What is this method used in the "it's not your fault" segment of Good Will Hunting and why does it work?

An addition to the other answers:

We must remember that we are watching a movie. Movies are often called "dramatizations", a term that makes very clear what this type of movie does: it creates drama. It was not made to educate the viewers about how a therapy works, but rather to evoke intense emotions in the viewers. We should even assume that this movie does not faithfully depict any actual therapy but rather takes up the ideas that most viewers have of what would be helpful and reflects them back at them, because reinforcing a belief that you already hold will create the strongest emotional echo.

What do most people do in a situation like that in the movie? They tell their friend that "it is not your fault". Most therapists don't do that. Telling a patient how he or she should feel often has adverse effects: the person begins to defend his or her emotions from the devaluing judgment that they perceive the therapist's suggestion to be. What happens is that the belief in their own guilt gets cemented and harder to overcome.

A good therapists helps a patient to arrive at the conclusion by themselves. The most powerful ideas, when it comes to changing yourself, are those insights that you have yourself. A therapist might use questions ("Why do you think ...?") or careful suggestions ("Do you think it is possible that ...?") to direct the thinking of the patient, or the example of himself or a group of other patients with similar experiences (in a group therapy). Another component is psychoeducation, i.e. explaining to the patient that feelings of guilt are common symptoms and why patients experience them.

I cannot view the video, so my examples probably don't fit the situation at hand. Please always provide a short summary.


What is the study with the dual-task experiment that involved a colour-wheel change detection task?

Your description sounds a little bit like Experiment 3 from

Hollingworth, A., Richard, A. M., Luck, S. J. (2008) Understanding the function of visual short-term memory: Transsaccadic memory, object correspondence, and gaze correction. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol 137(1), 163-181. PDF

See Fig. 7 on page 172 for a picture of the display utilized in this experiment.


What is a good textbook for an undergrad Cognitive Neuroscience course?

I'm in an undergraduate course on Cognitive Neuroscience and have found the textbook we chose, Principles of Neural Science, to be helpful and illustrative.  Strictly speaking, cognitive neuroscience is the subject of but one of the book's sections, but if you are not requiring prerequisites I think it is appropriate to have the basics (and some possible extensions) included.


Almost every pair of theories on that list sets up a false dichotomy.

It is not an issue of one theory over another; at issue is how much different explanations apply to different circumstances. There is at least some evidence for each possibility that is not explained away by the other.

Resolving these dichotomies in favor of one theory or the other is probably not a worthwhile pursuit.

However, many papers are published that are greatly informative on some of these issues, and in fact if you had scrolled down just a bit on your own link or followed up a bit, you would find that the original author of the table presented in that tweet has an updated list (though several years old now) that mentions several such papers: https://faculty.washington.edu/agg/pdf/PPS_2012_supplement.Unresolved_controversies.pdf

I especially like this footnote from that link, which I think strongly supports my answer (emphasis mine):

  b This controversy is treated as unresolved by some researchers, but the recent article by Smith
  and Grossman (2008) has argued, using brain imaging evidence, for “multiple systems of category
  learning”, which suggests a controversy resolution in the form treating multiple theories of the nature of
  category representations as valid in distinguishable domains of application.

So to answer your question:

  In general, how does one resolve two competing theories in Psychology?

In general, one resolves the existence of competing theories by testing cases where one theory or the other better explains an experimental result and attempts to resolve the conflict by finding mediating factors that prefer one theory over the other (or some entirely separate theory that may explain all or part of the data).

This is usually an incremental, iterative process, not something that is resolved in one key work.

References

Greenwald, A. G. (2012). There is nothing so theoretical as a good method. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 7(2), 99-108.


Lecture versus problem-based learning of psychology

There is a large amount of research of research that compares the effectiveness of problem based learning (PBL) with more traditional approaches such as lectures. Most of it stems from medical science education, and attests to the positive consequences of PBL (see the meta-analysis by Walker & Leary, 2009). However, some researchers have questioned how rigorous this research is and others have doubts whether the benefits of PBL are worth its costs - as it can be quite resource demanding (for a starting point into this discussion and literature, see e.g., Pease & Kuhn, 2011).

Furthermore, there seems to be much heterogeneity in the effectiveness of PBL (e.g., Walker & Leary, 2009). Several meta-analyses have been conducted in an effort to explain these differences. A good starting point into the subject may be Strobel and van Barneveld's (2009) meta-review of PBL-meta analyses. Quoting from their abstract:

  Problem-based learning (PBL) has been utilized for over 40 years in a
  variety of different disciplines. Although extensively researched,
  there is heated debate about the effectiveness of PBL. Several
  meta-analyses were conducted that provided a synthesis of the effects
  of PBL in comparison to traditional forms of instruction. This study
  used a qualitative meta-synthesis approach to compare and contrast the
  assumptions and findings of the meta-analytical research on the
  effectiveness of PBL. Findings indicated that PBL was superior when it
  comes to long-term retention, skill development and satisfaction of
  students and teachers, while traditional approaches were more
  effective for short-term retention as measured by standardized board
  exams.

