Psychological effects of statutory rape - differences by gender?

The following is a culmination of research I have conducted over a long time on the very subject.

The term "statutory rape"

This is a generic term and some consider it to include just victims under the age of consent, and some consider it to include victims aged 16-18 or older who are being taught in college/university.  Therefore, I would first like to address the term "statutory rape".

  Of all offenders of male statutory rape victims, 70% were age 21 and older, while 45% of offenders of female statutory rape victims were 21 and older (Troup-Leasure & Snyder, 2005).

This has been amalgamated to form the statistic that young adults under age 25 are the most common perpetrators known to law enforcement (Oudekerk, et al. 2013), because most (95%) statutory rape victims were female according to Troup-Leasure & Snyder, (2005).

One important point of note here is that the figures, as with all official rape and sexual assault statistics can only be based on cases reported to the police.  Many cases go unreported for many reasons, and therefore these statistics can be a little skewed.

In common law jurisdictions, statutory rape is nonforcible sexual activity in which one of the individuals is below the age of consent (the age required to legally consent to the behavior) (Cusack, 2015; Troup-Leasure & Snyder, 2005). Although it usually refers to adults engaging in sexual contact with minors under the age of consent, it is a generic term, and very few jurisdictions use the actual term statutory rape in the language of statutes (Davis & Twombly, 2000)

Different jurisdictions use many different statutory terms for the crime, such as sexual assault, rape of a child, corruption of a minor, unlawful sex with a minor, carnal knowledge of a minor, unlawful carnal knowledge, sexual battery or simply carnal knowledge.

The terms child sexual abuse or child molestation may also be used, but statutory rape generally refers to sex between an adult and a sexually mature minor past the age of puberty, and may therefore be distinguished from child sexual abuse (Cusack, 2015; Fradella & Sumner, 2016). Sexual relations with a prepubescent child in this case is typically treated as a more serious crime.

In statutory rape laws, overt force or threat is not present. Statutory rape laws presume coercion, because a minor or mentally handicapped adult is legally incapable of giving consent to the act.

Female on male statutory rape

Until the late 1970s, sex involving an adult female and an underage male was often ignored by the law, due to the belief that it is often sexual initiation for the younger male (Gartner, 2001) This view still exists within the public viewpoint, as it is glamorized by the media and there may be a gender bias in courts on teacher-student sexual relationships (though these relationships are illegal regardless of age).

To add to this, in at least one case, the U.S. courts have held that male victims of statutory rape may be liable for child support for any children resulting from the crime. In County of San Luis Obispo v. Nathaniel J (California courts of appeal, 1996). the 15-year-old victim Nathaniel J. discussed a future relationship with the perpetrator (a 34-year-old woman) and stated that the sex was "mutually agreeable". Given this testimony, the California Court of Appeal held Nathaniel J. financially responsible for his child. The court stated the boy was "not an innocent victim" of the sexual intercourse.

Early Research

The way that long-term effects of child sexual abuse (CSA) have come to be put together reflects, in no small measure, the very particular circumstances that surrounded the revelation of CSA as an all too common event in the lives of children. The first phase of modern research into CSA was not triggered by observations on child victims, but by the self-disclosures of adults who had the courage to publicly give witness to their abuse as children. These early self-revealed victims who were studied, exclusively women, had often been the victims of incestuous abuse, and plausibly attributed many of their current personal difficulties to their sexual abuse as children. This contrasts with the emergence of child abuse as a public health and research issue that has been driven by the observations of professionals caring for abused children

Long-term impact on mental health

There have been numerous studies examining the association between a history of CSA and mental health problems in adult life that have employed clinical samples, convenience samples (usually students), and random community samples. There is now an established body of knowledge clearly linking a history of CSA with higher rates in adult life of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, substance abuse disorders, eating disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Briere & Runtz 1988; Winfield et al. 1990; Bushnell et al. 1992; Mullen et al. 1993; Romans et al. 1995; Romans et al. 1997; Fergusson et al. 1996a; Fergusson et al. 1996b; Silverman et al. 1996; Fleming et al. 1998; Fleming et al. 1999). A more controversial literature links multiple personality disorder with CSA (Bucky & Dallenberg 1992; Spanos 1996).

Unravelling the associations between abuse and long-term problems

There is a wide range of potential adverse adult outcomes associated with CSA. However, although there is a proposal by Karen Rodman, Director and Founder of FAAAS Inc (Families of Adults Afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome) for Post-Traumatic Relationship Syndrome or Ongoing Traumatic Relationship Syndrome (OTRS), there is no unique pattern to the long-term effects and no real distinctly specific “post-abuse syndrome” that I have found. This suggests that CSA is best viewed as a risk factor for a wide range of subsequent problems.

In studies on the long-term impact of CSA that employ adult subjects, it is all too easy to forget the abuse occurred in childhood, and to resort to applying inappropriately adult-centred conceptualisations.

The sexual abuse of children occurs during a period in life where complex and, hopefully, ordered changes are occurring in the child's physical, psychological and social being. The state of flux leaves the child vulnerable to sustaining damage that will detrimentally affect the normal developmental processes. The impact of abuse is likely to be modified by the developmental stage at which it occurs. It will also vary according to how resilient the child is in terms of their psychological and social development up to that point. A child who has already had to cope with, for example, a problematic family background or prior emotional abuse, will be more vulnerable to the additional blow of CSA.

These suppositions are borne out by studies that have demonstrated powerful interactions between the child's prior exposure to potentially damaging situations, and the degree of adult disturbance apparently associated with a history of CSA (Mullen et al. 1993; Mullen et al. 1994; Fergusson et al. 1996a; Fergusson et al. 1996b; Fergusson et al. 1997a; Fergusson et al. 1997b).

The long-term effects of CSA will also be modified by the individual's experience subsequent to the abuse. Romans et al. (1995 and 1997) demonstrated that long-term problems following CSA were significantly lower in those who had supportive and confiding relationships with their mothers and in those who, as adolescents, experienced some success at school or with peers. The nature of this success (academic, social or sporting), is probably less important than the accompanying strengthening of self-esteem and enhancement of opportunities for effective social interactions with peers.

The relationship between the potential damage inflicted on elements in the child's development and subsequent mitigating factors is complex. For example, the observation that those victims of CSA who manage to establish and maintain stable marital relationships are protected against some of the potentially adverse outcomes of CSA (Cole & Putnam 1992) may reflect, in part, the mitigating and healing influence of patience and understanding from their partners.

Peters (1988) suggested that CSA interacts with family background to produce disruption of the child's developing self-esteem and sense of mastery of the world (agency). It is these deficits that increase the likelihood of psychological problems in later life. This model of developmental deficits leading to social and personal vulnerabilities in adult life, which in their turn create an increased risk of mental health problems, can usefully be expanded.

Those with histories of CSA, have an increased risk of social, interpersonal and sexual problems in adult life. This association may play a role in creating at least some of the far better-known associations between CSA and mental health problems.

Greater vulnerability to depression is found in women who lack a trusting, intimate and confiding relationship (Henderson and Brown 1988; Harris 1988; Romans et al. 1992). Depression is also associated with lowered self-esteem and a sense of hopelessness about one's ability to influence one's life (Browne & Finkelhor 1986, Ingham et al. 1986). Therefore, the social, interpersonal and sexual problems associated with a history of CSA may themselves provide fertile ground for the development of mental health problems, particularly in the area of depressive disorders.

A plausible hypothesis can be put forward that the developmental disruption in CSA victims' sense of self-esteem, sense of agency, sense of the world as a safe enough environment, in their capacity for entering trusting intimate relationships and, finally, in their developing sexuality, leads in adult life to an increased risk of low self-esteem, social and economic failure, social insecurity and isolation, difficulties with intimacy and sexual problems.

Gender Differences

Research continues to depict CSA as predominantly perpetrated against female children. It is estimated that 1 in 20 children in the UK have been sexually assaulted (Radford et al. 2011). According to the Office for National Statistics, between March 2003 and September 2018, 82% of sexual assaults in England and Wales were on girls under 16 leaving 18% on boys under 16 (Table A4 in Elkin (2019)). In Australia, in 2003, 76% of recorded sexual assault victims aged under 15 years of age were female and 24% were male (Trewin, 2004).

The thing to remember about crime statistics are these are only assaults which are reported to the police and many go unreported (Gregory & Lees, 1999).

  Child sexual abuse is clearly an issue in need of a nuanced understanding of both male and female victims. Research suggests that the sexual abuse of boys is far more common than generally believed (Dorahy & Clearwater, 2012). This is emerging from studies of clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse and from studies of gay and bisexual men. The prevalence rates for both groups are significantly higher than the more commonly cited figures for males in the general population (Jinich et al., 1998; Wilson & Widom, 2010). In relation to clergy-perpetrated abuse, it is becoming clear, as outlined earlier, that boys are much more likely than girls to be the victims of this type of abuse, though it may not be formally reported to authorities for some time, if ever (John Jay College, 2004; Parkinson et al., 2010).

