme values like MBTI did. Boxing the extremes is a fairly silly idea given that these dimensions have normal distribution in the population. So I guess that has created a bit of an "anti-quadrant" reflex in some psychologists. By the way, even the D&D "personalities" from your last chart are superior to MBTI in this sense that the D&D matrix acknowledges the "middle" personality type on both of its dimensions.

On the other hand, even the currently widely accepted models of personality, each of the axes does have a fairly natural dual interpretation: introversion vs extroversion etc.

Of course boxing your opponents is very popular in political discourse, even resulting in pun charts like:

Or even


Is intelligence (or mental ability) genetically transferred (inherited characteristic) from the parent to the offspring or is it an acquired trait?

You could start by reading "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns". This is a consensus article based on many of the world's leading researchers on intelligence.

Empirical research suggests that variations in intelligence is largely hereditary.
Specifically estimates of heritability of intelligence at adulthood based on monozygotic twin samples who were reared appart suggests correlations of around .68 to .78 (see p.85 of the above article).

Of course, these estimates are typically based on samples growing up in the same country at a similar point in time. These estimates would be smaller if for example, monozygotic twins could be separated so that one twin grew up in a stone age society and another grew up in developed society with good education and health care.

Intelligence is something that develops over time. We can contrast acquired knowledge and skills (often called crystallised intelligence) with more abstract capacities (often called fluid intelligence). In particular, crystallised intelligence is predicted to improve more with schooling and general exposure to cultural learning experiences.

A lot more could be said about all this, but I recommend you just read the article, see below. It discusses these issue in accessible language and much greater depth:

https://www.mensa.ch/sites/default/files/Intelligence_Neisser1996.pdf
http://rcgd.isr.umich.edu/life/Readings2007/Nisbett%20reading.pdf


what are the components of logical mathematical intelligence?

This question may be too complex to answer specifically as there are several components that identify Logical-Mathematical intelligence.

In terms of behaviour high LMI people need things to explore and think about, and are often seen as manipulative and often seek new experiences or topic matter to discover.  These people love to experiment, question, figure out and calculate and often excel in logical or mathematical topics (as the name implies).

Testing for this in isolation may prove to be difficult as question sets focusing on logical reasoning and mathematical prowess may be skewed due to several reasons, including insufficient education to master the mathematics and the fact that given time most people have the ability to respond to LMI based questions.  Its is also very common that people may have a high L sub-component and a low M sub-component and vice-versa.

May I suggest a more holistic way of measuring MI in all it's facets, and then extracting the top LMI performers.  There are a few commercial tests and testing bodies that can help you here.