Should I define each and every term while writing an article for a psychology journal?

This question may be better directed to academia.se.
In the first instance, you should check the editorial requirements of the journal you are targeting.  Most journals prescribe that it is mandatory to spell out acronyms with first usage.  It is possible that some very specific technical journals will allow common terminology through without being specific.
Your question is interesting in that you have used the acronym CAB for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, for which I use the acronym CBT.  I personally associate CAB with Clinical Assessment of Behaviour.  Clearly the acronyms CAB and CBT are not as well established as I had understood.


Is Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) a science or pseudoscience?

We have quite a few questions on this site about Neuro-linguistic-programming. In general I think it is more productive to talk about a particular scientific claim or a particular treatment rather than an entire paradigm. Paradigms that are not grounded in the scientific method may incidentally reflect the truth when studied relative to scientific standards.

In general, this question on NLP and sales effectiveness has mostly been answered in a general sense. In particular, @what's answer makes reference to the scientific evaluation section on Wikipedia which basically states that NLP is not scientifically based or validated.


Best start here: The entropic brain: a theory of conscious states informed by neuroimaging research with psychedelic drugs (2014). And then here is some more current literature worth exploring:
Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin (2012).  Additionally:

Broadband Cortical Desynchronization Underlies the Human Psychedelic State (2013):

  Psilocybin reduced spontaneous cortical oscillatory power from 1 to 50
  Hz in posterior association cortices, and from 8 to 100 Hz in frontal
  association cortices. Large decreases in oscillatory power were seen
  in areas of the default-mode network. Independent component analysis
  was used to identify a number of resting-state networks, and activity
  in these was similarly decreased after psilocybin. Psilocybin had no
  effect on low-level visually induced and motor-induced gamma-band
  oscillations, suggesting that some basic elements of oscillatory brain
  activity are relatively preserved during the psychedelic experience.

Connectome-harmonic decomposition of human brain activity reveals dynamical repertoire re-organization under LSD (2017):

  ... Fig. 2h demonstrating the energy difference between LSD and PCB
  conditions ... For both effects, increased energy of high frequencies
  and decreased energy of low frequencies, the differences between each
  pair of conditions were found to be significant (p < 0.01 ...). ...
  Taken together, our results reveal that LSD increases the total energy
  of brain activity and expands the repertoire of active brain states
  by significantly increasing the activity of high frequency brain
  states.


In his 2003 psycholinguistics book, John Field has summarized (pp. 70-72) his own typing errors and combined them with an older corpus of Hotopf.
Missing words were among the frequent errors, but alas no numerical frequencies are given.
But what he says he noticed is that short function words like "are" or "it" (these are his examples) are more likely to be omitted. And regarding the type of words more likely to be omitted he says:

An important factor appears to be the difference between lexical and function words.
The latter seem very susceptible to error: they are sometimes omitted or duplicated, and it is quite common in rapid typing for one function word to be
substituted for another, even when they are not phonologically identical. This
leads one to the conclusion that function words may be processed differently from
lexical ones. It seems possible that the writing process accords a higher level of attention to lexical items.

Although he doesn't say this, the full-context examples that he gives for omission seem to have another property, namely that short words get omitted close to each other (compare with duplication)

though these [are] not frequent

that [it] is possible

And if you're curious about the related issue(s) he mentions, among the frequent duplication examples are "the the", "that that", and "of of". Among the substitutions are "the" instead of "that", "of" <- "for", "doe" <- "do", "were" <- "where", "for" <- "from". He continues:

Finally, notice that some writing slips provide evidence of a planning process operating
at a level higher than the word. When writing a particular word, we already
have the next few words stored in our minds, ready for production

The examples for these are more interesting

importan topic
these given (= give) insights
using bothing (= both) approaches
difference (= different) intelligence tests
neighbourshoods

This is more qualitative than quantitative, but for lack of anything better, I put it in the answer box.
So if Field is correct, there's an anticipatory process in writing that causes a number of spelling errors, not all of them omissions.


Can a person be brilliant even though slow at resolving problems?

There are many definitions of intelligence. I find the one given by David Wechsler (1944) useful in the context of this question:

  The ... capacity of the individual ... to deal effectively with his environment

Finding a solution quickly is sometimes necessary if you want to deal with your environment effectively. Not all problems will wait for you to solve them slowly. Which is why the concept of intelligence usually includes a time component and a person solving the same problem slower is considered less intelligent.

"Brilliance" is not a psychological concept.

Source:

Wechsler, D (1944). The measurement of adult intelligence. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.


How to reliably measure working memory capacity?

First of all, the existence of a working memory is a theory, not a proven fact. The working memory is a concept of the information processing theory that likens the human brain to a computer. Other theories don't necessarily have an equivalent for this concept.

Second, there are different theories regarding how the working memory is made up: one single store (e.g. Atkinson & Shiffrin) or several systems (e.g. Baddeley & Hitch). Depending on what you believe the working memory is, you might have to measure it (or its parts) in different ways.

Traditionally the capacity of the working memory is measured by asking subjects to remember a list of items and then counting how many they can repeat. This is a standard subtest in many intelligence tests, e.g. the WAIS. The average (!) capacity for remembering letters or numbers has been shown to be 7 +/- 2 . Different experiments find different numbers, but they all range between 3 and 9 (as far as I know). Regular tests stop at nine items, and it is very rare that someone can regularly hold more items in his short term memory after hearing them once only (telephone numbers are stored in long term memory after being learned).

Measuring the capacity for non-linguistic visual, non-verbal auditory, olfactory, tactile etc. stimuli is extremely difficult, because as yet scientists don't even begin to understand how these stimuli are percieved, processed and represented in the brain. The only comprehensible and meaningful measurements are made of the memory of linguistic items like letters or words or visual representations of objects (like a page with a number of drawn objects).


How to measure dominance and submissiveness?

I am using TRUE (http://www.salleurl.edu/tsenyal/true/features.html) and SAM (Self-Assessment Manikin) interface includes a scale for dominance, along with valence and activation. The scale allows you to rate dominance from 'controlled' to 'in control' on a scale from 1 to 9.

References

Planet, S., Iriondo, I., Martínez, E., & Montero, J. A. (2008). TRUE: an online testing platform for multimedia evaluation. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on EMOTION: Corpora for Research on Emotion and Affect at the 6th Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation (LREC 2008). Marrakech, Morocco.


Why do people fear ghosts but not believe in fairies?

There are some arguments for the origins of religion based on the byproducts of our adaptive cognitive mechanisms and biases. A prominent one is the hyperactive agency detection device (HADD)--we are quick to infer the presence of intentional agency upon hearing a sudden unexplained noise or unnatural movement, especially in low perceptual quality situations (e.g. the dark). The cultural description of ghosts and other feared supernatural entities align with the situations in which HADD is likely to be triggered, but not so much fairies.


Where can I find a database, preferably OWL-based, that contains structured information about everyday objects?

Cyc is similar to what you are looking for. It is a database of general knowledge and is organized semantically. It is free to use for research purposes.


How are people working in psychophysics trained?

Short answer
Psychophysics is a multidisciplinary field featuring people with a Physics, Psychology, Medicine and/or Biology background.

Background
OK, here follows a lot of personal account to illustrate where psychophysicists may come from.

Traditionally, psychophysics is a part of Psychology.

I do a lot of psychophysics and I'm a Biologist by training (MSc), but learned psychophysics during a postdoc. My supervisor teaching me psychophysics was a physicist (MSc) who acquired their skills during their PhD (in visual sciences).

My current supervisor is a physicist by training (MSc), but has done heaps of psychophysics as part of his post-grad Audiology training.

Many of my psychophysics colleagues are in fact physicists.


Short answer

There is no consistent evidence for the fact that women are better than men at multitasking. We do know that multitasking is detrimental for performance, whether it is forced or scheduled. Women do appear to be better at planning when to multitask and, in fact, do it less often than men. Counter-intuitively, women may give the impression to be better at multitasking because they do it less often.

Long answer

The notion that women are better multitaskers is deeply grained in our society. There is even an evolutionary explanation as of why that may be the case. As paraphrased by Ren, Zhou and Fu (2009):

  [...] females who stayed at home could not afford focusing solely on food preparation because the offspring cannot be left on their own. In other words, the structure of primitive human society exerted a strong selection pressure against females who were incapable of juggling several chores.

Women are better
In controlled experiments, people even found some evidence (Stoet et al, 2013;Ren et al, 2009) that supports that women are better multitaskers. In the study of Stoet et al, stimuli were shown that had two dimensions (shape and filling) each of which had two features (which determined which button to press). Only when the stimulus was presented, it became apparent on which dimension the participant had to focus. The results showed that 120 women performed significantly better on the task, compared to 120 men. As you can see from the Figure, the effect is not that large though. With enough participants, every minor effect will become significant at one point.