       - Cashmore & Shackel (2013)

Talking to male victims myself in my line of work over the years has revealed that boys suffer the same as girls, with additional problems whereby cultural images of how "real men" should think, feel and act can create problems (Price-Robertson, 2012).

  powerful barriers to male victim/survivors of child sexual abuse disclosing their experiences to others, accepting their experience as one that may have had a formative influence on their lives, and healing from the trauma of the abuse … [This] means that many in society have difficulty fully acknowledging and accepting the reality of the sexual abuse of males during childhood/adolescence, and the trauma it can inflict. (p. 5)

Table 2 in Cashmore & Shackel (2013) summarises the findings from 11 studies on the impact of CSA on males and a comparison between male survivors of child sexual abuse and female survivors and non-abused men. Overall, research on the effects of CSA amongst male victims indicates that male survivors often "experience the event as traumatic and that psychological distress is a common long-term correlate" of such abuse.

References

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California courts of appeal (1996). County of San Luis Obispo v. Nathaniel J [Online]Retrieved from: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1847179.html

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Davis, N. S., & Twombly, J. (2000). State legislators' handbook for statutory rape issues. American Bar Association, Center on Children and the Law. pdf: https://www.ovc.gov/publications/infores/statutoryrape/handbook/statrape.pdf6

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Jinich, S., Paul, J. P., Stall, R., Acree, M., Kegeles, S., Hoff, C., & Coates, T. J. (1998). Childhood sexual abuse and HIV risk-taking behavior among gay and bisexual men. AIDS and Behavior, 2(1), 41-51. doi: 10.1023/A:1022307323744

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What is the relationship between top-down mechanism and priming the visual system in the following experiment?

This is potentially an example of a top-down influence on the visual system.

That is, if the experiment demonstrates as expected, that priming the visual system with a word influences the pattern of eye movements (compared to not priming) when free-viewing the following object, then that would support the conclusion of a top-down mechanism at work.

In Biased Competition Theory:

  Top-down processing is based on pre-existing knowledge when
  interpreting sensory information.

Top-down processes are contrasted with bottom-up processing that is based on sensory input alone - that is, it can be modelled using only features of the stimulus.  When attention (eg, eye movement) is directed in ways that are not accounted for by sensory input, this provides evidence for a top-down (higher level cognitive) mechanism.

Although much research on top-down effects on eye movement in scene viewing is done using visual search tasks, search targets are not necessary for demonstrating top-down effects, and many experiments use free-viewing (non-directed) tasks to test such effects.

One of the earlier studies showing evidence of top-down influence in free-viewing conditions is Parkhurst et al (2002), who tracked eye movements in free-viewing of various scenes.  Although bottom-up predictions correlated well with the data, some top-down influence was found as well.  Since then, most theories of visual attention incorporate both bottom-up and top-down mechanisms in visual processing, whether task-directed or not.

In fact, even conscious awareness is not necessary for top-down influence: Kiefer et al (2012) review the significant literature on top-down influence of masked (unconscious) priming of the visual system.  Per this review, priming the visual system in a variety of ways influences attention in a top-down manner.


What techniques are being used here to influence the subject to pick a certain outcome?

Priming is a phenomenon where an exposure to a stimulus affect/influences response to another stimulus. It is however, a broad definition which may or may not fully explains what actually happened in the video.

For what's it worth, I notice that number 7 was the only number (between 0-9) that didn't appear at all in any of the arithmetic calculations, answers or questions. But I can't say that I understand how this could influence subject's choice.


What you describe is the textbook definition of a habit: routines of behavior that are repeated regularly and tend to occur subconsciously. These are triggered by some external (say, being behind the driver's well of a car) or internal (say, being upset) stimuli. This activates chunks of procedural memory, which attempts to carry out a task that was usually associated with the stimuli (keeping the car on the road; eating a cake).
Although chunking is best understood for factual memories, a similar procedure is believed to apply for how procedural memories become a habit. Obviously, this is a highly researched topic, mostly because of the connection to addiction.
A final minor point is to be careful with terminology. Subconscious is a vague term that should typically be replaced by unconscious or preconscious.

Annotated references
Wood, W., & Neal, D.T. (2007) "A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface." Psychological Review, 114(4): 843-863. [pdf]

A relatively well know article that shows a model of how habits are shaped and interfere with or aid conscious goals.

Barnes, T.D., Kubota, Y., Hu, D., Jin, D.Z., & Graybiel, A.M. (2005) "Activity of striatal neurons reflects dynamic encoding and recoding of procedural memories." Nature 437, 1158-1161 [pdf]

A look at the neurobiology of chunking of procedural memory and habit formation in rats. Stresses how easy it is to reactivate old habits.

Graybiel, A.M. (2008) "Habits, Rituals, and the Evaluative Brain." Annual Review of Neuroscience 31: 359-387 [pdf]

Reviews evidence for the involvement of basal ganglia–based circuits in procedural chunking and habit formation. Show that habits form for both overt behaviors (say, backing your car out of the driveway) and cognitive behavior (say, general route planning).

Dehaenea, S., Changeux, J.-P., Naccachea, L., Sackura, J., and Sergent, C. (2006) "Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy" Trends in Cognitive Sciences 10(5): 204-211. [pdf]

Explains the difference between unconscious, preconscious, and subliminal and how to test for them.


What's the function of the clean-up memory in SPA?

SPA is used (among other things) for combining (binding) and extracting (unbinding) knowledge representations for processing. This is a (purposely) lossy compression. In the "Learning Rule Generation for Induction" case, the clean-up memory is used to convert a general transformation that is being learned (lots of different transformations convolved together) into a transformation that is already known. So basically it's associating the in-progress transformation to a known transformation.

This is why the "clean-up memory" is also called the "associative memory" in other SPA models and in Nengo 2.0.


Getting analysis of changes in MY brain upon cannabis consumption

Both the Amsterdam University (UvA) and Radboud University use a public online system for applying for participation in experiments. I forget which system UvA uses, but Radboud uses the sona system (just google it, you can creat an account). There you can see ongoing studies and apply for experiments. Both these cities are big research hubs for neuroimaging. And other universities surely also have similar systems for recruiting participants, but I don't have experience with them so I don't know.

That being said, nobody will tell you about the difference between your brain and other brains. This is simply not a topic of research. It's kind of like asking what's the difference between this grain of sand and all other grains - there are too many to list, the similarities stick out more clearly, and even if there are some differences who knows which ones are important. Neuroscience is a new thing, and we're still cataloging the basics. Unless there's something grossly distorted about your brain, nobody can give it a casual look and tell you something about your personality or behaviour. And if there is something grossly distorted, they'll contact your doctor, and not discuss it with you directly.

On the other hand, if there are marijuana studies you can take part and ask for feedback. At the Donders Institute in Nijmegen you can get a CD with your brain scan for your participation. But the feedback you get will depend on the question the researcher is asking. Typically this question would pertain to shared effects of marijuana on everyone, and not to individual differences. Individual differences studies are still rare, as they require huge numbers of participants while scanning resources are very limited and costly.


Just because masturbation doesn't interfere with everyday life, why aren't higher rates considered an addiction?

The frequency of a behavior is not what makes that behavior an addiction.

For example, take walking. Most people take hundreds, if not thousands of steps each day. Nevertheless walking is not considered an addiction in most cases. Why? It is not something that the organism must do to survive, it is a voluntary behavior, yet no-one would think you addicted to walking because you did not take the elevator or did not drive the 400 yards to the supermarket. On the contrary, it is generally recommended to walk whenever you can, for reasons of health.

The urge for a behavior does not make that behavior an addiction, either.

For example, most people feel a strong urge to eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and none of these behaviors are considered an addiction. Maybe sexuality is a physical need, and in the absence of a partner masturbation is better than "going hungry"?

The problem with masturbation is that even scientists find it difficult to look at it neutrally, because it is hard not to see it through the filter of our cultural norms on sexuality. Walking is not a taboo, it can be done in public and with anyone you want. Eating and sleeping can be done in public, although to a lesser degree, and even defecating is not suppressed with the same vehemence as sexuality: a man urinating against a tree in a park is not something you find overly idyllic, but most people would not call the police, because they know how it hurts to hold in, while a man masturbating in the same spot will find himself arrested rather quickly. Masturbation has been forbidden by religious rules, thought to cause illnesses, and today has the stigma of presumably signifying an inability to find a partner.

Once you strip away the morals and prejudices and look at masturbation with a cold eye, you will realize that many children indulge in it and only take a break while they are dressed. Children stop masturbating (in the presence of witnesses) only if they experience negative reactions to their behavior, i.e. only once they learn the norm that masturbation is something to be ashamed of.