[emphasis added]

If you are looking for research on PBL in psychology, the journal Teaching in Psychology may be worth a look. The journal is more of an outlet for publications on specific exercises and teaching-related resources ("hands-on-approach"). However, the proposed teaching methods and exercises (which could be often regarded as PBL) are usually compared to traditional approaches in small evaluation studies. Other than that there doesn't seem to be much research that looks into the effectiveness of PBL in psychology on a broader level.

References

Pease, M. A., & Kuhn, D. (2011). Experimental analysis of the effective components of problem-based learning. Science Education, 95, 57–86. doi:10.1002/sce.20412

Strobel, J. , & van Barneveld, A. (2009). When is PBL More Effective? A Meta-synthesis of Meta-analyses Comparing PBL to Conventional Classrooms. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 3(1).

Walker, A. & Leary, H. (2009). A Problem Based Learning Meta Analysis: Differences Across Problem Types, Implementation Types, Disciplines, and Assessment Levels. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 3(1), 6-28.


What effects does multitasking have on comprehension and memory of audiobooks/speech?

There does not seem to be any research on your exact question on:

the effect of "low attention tasks" and "high attention tasks" on the comprehension and memory of speech modality learning.

However, if we widen the scope of the question to different modalities of learning like reading, then there is ample research. However, most of the research seems to be done on comprehension and not memory.
Low Attention Tasks
Lin Lin et. al. (2009) did a study on college students for assessing their reading performance under three conditions: (a) reading only (silence condition), (b) reading with a video playing in the background (background multitasking condition), and (c) reading and watching video simultaneously (test multitasking condition). They found that the participants performed best in the background condition, i.e. when they had a background video playing. This a surprising finding. A similar study was done by Jennifer Lee et. al. (2011) and found that the performance was similar for cases (a) and (b).
For your case, this suggests that "low attention tasks" will not negatively affect your comprehension, and may even increase comprehension (as suggest by Lee et. al. (2009)).
High Attention Tasks
Beyond conclusions about the effect of low-attention tasks, Jennifer et. al. (2011) also rigorously tested the effect of "high attention tasks". To quote from their abstract:

Participants were given a timed (16 minutes) reading comprehension test in three conditions: Silence (only reading), Background multitasking (reading with a non-tested video shown simultaneously), and Test multitasking (reading with a tested video shown simultaneously) conditions.
Our findings indicated that: (1) participants in the Background condition performed as well as those in the Silence condition, and (2) when participants were tested on their video comprehension, the group in the Test condition performed significantly better than the group in the Background condition. The results of this study suggest that cognitive load plays an important role in determining how much information is retained when students perform more than one task at a time.

Their conclusion tells that the division of cognitive load affects your performance very clearly. Hence, it is best to avoid the high-attention tasks altogether.
References:

Lin Lin, Tip Robertson & Jennifer Lee (2009) Reading Performances Between Novices and Experts in Different Media Multitasking Environments, Computers in the Schools, 26:3, 169-186, DOI: 10.1080/07380560903095162
Jennifer Lee, Lin Lin & Tip Robertson (2012) The impact of media multitasking on learning, Learning, Media and Technology, 37:1, 94-104, DOI: 10.1080/17439884.2010.537664

Non-research Sources
Beyond what the current research says, I would like to cite 2 more sources: "Deep Work" book by Cal Newport, and the training modality of Samurai Jack (a fictional character in an animated series).
In "Deep Work", Cal Newport makes a very compelling case for why deep work (i.e. work devoid of all distractions) is so important. The first half of the book is completely dedicated to understanding its importance; while the second half deals with its implementation. Cal Newport is an academic, and so he backs his claims with scientific research and his own careful observations.
Finally, as a kid, I was always fascinated with the training regime of Samurai Jack. When training for sword fighting, he used to blind-fold himself and then train. This made him one of the best Samurais, capable of defeating a redoubtable evil dragon. What I got to understand from his regime was that he was blocking all the various stimuli in order to bring intense focus and really bring out the potential of the remaining active senses.
This is not just true for Samurai Jack. Masters in any field have been doing this through the ages : cutting down stimuli.
It's surprising, then, today we are instead adding more stimuli instead of reducing them. I think it's best to go the old-fashioned way. It's best we embrace the The Samurai Jack Blindfold:


What is the effect of Daylight Saving Time on attentiveness and productivity?