In the study of Ren, the participants were to perform a go-nogo task, followed by a flanker task (target identification). In a simple condition (always go, followed by a flanker task), men and women were, in a way, monotasking the flanker task. In the hierarchical condition participants had to make a decision on both go-nogo, which determined whether the flanker task had to be performed. There are two important notions that we must consider here. First of all, women improved on the hierarchical conditions! This is very surprising given the general consensus is that multitasking is detrimental for performance. Secondary task performance, for instance, is even being used as a measure for mental workload (Wickens, 1983; Kaber, 1999).

This surprising observation may be explained by the notion of the authors themselves (which is the second notion): the task at hand is not necessarily multitasking in the sense of rapid switching between (often unrelated) tasks. Instead, I think, the task in this study must be seen as sequential monotasking, in which the first task determines how the second one must be performed.

Women are not better
Another study investigated multitasking abilities between men and women using sudoku's and cross-word puzzles (Buser and Peter, 2011). The tasks were either performed (1) sequentially, (2) forced multitasking or (3) freely scheduled. Results showed that during forced multitasking and freely scheduled multitasking, performance dropped significantly compared to sequential task execution. No gender differences were found here.

Then why do we think women are better multitaskers?

Stoet et al, performed two experiments. In the second experiment, three more ecological valid task were to be performed concurrently, for which the participants had eight minutes in total. The order in which they had to be performed was up to the participants. Here, less obvious differences were found. In two of the task there was no significant difference in performance. One task, the key-finding task, did show that women were significantly better. However, we must again ask, is this because of their multitasking ability?

Because the participants could decide when and how to perform the task (sequential monotasking or multitasking-wise), they were in charge of the planning. It has been shown that people are generally bad at this and performance always is affected (Katidioti, 2014; see also Provable ROI for call center rest periods?; Buser and Peter). What Buser and Peter found, however, is that women are less inclined to multitask compared to men when given the choice. If this is indeed the case, this may explain the fact that women performed better at the key searching task.


What positive techniques can be used to motivate individuals resistant to common gamification techniques?

I would argue that gamification is essentially a form of applied motivational psychology. As such, all findings from research on motivation could potentially be important for gamification. In the other thread that you mention, Self-Determination Theory (Gagne & Deci, 2005) has already been brought up. I would like to make a couple of very general suggestions regarding your problem that stem from SDT.

Self-Determination Theory

In terms of SDT, motivation can be either externally controlled or autonomous. Someone seems to have suggested punishment, which would be a form of externally controlled (a.k.a. extrinsic) motivation. Another obvious way of extrinsically motivating people would be to reward them. Maybe this is an option for you, but since you already mention that reputation points, badges and the like don't work, this might not be a good route.

You are probably looking for a way to motivate people in such a way, that they participate in your games because they are autonomously motivated. In SDT there are 3 different forms of autonomous motivation: intrinsic, identified and integrated motivation. You don't have to worry about those that are intrinsically motivated, because they already like to participate in games and do so. Also, you can't control intrinsic motivation externally, it must come from the individual.

Internalization

However, integrated and identified motivation which are both forms of autonomous motivation (the latter is a weaker form) can be influenced. SDT states that it is possible that a process of internalization occurs, in which a certain behaviour becomes part of the identity of a person, which in turn fosters (autonomous) motivation for this behaviour. In other words, if you manage to somehow influence people's values and attitudes towards your game, they will be more likely to participate in it. As the other thread already mentioned, internalization occurs when the 3 basic psychological needs (need for competency, relatedness and autonomy) are met. SDT puts a special focus on the need for autonomy. Only when this need is met is the behaviour expected to become integrated. So as a very general answer to your question, you might want to look into ways to satisfy those needs. It also seems to work better to satisfy at least 2 of those needs instead of only one (Gagne & Deci, 2005).

Deci et al. (1994) performed a laboratoy experiment to explore ways, in which internalization can be promoted. They found three factors: giving a meaningful rationale, acknowledging that people might not find the task interesting and emphasizing choice rather than control. I must admit though, that I have not read this paper but only the very brief summary that Gagne & Deci (2005) give. It might be interesting for you to read it. Also, there is probably more research on SDT that has be done, so a literature search might yield interesting results.

References:

Deci, E. L., Eghrari, H., Patrick, B. C., & Leone, D. R. (1994). Facilitating internalization: the self-determination theory perspective. Journal of Personality, 62, 119–142.

Gagné, M., & Deci, E. L. (2005). Self‐determination theory and work motivation. Journal of Organizational behavior, 26(4), 331-362. PDF


Is it ethical to deliberately provide incorrect information to participants in a psychological study?

The whole point of these lies is to prevent participants from changing their answers because they want to please the researchers or convey their personal beliefs about a topic.

It is typical to inform participants about the true purpose at the end of the study if this is possible. Other times, studies use purposefully vague language in describing the purpose. The point is to provide enough informed consent for participants to agree to the bounds of what a study will ask of them.

All of these decisions about study design are reviewed by an Institutional Review Board that is in charge of research ethics at an institution. Yes, these sorts of lies are ethical.

As far as your specific example, how would you expect a study testing placebo effects to work if you started the study by telling the participants "This is a study about the placebo effect"? - knowing it is a placebo ruins the whole idea of the placebo effect.


Why can't subjective utilities take probabilities into account?

You certainly did not understand it correctly, because the statement that the second case is either rational or not cannot be stated based only on the information you provided.

The rationality of the second statement depends on the specific decision-maker's attitude to risk only. It is not possible to infer it based only on the information you are providing.

1) Let's consider the first case: "You value 5 dollars twice as much as 4 dollars"

A possible decision situation would be a day in which you are so starving that you might well eat one hamburguer as two. However, one hamburguer costs 4 dollars in the store where you are; but there is a promotion in which you can buy two hamburgueres for the price of 5 dollars.

You could represent this situation stating that you value the same:
a) 4 additional dollars, in relation to your current status quo;
b) as the 1 additional dollar, in relation to the moment after receiving the previous 4 dollars.

In this situation, there is no uncertainty involved about the consequences of your decision. If you pay 4 dollars, you eat one hamburguer. If you pay 5 dollars, you eat two hamburguers. In certain situations, you can model your preference by means of a value function (rather than an utility function).

A value function measures only how much you value (i.e. how much you consider attractive, desirable, preferable) distinct consequences, so that consequence levels with higher values mean that you prefer them in relation to consequence levels with lower values.

Utility not only measures this value, but it also measures your attitude in relation to uncertainty (risk). Since this is a certain situation, your utility function is exactly the same as your value function.

2) Now for the second case: "Why is not also rational to value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars"

This situation is distinct from the previous one, because now one of the alternatives is uncertain, there is only a 80% chance of occurring.

A possible decision situation would be the case in which the store has offering a promotion in which you could take a 20% chance of eating your first hamburguer for free, but if you lose you would have to pay 5 dollars for it.

The only possible way that you could "value 5 dollars twice as much as 80% chance of 5 dollars" is if you are indifferent between:
a) paying 4 dollars for eating one hamburguer (as in the previous case);
b) or accepting this new promotion.

If you are indifferent, then IT IS RATIONAL that you value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars! In this case, it is said that you are risk-neutral, and once more, your utility function is exactly the same as your value function.

If you prefer choice a) then it means you are not willing to risk having to pay 5 dollars for the hamburguer. Then, you no longer value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars! You now value 5 dollars MORE THAN TWICE AS an 80% chance of 5 dollars! In this case, it is said that you are risk-averse, and now your utility function is distinct from your value function.

Likewise, If you prefer choice b) then, once more, you no longer value 5 dollars twice as much as an 80% chance of 5 dollars! You now value 5 dollars LESS THAN TWICE AS an 80% chance of 5 dollars! In this case, it is said that you are risk-seeking, and again your utility function is distinct from your value function.

PS: Note that utilites (and values) are always subjective, so the term is redundant (that's why I did not mentioned it at all)


Are there studies on the evasion of characterization?

Its a kind of non-conformity. Its caused by desires for uniqueness. It can be treated if it becomes abnormal or interferes with life or the lives of those who love.

  Conformity is the act of matching attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to group norms. Norms are implicit, unsaid rules, shared by a group of individuals, that guide their interactions with others. This tendency to conform occurs in small groups and/or society as a whole, and may result from subtle unconscious influences, or direct and overt social pressure. Conformity can occur in the presence of others, or when an individual is alone. For example, people tend to follow social norms when eating or watching television, even when alone.

-Wikipedia Conformity

  A high need for uniqueness undermines majority influence. Need for uniqueness (a) is a psychological state in which individuals feel indistinguishable from others and (b) motivates compensatory acts to reestablish a sense of uniqueness. Three studies demonstrate that a strive for uniqueness motivates individuals to resist majority influence. In Study 1, the need for uniqueness was measured, and it was found that individuals high in need for uniqueness yielded less to majority influence than those low in need for uniqueness. In Study 2, participants who received personality feedback undermining their feeling of uniqueness agreed less with a majority (vs. minority) position. Study 3 replicated this effect and additionally demonstrated the motivational nature of the assumed mechanism: An alternative means that allowed participants to regain a feeling of uniqueness canceled out the effect of high need for uniqueness on majority influence.

-What Motivates Nonconformity? Uniqueness Seeking Blocks Majority Influence


Is it possible to run Psychtoolbox or PsychoPy on Raspberry Pi 2 for simple perceptual experiments?