It is this normative view from which a masturbating teenager might appear addicted. For the scientist, masturbation is a normal and healthy behavior, especially in a 13 year old teenager, who has gained a new function and a new level of sensory pleasure. For the scientist, it appears unnatural not to explore this ability.

As for masturbation in adults, as far back as 1948 Kinsey found that masturbation alleviates nervous tension and that men who masturbate lead a more balanced life. Sexuality appears not as voluntary as riding a bike, but rather has strong physiological and psychological effects that make sex appear to be normal and healthy behavior for an adult human being.

And if we have come to consider sleep lengths between four and twelve hours to be perfectly normal for adults of our species, why would we not be equally broadminded regarding sexuality? Maybe because indulging in any kind of pleasure is frowned upon in our performance-oriented society?

Sources:

Kinsey, A. C., Pomeroy, W. B., & Martin, C. E. (1948). Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders.


How to offer support to an American acquaintance with depression?

How untrained people should approach interactions with depressed people or any other mental health problem?
The main point to make is that you must not try to counsel them.
I believe you may have worked this out for yourself, and I don't want to sound patronising and "tell you how to suck eggs", but to be clear being untrained, you can cause more harm than good if you try to counsel them.
The only thing you can do is be a good listener and listen without judgement.
The moment you start to judge that person on what they say, you start to be harmful to them.
If faced with talk of suicide
If you are faced with talk of suicide, while Rebecca's answer in meta.stackexchange.com mentioned in the comments by @BryanKrause suggests not to repeat "canned comments about suicide hotlines", you do need to bear in mind your own position in all this.
Remember — trained or untrained, you cannot be there for that person 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It will not be healthy for you or them.
In a slightly different way to what is suggested in MTL's answer to the same question in meta.stackexchange.com you can tell them:

I am here to listen right now, but please bear in mind that I may not be here all the time. Any time I'm not around to talk to and you feel suicidal, there are helplines available for you to call too and a full list is available at http://suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html

When dealing with talk of suicide, Rebecca's answer is very good for pointers regarding worries you may have, so it may be beneficial for you to take some time to read through what she says.


Where to find recent most important studies and researches?

By definition all journals publish "recent studies" because they are publishing all the time (either on a monthly/qaurterly basis). Sometimes, journals publish articles online months before in print. However i think your question is about finding the best articles, rather than journals, and there are a few tricks.

If you have access to any good search engine (google scholar, web of science, scopus), you can perform searches in there, and then rank articles by number of citations. This will give you the most important and talked about studies, although by nature they will be quite old studies, since in order to be the most cited they have to be out for a while.

Another good trick is to use webofscience / webofknowledge feature which lets you look at articles that have cited a specific paper. Say you find a classic study that you want to find more recent research on, webofknowledge will let you find recent studies that have cited that paper.

Alternatively a good place to start is looking through review articles or textbooks first. You can find these by adding "review" to your search terms, e.g. ("Social learning" AND "animals" AND "review").

Finally, looking at the web pages of important researchers in a given field would be a good place to find recent research, usually they will have fairly up to date lists of their recent research If you've done a bit of reading then you should be able to identify key researchers in a given field.


How to get out of the habit of eating junk food?

Paul McKenna would be jumping on this question had it been a self-help question :)

Some of the causes/factors in habitual eating and strategies to combat habitual eating are described below.

Causes and factors of habitual eating

Excessive hunger may precipitate an episode of binge eating compared to average hunger levels (Haedt-Matt & Keel, 2011).
Negative moods, an immediate break-down of emotion and impulse regulation attempts can contribute to episodes of binge eating in Binge Eating Disorders (BED) (Munsch et al., 2012). Binge-eating behaviours can thus arise from negative moods as a substitution for positive strategies to alleviate those negative moods.
Depressive symptoms can predict the onset of overeacting and binge eating (Skinner et al., 2012). Similar to point two, these behaviours are a form of maladaptive coping mechanisms against negative affects.

Strategies to combat habitual eating

Cognitive Restructuring (CR) - Cognitive restructuring involves a problem-solving methodology where an individual identifies the maladaptive cognitions that are causing the unhelpful behaviour (Moffitt et al., 2012). This consists of rationalising and challenging disruptive thoughts that can cause the specific craving or binge eating behaviour. Moreover, it can involve the process of the replacement or modification of those disruptive thoughts into more healthy, positive thoughts.
Cognitive Defusion (CD) - Defusion from thoughts about food can improve the probability of distancing oneself from the temptation of food cravings (Moffitt et al., 2012). This involves acceptance (not passive resignation) of cravings and temptation of binge eating and build the experiential willingness to be open to these thoughts and temptations. For example, defusion would involve observing the thought associated with the craving - 'I notice I'm having the thought that I need to eat some chocolate' compared to a seemingly factual statement like 'I need to eat some chocolate'. The individual acknowledges the thought, thanks themselves and lets the thought dissipate in time.

References

Haedt-Matt, A.A. & Keel, P.K. (2011). Hunger and Binge Eating: A meta-analysis of studies using ecological momentary assessment. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 44(7), 573-578
Munsch, S., Meyer, A.H., Quartier, V. & Wilhelm, F.H. (2012). Binge eating in binge eating disorder: A breakdown of emotion regulatory process? Psychiatry Research, 195, 118-124
Skinner, H.H., Haines, J., Austin, S.B. & Field, A.E. (2011). A prospective study of overeating, binge eating, and depressive symptoms among adolescent and young adult women.
Journal of Adolescent Health, 50, 478-483
Moffitt, R., Brinkworth, G., Noakes, M. & Mohr, P. (2012). A comparison of cognitive restructuring and cognitive defusion as strategies for resisting a craved food. Psychology & Health, 27(2), 74-90


Is there a Dot-Probe Paradigm / visual-probe task available online?

There appears to be an Inquisit implementation of the dot probe task that will run both online and in a lab. Such scripts can presumably be customised to your purposes.

If you want to use this for research purposes, you would need to have access to a licence to Inquisit.

There is also a trial version of the software. You could download the trial of Inquisit and the script and run the script on your computer.


Can positive self-affirmation improve mood?

Self affirmations is a kind of meditation, that is a specific state of mind, guided consciously. This kind of activity itself amends the person into a more direct and ordered state, actively improving the balance between the functioning of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems.

This brings in the feeling of improvement and serves as a reward which helps to repeat self affirmation again. The more calm and ordered state of body lends even more control to the intellect which starts solving things, which also improves mood. This is widely used in medicine, for example, during child birth where the women are instructed to breathe calm and control the breath, which brings improvements of vital importance.

That being said, it is impossible to say, if self affirmation is primal. Maybe the fact itself of the sympathetic system function subsiding, gives birth to the feeling of improvement which is verbally perceived as a positive self affirmation. However, if free will is real then positive self affirmation is a good way to manifest it.

In any way the mechanism is complex and involves changing brain EM rhythms, probably with many other processes coming into play.


The first Schwartz Value Survey (SVS) was published in 1992 which consisted of 56 items. Since then, it has gone through a couple changes. A current version employs 57 items. The SVS56 and SVS57 are different, with one item changed and one item added in the SVS57. Schwartz & Sagiv (1995) is the first article using the SVS57.

A 'face' item was added in 2004, the final survey consisting of 58 items.

The SVS57 is available here with a short scoring key included as well. However, I recommend going through the full manual with additional resources, available here.


What is the fastest way to make an intermittent reinforced behavior become extinct?

The fastest way to extinct any behavior is negative reinforcement. But except few specific cases (e.g. self-biting), it's pretty much unethical. Regarding your 2 hypotheses: hypothesis 2 is the classical extinction paradigm. It will first get worse: the animal will repeatedly, almost obsessively, touch the button hoping for a reward. But it will eventually fade away (think weeks for total extinction though). Hypothesis 1 is hard to predict. I'm quite sure the dog will press the button if it remembers it (even after durations longer than in hypothesis 2). But it will probably fade away very quickly. In any case, this would avoid distress and confusion the animal would experience when pressing the button and not getting rewards. Whether it is faster or not is honestly anyone's guess and would presumably depend on how long you trained your dog, how big were the rewards he got and how memorable the button is.


Are cognitive flexibility and interference control the same thing?

Interference control is the ability to suppress irrelevant information (Gazzaniga, Ivry & Mangun, 2014). For example, ignoring the sound of the dishwasher in the other room while you are watching a TV show. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to switch between thinking about two (or more) different concepts (Scott, 1962). Cognitive flexibility is further divided into task switching (an unconscious behaviour) and cognitive switching (a conscious behaviour). Interference control and cognitive flexibility are different processes that are grouped under the wide range of functions associated with cognitive control.