Short answer

The amount of sleep that people get affects people attentiveness and their productivity to a large extent, as discussed by Rosekind et al. (2015). When switching to DST, many people experience a loss of sleep
(Barnes and Wagner, 2009) which can last up to a week and potentially longer (Harrison, 2013). This lack of sleep may explain the fact that more occupational accidents occur and productivity on the work floor drops (Barnes and Wagner, 2009; Coren, 1996).

Long answer

Sleep and attention

Rosekind et al. (2010) did a research on the effect of sleep and productivity in a general sense. In their introduction, they described the following:

  The prefrontal cortex is an especially important part of the brain for
  such functions as temporal memory and divergent thinking tasks
  (Harrison & Horne, 2000b), as well as control of emotional responses
  and attention (Johnson & Proctor, 2004). Consistent with this
  contention, empirical research indicates that sleep is an important
  determinant of alertness and attention deployment and control (Dijk,
  Duffy, & Czeisler, 1992; Flower et al., 2003; Jewett & Kronauer, 1999;
  Smith, McEvoy, & Gevins, 2002).

Following, in their study, they compared alertness and task performance of people (1) with good sleep, (2) who are at risk of losing sleep, (3) with insufficient sleep syndrome (ISS) and (4) who suffer insomnia. The results indicated that the people who sleep well always significantly outperformed the insomniacs. Effects of different sizes were found between the insomniac, at-risk and ISS group, depending on the measure.

DST

With sleep loss, attention and productivity is thus negatively effected. But do people lose sleep because of DST? Harrison (2013) researched the effect of DST on sleep and related behaviors and, in his abstract, states that:

  Relative ease in adjustment of sleep patterns is assumed by the general population but this review suggests that the scientific data challenge a popular understanding of the clock change periods. The start of daylight saving time in the spring is thought to lead to the relatively inconsequential loss of 1 h of sleep on the night of the transition, but data suggests that increased sleep fragmentation and sleep latency present a cumulative effect of sleep loss, at least across the following week, perhaps longer.

The negative effect is not limited to the shift of the clock in the spring:

  The cumulative effect of five consecutive days of earlier rise times following the autumn change again suggests a net loss of sleep across the week. Indirect evidence of an increase in traffic accident rates, and change in health and regulatory behaviours which may be related to sleep disruption suggest that adjustment to daylight saving time is neither immediate nor without consequence.

Another study by Barnes and Wagner (2009) also showed that people slept shorter after DST and that there was an increased amount of accidents in the immediate Monday after, compared to before the switch to DST. No significant differences in amount of sleep or accidents were found after the autumn switch from DST to normal time.

The loss of sleep is not only a problem for productivity on the job. In a Canadian study (Coren, 1996), the amount of traffic incidents were investigated over several years around the switch to DST. Three Mondays were compared: 1 week before DST, Monday immediately after DST and the Monday 1 week later. Results shows that the amount of accidents significantly increased directly after the switch to DST, and a week later (although the effect size is smaller).
.

References

Barnes, C. M., & Wagner, D. T. (2009). Changing to daylight saving time cuts into sleep and increases workplace injuries. Journal of applied psychology, 94(5), 1305.

Coren, S. (1996). Daylight savings time and traffic accidents. New England Journal of Medicine, 334(14), 924-925.

Harrison, Y. (2013). The impact of daylight saving time on sleep and related behaviours. Sleep medicine reviews, 17(4), 285-292.

Rosekind, M. R., Gregory, K. B., Mallis, M. M., Brandt, S. L., Seal, B., & Lerner, D. (2010). The cost of poor sleep: workplace productivity loss and associated costs. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 52(1), 91-98.


What are some criticisms of HEXACO from the Big Five camp?

We had a discussion of the pros and cons of the HEXACO model in a recent article that draws on arguments and evidence presented by the "heavyweights" of the Big 5 (Anglim, & O'Connor, 2019).
Here is the quote of the paragraph that focusses specifically on the critiques:

Although the HEXACO model is receiving growing support, the necessity
of a sixth broad trait, as well as the nature of this trait are
subjects of current debate.