Speaking for the PsychoPy team, I would expect it to be possible but performance won't be great.

Both PsychoPy and OpenSesame use Python under the hood and this is an interpreted language. That means it isn't super-fast to execute code but we can get away with that by having fast computers (and hardware-accelerated graphics makes a huge difference).

Another option to consider might be a barebones PC like the Intel NUC computers. You can get one of those for £100 (but you have to add memory and hard disk so maybe £180 all in?). It still won't be as fast as a high-spec computer but should outperform a Raspberry Pi

Jon (for full disclosure, I'm the creator of PsychoPy)


Is the theory of Information Metabolism a reasonable scientific theory?

Short answer: No.

A literature search of Google Scholar and Web of Science for "information metabolism" finds no empirical evidence to support the theory. Furthermore, it appears that the theory of information metabolism is virtually only embraced directly by the author, Kępiński, himself.

However: It is based on scientifically sound principles of dissipative systems, thermodynamics and negentropy, as proposed by Nobel prize-winning physicist Ilya Prigogene. In some sense, though, it is based on science in the same sense a movie may be based on a true story. It's not a trivially wrong theory, but there does not appear to be any concrete support.

CREATES and theories resembling information metabolism theory

CREATES does not appear to have any scientific basis or relation to information metabolism theory whatsoever. However, the link you provided cites Carnot’s principle as a basis for the theory of information metabolism:

  “the organism is an open system and its negentropy rises or falls as results of processes described by the laws of life conservation and species conservation, respectively”

This is very similar to the principles of more modern embodied dynamical systems approaches to explaining behavior, such as the ecological psychology of Mace, Turvey and Shaw. Both ecological and information metabolic approaches appear to be epistemologically dynamicist, and therefore share an epistemological stance. They appear to differ strongly on the content theory of the cause of behavior (i.e., on what constitutes a meaningful scale for behavioral analysis): information metabolism theory draws more heavily on Freud and Jung, while ecological psychology draws on the work of James J. Gibson.

Concluding remarks

Information metabolism theory is not a reasonable scientific theory in 2015, but neither was it scientifically stillborn in 1970. It appears to have been a theory invented before its time; in this, it is also like Gibson, who similarly lacked both the theoretical and mathematical tools to specify and formalize ideas. The popularization of those tools in behavioral science would eventually lead to the development of ecological psychology as a full fledged school of thought in the decades after Gibson's death.

In the case of information metabolism theory, however, it appears that either the theory was entirely subsumed into socionics and therefore no longer exists as an independent theory, or simply that no one took up the mantle as the scientific star of psychoanalytic approaches rapidly waned around the same time.

Edit: There seems to have been some limited attempts to update the theory for modern dynamical systems tools around the turn of the millenium (Kokoszka, 1999; Kokoszka, Bielecki and Holas, 2001), but still nothing empirical to validate it.

References

Kokoszka, A. (1999). Information metabolism as a model of human experiences. International journal of neuroscience, 97(3-4), 169-178.
Kokoszka, A., Bielecki, A., & Holas, P. (2001). Mental organization according to the metabolism of information model and its mathematical description. International Journal of Neuroscience, 107(3-4), 173-184.


How to quantitatively measure strength of friendship using observable factors?

It's not my area, but a quick Google revealed this one.

The McGill Friendship Questionnaire - Respondent's affection (MFQ-RA). Item and validation information is available on the site.

It also mentions that it takes inspiration from  "the Friendship Questionnaire" and the "Friendship Qualities scale". So they might also be worth checking out.


Is there sub-conscious error correction in interpreting heard language?

A simple explanation for the phenomenon is top-down feedback. As the bottom-up acoustic/phonological input is coming in, there is top-down feedback based on your knowledge of the language, the situation, and all of the other contextual information, which is helping to constrain or inform your interpretation of the bottom-up signal. A classic example that is close to the example in your question is the phoneme restoration effect (originally demonstrated by Warren in 1970, and studied in depth by Samuel for decades): if a speech sound is replaced with an extraneous sound like a cough, listeners still report hearing the missing speech sound. Importantly, they report hearing exactly the sound that would belong in that context. So a manipulated word like "*eel"(where the * corresponds to the cough), sounds like "wheel" if it is the context "the *eel was on the axle", but the same word sounds like "peel" in the context of "the *eel was on the orange".

This kind of integration of multiple sources of information is typically called "interactive processing". For a review in the domain of speech perception see McClelland, Mirman, & Holt (2006).

References:

McClelland, J. L., Mirman, D., & Holt, L. L. (2006). Are there interactive processes in speech perception? Trends in cognitive sciences, 10(8), 363–369. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.06.007

Samuel, A. G. (1981). Phonemic restoration: Insights from a new methodology. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 110(4), 474–494.

Samuel, A. G. (1996). Does lexical information influence the perceptual restoration of phonemes? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 125(1), 28–51.

Warren, R. M. (1970). Perceptual restoration of missing speech sounds. Science, 167(3917), 392–393.


Behaviorist interpretations of decision field theory

I am pretty sure that you will not find a paper that tries to give purely behaviorist interpretations of decision field theory (or other similar models of decision making), because that would not make sense at all.

As you noted in your initial question, decision field theory is a cognitive model, i.e., it tries to explain overt behavior in terms of internal (mental) states of the organism. Its goal is to understand and model decision making and predict behavior (e.g.  by making assumptions about the process of information accumulation, the allocation of attention, or about how choice biases might affect information accumulation). Thus, the focus of this theory is not the observed behavior, but rather the mental "mechanisms" it is based on.

Behaviorism has neither the intention, nor the concepts to interpret mental states. A behaviorist's account to decision making would only be concerned with describing the (statistical) relation between stimuli and choices/decisions, neglecting internal states of the organism at all. Therefore you will have a hard time to find a behaviorist's paper commenting on a cognitive models, because the latter are concerned with a topic that rests in the behaviorist's black box.

Nevertheless there will be behavorist's papers about decision making, but this is a whole different question.


Does the brain's reward system also work when the reward comes before the experience?

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

Background
The reward system can be seen as positive reinforcement.

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

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

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

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

Fig. 1. Operant conditioning. source: wikipedia

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


Is there a term for individuals who can "visualize" numbers and advanced mathematics?

Sounds like a form of Synesthesia, in particular it sounds like Number Form Synesthesia mixed with Grapheme-color Synesthesia:

  A number form is a mental map of numbers, which automatically and involuntarily appears whenever someone who experiences number-forms thinks of numbers. Number forms were first documented and named by Francis Galton in "The Visions of Sane Persons". Later research has identified them as a type of synesthesia. In particular, it has been suggested that number-forms are a result of "cross-activation" between regions of the parietal lobe that are involved in numerical cognition and spatial cognition

It doesn't seem exactly like what he does but it could be a form of it. It's hard to imagine just how it would be to perceive the world as a synesthesic person does.

It sounds like he's learned to apply his visual-spatial skills to "arrange" the number forms to aid his calculations.

Synesthesia is covered in detail in the book Synesthesia: a union of the senses, though I'm not aware of any specific case studies on individuals with this exact set of skills.

A term to describe people with Synestesia is Synesthesic.


How to run a multiple hierarchical regression with both categorical and scale predictors in SPSS?

Basically, you've got three kinds of predictors:

Binary (e.g., gender sex coded female = 0, male = 1):  The coefficient is the degree to which males are higher than females on the outcome variable, holding all other variables constant.
Numeric (e.g., age in years): The coefficient is the effect of being one year older on the outcome variable holding all other variables equal
Nominal (3 or more categories; e.g., ethnicity). Here you create k - 1 dummy variables (where k is the number of categories). Each dummy category is the effect of being in that category relative to the reference category holding all other variables constant.

Once you understand how to interpret the coefficients, hierarchical regression really doesn't change anything. Hierarchical regression is really the same as running a set of regression models with different predictors (they just happen to involve incrementally adding predictors).


I think the present bias is a result of the immediate gratification tendency that we as humans have. The following extracts are from the book Smart Change: Break the habits that hold you back and form the habits of success by Art Markman

  One of the most difficult things for people (and other animals for
  that matter) is to pass up something desirable right now in favor of
  something else in the future. A piece of cake now has a stronger pull
  on our actions than having a beach-ready body by next summer. An
  afternoon playing video games feels like a better way to spend an
  afternoon than studying for an exam that won’t happen for another
  week. Checking a few emails at work feels more productive than putting
  in effort on a big long-term project that won’t be finished for
  months. You’re wired to want to do what feels good in the short term.

  A beautiful experimental method for looking at the difficulty of
  overcoming temptations was developed by Walter Mischel in the late
  1950s to study how children deal with temptation. In his studies, an
  experimenter asked four-year-old children to sit in a room and showed
  them a small tempting object like a marshmallow or a cookie. Then the
  experimenter placed the object in front of the child next to a bell
  and said that he had to leave the room for a while. If the child was
  able to wait until the experimenter got back, then the child would get
  a larger reward (like two marshmallows or cookies). However, the child
  could ring the bell at any time and just take what was on the plate.
  If the child was able to wait fifteen minutes, then the experimenter
  would come back in the room and give the child the bigger reward.