References

Gazzaniga, M. S., Ivry, R. B., & Mangun, G. R. (2014). Cognitive Neuroscience: The biology of the mind (4th Ed.) New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Scott, William A. (1962). Cognitive complexity and cognitive flexibility. Sociometry. American Sociological Association. 25 (4): 405–414. doi:10.2307/2785779. JSTOR 2785779.


How does cognitive science explain distant intentionality and brain function in recipients?

Pseudoscience based on false premises and misuse of statistics, I'd say at first glance...but let's take a closer look at this article. First, I'm seeing among the references a lot of articles from journals with "alternative" in their titles, and other sources that strike me as either vaguely fishy or otherwise somewhat tangential. Not what I'd hope to get from an article claiming evidence of "distant intentionality".

Next, the one, lonely paragraph in which Achterberg and colleagues (2005) offer their own half-hearted explanation:

  Given that there are no known biological processes that can account for the significant effect of the DI protocol, the results of this study may be interpreted as consistent with
  the idea of entanglement in quantum mechanics theory [(Einstein, Podolsky, & Rosen, 1935)]. Entanglement has been confirmed to occur between photons, and many have speculated that certain highly organized macroscopic systems, including the brain, exhibit the property of entanglement with other complex systems [citation needed]. In a recent study evidence was found for nonlocal connections between separated preparations of human neurons [(Pizzi, Fantasia, Gelain, Rossetti, & Vescovi, 2004; wrong title listed in reference section)]. These findings, plus the current study correlating brain activity in two sensory-isolated humans do not fit the classic model of physics and can be interpreted as consistent with entanglement at the macroscopic level. [Emphasis added.]

Some pseudoscientific warning signs to note here:

The direct acknowledgement that biological science can't explain their results
One incredibly outdated reference from a physics journal about quantum entanglement

Einstein and colleagues' 1935 article! Hardly the modern authority on quantum mechanics.

"Many have speculated," with no citation as to who these "many" are or why anyone should care
One other reference to proceedings from a society for optical engineering...In their reference section (not visible in the version I've linked in my own references here), Achterberg and colleagues (2005) omit the last two authors' names and replace the word "separate" with "human" in the title for this article's entry. I've referenced it below properly, and provided a link; see what you think of it.

It mentions the Penrose–Hameroff model of quantum computation in neuron microtubules... Please see @ArtemKaznatcheev's take on that whole mess of quantum quackery.

Hardly any other attempts at explanation to be found throughout the very brief article.

Wouldn't you expect more effort and enthusiasm on their part if they really, honestly believed in this themselves, and actually knew what they were talking about? I sure would...

As for that significant effect that just can't be explained no matter how hard the authors (don't) try, why not scrutinize their entire results section and see what's to be made of it, since it's so comically short:

  RESULTS

  The FSL software produces a quantitative table of cluster results that includes: cluster size, probability for each cluster, $z$ scores, $x\ y\ z$ coordinates of the cluster in Talaraich space and contrast of parameter estimates (see Table 1). If a cluster is significant in a group analysis it means that there were specific brain regions in which the combined subjects had enough activation to raise the $z$ score above the noise level threshold.

  In other words, if all of the subjects had random activation at different places in the brain, then there would be no group activation. One of the two clusters was highly statistically significant $(p = 0.000127)$. Significant areas of apparent activation in the group analysis and total number of pixels activated for the group are reported in Table 2. A scan representing the group activation as a whole appears in Figure 2.

That's seriously the entire results section. There's actually a lot more work in the methods section to set up the analyses...but evidently this is all that came of it and is fit to report? I don't understand that decision, because Table 2 (also not visible in the version I've linked) seems to list two very small $p$ values, and a lot of other inscrutable statistical information. Then again, it's not clear to me that the authors even paid that much attention to what they were writing here, because the $p$ value from the table that they seem to refer to in the results section is actually one order of magnitude higher than they say in the results (i.e., the table lists $p = 0.00127$: three zeros, not four).

Setting all these qualms aside, consider one more—maybe the most important: the authors seem to be claiming evidence of a process they don't understand (we might as well call it "quantum magic") based on a single $p$ value. I'd bet that's only good enough to convince people who really don't understand what it means in the first place. If you want to give these statistics some serious thought, I'd recommend starting with Wagenmakers (2007) and colleagues (2011). The first of these explains a wide variety of problems with $p$ values as they are commonly (mis)used and (mis)interpreted. The second takes a particularly close look at some much higher-profile quackery that made it into one of the biggest journals in my field (Bem, 2011). Bem's pseudoscientific article caused quite a stir, because it claimed even better evidence of precognition, and because Bem actually had a decent reputation as a social psychologist going into this fiasco...but now his Wikipedia page has this sad blemish of a section, and it's all quite unsympathetic, as you can see for yourself. Maybe this is the price of bringing bad work into the spotlight; there but for the grace of obscurity and mediocrity go Achterberg and colleagues (2005).

Still, Bem's (2011) a much better story in pseudoscience, as far as they go. If you're looking for the light reading version, you can find it in my article for WhatTheFreud.com, a website for psychology articles that a colleague / friend / former bandmate of mine made. That reminds me, I owe him another article...Maybe I'll try to dig up and synthesize some theories that could explain why so many of us are so desperate to believe in magic that we'll believe the first person who can throw a sufficiently confusing set of numbers at us and claim that they support just the right kind of magic we want to believe in (e.g., for your anecdotal reasons; not that I blame you for wanting to believe). Maybe I'll try to find a study of the harm journals do by having such shoddy standards for the work they accept...or maybe I'll just try to keep it light and write one about the Sokal affair. Now there was a guy who knew what it really means to get published in some random journal somewhere: it means you can successfully convince some small group of people that you know more than they do, and not necessarily anything more.

References
- Achterberg, J., Cooke, K., Richards, T., Standish, L. J., Kozak, L., & Lake, J. (2005). Evidence for correlations between distant intentionality and brain function in recipients: A functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis. Journal of Alternative & Complementary Medicine: Research on Paradigm, Practice, and Policy, 11(6), 965–971. Retrieved without figures, tables, or references from http://stpresskit.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/evidence-for-correlations.pdf.
- Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3), 407–425. Retrieved from http://caps.ucsf.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/bem2011.pdf.
- Einstein, A., Podolsky, B., & Rosen, N. (1935). Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete? Physical Review, 47(10), 777.
- Pizzi, R., Fantasia, A., Gelain, F., Rossetti, D., & Vescovi, A. (2004). Non-local correlation between separated neural networks. In E. Donkor, A. R. Pirick, & H. E. Brandt (Eds.), Quantum Information and Computation II. Proceedings of SPIE, 5436, 107–117. Retrieved from http://air.unimi.it/bitstream/2434/30203/2/spie2004.pdf.
- Wagenmakers, E. J. (2007). A practical solution to the pervasive problems of $p$ values. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14(5), 779–804. Retrieved from http://www.brainlife.org/reprint/2007/Wagenmakers_EJ071000.pdf.
- Wagenmakers, E. J., Wetzels, R., Borsboom, D., & Van der Maas, H. (2011). Why psychologists must change the way they analyze their data: The case of psi. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 426–432. Retrieved from http://mpdc.mae.cornell.edu/Courses/MAE714/Papers/Bem6.pdf.


Is there evidence to suggest that receiving angry emails increases stress levels?

The reaction to an angry email is just the same as reacting to any angry comment (verbal or written). It is usually seen as a provocation and triggers the urge to retaliate or invoke self-defense. The mental stress is a consequence of this situation. Often this stress is transient.

I have no nowledge of any documented evidence of stress or the level and duration of the same.


Is there an R implementation of the linear ballistic accumulator model or Ratcliff's diffusion model for measuring response time and accuracy?

Here are a few options. I have not tried them yet personally.

As mentioned below, the rtdists package in R is able to fit both LBA and diffusion models.

Other Options

LBA

Scott Brown has a copy of Donkin et al (2009) on his web page with some code in R, Excel, and WinBUGS for fitting the LBA model:

http://www.newcl.org/publications/DonkinAverellEtAl2009BRM.pdf
http://www.newcl.org/members/chris/fitLBA.zip

There's also the glba package on CRAN by Ingmar Visser.

http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/glba/index.html

Diffusion model

The Diffussion model is available as a matlab toolbox called (DMAT).

References

Donkin, C., Averell, L., Brown, S.D., & Heathcote, A. (2009) Getting more from accuracy and response time data: Methods for fitting the Linear Ballistic Accumulator model. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1095-1110. PDF
Vandekerckhove, J., & Tuerlinckx, F. (2008). Diffusion model analysis with MATLAB: A DMAT primer. Behavior Research Methods, 40, 61-72. doi:10.3758/BRM.40.1.61 PDF


Dynamical systems (basically all of them) display a wide repertoire of dynamics when tuned close to criticality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_phenomena). In this range, organized patterns of activity emerge, close to those that we find when looking at statistical dependencies between time series recording (at least partially) brain activity.