First, other prominent six factor
inventories including the Hogan Personality Inventory (Hogan & Hogan,
1992), the Six Factor Personality Questionnaire (Jackson, Paunonen, &
Tremblay, 2000), and Saucier's Big Six (Saucier, 2009) have not
converged on the same sixth factor in the same way that has broadly
occurred with the Big Five (De Raad, Barelds, Mlačić, et al., 2010).
Second, while several lexical studies have broadly supported the
HEXACO model, the support is far from universal.
Third, Saucier and
Ostendorf (1999) have argued that any broad trait in addition to the
Big Five will correlate highly with one of the existing Big Five, and
honesty-humility correlates relatively highly with agreeableness (r =
.67 in Gaughan, Miller, & Lynam, 2012). Honesty-humility also
correlates reasonably well with straightforwardness and modesty facets
of agreeableness in the NEO-PI-R, suggesting that a comprehensive
facet-level model using the Big Five may provide similar predictive
benefits (Costa & McCrae, 1995; Gaughan et al., 2012).
Fourth,
Barford, Zhao, and Smillie (2015) mapped the Big Five and HEXACO
traits to a common space provided by the interpersonal circumplex, and
found that honesty-humility occupied a fairly similar space to the
politeness aspect of B5 agreeableness.
Finally, Condon (2017) assessed
the covariance structure of approximately 700 statement-based
personality test items drawn from the most commonly used public-domain
personality measures (including an approximately equal representation
of items from prominent five and six-factor measures). While he found
support for a large number of narrow traits, factor analysis suggested
five broad traits, and when six factors were extracted, the sixth
factor did not correspond to honesty-humility.

References:

Anglim, J., & O'Connor, P. (2019). Measurement and Research Using the Big Five, HEXACO, and Narrow Traits: A Primer for Researchers and Practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology, 71, 16-25. https://psyarxiv.com/a78g2/download


Is there a correlation between online and offline vandalism?

According to this study, there really is a correlation:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/02/internet_troll_personality_study_machiavellianism_narcissism_psychopathy.html

  The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba
  and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who
  engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall
  in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to
  manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and
  self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and
  sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

  It is hard to overplay the results: The study found correlations,
  sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling
  behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark
  Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an
  individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet.

The research document itself can be found here:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324


Does neuroticism go hand in hand with introversion?

Does neuroticism therefore go hand in hand with introversion?

No, these are different dimensions of personality. One can be therefore be introverted and neurotic, or extroverted and neurotic [1].

With that said, there appears to be a relationship between introversion and neuroticism - a positive correlation of .3 [2]. Rather than one causing the other, it may be because both have a common cause [3].

[1] http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1961.tb02931.x/abstract
[2]http://www.tc.umn.edu/~cdeyoung/Pubs/DeYoung_2007_BFAS_JPSP.pdf
[3]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19263467


Do persons with autism have a bigger genetic predisposition to psychosis/schizophrenia?

Generally speaking, yes; it's relatively more common for psychosis to be comorbid with or present after diagnosed Autism.

For a good overview of this topic read Autism and Schizophrenia (Yael Dvir, MD and Jean A. Frazier, MD).

  COS (Child Onset Schizophrenia)—the onset of psychosis before age 13 years—is considered a rare and severe form of schizophrenia. Systematic studies of COS show high rates of the disorder being either preceded by or comorbid with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD).7

Note however that the similar (but not identical) features between COS and Autism:

  Although the disorders are distinct, they have shared clinical features. Social withdrawal, communication impairment, and poor eye contact seen in ASD are similar to the negative symptoms seen in youths with schizophrenia.11 When higher-functioning individuals with autism are stressed, they become highly anxious and at times may appear thought-disordered and paranoid, particularly when they are asked to shift set (such as being asked to change a topic of conversation or to stop an activity that they are engaged in and begin a new activity).12 A subset of children (28%) in the ongoing NIMH study of COS have been reported to have comorbid COS and ASD.7

There's also likely a bit of sample bias going on; children presenting severe symptoms of either Autism or COS are logically much more likely to be seen by medical professionals than neurotypical children or those who may have Autism but present less significant external symptoms. So take the specific percentages with a grain of salt, but the two certainly seem to be related.


What is the relationship between language and the level of comprehension of consciousness?

One thing that comes to mind is the discussion over why English-speaking people think submarines cannot swim, while they think airplanes can fly.  Supposedly in Russian, though, they do refer to submarines as "swimming."

Meanwhile, we ask whether computers can think, without really realizing that this question turns out to be simply a question about semantics, just like the question of whether or not a submarine can swim.

(Edsger Dijkstra said: "The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.")

The thing is, some words we use we consider, by definition, apply only to humans or animals.  We seem to be more concerned about the pedigree of the thing, than its actual behavior or function.

We use the word "conscious" similar to the word "swim"....it, almost by definition, only applies to living things.  On the other hand, the word "aware" is much more commonly used to refer to something a machine or object might be capable of.  For instance, a thermostat is "aware" of the current temperature in the room, or my computer is "aware" of the other computers on the network.  There is a very real thing we are describing about the thermostat and the computer, and we aren't being metaphorical.  (note that the computer is even aware that one of those computers on the network is actually itself.  Is is therefore "self aware"?)

People use lots of words in everyday speech that fall into this grey area of metaphor or anthropomorphism.  We say a magnet is "attracted" to metal, without it feeling like we are anthropomorphizing or speaking metaphorically...we just define "attract" in a way that can apply to both objects, animals and humans.