  In a typical experiment, the average child was able to go only about
  ten minutes before ringing the bell. Factored into that average are
  the many children who rang the bell soon after the experimenter left
  the room and others who were able to wait the full fifteen minutes.
  Even for those children who are successful at waiting, it can be a
  difficult experience. In fact, there are a number of popular videos on
  YouTube of children in these experiments agonizing over the
  marshmallows in front of them. It is funny to see the children
  struggle to wait for the bigger reward. But the videos also illustrate
  how hard it can be to overcome temptation.

In the above experiment although the future benefits are clearly better (two instead of one marshmallow), the now is weighted more.


According to the article "A feeling for fiction: becoming what we behold" (Miall and Kuikan, 2002), suggest 4 levels of how reading stories/fiction affect us:

The first is a satisfaction and enjoyment

  are reactions to an already interpreted text

The second level is when the feelings and engagement start kicking in:

  feelings such
  as empathy or sympathy with an author, narrator, or narrative figure are involved in the
  interpretive processes by which a representation of the fictional world is developed and
  engaged

So, in this second stage, we are starting to get 'drawn in' to this fictional world.

The third level involves

  feelings of fascination, interest, or intrigue are an initial moment in readers’
  response to the formal components of literary texts (narrative, stylistic, or generic).

Now, these first 3 levels are more or less aesthetic, it is the fourth level (and the focus of the linked paper) that links the aesthetic and narrative feelings together that

  interact to
  produce metaphors of personal identification that modify self-understanding. We also argue
  that the concept of catharsis (the conflict of tragic feelings identified by Aristotle) identifies
  one particular form of a more general pattern in which aesthetic and narrative feelings evoked
  during reading interact to modify the reader.

This last point is also discussed in the article "Why fiction may be twice as true as fact: Fiction as cognitive and emotional stimulation" (Oatley, 1999) with the statement:

  in the simulations of fiction, personal truths can be explored that allows readers to experience emotions - their own emotions - and understand aspects of them that are obscure, in relation to the contexts in which the emotions arise.

From that, fiction is not just 'escapism' and affects us on psychological and cognitive levels beyond aesthetic levels.  This would be true for any form of fiction, and potentially for music and visual art.

A possible evolutionary advantage is that this type of activity takes us away from the 'here and now' to places that we have never known, yet (according to the articles) have a sense of familiarity for us, emotionally and cognitively.


Totally out of my league here, but judging from a quick Google search, this seems to be a common problem in FSL. You've said this YouTube video helps, so that's good...but since it uses an applescript, I suppose it requires the Mac OS.

You say Freesurfer's mri_convert works in Linux using this code:

mri_convert
--in_orientation [file's current storage order, e.g. LAS]
--out_orientation [desired storage order]
<in volume>
<out volume>


Can two neurons in the brain be connected more than once?

The commenter below alerted me to the existence of autapses, which apparently are chemical synapses between a neuron and itself. So those clearly exist. At the same time, it does seem that there is a mechanism that would suppress self-synapses: a protein called Dscam that acts during neuronal development. Dscam is a membrane protein that can form a high number of isoforms through alternative splicing and thereby provides an identity to the developing neuron to prevent forming connections to itself.

I suspect that what is more common is for a neuron to be connected to itself indirectly. That is, neuron 1 stimulates neuron 2, which stimulates neuron 3, which stimulates neuron 1.

EDIT: Just heard about this article, which shows that two neurons can be connected via two different synapses!


What makes a book easier or harder to read?

This question is open to some amount of opinion as there can be differences due to education level of the person reading the material etc.  However, there was a study by the American military in order to make their technical manuals as easy to read as possible.  The study was started by Rudolf Flesch with his Reading Ease evaluation, known as the Flesch reading-ease score (FRES) test, and Flesch later worked with J. Peter Kincaid to develop the Grade Level evaluation for the United States Navy, known as the "The Flesch–Kincaid" (F–K) reading grade level or Flesch–Kincaid readability test (Kincaid, et al. 1975)

Using the total number of words, syllables and sentences in the text, the formula for the Flesch reading-ease score (FRES) test is

$Score = 206.835 - 1.015 \left(\frac{total\;words}{total\;sentences}\right)-84.6\left(\frac{total\;syllables}{total\;words}\right)$

The readability tests used by schools is the F–K reading grade test.  The "Flesch–Kincaid Grade Level Formula" instead presents a score as a U.S. grade level, making it easier for teachers, parents, librarians, and others to judge the readability level of various books and texts.

Using the total number of words, syllables and sentences in the text, the Flesch–Kincaid (F-K) Grade Level Formula is

$Grade = 0.39\left(\frac{total\;words}{total\;sentences}\right)+11.8\left(\frac{total\;syllables}{total\;words}\right)-15.59$

Scores can be interpreted as shown in the following

References

Kincaid, J. P. Derivation of New Readability Formulas (Automated Readability Index, Fog Count, and Flesch Reading Ease Formula) Memphis:Naval Air Station Memphis [US Navy Unclassified PDF]
Available at: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a006655.pdf


Which term is meant in this example of defence mechanism?

Preamble

Before I go into my answer, I should point out that where the psychoanalytical theory of psychological defence mechanisms originated from Sigmund Freud, his theories are considered by many to be pseudoscientific. More can be read in my answer to this in meta

TL;DR

The Gnomes concept in the LiveJournal Blog does not fit any definition of the defence mechanisms.

Psychological Defence Mechanisms

In psychoanalytic theory, defence mechanisms are psychological strategies brought into play by the unconscious mind to manipulate, deny, or distort reality in order to defend against feelings of anxiety and unacceptable impulses and to maintain one's self-schema or other schemas.

Saul McLeod (2009) provided a list of all of the psychological defence mechanisms put together by Sigmund Freud.

These have Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) number F01.393, and if you look at the MeSH Tree Structures for F01.393, these are expanded providing the following (NIH, 2018):

Acting Out [F01.393.047]
Denial (Psychology) [F01.393.200]
Displacement (Psychology) [F01.393.246]

Cathexis [F01.393.246.250]
Scapegoating [F01.393.246.500]

Fantasy [F01.393.351]
Learned Helplessness  [F01.393.398]
Identification (Psychology) [F01.393.446]

Gender Identity [F01.393.446.250]

Femininity [F01.393.446.250.500]
Masculinity [F01.393.446.250.750]

Perceptual Defence [F01.393.628]
Procrastination [F01.393.661]
Projection [F01.393.693]

Scapegoating [F01.393.246.500]

Rationalization [F01.393.746]
Regression (Psychology) [F01.393.784]
Repression, Psychology [F01.393.821]

Repression-Sensitization [F01.393.821.645]

Sublimation, Psychological [F01.393.898]

A Different Take on Defence Mechanisms in LiveJournal Blog (Evolution, 2017)

Taken from the question, and an English translation is available here.

In her blog, Evolution explained...

  Gnomes, or rather dwarf caps, are such psycho-protection that people use to explain themselves the indifference of a partner.

  Stupid, Stesnyasha and Bednyasha, remember?

  Not only women, but also men like to put such a cap on the figure of an interesting person.

  Why is this done?

  Around then, why do people wear crowns.

  When one wants to get something from a person, but he does not give (usually love, recognition, approval, respect, in general food for self-esteem), it is necessary to extract something from it, for which the crowns and caps are used.

  You need to wear a crown (imagine yourself powerful and significant) on your figure, and put a stupid cap on the figure of a person (imagine him stupid and dependent) and then from the height of his greatness, considering the defectiveness of the second, to help him give you what you want to take.

This does not fit any definition of the defence mechanisms developed by Freud, or expanded in MeSH.  What is being described here is domestic abuse through manipulation and coersion via demoralisation of the significant other.

References

Evolution (2017). Gnomes [Online]Retrieved from:Russian Original: https://evo-lutio.livejournal.com/591726.htmlEnglish Translation: https://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fevo-lutio.livejournal.com%2F591726.html

McLeod, S. A. (2009). Defense mechanisms. [Online]Retrieved from https://www.simplypsychology.org/defense-mechanisms.html

NIH (2018). Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) [Online]Retrieved from: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh


How to compute weights and bias for a McCulloch-Pitts neuron?

The weights and bias for a given neuron depend on the task you are trying to solve.  Each computation will have a different set of weights that will implement it.


Yes – electricity does pass through synapses if the link between the neurons in question is constituted by an electrical synapse.

There are two different types of synapses, chemical synapses and electrical synapses.

At a chemical synapse, an arriving pre-synaptic action potential indeed causes the release of neurotransmitters which carry the signal across the synaptic cleft to the subsynaptic membrane. This can effect an action potential in the postsynaptic neuron (among other things).

At an electrical synapse, on the other hand, ions do actually move from the presynaptic cell, through a gap junction channel, and to the postsynaptic cell, capable to cause a depolarization there.