Long range correlations also emerge in this phase.

So, it's true that dynamical models tuned close to criticality better fit brain activity. On the other hand saying that "brain activity is critical" is a logical fallacy, since we are giving to the modelled system properties of the model.

(chaos is a close concept, stressing the dependency on initial conditions, but in this case I think that criticality is more relevant).

See, among other things, this scientific yet accessible paper

Beggs, J. M., & Timme, N. (2012). Being Critical of Criticality in the Brain. Frontiers in Physiology, 3. doi:10.3389/fphys.2012.00163

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2012.00163/full


Is there any study on the effectiveness of taking notes in a lecture vs taking notes on written materials?

The primary value of taking notes by hand is not the record that you create, but that the act of taking notes causes your brain to engage more deeply with the material.  You might never look at your notes again, but taking them has a strong positive effect on your ability to understand and remember the material that you are taking the notes about.

As such, you could potentially get similar value not by copying but by summarizing a text by hand.  Taking notes in lecture gives at least one additional benefit: it provides a focused block of time in which distractions are less available to you.  With a good lecturer, you get a second benefit: a lecturer is often much better than a text at directing your attention to the most important concepts in material.


Do safety features cause drivers to engage in more risky behavior than they otherwise would?

Any review in this area should start with Peltzman's 1975 JPE article.  Peltzman was writing a few years after the 1968 Motor Vehicle Safety Act (U.S.) went into effect.  The act required, among other things, padded dash boards and seat belts.  He says (p. 717):

  The  one result of this study that can  be put  forward most
  confidently is  that  auto  safety  regulation  has  not  affected
  the  highway  death  rate.  Neither the time-series nor cross-section
  data permit any other conclusion.  However,  these data are not as
  decisive about what underlies this result.  On  one interpretation,
  safety regulation has decreased the  risk of death  from an accident
  by more than an unregulated market would  have,  but  drivers have
  offset this by taking greater accident risk.

In general, the idea is that seat belts and other safety devices may save lives if the accident rate is held constant, but that in reality, wearing a seat belt may induce more risk taking and thus more accidents overall (moral hazard, or Peltzman's "compensating behavior").  Then, it is not obvious whether more accidents which are, on average, less fatal will result in more deaths overall.

Of course, Peltzman didn't settle the matter.  More recently, Cohen and Eniav (2003) found the opposite--that safety devices unambiguously save lives and that there is no evidence of additional risk-taking by seat belt wearers.  Levitt and Porter (2001) came to a similar conclusion (this later paper is worth reading because it brings to light the issue of sample selection problems (à la Heckman), and a way of correcting for it).  It seems, at least for seat belts, that the matter has been settled by these later papers.  But, these lines of research highlight that, in general, we cannot say for certain what the net effect of safety regulations will be a priori.

Interestingly, the Cohen paper focuses on primary enforcement, that is, providing incentives to use safety devices (or, rather, disincentives for not using them) beyond the live-saving benefits.  This would tend to cause people who wouldn't ordinarily use safety devices to use them.  If it is true that drivers are compensating for their unsafe behavior by using safety devices, then more safe drivers would be induced to use the devices and the moral hazard may be somewhat offset.  This tends to indicate that non-optional safety improvements may have a larger impact on deaths per mile than optional safety improvements.

Oh, and here is the spiked steering wheel comic you are looking for.


Research suggesting conscious control over brain region activation?

Yes! Recent work using fMRI has shown that subjects can indeed control localized brain regions through practice [1]. Some regions that have been tested include the rostal ACC [2] responsible for pain perception, PPA responsible for representing locations, and FFA responsible for representing faces. Repeated experiments seem to suggest the phenomenon is robust, and that the technique may not be particular to regulating any specific brain region but could work on many brain regions given the proper experimental design.
Typically, these experiments work by utilizing real-time fMRI, a technique that allows real-time biofeedback of brain activation to be presented to a subject in an fMRI scanner. In these experiments, a subject may specifically be instructed to "up-regulate" or "down-regulate" activation in a brain region by performing a specific task. For instance, a subject can "up-regulate" activation in the fusiform face area (FFA) by mentally picturing faces. Consequently, feedback is presented to the subject (e.g., as a 'thermometer') indicating level of activation of the FFA.
Interestingly, subjects become better at up-regulating or down-regulating activation in specific brain regions by attending to feedback-- even moreso than subjects who do not receive biofeedback. This is reflected both in the fMRI images and subjective reports from the subjects. This technique has potential implications for rehabilitation, e.g. giving chronic pain patients another tool to cope with their disorder.
The technique has even been used to up-regulate abstract, distributed patterns across the brain. For instance, Stephen LaConte and colleagues have used a machine learning technique called support-vector machines to classify abstract patterns such as 'craving' or 'not craving', represented as a distributed pattern of brain activity. Using real-time fMRI, smokers have been able to learn to control their cravings through instruction and biofeedback.
I believe similar findings have been shown using EEG as well, though I am not as familiar with the literature. However, there is evidence that subjects using an EEG brain-computer interface to control an on-screen keyboard become better with practice, which suggests that they are able to manipulate their brain patterns in order to perform the task.
References

de Charms et al. (2004). Learned regulation of spatially localized brain activation using
real-time fMRI. NeuroImage, 21, 436-443. Retrieved from http://www.christofflab.ca/pdfs/deCharms_2004_Neuroimage.pdf

de Charms et al. (2005). Control over brain activation and pain learned
by using real-time functional MRI. PNAS, 102,
18626–18631. Retrieved from http://www.stanford.edu/~fumiko/publications.files/Hoeft(Maeda)_2005PNASdeCharms.pdf


Grid cells : Between what is the correlation of autocorrelogram measured?

Autocorrelation is calculated between the spikes-histogram and itself.

The experiment is carried out while the activity of a specific neuron is recorded.

Histogram - An animal runs in a circular arena which we divide into multiple squared bins, whenever the cell fires (i.e. generate an action potential) 1 counter is added to the location (the bin) in which the animal is currently located.
Autocorrelation - Two instances of the spikes histogram are observed such that one is "placed on-top of the other" and the correlation between the two instances is calculated.

When the two instances are perfectly aligned, their
autocorrelation is 1 (they perfectly match).
Now we start moving one of the instances. The match between the two instances is not perfect (the autocorrelation is smaller than 1) but because there are peaks (at the spikes-histogram) all across the arena, if we shift one of the instances such that it would be "on top" of another peak (e.g. each peak is aligned with the peak directly to its right) the autocorrelation would, once again, equal 1.
(τX,τY) - The shift of one of the instances is carried out for every value of x and y of the arena (i.e. for every phase) and the value of autocorrelation for each (τX,τY) shift of the first instance relative to the stationary second instance is plotted - this is what the autocorrelation figure shows.

What should we learn from the autocorrelation figure - That the cell response is indeed represented by a grid. The figure exemplifies that when the spikes histogram is shifted in a single full period (i.e. to the next peak) it fully matches itself, so the grid pattern indeed characterize similarly the whole arena (tessellating it).


Is there a mechanical/vibrational communication method between pre- and post-synaptic terminals in addition to chemical and electrical synapses?

Short answer
Action potentials travelling through the axon are accompanied by a mechanical displacement of the axonal membrane.
Background
Multiple studies have shown that a mechanical displacement of the axonal membrane accompanies an action potential. Hady & Machta (2015) used a computer model to show that these mechanical displacements are generated by the storage of energy  in the neuronal membrane when the action potential travels through the axon that alter the compressive electrostatic forces across the membrane. These forces lead to co-propagating mechanical displacements accompanying the action potentials, which the authors have dubbed 'action waves' (Hady & Machta, 2015).
It is important to realize that the action potential drives the action wave and communication between neurons. As far as I understand, the action wave has no known physiological function in neural communication, although it is a point of debate (Fox, 2018).
Reference
- Fox, Sci Am (2018), April issue
- Hady & Machta, Nat Comm (2015); 6: 6697


How to understand what a low score or high score is for a particular measure?

First, a minor point is that the TIPI is a very poor measure of individual-level personality. Two item measures of personality are rarely justifiable. Standard errors of measurement are unnecessarily large.

In general, you are talking about the topic of norms and standardized scores.
Any introductory book on psychological measurement will discuss topics related to standardised scores and norms.

General thoughts about defining a high and low score:

1. Define your population.

You need to define your target population. E.g., Just males? Just females? What ages? What country? etc.

2. Obtain estimates of norms for that population.

You then need to get a sample estimate of that population. In some cases, the test manual may provide this. In other cases, you can look to the published literature to see various normative samples.

3. Calculate statndardized scores

You then need to compute a standardized score that relate an a particular respondent's score to the norms. Percentile ranks are one way of doing this. Other approaches are based on z-scores (i.e., where the raw score is scales to mean of zero and an standard deviation of 1). For example, t scores are the same as z-scores, but mean is 50 and standard deviation is 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_score

Note that these standardized scores are always contingent on your norm sample.