Likewise, people instantly understand what we mean if we say the magnet "wants" to stick to the metal, or that a magnet "doesn't like" having its north pole pressed against the north pole of another magnet... but, if you ask them, they might say we are being poetic in our speech by applying those terms to a simple object like a magnet.

As time goes on, more and more words that formerly applied to only people or animals, will start being used to describe things going on in machines.  A cameras "sees". A security system "notices" a person moving in the room. A computer "makes a decision".  A thermostat "tries" to get the temperature in the room to match the one set on its dial.  Siri "understands" what I said.  My Tivo "thinks" I will like a show.  Obviously these aren't just changes in the definitions of words, they go hand in hand with advances in technology that results in our having occasions to meaningfully use the words to apply to non-living things.

So, to get to the point, yes, I think the language we use absolutely affects comprehension of consciousness.  The more we get comfortable using the word "conscious" (and all these other words, "think," "aware," "try," "like," "want," "decide," "detect") to refer to things a machine is capable of, the less we will see the concept of consciousness as being mysterious and magical.  I think that the "hard problem" of consciousness will not be "solved" by science, instead, science, technology, and the evolving way we use language to describe machines will gradually make the problem seem non-existant.


Actually, standard IQ tests, such as Raven's matrices, tend to assess intelligence better if they are not timed. In this paper by Philip Vernon (1988) it was found that the g-factor extracted slightly more variance for the same test if the test was not timed than if it had a time limit. This means if you ask yourself: "What is this test measuring?", you can answer: "Intelligence" with more confidence if it was administered in an untimed setting.

IQ tests measure a host of other things, such as how well you are feeling on the day of the test, whether you are nervous when it comes to test-taking, how aquainted you are with this type of questions, etc. Giving people more time can attenuate some of these factors a bit. Timed variants are more prevalent for reasons of convenience, and also because it's easier to standardize the test situation.

It has been argued that there is little difference between timed and untimed tests because intelligence closely corresponds to working memory capacity (Kyllonen & Christal, 1990):

  Confirmatory factor analysis yielded consistently high estimates of
  the correlation between working-memory capacity and reasoning ability
  factors (r = .80 to .90). We also found differentiation between the
  two factors: Reasoning correlated comparatively highly with general
  knowledge; working-memory capacity correlated comparatively highly
  with processing speed.

Some IQ tests even have subtests which measure this capacity directly: repeating a row of numbers in the same order or backwards. Giving you additional time will not help you reproduce the row of numbers, if it was initially too long for you to remember.

From the high correlation between working memory capacity and processing speed, it was concluded that IQ tests largely measure the ability to vary features of multiple items at the same time, i.e. to manipulate multiple objects in working memory. Crucially, during administration an IQ test such as Raven's matrices, you are not supposed to use pencil and paper or other cultural crutches: you work on the items 'online' in your head (Engle et al., 1999). The more objects you can hold 'online', the better you will do. Recent research (Colom et al, 2008) goes even further to say that processing speed is not a good predictor on its own, once working memory capacity is removed:

  The findings are consistent with the view that simple short-term
  storage largely accounts for the relationship between working memory
  and intelligence. Mental speed, updating, and the control of attention
  are not consistently related to working memory, and they are not
  genuinely associated with intelligence once the short-term storage
  component is removed.

And of course, as always with measures of individual differences, it is important to keep in mind that IQ doesn't measure how many questions you completed - it measures how you rank in a group of peers which has done the same test under the same conditions.

References:

Vernon, P. A. (1989). The generality of< i> g. Personality and
Individual Differences, 10(7), 803-804.
Kyllonen, P. C., & Christal, R. E. (1990). Reasoning ability is
(little more than) working-memory capacity?!. Intelligence, 14(4),
389-433.
Engle, R. W., Tuholski, S. W., Laughlin, J. E., & Conway, A. R.
(1999). Working memory, short-term memory, and general fluid
intelligence: a latent-variable approach. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General, 128(3), 309.
Colom, R., Abad, F. J., Quiroga, M. Á., Shih, P. C., &
Flores-Mendoza, C. (2008). Working memory and intelligence are highly
related constructs, but why?. Intelligence, 36(6), 584-606.


What is an example of a learning machine that achieves zero variance?

First, a definition, which is basically what you said but refers to elements in the domain of the function: "A learning algorithm has high variance for a particular input x if it predicts different output values when trained on different training sets." So, in order to have zero variance, the machine/NN must output the exact same value for x across training sets. The only way to achieve zero variance with respect to all possible x is if you have a constant (non-learning) machine/NN (because then it will trivially maintain its output/function), or if you have training samples perfectly sampled from the same (computable in your machine/NN!) function without noise. An example of such training data would be samples consisting of elements (x,y) all sampled from the same linear function. However, in most real world applications this won't be the case. Furthermore, it isn't necessarily advisable to minimise variance because you will overgeneralize (assume a function for the underlying distribution that is too simple).