Electrical synapses are found in many animals (including human). Due to their different characteristics, like the lack of neurotransmitter-related mechanisms and a significantly smaller synaptic cleft, they e. g. allow for a faster propagation of a signal between two neurons (while the signal decreases in strength due to the lack of gain). They occur as a part of neural structures which require fast signal transmission.

(While more technical details can be found in the referenced sources, it is helpful to review some of the basic concepts to avoid misconceptions:

It is sometimes (naively) assumed that the propagation of an action potential consists in a flow of electric charge along the axon, but what actually happens is that ions move through the membrane, i. e. roughly along an axis that is orthogonal to the direction of the signal. It is the action potential that moves along the axon. Thus, the original question is not to be taken to mean »Does the electric current that moves along the length of the axon also move through the synaptic cleft?«

Still – even if the flow of electric charge does not constitute the action potential, electricity can flow along the axon, as well. This is what happens in the case of saltatory conduction between the nodes of Ranvier in myelinated axons. It is generally referred to as an electrotonic potential.)


Fit a psychometric function when the maximum is not 100% (not because of lapse)

Yes. When you fit your psychometric function you try to maximize $p(X|\theta)$, with $X$ your observations and $\theta$ your parameters. When you assume 100% correct answers, you would typically assume that your psychometric function is $\Phi(s|\theta)$, $s$ being your stimulus value and $\Phi$ being a cumulative normal. More specifically $\Phi(s|\theta)=\frac{1}{\sigma\sqrt{2\pi}} e^{-\frac{(s-\mu)^2}{2\sigma^2}}$. Here $\theta$ is both the mean $\mu$ and the std $\sigma$. To have a psychometric function that does not go to 100% correct, you just need to add a third variable to $\theta$. It doesn't matter whether the observer's performance is limited by lapses or another factor, mathematically that's equivalent. Then you fit your data with $\Phi'(s|\theta)=\frac{\lambda}{2}+(1-\lambda)\Phi(s|\theta)$. With $\lambda$ your lapse rate, assuming this lapse rate is symmetrical. You could add a 4th parameter if you have a good reason to assume the lapse rate is different near 0 and near 1 (then $\theta=(\mu,\sigma,\lambda_{low},\lambda_{high})$). Also, you might run into issues because if you fit with $\lambda$ unconstrained, you could get values higher than 1 or lower than 0. So when fitting it is helpful either to use a constrained algorithm (e.g. a quasi-Newtonian gradient descent, in Matlab that would be fmincon), or better to transform your parameter using a function that is bounded like the cumulative normal function itself. In other words, use $\Phi'(s|\theta)=(\frac{\Phi(\lambda_{low})}{2})+(1-\frac{\Phi(\lambda_{high})}{2})\Phi(s|\theta)$.

It is in facts recommended to always allow for a lapse rate, as you could misestimate the slope of your psychometric function when you do not.


Are brain sub-divisions based off embryonic development used when describing mature brains?

From my point of view, the terminology regarding the early three vesicles prosencephalon,  (forebrain), mesencephalon (midbrain), and rhombencephalon (hindbrain) as well as the later developmental structures arising from these structures, namely telencephalon, diencephalon, mesencephalon, metencephalon, and the myelencephalon are mainly of use when discussing embryonic development. Alternatively it can be sensible to group various brain structures according to embryonic origin when discussing, e.g., infants with developmental brain disorders, with the origin very early in development. In this case the congregate of brain structures arising from an early embryonic vesicle may be affected.

I have seen authors swinging around these anatomical terms outside the context of development and quite frankly, it often doesn't make sense and only complicates matters as one has to trace back the structures arising from it later in life. Not being an anatomist, my humble opinion would be, wherever possible, to avoid these terms.


What is the difference between getting high( i.e. using alcohol or similar things) and getting unconcious using general anesthesia?

The short answer to what the difference between getting high and getting unconscious using general anaesthesia - It simply boils down to a matter of dosage levels and medical supervision!

And now to clarify ...

When you are put under general anaesthetic the attending anaesthesiologist will be administering possibly multiple drugs that work together to achieve the required effect of preventing you from moving your body, and your brain from being aware of whats happening to your body.
   The precise dosages and the timing of there administration are carefully chosen to ensure you stay blissfully unaware and immobile for the duration of the procedure.

Now compare that to you going out for a night on the town where ideally the only one administering any drugs is you (for better or worse) - barring any accidental overdoses from you pounding down a full bottle of spirits in one turn - the dosages you put in your system are thankfully just not in the same league as what you would receive on the operating table and so you just get high or obnoxious as apposed to getting into what is technically a medically induced coma.

One of the major characteristics of that induced coma is that your body looses its protective reflexes and your at the mercy of the attending medical teem to prevent you from choking on your own tongue - when you hear of someone outside of a hospital dying from an overdose whether it be drug or alcohol, a lot of the time the cause of death isn't the toxicity but that same loss of protective reflexes that doesn't save them as they asphyxiate on there own tongue or vomit after slipping into a deep sleep (or coma).


Could neuroscientific knowledge and techiques be used to optimise peoples' education and learning?

There is an emerging trend in cognitive science called neuroeducation - the wikipedia page is of interest, especially the section "Neuroscience and education: A bridge too far" (I removed the question mark).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_neuroscience

Another thought that came while reading your interesting question. It is about the desire to enhance the human mind, a desire that we find for example in the "transhumanism" movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism). If I understand the role of cognitive science as a science to describe how the mind works, I have a hard time thinking about it as a science that aim at modifying how the brain works. Cognitive science would not be a science anymore, but a technology.


Are there any movies or series involving someone with ADHD?

The problem with ADHD is that it doesn't really have its own trademark indicator, the way that schizophrenia or Asperger's might. There are several different subtypes of ADHD, and they tend to look different from each other, particularly in the instance of ADHD with hyperactivity and ADHD-PI (primarily inattentive). Even then, there are plenty of disorders that mimic the characteristics of ADHD (such as histrionic personality disorder or sluggish cognitive tempo), and so it is really difficult to tell whether or not a character has ADHD, a mood disorder, an anxiety disorder, or something else entirely.

Furthermore, movies like A Beautiful Mind are autobiographical in nature and tend to focus primarily on the disorder and its deleterious effects on an otherwise prominent individual. This is difficult to do with ADHD, because the symptoms of ADHD are often mistaken for laziness, naïveté, sluggishness, rashness, and a variety of other negative personality traits. On the other hand, disorders like schizophrenia are rarely mistaken for personality traits. It is very clear (in the case of John Nash) that there was something going on almost unrelated to the man himself. Take the description of the movie for example:

  The story begins in the early years of a young prodigy named John Nash. Early in the film, Nash begins to develop paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on wife Alicia and friends.

You would rarely hear such a description of an individual with ADHD, because ADHD is often early-onset, and so the difference between one's natural personality and a neurodevelopmental disorder is not always clear.

On top of that, characters are often portrayed as having symptoms of ADHD, but it is considered to be a part of their personality used for comedic effect. Other times, their ADHD-like characteristics may be attributed to other disorders, such as the case of Cat Valentine in the Disney Channel show 'Victorious', who suffers from bipolar disorder (as per the show's storyline) yet her characteristics are speculatively more along the lines of ADHD, or even dependent personality disorder. This opens up a can of worms to debate against, however, as characteristics can only serve as implications of a disorder, and are not enough to diagnose a person in general. Furthermore, even a professional cannot diagnose a character and call it a day, as characters are under the artistic license of the producers and thus there is nothing definitive a professional can say about them.

In terms of characters, it is speculated that Tigger from Winnie the Pooh has classic ADHD (as seen here, though this is largely meant to be humorous). It is also thought that Winnie the Pooh himself has primarily inattentive ADHD. The character Tony Stark of Iron Man is so highly speculated to have ADHD that I have heard him being used as an 'example' of a superhero with ADHD, so that children who struggle with the disorder can feel more confident about their abilities.

In terms of confirmed characters, I know of very little. After further research, I know that the character Lucy Knight of the show 'E.R.' was on Ritalin (a medication used to treat ADHD). I have also repeatedly read that Luna Lovegood of Harry Potter has ADHD-PI, but I think that her character is too broad for any diagnosis. I don't know if Bradley Cooper's character in Limitless has ADHD or not, as the whole plot seems to be akin to the effects of someone unintentionally taking Adderall.

I know that this isn't a movie or show, but Calvin from the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes series is confirmed to have ADHD, as per the creator of the strip and as demonstrated in this comic.

EDIT: Forgot to mention this, but the character Michael Scofield of Prison Break is diagnosed with low latent inhibition, which is often used interchangeably with ADHD.


Beyond CBT and MBI, what are effective behavioral interventions for modern lifestyle addictions during their engagement?

Alas there's not much in the way of interventions that can curb impulsivity on the spot. Quoting from a somewhat dated but widely cited review, Moeller et al., 2001:

  Of the operant therapies used in treating individuals
  with impulsive-related disorders, contingency management
  procedures have received the most clinical and research
  attention. Contingency management involves the
  use of predetermined positive or negative consequences
  to reward or punish (and thus deter) the occurrence of a
  target behavior. [...]