There are also a range of more sophisticated approaches that are sometimes applied. For example, if you are doing cognitive testing in children, you can interpolate norms between ages, so for example, the norm for a 6.5 year old is different to a 6.8 year old.

4. Define cut-offs

The definition of high and what scores are low, average, and high is somewhat arbitrary. You probably want to think about your application and what the consequences will be of these categorical designations.

That said, I think based on natural language, I think a reasonable starting point (using z-scores where mean is 0 and standard deviation is 1) would be:

Low: z-score < -1
Average: -1 < z-score < 1
High: z-score > 1

I'd probably use language to also say that

Very low: z-score < -2
Very high: z-score > 2

Assuming a normal distribution, about a sixth of the distribution would be the low category, and another sixth would be in the high category.
If the distribution is not normal (e.g., you have floor or ceiling effects), then you may prefer percentiles for the full distributions or raw scores, but in cases of published articles, you probably wont have that.

Applying to the TIPI Example

Thus, for sake of illustration, here is how you would apply this to the above

For extraversion where the mean is 4.44 and SD is 1.45, then you might have cut-offs of low < 2.99 < average < 5.89.

Anyway, as noted above, the publication present several different norms by gender and race. You may even have your own norms that is more relevant to your context.


Is the weight of neural inputs in the human brain as central as it is for neurons in an artifical neural network?

The general biological term for this kind of mechanism is synaptic plasticity. Synapses are the biological structure that allow neurons to communicate via the exchange of neurotransmitters. The strength of the synapse (the effectiveness of the link between the neurons) can be modified over time.

One important kind of modification is long-term potentiation, first reported by Bliss and Lømo in 1973. They demonstrated that short term bursts of activity in a neural pathway can cause long term augmentation of the post-synaptic response. In artificial neural network terms, they were able to demonstrate something akin to an increase in the connection strength between two neurons.


Can't we teach other intelligent animals "complex" languages?

Many researchers into animal language have presented results of studies as evidence of linguistic abilities in animals. Many of their conclusions have been disputed (Jannedy, Poletto, & Weldon, 1994; Wallman, 1992).
It is now generally accepted that apes can learn to sign and are able to communicate with humans.
The Smithsonian Institution talked about apes communicating and the following are YouTube videos of a gorilla communicating through sign language
A Conversation With Koko
Koko signing with Robin Williams (with translation in subtitles)
References
Jannedy, S., Poletto, R., & Weldon, T. L. (Eds.). (1994). Language files: materials for an introduction to language & linguistics. Ohio State University Press.
Wallman, J. (1992). Aping Language. Cambridge University Press.


Would a patient benefit from continuing cognitive therapy even after solving his pathology?

No, people who have experienced some psychopathology, went into cognitive therapy and resolved their problems would most likely not benefit strongly from continuing cognitive therapy. However, they may still benefit from additional therapy in case of relapsing or future problems.
Cognitive therapy
Cognitive therapy is a short-term therapy that was designed to "modify an individual's idiosyncratic, maladaptive ideation" (Beck, 1970).

The basic cognitive technique consists of delineating the individual's specific misconceptions, distortions, and maladaptive assumptions, and of testing their validity and reasonableness. By loosening the grip of his perseverative, distorted ideation, the patient is enabled to formulate his experiences more realistically.

Strictly speaking, therefore, once maladaptive ideation can no longer be detected in the individual, the individual's problem is solved to the extent it can be solved, at least insofar as cognitive therapy's notion of psychopathology is concerned. This does not necessarily mean the patient is problem-free, only free of detectable problems that cognitive therapy applies to.
References

Beck, A. T. (1970). Cognitive therapy: Nature and relation to behavior therapy. Behavior therapy, 1(2), 184-200.


Is a low Emotional Intelligence (EQ) pathological?

Shortly , a low EQ is not a sufficient condition to diagnose a mental psychiatric disorder.

This is the DSM-V Proposal for the Definition of Mental/Psychiatric Disorder

All these features have to be satisfied in order to diagnose a Psychopathology. Having said that, a low emotional intelligence is a risk factor to contract a Mental Disease. According to Eisenberg (1995), our mind is influenced by biological and social factors and we shouldn't embrace simplifying approaches.

Finally, a good psychiatrist has to consider four perspectives from which to view a psychopathology:

1) The disease perspective: in which patient is identified whith his illness

2) The behavior perspective: which looks at the behavior of the patient

3) The dimensional perspective: which looks at cognitive and emotional dimensions of the patient

4) The life story perspective: which looks at the life story of the patient

References

Dan J. Stein, Katharine A. Phillips, Derek Bolton, K.W.M Fulford, John Z. Sadler, and Kenneth S. Kendler "What is a Mental/Psychiatric Disorder? From DSM-IV to DSM-V"
Eisenberg L. The social construction of the human brain , "Am J Psychiatry 1995; 152: 1563-75


The majority of researchers believe it has to do with relief to the flight or fight system and related to human bonding.

For example, we hear the phrase "laughter is contagious". That's because we want to let others know we have good feelings towards them and would like to connect at some level but in a quick and non-direct way.

However, for situations where the joke may be "dangerous", Suslov's theory is better understood. I have also personally witnessed it many times. This kind of laughter follows the familiar model: "Oh no, I hope he doesn't say something that pokes fun or embarrasses me in this social setting". Next, you hear the joke and realizing it doesn't embarrass you (too much) the relief and release of energy transmutes into a laugh.

Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laughter#Causes

Reference:
How Laughter Works:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/inside-the-mind/emotions/laughter.htm


Measuring serotonin in the brain with a sample of spinal fluid

It is entirely possible to sample serotonin levels from cerebral spinal fluid (CFS) taken via a lumbar puncture, also known as a spinal tap, to the spinal column from the central nervous system (CNS).

This is the most accurate method of measuring neurotransmitter levels in the brain* without risking damage to cerebral tissue, although it is safer and almost as accurate to take the sample from platelets extracted a blood sample. The reason it is safer is because you don't have to go through nerve tissue, and because CSF does not contain the defences of blood to deal with toxins and pathogens (potential infections).
note. It is perhaps more accurate to use a tissue sample, although this would take longer to analyse and damage grey matter. In animal studies we use in vivo microdialysis, but this is only worthwhile in controlled (extremely clean) experimental conditions.


Where to obtain full set of IPIP items on the internet?

The IPIP website provides what I think is a complete list of the items:

There is a a table of contents here: http://ipip.ori.org/newIPIPitemsTOC.htm

and this appears to be a complete list of items: http://ipip.ori.org/new2413Items.htm


Can "fire together, wire together" be undone?

The phrase "fire together, wire together" comes from an explanation of Hebbian Learning and refers to the adaptation of synapses as a response to the firing of already connected neurons. This is one of several Synaptic Plasticity mechanisms. Two others that exist are Long Term Potentiation (strengthening and creation) and Long Term Depression (weakening and destruction).

All of these mechanisms are still being researched heavily to understand their detail better. However, I hope this gives you a good starting point.


Using Cognitive biases for behavior change?

CBM is not so much a theoretical framework but rather a label attached to a collection of methods and biases. In a way, this reflects the state of research on heuristics and biases, at least in behavioral economics. As many famed findings in the field have come from attempts to "disprove" traditional economic theory, the resulting effects (biases) have often remained without a satisfying explanation in the form of a plausible cognitive process. This has hindered
the formulation of a common theoretical framework in which various biases
could be classified (according to, e.g., underlying cognitive mechanisms,  preconditions w.r.t. context and subject, effective interventions).

(To name an exception, a framework covering comparison selection was recently proposed by Simonson, Bettman, Kramer & Payne 2012. The authors cover a number of effects which may commonly be labeled "biases". In addition, various frameworks based on some form of dual-process theory have been proposed, but there is a lot of redundancy between them.)

In addition, the "heuristics and biases" literature has remained largely separate from the psychology of behavior change and, arguably, from cognitive psychology. Look no further than the popular "Nudge" by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein: almost all of their implications are derived directly from the biases "as effects" rather than being derived within a more general framework grounded in cognitive process theory.

In short, to the best of my knowledge, the framework that you seek does not exist. I expect that you will find it necessary to devise behavior change strategies one bias at a time.

As a final remark, the heuristics and biases literature has been criticized for tarnishing what may actually be highly adaptative and efficient cognitive strategies (see the illuminating works by Gerd Gigerenzer). Accordingly, many a bias may be exploitable only under rather specific and unusual circumstances.


What experiment in a simple decision task should we run to obtain one million trials?