Source:

S. Geman, E. Bienenstock, and R. Doursat (1992). Neural networks and the bias/variance dilemma. Neural Computation 4, 1–58.


According to Tenenbaum et al. (1995) the effect may be opposite. In their study, they had people, who where normally not engaged in a training program for strength, tested on their knee-extensor strength before and after four sessions of psychological interventions.

There were three conditions. In the first, the control group, no intervention was given. In the second condition, people received positive statements. The third group of people received "relaxation-visualization autogenetic training".

The surprising result were that the control improved significantly in "peak force", and the improvement was significantly greater than the intervention groups. No differences in increment where found on "peak power".

In short, the authors found that mental preparation or "psyching up" is not beneficial for physical performance. The authors argued that "psyching up" may distract you from the task you should be performing, and that that may have a negative influence on you performance. Do take into account that the study is very old and that the result may be outdated. However, the paper may be a nice start for further reading into this topic.

Tenenbaum, G., Bar-Eli, M., Hoffman, J. R., Jablonovski, R., Sade, S., & Shitrit, D. (1995). The Effect of Cognitive and Somatic Psyching-up Techniques on Isokinetic Leg Strength Performance. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 9(1), 3-7.


Can a person do things against their own will and be conscious of it at the same time?
Can a person do things they know they are not willing to do?

This is a little tricky to answer without parsing it as follows: can someone's earnestly stated desires be different to the desires implied by their actions?
Phrasing your question this way is important because what someone wants is unknowable: people could be lying to themselves, or lying to us, or simply lacking the insight to fully understand the motivations underpinning their behaviour. The intent behind a behaviour is even more unknowable: it can only be inferred from observation. Thus, although we presume that a dog eats because its hungry, and drinks water because it's thirsty, we need to be careful in recognising that while this is certainly a reasonable inference, nonetheless it is still only an inference.
I am sure you will also find some very rare syndrome that is sexier e.g. alien claw hand or similar, but conceptually I would suggest drug addiction is the best example of this.
Although not immediately apparent, the phenomenology of the drug-taking behaviour is very reminiscent of what you're describing. The two core features of addiction are craving and compulsion -- the latter is of relevance to your question. At its core, compulsive drug-taking behaviour is a decoupling of an earnestly stated (or believed) desire and action that suggests something entirely to the contrary.

I am a firm believer of the principle of free-will, but wanted to see if there was any examples(or case examples) of people knowingly doing things against their own will.

Typically, drug addicts will consciously state that they do not want to consume drugs, but that they are lead to do so by some uncontrollable compulsion. That is, they continue to consume drugs despite the clear acknowledgement that it is no longer in their interests to do so and conveying an earnest desire to not consume drugs.

I know that we can be pressured to do things and make hard choices, but the choice is still that of the individual.

The concept of drug addiction creates problems for proponents of free will: if addiction is a choice, then so are the harms. The moral culpability of the addict came be framed in either two ways:
Deviancy. The drug addict values the wrong things. They belong in prison.
Weakness. The drug addict has the same values as us, but is too weak-willed to pursue/obtain/keep them. In recognising their weakness, they deserve help.
Generally, to reconcile the concept of addiction as choice (free will) versus addiction as disease (addiction) those in the literature will attempt to describe the initial use of drugs as a volitional act, but one which becomes less and less freely chosen over time. The adaptive changes that are observed in the brain with repetitive drug administration i.e. addiction support are generally used to argue this point.


What statistical tests should be performed to test effect of trials on response times where each subject has different number of data-points?

Mixed effects regression is somewhat related to repeated measures ANOVA and can handle missing data. However, they assume the missing data are missing at random.

Depending on what type of rejection criteria you are using, that assumption may be broken, in which case I think you're pretty much out of luck without a method to account for that. It may be that it is a sufficiently reasonable assumption, however, even if not strictly warranted.


Can the human brain be simulated by a computer?

To my knowledge (I hold an advanced degree in the field), there is no widely-accepted research that documents that the brain cannot be simulated using a classical computer.
Our current understanding of the human brain is that the primary functional mechanisms consist of neurons that transmit data via chemical and electrical connections.
That said, we have no comprehensive, finite, and accurate definition of "consciousness", and therefore we cannot prove or disprove consciousness of a computer simulation.  For that matter, as much as we have tried, it is questionable if we can truly prove or disprove consciousness in human beings, although that is the topic of much debate.  It largely depends on how one defines the term "consciousness".
Outside of consciousness and several other more abstract and philosophical matters (such as feelings and emotions), we know of no limits to our cognitive simulations.