  Reinforcement and response cost contingencies have
  been used in reducing impulsive behaviors in children. In
  the classroom, token economy systems have proven to be
  an effective short-term method for reducing disruptive behavior
  and promoting on-task, academic behavior (89, 90).
  Outside the classroom, the efficacy of contingency management
  procedures has not been demonstrated, and such
  procedures are generally considered to be impractical in
  home settings (91). Furthermore, recent studies have
  shown that contingency management procedures produce
  smaller gains than stimulants like methylphenidate, and
  gains engendered by contingency management treatment
  do not persist once reinforcement is terminated (92). Thus,
  generalization and maintenance continue to be central
  problems in using these behavioral reinforcement systems.

I quoted mostly the parts relating to ADHD since this seems to be the actual interest behind your question. And nothing on adult ADHD was mentioned in that review (only studies in contingency management in substance abuse in adults were mentioned in that review.) There's a fairly interesting ongoing trial on contingency management in smoking cessation in subjects with and without ADHD; quoting from the design:

  The investigators hypothesize that prior to a quit attempt, smokers with ADHD will exhibit significantly lower levels of intrinsic motivation to quit, and equal or higher levels of extrinsic motivation to quit compared to smokers without ADHD. [...] investigators hypothesize that smokers with ADHD will exhibit relatively less readiness for change than smokers without ADHD. [...] The investigators hypothesize that the CM [contingency management] intervention will result in relatively greater change in extrinsic motivation to quit versus intrinsic motivation to quit, and that this effect will be more pronounced among ADHD smokers. [...] The investigators hypothesize that overall motivation to quit (intrinsic and extrinsic) and readiness for change will be significantly influenced by the CM intervention versus treatment as usual among ADHD smokers.

Results haven't been published; they're scheduled for 2019. One very, very small trial was completed by another group on this same topic

  The prevalence of smoking among individuals diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is twice as high as the general smoking population. The aim of this study was to test the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of delivering a smartphone-based contingency management (CM) smoking cessation intervention with 3 adults diagnosed with ADHD. Using a multiple-baseline design, participants (N = 3) used their smartphones to upload 2 daily videos showing themselves measuring their carbon monoxide (CO) levels (abstinence was defined as CO ≤4 ppm). Monetary vouchers, redeemable for gift cards, were used to reinforce smoking abstinence during tapering, treatment, and thinning phases that lasted up to 28 days. During a 1-week follow-up meeting, participants provided 1 CO sample that was not rewarded. Preliminary results demonstrated that participants decreased their exhaled breath CO relative to baseline (from a mean of 24 ppm at baseline to a mean of 6 ppm during treatment). Participants rated the smartphone application as effective, convenient, and easy to use. Results suggest that a smartphone-based CM intervention is both feasible and acceptable for initiating smoking abstinence among individuals diagnosed with ADHD.

On a related note to these two latter studies, there have been conlficting results whether methylphenidate does or doesn't increase smoking in subjects with ADHD.

One more interesting observation (which, unfortunately, does not seem to have resulted in any particular treatment approaches) is that anxiety is correlated with more impulsivity in bipolar, ADHD, and other kinds of high-impulsivity disorders:

  Further, children and adolescents diagnosed with
  disruptive behavior disorders (ADHD, ODD, conduct
  disorder), conditions characterized by impulsiveness,
  often present with co-occurring anxiety disorders; for
  example, in a meta-analysis of community-sample
  based studies of comorbidity of diagnoses among
  children and adolescents, Angold, Costello, & Erkanli
  (1999) found that the median odds ratio for the
  association between ADHD and anxiety disorders
  was 3.0 (2.1–4.3) and for CD/ODD and anxiety
  disorders was 3.1 (2.2–4.6). Thus, while our study
  did not include an assessment of behaviorally disinhibited
  temperament, prior literature supports the
  proposition that anxiety may particularly influence
  impulsivity in individuals with an underlying predisposition
  toward behavioral disinhibition.

Also worth mentioning perhaps is a recent (and very large) epidemiological study on the overlaps of ADHD, anxiety, and bipolar (alas without a separate measure of impulsivity):

  We examined the relationship between ADHD, anxiety disorders and bipolar disorder in a birth cohort of 2,409,236 individuals born in Denmark between 1955 and 1991. [...]
  Over 37,394,865 person-years follow-up, 9250 onsets of bipolar disorder occurred. The incidence rate of bipolar disorder was 2.17 (95% CI 2.12–2.19) in individuals with no prior diagnosis of ADHD or anxiety, 23.86 (95% CI 19.98–27.75) in individuals with a prior diagnosis of ADHD only, 26.05 (95% CI 24.47–27.62) in individuals with a prior diagnosis of anxiety only and 66.16 (95% CI 44.83–87.47) in those with prior diagnoses of both ADHD and anxiety. The combination of ADHD and anxiety increased the risk of bipolar disorder 30-fold (95% CI 21.66–41.40) compared with those with no prior ADHD or anxiety.

Interestingly the link between anxiety and ADHD isn't strong considering the known genetic factors (from the mega study published in Science this summer), although the genetic link of ADHD with bipolar is significant and so are the genetic links of ADHD with major depression (MDD) (which is even stronger), and of anxiety with depression. Also OCD is (genetically) linked with bipolar but not with ADHD. (Schizophrenia is genetically well-linked to almost everything psychiatric except the anxiety disorders.) Research into genetic causes of most psychiatric disorders can be considered in its infancy through (genetic factors can currently explain only a small fraction of the variance in disorder incidence).

(Yes, I know this is a fairly large divagation from the topic of the question.)


Is "haptodysphoria" an urban legend or is there another term under which this studied?

Apparently "sensory over-responsivity" is a more widely used term:

  Sensory over-responsivity, a subtype of sensory modulation disorder, is characterized by extreme negative reactions to normative sensory experiences. Individuals vary widely in their reactions to sensory stimuli, with some children and adults reporting aversive, even painful, responses to contact with everyday objects and exposure to everyday sounds. Some people find the sound of vacuum cleaners or sirens highly aversive, and some children fuss about stiff new clothes and labels sewn inside collars. They may dislike being lightly touched or vigorously protest brushing their teeth.

No mention of velvet though in that article.


Is there a mental disorder in which one is unable to determine personal preferences, and as a result, is a cause of great distress?

There is no specific symptom criteria in DSM that matches your description. It’s a very general problem that can be conceptualized in a variety of ways.

The closest thing I can think of that resembles your description would be generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Dugas and Ladoceur claims in their research that the main underlying factor causing GAD is intolerance for uncertainty (IU), which - among several things - increases anxiety in decision making. IU paired with another factor for GAD - cognitive avoidance - causes tendencies to avoid difficult decisions completely, or dealing with decisions with excessive worry.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11142548/

Please bear in mind that proper assessment and diagnostic requires a face to face consultation with a licensed specialist.


Is it possible to do multiple internal monologues in parallel?

No one can speak two words or can sing two songs in parallel.

PHYSIOLOGICALLY
There's something called polyphonic singing, which overtine singing is a form of. Here's a demonstration of overtone singing and a demonstration that also includes undertone singing, so it's possible both physiologically and cognitively.
For verbal communication, some languages require just little enough use of parts of the mouth and/or throat such that it's possible to produce sounds in parralel that can build up words.
Overtones and undertones are not the only techniques that can be used to produce muliple sounds at the same time that are enough to communicate in a verbal langauge. For example, beatboxers produce multiple sounds at the same time. It depends on the language. For example, some language requires a certain pressure in the lungs to produce some of it sounds such that other sounds cannot be produced at the same time, while in others that is not the case, while some require so much that no sounds can be produced in parralel that are a part of verbal languages, , as far as I know, such as whistling languages (and possibly clicking languages but I'm not fully certain about that).
There's also non-verbal communication that can be done. In this case, single-handed sign language can be done with 2 hands at the same time. This might limit communication, but, again, it depends on the language.
In addition, other physical communication can be used for conversing.
COGNITIVELY
I do not know enough about neuroscience to answer this, except for what I heard in documentaries from some researchers (and I don't have citations nor links for that) that the human brain can retain only about 3-7 "small" pieces of information at the same time (I've heard an estimation in bytes, too, however I don't know how relevant and/or accurate it is, as meaning can be encoded to very large and very small amount of bytes), and I do not know enough about how language processing works in the brain to answer you that, and self-conversation also requires processing of the own self, so it's not only the language processing part(s) of the brain that will need to be involved, as there will be needed to be some feedback loop that takes own-produced information as stimuli for processing - something that is usually done serially, and not in parallel.
So I do not think that we have enough cognitive capabilities for that, but like I said, I'm not an expert in the field.


Research on "probabilistic thinking" in non-human animals?

Try an internet search on animal learning probability.  Although that might not be what you want because it sounds like you specifically want insight as opposed to learning in general.

Your particular example is problematic because you're inferring far too much on the subjects part. They might prefer B because they just want more of anything offered. The experiments need to be much more careful than that in order to attribute effects to probabilistic thinking. What kind of response will occur doesn't just depend on the probability of events but what kind of reward contingencies are associated.  Both people and animals do dumb things with simple probabilities and rewards.  But they do the same thing. Does that justify an argument that they have a probabilistic sense?