I like this idea! I think the task should be one where the data could be used by many analytic tools. Hence, the data would not only be beneficial for one particular question, for example parameter estimations, but also for other tools such as Systems Factorial Technology (see Townsend & Nozawa, 1995), which provides a deeper understanding of the underlying cognitive sub-processes architecture, and other interesting information such as the process' capacity.

I suggest that the task at least respect a double factorial paradigm. This design is very simple: you have four conditions in a 2 x 2 design, where you vary two variables. It could be any variable, the only restriction is that you have to vary them independently one from another. In other words, each variable should reflect a cognitive sub-process. In one condition, both variables are in scenario where the sub-process should work very effectively (or optimally). In an other condition, both variables are in a scenario where the sub-process should work less effectively (or sub-optimally). And in the two remaining conditions, one variable works optimally and the other sub-optimally, and vice-versa.

As for the very details of the task, such as the stimuli that will be used and the specific variables, I do not have preferences. Letters are very manipulable, but they do carry semantic (more or less). Abstract stimuli could work. We could play with color, shapes, complexity, etc. At Psychonomics this year, they were many experiments which have use this design.

Reference for citation:
Townsend, J. T. & Nozawa, G. (1995). Spatio-temporal properties of elementation perception an investigation of parallel, serial, and coactive theories. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 39(4), 321–359. doi: 10.1006/jmps.1995.1033


"How easily can you succumb to propaganda and manipulation" test

Historical examples as mentioned in the comments, include: Asch's Conformity Experiment; Milgram's Obediance Experiment; and similarly, the Stanford Prison Experiment by Zimbardo.

Zimbardo's experiment had more to do with situational forces and taking on an assumed role. A brief synopsis: He randomly assigns healthy students to either guard of prisoner roles in a mock basement prison. They assume their roles with striking commitment, which leads to some unfortunate interactions between the guards and prisoners. Some of his rhetoric would probably suit your story nicely. In the later chapters of his book published after the conclusion of the experiment, Zimbardo discusses his idea of a "hero" able to resist the situational forces. He believes this to be a latent attribute within an individual, and that leads us towards personality psychology. It is more akin to Asch's study, in that there is no true "authority" but rather situational forces brought about by other conforming peers.

As far as an specific test, I believe the Big Five Inventory can be adapted to your purposes. In personality psychology, it is regarded as a rather valid and consistent tool. Some of the metrics included could predispose an individual to obedience. Some examples that come to mind:

Agreeableness: Includes applicable measures of trust and compliance

Conscientiousness: Perhaps some use of self-discipline and dutifulness would identify as positive traits for an obedient character (thinking soldier or the like).

Openness to Experience: Scoring highly in measures of curiosity and values may make a character less apt to be obedient.

Source - Also includes a 44-item sample inventory.


Why is empathy not a part of the Big 5 personality traits?

The basic goal of research on the big 5 is to identify those dimensions of personality that can account for the most important differences between people.

How do you determine what is important and "makes the list"? The research from which the Big Five have been derived relies on the lexical hypothesis. In a nutshell, the idea is that if a trait is important, it should be part of our language. So personality researchers such as Allport and Cattell have devised long lists of words existing in our lexicon used to describe the traits of people. Then they asked people to judge themselves with regard to these traits. Finally, they tried to identify underlying (common) dimensions in these trait descriptions by using statistical analyses (e.g. factor analyses). For example, if someone agrees to being a "friendly" person, he or she will probably also agree to being a person who "cares about people". These analyses resulted in the 5 very broad dimensions of personality.

What about empathy? Empathy is highly related to agreeableness. In fact, if you look at personality questionnaires, the agreeableness scales are likely to tap into empathy:

For example, the NEO agreeableness subscale of the International Personality Item Pool includes items such as:
"[I] Am concerned about others." or "[I] Sympathize with others' feelings." which are essentially items measuring empathic concern.
The NEO-PI-R (Costa & Macrae, 1992) is one of the most widely used Big Five questionnaires (with 240 items it's a pretty large and comprehensive one). It describes agreeableness as "the kinds of interactions an individual prefers from compassion to tough mindedness." It has two sub-scales that are related to empathy: Altruism ("active concern for the welfare of others") and Tender-Mindedness ("attitude of sympathy for others.").

This makes clear that from the perspective of the Big Five, empathy may be regarded as an element of agreeableness.

In line with this, agreeableness predicts specific measures of empathic concern and prosocial behavior such as helping.

All of the above should not imply that it has no value to think about and measure empathy as a specific trait (rather than the general agreeableness factor). This is just about different research goals. The goal of the Big 5 is to be maximally parsimonious. Some detail will be lost by this strategy. However, if you are specifically interested in empathy, it may make more sense to focus on it at the cost of parsimony.


How to convince subjects that the computer is playing fairly

I'm imagining a system that chooses the computer's response not in a stochastic manner, but chaotically. Suppose you have some chaotic mapping function from the [0,1] interval to the {heads, tails} set. Choosing any real number in the set will get you some deterministic mapping to heads or tails. This mapping equation should be quite complex, but made visible to the user. Have them choose a number in [0, 1], and you'll get an output that appears random, but could be computed if the user chose to take the time. You just need to make the mapping function complex enough that it's not easily computable to rig the game, and also such that it maps 50% to heads and 50% to tails.


Are people who have a crush on someone generally delusional with respect to their crush?

Unrequited love is so common that it is funny. Most childhood crushes begin as such because children are unable to identify who is interested in them. More difficult it becomes when no one is inclined to be in love with them. Being a normal person attachments form to those nearest who show compassion or have some physically appealing trait. Such beings irrational behavior based on the lack of psychological health in a person's life. Therapy can help identify why a person needs love from that individual and why they can't accept the lack of interest. Then it can help identify more suitable candidates for love who bear the same attractable traits. Finally it helps someone develop greater self-esteem and help them move on and cope with the strong pain of rejection.

Due to the symptoms of their illnesses, those with dependency, attachment or borderline personality disorders are more likely to experience unrequited love or even become obsessed with a person.

In the most extreme and rare form stalking and erotomania can happen as a result of psychosis. These instances are actually disillusion. Normally this occurs with those who have a history of bipolar or schizo typical and are symptomatic, not under a doctors care or taking anti-psychotics.

The literature describes the changes which happen in a normal person's brain caused by love not as delusion but as bias. It has been shown that if you trust someone and you love them your more likely to overlook their faults and systematically misremember their transgressions. Moreover though beauty is in the eye of the beholder it is likewise enhanced by love. The person you love appears more attractive than they would otherwise. This is probably an evolutionary adaption to promote long lasting relationships.


Is self-infallibility a mental disorder?

I've not seen self-infallibility listed anywhere; however, there are a few psychological constructs that may be useful:

Dark Triad
DSM5 - Conduct Disorder
DSM5 - Narcissistic Personality Disorder
DSM5 - Antisocial Personality Disorder

Overconfidence may be a synonym for self-infallibility in the context you are thinking.  Overconfidence would normally be thought of as a component of narcissism.
More information would probably be required to distinguish between the four identified psychological constructs but hopefully these four links are a starting point for further research.
References
Jones, D. N., & Paulhus, D. L. (2014). Introducing the Short Dark Triad (SD3): A Brief Measure of Dark Personality Traits. Assessment, 21(1), 28–41. https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191113514105


Name this partner selection experiment where participants can see the value of others but not themselves and seek to pair with high value others?

I did not find a textbook that mentioned this activity, but I found several articles that describe this Pairing Game. Ellis & Kelly (1999) describe two variations on the game and its use in the classroom. Lewis & Gurung (2003) describe expanding the original game in order to teach additional relationship and social psychology theories. Elias & Pratkanis (2006) review a range of in-class psychology exercises, including the Lewis and Gurung paper. Eastwick & Buck (2014) describe making the game more complicated (but also more realistic) by incorporating a social relations model.

Eastwick, P. W., & Buck, A. A. (2014). Too Much Matching A Social
Relations Model Enhancement of the Pairing Game. Teaching of
Psychology, 41(3), 246-250.
Elias, S. M., & Pratkanis, A. R. (2006). Teaching social influence:
Demonstrations and exercises from the discipline of social
psychology. Social Influence, 1(2), 147-162.
Ellis, B. J., & Kelley, H. H. (1999). The pairing game: A classroom
demonstration of the matching phenomenon. Teaching of Psychology,
26(2), 118-121.
Lewis, B. P., & Gurung, R. A. (2003). Mixing, matching, and mating:
Demonstrating the effect of contrast on relationship satisfaction.
Teaching of Psychology, 30(4), 303-306.


Does a true hallucination need to go away while plugging one's ears?

A hallucination is a perception in the absence of external stimulus that has qualities of real perception and hallucinations can occur in different ways.