Does thinking or focusing on something alter a neuron's speed?

There are, as far as I know, 2 main factors that determine the speed of action potential propagation:

Diameter: Axons with a large diameter have lower resistances, and hence higher conduction velocities;
Myelination: Myelin prevents passive diffusion of ions through the cell's membrane and increases charge separation across the cell membrane, speeding up conduction. Additionally, the spaces between the myelin sheaths, known as the nodes of Ranvier, facilitate saltatory conduction, which is akin to the action potential 'jumping' from node to node with a net increase in propagation as a consequence.

These factors are physical properties of a neuron and hence are pretty much constant under physiological conditions, and are not influenced by thinking or focus.


Does studying flashcards, both front to back and back to front, decrease retention opposed to only memorizing one way?

No, it just makes the intervals suboptimal. Either bury the card if the opposite side came recently or change the card to the direction it will usually appear. (Sometimes it will be the description first.) The forgetting curve, memorizing right at the periphery, will still go back up:

There is also the study done by Glenberg Smith & Green about this...

Anki is programmed to deal with similar "sibling" cards
The algorithm will bury them--except when learning...

https://www.quora.com/topic/Spaced-Repetition
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anki/
https://anki.tenderapp.com/


How does the neocortex distinguish between perception and imagination?

Short answer
Perception and imagination in the visual system use pretty much the same neural machinery, but in opposite directions - perception goes bottom-up, from the periphery to the central nervous system, while imagery uses the top-down approach, travelling from the higher associative cortices to the lower visual areas in the brain.

Background
The distinction between perception and imagination has received a lot of attention in the visual sciences. For example, imagery in congenitally blind individuals versus late-blind individuals is an interesting distinction to make with far-reaching consequences in certain fields of research (e.g. (Kupers et al., 2001)

Perception in the visual system goes from the periphery (retina), via the brainstem (LGN) to the striate cortex (V1) and higher extrastriate areas (V2-V7, see Fig. 1).

Content-related activation during imagery in visual extrastriate cortex is thought to be governed by “top-down” mechanisms in parietal and frontal cortex that mediate the retrieval of object representations from long-term memory (Ishai et al., 2000). Visual imagery and visual perception draw on most of the same neural machinery. However, albeit the vast majority of activated areas are activated during both conditions, the spatial overlap is neither complete nor uniform. The overlap was much more pronounced in frontal and parietal regions (higher visual areas) than in temporal and occipital regions (lower visual areas) (Ganis et al., 2004).

I can't supply you with references on your following questions, but I wouldn't see any reason why the brain couldn't...

  [...switch between] perception and imagination states, or [carry imagination and perception] out simultaneously

Basically, perception and imagination are two separate processes sharing large parts of their pathways, but not being identical.

  When an area sends information to another one, how does it signal whether this was perceived or imagined information?

This distinction is quite clear and pronounced, as perception is bottom-up (retinae to extristriate areas), whereas imagery is top-down (extrastriate areas to striate areas in the cortex).

  Is there less of a distinction between the two than I'm thinking?

Indeed they are pretty similar as discussed and referenced above.

Fig. 1. Visual system. source: Shumpei Ogawa

References
- Ganis et al., Cognitive Brain Res (2004); 20(2): 226-41
- Ishai et al., Neuron (2000); 28: 979–90
- Kupers et al., Front Psychol (2011); 2: 19


Why do you sometimes write down one word while actually intending to write another?

The speech error taxonomy on Wikipedia that Jeromy Anglim links to in his answer is pretty comprehensive. If you're interested in learning more, I would suggest reading some articles by Gary Dell (e.g., Dell, 1986). He is, in my opinion, the expert in this domain. He has used neural networks to explain speech errors of different types.

When mentally planning the next word in a sentence, we must choose the appropriate lemma. By selecting the units in a neural network that correspond to a certain lemma, it spreads activation to the corresponding morphemes, which in turn spreads activation to its corresponding phonemes. When the activation of a phoneme unit exceeds a certain threshold, it is selected for utterance (e.g., spreads activation to the motor units that allow us to speak).

However, this model is susceptible to retroactive and proactive interference: if we have just spoken another word that requires a different morpheme, its activation may exceed that of the target morpheme because of (for instance) undue attention or neural noise.

The same model can predict typographic errors as well: phonemes spread activation to orthographic units, which spread activation to the proper motor units which control our fingers.

Interestingly, speech errors rarely violate the rules of syntax, morphology, or phonology (even though they may make little sense semantically). Psycholinguists can use this fact in order to infer the structure of linguistic rules without having direct, conscious access to them.