Deriving a distinction between insight and conditioning is sometimes problematic (for example food aversion in rats) and insight is usually only accepted when it can pass the interocular impact test.  While I can show you lots of papers on probability learning I'm unaware of any that tap insight about probabilities.

Consider the problem for the researcher. In order to establish insight into probabilities the subject has to experience the events repeatedly in a relevant way so that they become learnable. Given this takes a degree of exposure in the first place it would be very hard to dissociate conditioning from insight based learning.

Also consider that people sometimes can learn probabilities but don't always do intelligent things with them. For example, when there are two possible events and one happens 75% of the time people tend to select the frequent event 75% of the time. This is rather boneheaded because selecting the frequent event all of the time will give you the most accurate performance. Animals actually learn to do the latter. So maybe animals have a stronger probability sense? Regardless, they clearly they learn probabilities.


Does high IQ correlate with good social skills?

The question is more complicated than it seems.

Even though it is easy to agree to that some people are more competent in their social behavior than others, it has proven to be very difficult to define what we mean when we talk about social skills (or "social intelligence", "social competence"). Is it the ability to manage social relationships, does it contain empathy, is it the knowledge about how social relationships work, the number of friends, or being good in negotiations, as you define it? Over the years, researchers have used partly overlapping and partly distinct definitions. For the difficulties associated with conceptualizing social intelligence refer to this review by Kihlstrom and Cantor (2000).

Consequently, this difficulty is also reflected in the difficulty of  measuring social skills. A wide variety of measures have been developed. Based on the multitude of conceptual approaches it is clear that the results of these measures will often diverge. For example, Riggio et al. (1989) conducted a study in which participants completed a large number of standardized measures of social intelligence. The measures included tests that measured the ability to perceive the feelings and intentions of others, the ability to assess interpersonal relationships, various measures aimed at testing the ability to predict social behavior of others and the ability to perceive feelings of others. The correlations of these measures "ranged from  -0.20 to 0.44, with a mean r of 0.20". Thus, they had some overlap among each other, but this overlap was pretty low. Riggio et al. also measured academic intelligence (with a variety of measures) and found that "the measures of academic and social intelligence ranged from -0.10 to 0.52, with a mean r of 0.15". Some have used results like these to question the usefulness of social intelligence as a construct. Others have questioned whether it is possible to distinguish social from other forms of intelligence at all. The methodological problem becomes even clearer if you keep in mind that most social intelligence tests are based on paper-and-pencil (self-report) questionnaires that do not necessarily overlap with peer reports or actual tests of social skills (in an assessment center, for example). In light of these difficulties, it may not be surprising that a prominent review of the literature regards the search for "social skills" as a concept as "long, frustrating, and fruitless" (Landy, 2005).

Even though the field does not seem to have found consensus in the mean time, more recent research shares the idea that it is necessary to take the multidimensionality of social intelligence into account when conceptualizing and measuring them. From this perspective, there will be elements of social intelligence that have a stronger overlap with "pure reasoning" measures of IQ than others. For example, Jones and Day (1997) found in research with sample of high school students that indicators of "crystallized social knowledge" (declarative and  procedural knowledge about social events) were highly correlated (r=.79) with academic problem solving (which is closely to related to what is measured with classic IQ tests). However they were not so strongly related (r=.29) to "social-cognitive flexibility" (the ability to apply social knowledge flexibly to solve novel problems). A strong point of this research is that the researchers combined self-ratings and tests with teacher ratings to assess all of these constructs. These findings suggest that some parts of social intelligence (social knowledge) are virtually indistinguishable from general intelligence. However, other elements of social intelligence (applying social knowledge) are somewhat positively related to intelligence (more intelligent = somewhat better in social problem solving on average).

References

Jones, K., & Day, J. D. (1997). Discrimination of two aspects of cognitive-social intelligence from academic intelligence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 89, 486–497. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.89.3.486

Kihlstrom, J.F, & Cantor, N. (2000). in R.J. Sternberg (Ed.), Handbook of intelligence, 2nd ed. (pp. 359-379). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Landy, F. J. (2005) The Long, Frustrating, and Fruitless Search for Social Intelligence. In K. R. Murphy (Ed.) The Emotional Intelligence Bandwagon: The Struggle Between Science and Marketing for the Soul of EI. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates, 2005

Riggio, R. E., Messamer, J., & Throckmorton, B. (1991). Social and academic intelligence: Conceptually distinct but overlapping constructs. Personality and Individual Differences, 12, 695–702. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(91)90225-Z


The question you link to has an answer which says: "narcissism in US men" which is quite a different category than what you ask here. Selfie-ism or Selfitis is not a disorder, or by default narcissistic.

Why do [female] teenagers take so many selfies?

Statista, on their webpage "Selfies Are All About Appearance", reports on a Georgia Institute of Technology study of 2.5M Instagram selfies titled: "Selfie-Presentation in Everyday Life: A Large-Scale Characterization of Selfie Contexts on Instagram" (ICWSM 2017), by Julia Deeb-Swihart, Christopher Polack, Eric Gilbert, and Irfan Essa, that out of those whom do take selfies the percentages are 59% female and 41% male.

I'm asking the causes of this fact, not if there is a correlation with narcissism.

It's not all about appearance, only 52%; with 14% family, friends and pets, 13% about ethnicity or nationality, 7% travel, 5% health and fitness, with the remaining 9% falling into other categories.
For the appearance category the reasoning is:

Most: Comments, compliments and likes. (World Disclosure).

Confirmation: I am wearing properly applied makeup, and have great clothes.

Look: Where I am, what I have, where I go, whom I know.

The Georgia Tech study: "Selfies: We Love How We Look and We’re Here to Show You" offers these graphs showing the most popular selfie type and who shares the most selfies:

As you can see the belief that teen age girls share the most selfies is not correct.
It is the skew of the search engines that produces this belief, it not supported by studies.

Furthermore their photos are strange, they usually pose in a weird way.

See the result of using Google to search for "female selfies" - the results are not particularly different than the two examples you provided, nor would I describe them as weird. See the Selfie Explorer Tool (after the next paragraph) for an analysis of poses.
While not directly part of the question the website SuggestMe has a webpage regarding the travel aspect: "Tourists and locals love taking selfies in London" showing the top 10 most popular cities, places, and places per city. Establishing proof that one is worldly, sophisticated, versed in the ways of the world.
The "Selfie Explorer Tool" at SelfieCity allows you to generate requests for specific types of selfies based on attributes such as demographics, pose, features, or mood. It also shows which types are more prevalent.
A NYTimes article: "The real reason men hate women taking selfies" offers:

"There are few harmless actions that seem to infuriate guys more than young women taking selfies.
And it is mostly young women who have been snapping pictures of their faces and posting them to Instagram since the social-media platform’s inception in 2010. In 2014, a survey by photography app Selfiecity revealed that in New York, 23-year-old females take the most selfies and 62 percent of selfies are taken by women. (That’s still less than in other cities — in Moscow, for instance, 82 percent of selfies depict female faces.)
Taking pictures of yourself is an action that harms precisely zero people, but you wouldn’t know that the way some people respond.
...
Male journalists regularly rail against the practice. ... There’s a fairly common refrain in these pieces that selfie takers are “narcissistic,” despite the fact that a 2017 study from Brigham Young University indicated that’s not generally true. As Alicia Eler points out in her new book “Selfie Generation” (Skyhorse Publishing), “Generally, it’s men telling women that they are narcissists for selfie-ing.” She further remarks that “young women are simultaneously told that their self-worth depends on their appearance, but they are referred to as ‘vain’ and ‘narcissistic’ if they post selfies, which are all about appearance.”

Psychology Today has an article: "Get Over Selfie Shame!" as does a NYTimes article: "The real reason men hate women taking selfies" and Snopes: "Rumor: The American Psychiatric Association has classified the taking of 'selfies' as a mental disorder" disagreeing with the snap diagnosis.
An important problem to acknowledge is the so-called "Snapshot Dysmorphia" a term coined by Drs. Susruthi Rajanala, Mayra Maymone, and Neelam Vashi, in "Selfies — Living in the Era of Filtered Photographs", where people visit plastic surgeons with selfies that have been adjusted by filters using a program such as Facetune and expect to receive surgery to look like their more perfect self.
The danger of taking selfies has prompted even the Russian government's Interior Ministry to offer a "Safe Selfie" guide:

"Safe Selfies
Your health and your life is more valuable than millions of likes in social networks!
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia is concerned about the increasing number of traumatizations and even deaths when trying to make a unique self. Each of these cases could be prevented. For this purpose, the Memorandum "Safe Self" was created in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, designed to draw attention, primarily to young people, to this problem. We tried visually, in the form of pictograms, to depict the most traumatic cases of creating selfies, thereby to warn citizens against unjustified risk for the sake of a memorable frame.
When a person tries to take a picture of himself - his attention is distracted, his balance is lost, he does not look around and does not feel danger. Do SELFI, making sure that you are in a safe place and your life is not threatened!
We hope that our initiative will be supported in all regions, will support young people, adults and children.
Download PDF version of Reminder.".