Visual hallucinations can occur with the eyes open or closed (see also).  Visual hallucinations can also occur with people who have lost their sight

Just like visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations can also occur with the ears open or plugged.  To highlight the point, I suffer with tinnitus and I hear the noise with my ears plugged or open. Auditory hallucinations can also occur in people with hearing loss


This is my opinion, based on what I know about how the brain works. As all process within the brain are physiological processes. It must be acknowledged, that what we know now about the brain, will, most likely, seem simplistic, to future generations; as more research is done. Will provide some quotes from the links I've provided, as I have time.

I don't wish to get bogged down in a debate about what “personality” is, traits, state etc. For the sake of this argument, let's assume personality is the most "natural" way of being of a person. Those innate impulses that arise from the "subconscious" parts of the brain, and these can either be allowed to flow (depending on social context and impulses) or require vigorous conscious action by the frontal lobe, to inhibit action upon such impulses. This latter comment regarding inhibiting these does not pertain to the actual “personality”, but to the efforts required to make conscious change and is a measure of the difficulty in bringing about fundamental personality change.

So for the purpose of this argument, I am viewing personality as the subconscious impulses that arise from the brain.

Which then brings us to the question. What is causing these impulses? To make it short, Long Term Potentiation) LTP of various neural pathways within the brain.  There is no guarantee that a connection between two neurons will fire. It is the priming of the synaptic cleft , the membrane endings and contents of both neurons that increases the likelihood that the a connection will form between two neurons. When a pathway is formed, that is “permanent” (as close to permanent as something can be in the brain), it means that pathway of the brain has been Long Term Potentiated. So the neurons fire to form that thought/action/feeling, effortlessly and reliably.

Which brings us to the next question. How is the brain Long Term Potentiated? To make it short (again), for “ordinary” activities; like learning the piano, or not to interrupt people when they are talking; reiteration of experience. The more dull the consequences of each iteration, the more iterations required.  Which works, conversely, as in the case of trauma, where there is a cascade of chemicals throughout the body that assists in the LTP of the neural paths being used during the experience.

This then brings us to the next question. How does change one's personality or one “undo” or “reduce” LTP of parts of the brain, we’d like to change and bring about “LTP” of pathways in the brain we find desirable. Now this is the key to answering the OP’s question, Can personalities change within a period of a few years (as opposed to decades).

As already mentioned in one answer, well-practiced psychotherapy (whatever you’d like to call it) relies on the concept of undoing LTP and LTP different pathways. Also, as mentioned in another answer, trauma creates a rapid change in LTP of pathways in the brain.

Now, I say this, using the logic of my above points; From my observation of human beings, my own efforts in life to change my personality and study of neuroscience and interest in psychology and psychiatry. I can honestly say, I have come to the conclusion, that it is most difficult and unlikely that any significant change can be made to someone’s personality, without the use of severe methods. One can practice overcoming (in this case), the action of behaving as a shy person, but the experience of social anxiety will remain and lag. It will eventually change. As the brain is plastic and we can mold it through repetition. However it, usually, would take longer than a few years for the internal changes to follow. This is something that can be achieved over half a life time, but the outward change of behavior, does not equal an inward change of personality; it can be a reflection of a person’s willingness to bring about change (and is most certainly a step in the right direction in achieving change). Look at many disciplines, martial arts, many spiritual vocations, it takes many years for the person to evolve. Which is a change in personality. And in these cases this is people living a full-time existence to transform their personalities. So the poor, every day, folk, with all of life’s pressures bearing down upon them, it makes it even harder to consciously override our natural impulses.

I should add, that it's the gamut of human experience that shapes who we are, combined with the natural chemistry. I have not covered this as in depth as would be to give this discussion full due.

As this site is a minefield of potential controversy and arguments over semantics. For the purposes of this answer I am using “words” that I am defining for the use of this passage here, and the debatable semantics of their use is outside of the scope of the OP’s question. So please comment on the merits and principle of my answer, that addresses the question and not points off topic.

BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (1997) 20, 597–655
Long-term potentiation: What’s
learning got to do with it?
Tracey J. Shors
Louis D. Matzel
http://hargreaves.swong.webfactional.com/bbs97.pdf


How does excess of dopamine affect one's mental health?

Not all medications administer dopamine in the same way.

For treating Parkinson's specifically, dopamine-boosting medications such as L-DOPA (which are notable for their ability to cross the blood-brain barrier, which dopamine itself cannot do) are often administered with a DOPA decarboxylase inhibitor (DDCI) or with a benserazide to prevent peripheral synthesis of dopamine from L-DOPA. This prevents the negative side effects that may result from excess dopamine in the peripheral nervous system.

Other medications (such as stimulant medications, used to treat disorders such as ADHD) convert tyrosine hydroxylase into L-Dopa, which in turn becomes dopamine. Long-term amphetamine use has shown to have positive effects on the brain when administered in therapeutic doses. By contrast, however, certain psychotoxic amphetamines such as methamphetamine have shown to cause long-term brain damage.

When taken in higher doses, these medications can negatively effect heart rate, sleep patterns, appetite, mood, anxiety, aggression levels, and (in cases of abuse and overuse) can lead to psychosis or paranoia. They can also lead to trouble with urination and muscle coordination.


Why does cathodal tDCS (negative) produce sensation, while anodal tDCS (positive) does not?

Short answer
The underlying mechanism(s) causing the differences between the effectiveness of anodic and cathodic neural stimulation are largely unknown.

Background
As far as I know, the exact difference between the effectiveness of cathodic versus anodic stimulation are largely unknown. For instance, in animals and humans, both anodic and cathodic pulses can evoke neural responses. In human cochlear implant users, the anodic phase is more effective than the cathodic phase. In contrast, in animals (guinea pigs, cats and ferrets) exactly the opposite is observed. The reason for this discrepancy is unclear (Machery & Cazals, 2016).

The authors in your linked article state (McFadden, 2011):

  We hypothesize that the mechanism behind this may be associated with a concentrated exiting of current from the scalp at the cathode.

This, honestly, makes little sense as that same current was injected at the anode, barred the electrode sizes were not different.

Reference
- Machery & Cazals, Adv Exp Med Biol (2016); 894:133-42
- McFadden et al., Brain Stimul (2011); 4(1): 38–42


I have a feeling that many answers to your question will be influenced by anecdotes and personal parental style than actual research. A quick literature review suggests that there is evidence for both positive and negative influences of customary, nonabusive physical punishment, such as spanking.

A literature review by Larzelere (2000) found that nine studies indicated beneficial outcomes, such as reduced noncompliance and fighting.  In contrast, five studies that controlled for the level of child misbehavior did find detrimental outcomes. However, a further analysis found that alternative forms of discipline also showed detrimental outcomes when using a similar research method. The author concludes that "The outcomes differ by methodologic, child, and subcultural factors as well as by how the physical punishment was used".

A later meta-analysis by Larzelere and Kuhn (2005) found that conditional spanking was more effective in reducing child noncompliance and antisocial behavior in 10 of 13 studies. They added that overly severe or predominant use of physical punishment "compared unfavorably with alternative disciplinary tactics". In short, there seems to be a threshold whereas some amount of scolding (physical spanking in this case) can be a beneficial tool in a parent's disciplinary toolkit, while excessive amounts of scolding (such as relying on spanking exclusively) can be detrimental.

Larzelere RE. (2000). Child Outcomes of Nonabusive and Customary Physical Punishment by Parents: An Updated Literature Review. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 3(4), 199-221.
Larzelere RE and Kuhn BR. (2005). Comparing Child Outcomes of Physical Punishment and Alternative Disciplinary Tactics: A Meta-Analysis. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 8(1), 1-37.


Why do we find high pitched voices funny?

Two things come to mind for me.. First, at a very basic level, things that are perceptually salient capture our attention (Corbetta & Shulman, 2002), and this is obviously important for understanding our environment and assessing changes for threats (e.g.). In the video you linked, you have that perceptual salience and it's also in an animated and clearly exaggerated fashion.

The second thing that comes to mind is the voices that older children and adults make when communicating with infants. This sort of speech seems to serve an attentional/affective function (Gauthier & Shi, 2011), and research suggests that this sort of speech is actually a reflection of the infant's own communication styles (Smith & Trainor, 2008). Obviously, we might use such a voice because it sounds funny to them and we might get the infant to laugh. Who knows whether we intrinsically find it funny (if so, why?), or whether we learn to laugh at it as infants. It could well be that we simply come hardwired to interpret a perceptually salient and non-threatening social stimulus like that to be amusing.

References

Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (2002). Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nature reviews neuroscience, 3(3), 201.DOI: 10.1038/nrn755 PMID: 11994752

Gauthier, B., & Shi, R. (2011). A connectionist study on the role of pitch in infant-directed speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(6), EL380-EL386.DOI: 10.1121/1.3653546 PMID: 22225130

Smith, N. A., & Trainor, L. J. (2008). Infant-directed speech is modulated by infant feedback. Infancy, 13(4), 410-420.DOI: 10.1080/15250000802188719