Variables in positive reinforcement in human beings

Your question is, in essence, a request for a mathematical model of Temporal Difference Reinforcement Learning.  In a nutshell, temporal difference models add a notion of time to reinforcement learning models, which describe reinforcement learning as a comparison between what was expected and what actually occurred.

I think most of your answers can be found in the article above.  =)

Edit re: my insistence on mathematical models providing the answer to your question:

Just to be clear, mathematical models don't exist in a vaccuum.  Good models are:

built from constraints imposed by experimental observation
tractable; that is, they reflect the (presumed) underlying implementation

Case and point, the Rescorla-Wagner model's1 delta (prediction error) parameter has been correlated to the phasic activity of dopaminergic neurons.  This is precisely why the model is so hugely successful; it describes not only the experimental data, but the apparent neurological underpinnings, at least superficially.

Note that this is a very important kind of validity for neurological models, so much so, in fact, that there is an entire class of neuroimaging papers dedicated to finding functional activations that correspond to various parameters in such high-quality models.  Exhibit B.

I think your confusion arises from a lack of familiarity with the modelling approach to cognitive neuroscience (and that's okay! It's not obvious!), as well as a non-trivial distinction between the questions "what happens", "how does it happen" and "where does it happen".  You specifically asked what happens, which is the realm of formal mathematics.  What happens, as best we can tell, is that learning is driven by updating a prediction about what will happen concomitantly with (or shortly after) a stimulus, with what actually happens when that stimulus is sensed.  The models describe the exact nature of this interaction.  If you want to be more specific than this, you need to dive into the math.  If you want to know where or how these computations are performed, then that's another question entirely.

1.  this model doesn't integrate any notion of time, contrary to the above TDRL model


Is there a difference between hearing and decoding the sound?

Short answer

Yes, there is a difference between hearing and understanding sound.

Background

Acoustic information is processed in different neural centers along the auditory pathway. The auditory system runs from the peripheral end organ in the inner ear (the cochlea) to the cortex. Along the way various processing steps are carried out. For example, basic reflex behaviors in response to acoustic stimuli (e.g., startle responses) are processed in subcortical structures (Bocca, 1985), while complex sound perception, such as listening to music, is mediated in the cortex (Philips & Farmer, 1982).

Source: New York University

It is not until the cortex that complex sounds such as speech are processed into meaningful information. The difference between hearing and understanding sound is strikingly evident in people with lesions in the auditory cortex.

Damage to the auditory cortex can result in an inability to recognize complex sounds and in a loss of speech understanding. These symptoms are referred to as agnosia or cortical deafness (Rosati, 1982). The loss of speech understanding (word deafness) is the most debilitating and therefore most investigated aspect of agnosia (Philips & Farmer, 1982).

However, tone audiograms (i.e., tonal hearing sensitivity) of people with cortical deafness are largely unaffected (i.e., their auditory thresholds are fine) and they may have normal sound-intensity and sound-frequency discriminating abilities as well (Rosati, 1982). Hence, the auditory cortex is thought to fulfill a synthetic function, in that it integrates complex sounds such as speech in time (Bocca, 1985). Word deafness may therefore be comparable to hearing a strange language, or hearing reversed words being spoken; one can hear it, but not comprehend it (Rosati, 1982).

It has been shown that the auditory cortex is crucial in storing information as well as processing of sound stimuli with rapidly changing content (in the order of milliseconds to tens of milliseconds). A loss of storage capacity and the loss of the ability to analyze rapidly changing acoustic signals are thought to at least partly explain the detrimental effects of auditory cortex lesions on speech understanding and other auditory abilities (Philips & Farmer, 1982).

References
- Bocca, The Laryngoscope 1985;68:301-9
- Philips & Farmer, Behav Brain Res 1990;40:85-94
- Rosati et al., J Neurol 1982;227:21-7


What is the difference between Symbolism and Abstract thinking in Piaget's Theory?

Symbolism uses a symbol to represent an existing object, while abstract thinking can be thought of as considering things that don't actually exist.

For a rough example of each, consider representation as symbolism (this paper is the plane I'm on) and consider generalization as abstraction (what it means to be "on" something). For another, consider something (this blue line on a paper) that represents something else (this river), contrasted with considering the concepts of "blue" or "line".


Is there scientific evidence that narcissists cannot be treated?

It appears you have heard correctly, at least in a sense: there are no peer reviewed treatments for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) itself. On the other hand, this does not constitute evidence that narcissists cannot be treated, either.

A review of the NPD literature by Dhawan, Kunik, Oldham and Coverdale (2010) reported an absence of evidence one way or another in no uncertain terms:

  To determine the most efficacious treatments for NPD without other comorbidities, we performed searches using Narcissis*, pharmacology, clinical pharmacology, therapeutics, and psychotherapy for reports of controlled trials from January 1980 to August 2008. [...] We identified 7 prevalence studies that had used a structured or semistructured interview, 5 of which scored 5/6 using the epidemiologic quality tool. Mean prevalence was 1.06%, and the range was 0% to 6.2%. We found no studies of treatment meeting our inclusion criteria.

The prevalence numbers refer to how many people satisfied the DSM-IV-TR NPD criteria. The epidemiological quality tool referred to is defined as follows:

  Articles received 1 point for each of the following: surveying a national population (because personality disorders are more prevalent closer to city centers, this disparity could influence locally obtained samples), obtaining a sample that was representative of the population being surveyed, accounting for nonrespondents, using a valid diagnostic instrument, having adequate training of interviewers, and assessing reliability. Assessment of the above criteria was determined after each question for each study was independently rated by each author. Then the authors met twice and came to a consensus regarding the scoring of each question.

My own review of the 2009-2015 literature did not find any new developments. There simply does not appear to be any treatment studies for NPD, efficacious or otherwise.

References

Dhawan, N., Kunik, M. E., Oldham, J., & Coverdale, J. (2010). Prevalence and treatment of narcissistic personality disorder in the community: a systematic review. Comprehensive psychiatry, 51(4), 333-339.


How does ethnic identity contribute to a person's self esteem

I would look at Jennifer Crocker and Brenda Major's paper in 1989, Psychological Review, entitled "Social Stigma and Self-Esteem: The Self-Protective Properties of Stigma" which focuses on how being the target of social stigma can actually be protective of one's self-esteem.  It's not precisely what you're discussing but it comes the closest in the literature I know and they're discussion and bibliography would likely be a good starting point.  Hope this helps!


Is there any fMRI evidence for different "states of mind"?

Dario Ringach wrote in a letter titled Neuroscience: States of Mind:

(inline references removed, see link for references)

  If the ability to perceive oriented stimuli is found to depend on the
  cortical state, we can then ask a number of important questions
  about cortical function. Is the time the cortex spends visiting
  particular states a function of attention? In other words, if an
  animal is trained to perceive horizontal stimuli, will there be a
  corresponding increase in the time the cortex spends sampling the
  horizontal orientation map relative to the other maps? Perhaps
  perceptual learning has more to do with 'top-down' mechanisms (brain
  processes learning how to 'control' the ongoing state of the early
  visual cortex) rather than 'bottom-up' mechanisms (external stimuli
  producing dramatic and long-lasting changes in the way the visual
  cortex processes incoming information). In more general terms,
  one might ask if such intrinsic cortical states represent the brain's
  'current hypothesis' about the state of the external world. In
  this case, the purpose of the cortical machinery would be to
  continuously update the current hypothesis by considering new visual
  information.

Rabinovich is well-known in dynamical systems neuroscience for highlighting the importance of transient states (as opposed to attractor states).  That is, it is the active dynamics that correlate with perceptive state, moreso than the steady-state dynamics.  This view has experimental evidence from several different organisms (See the Rabinovich link) but the most notable example is Locust olfactory states.

The Rabinovich paper above is really the goldmine for this question, including fMRI evidence, but another source of fMRI theory in relation to brain states is Karl Friston's Free Energy Principle for the Brain


How is "the innermost child" framed in psychology?

What you are talking about is mentioned in psychology to be the “inner child”.

Inner Child Therapy is used within many different forms of therapy.  The inner child is often characterized as a subpersonality within the framework of psychosynthesis or may also be seen as a central element surrounded by subpersonalities. Virtually every talk therapy approach acknowledges and ascribes some meaning to the inner child, but in some cases they use a different label.  Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) has expanded the concept considerably in recognizing that there isn't just one inner child subpersonality, but many.

  Inner child therapy has been designed to help those who, as children, have been hurt by the adults and circumstances around them. They may have been hurt, not just by major, easily recognised traumas such as physical or sexual abuse or death of, or abandonment by, a parent, but also by the daily drip drip traumas such as neglect, rejection, criticism, humiliation, bullying, denial or confusion. (Christopher, 2016)

References

Christopher, J. (2016). Inner child therapy [Online]Retreived from: https://www.counselling-directory.org.uk/counsellor-articles/inner-child-therapy