Dell (1986). A Spreading-Activation Theory of Retrieval in Sentence Production. Psych Review, 93, 283-321. Retrieved from
http://129.237.66.221/P800/dell1986.pdf


What is the difference between feeling sad and feeling unhappy?

It is common for psychological tests to include multiple items with similar meaning. These items are then combined to form an overall scale score (e.g., depression or depressed thoughts). Multiple items with a similar meaning are used to increase the reliability of measurement, which is also important for validity.

I don't think there is a huge difference in meaning between the two items, and presumably they are highly correlated. However, they may provide slightly different connotations to different people. Thus, by having multiple items, the scale may have improved reliability.


If a person constantly invalidates your feelings is he/she a narcissist?

It really depends. first of all, the problem might be in the person who asks, maybe they really are super sensitive and what they are upset about is not rational.

Also you can never know from someones words that they lack empathy or not.
Some people are just tough, maybe he was in some back breaking situations in life that yours seem minor.

And also lack of empathy is just a small part of narcissism and is not a "only and only" determinant.

If you wanna see if others have empathy or not, you better watch their acts rather than analyzing their words. do they have criminal tendencies or ever were accused of criminal act? are they non-empathetic in their job? are they careless about others life situations? are they reckless? do they put others in trouble to get something they want? and so on.


Does the strength of the simultaneous contrast illusion vary with the length of time it is viewed?

I'm still not 100% with this answer but this is what I've got:
Research into time effect on illusion is sparce, but from what i have found I think it depends on the type of illusion. I found a paper by McCauley and Henrich which discusses the way in which illusions are processed - diachronic being over time and synchronic being instantly. They have used Müller-Lyer illusion as an example.

  Diachronic penetration contrasts with the synchronic penetration of
  those input systems. Because subjects either (a) acquire some explicit
  theory (that has implications for their demonstratively illusory
  experience with some stimulus),6 or (b) gain wider perceptual
  experience including, possibly, wider experience with the
  illusion-inducing stimulus and, presumably, thereby obtain a new
  implicit conception of it,7 or (c) both, they would, in the case of
  synchronic penetration, instantly or at least very quickly cease to
  experience the illusion or, at any rate, experience a mitigated
  version of the illusion—e.g., the perceived disparity between the
  lines in the Müller-Lyer illusion (below) would measurably decrease.

the Müller-Lyer illusion is a persistent illusion, Fodor (1983) also cites the Ames room and the phi phenomenom (perceiving a series of still images, when viewed in rapid succession, as continuous motion) as persistent illusions. It appears that the simultaneous contrast illusion is a persistent illusions.

The simultaneous contrast illusion is induced by the distribution of the peripheral gray values which indeed show a continuous shift of gray levels, although in a reverse direction. The phenomenon of simultaneous contrast helps us to make the contrast clearer; helping us to identify figure-ground relations more easily, more quickly and more securely (Carbon, 2014). Visual processing is very fast, it generally starts at about 75-80 ms (Vanrullen & Thorpe, 2001).

There are some illusions that once they are 'figured out' wont work again (such as change blindness).

Some illuisons require sematic knowledge to fill in the gaps for example the illusion below.

  What we will perceive at first glance is mainly guided through the
  specific activation of our semantic network. If we have been exposed
  to a picture of a man before, or if we think of a man or have heard
  the word “man”, the chance is strongly increased that our perceptual
  system interprets the ambiguous pattern towards a depiction of a
  man—if the prior experiences were more associated with a rat, a mouse
  or another animal of such a kind, we will, in contrast, tend to
  interpret the ambiguous pattern more as a rat (Carbon, 2014).

At first glance you perceive the illusion as one thing but you may go onto to perceive both things. This would require more time -  and this would be the illusion changing over time.

What I've concluded about the simultaneous contrast illusion and others like it is that perception of them is two things - fast and persistant. What I've drawn from this is that they don't change over time, and that not many researchers are interested in whether or not they change over time, possibly due to coming to the same conclusion?

References:

McCauley, R. N., & Henrich, J. (2006). Susceptibility to the Müller-Lyer illusion, theory-neutral observation, and the diachronic penetrability of the visual input system. Philosophical Psychology, 19(1), 79-101.

Carbon, C. C. (2014). Understanding human perception by human-made illusions. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 8, 566.

Vanrullen, R., & Thorpe, S. J. (2001). The time course of visual processing: from early perception to decision-making. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 13(4), 454-461.


Can brainwaves from EEG be used to measure enjoyment of media?

I think the question whether this experiment will give you useful data can be split into two parts:

Does the EEG reflect the emotional state ?
Does the stimulus (media,pictures) induce such an emotional state ?

For the first question there is a lot of research going on and this review might be a good starting point to get into the topic. Without knowing much of the literature I would guess though, that you always need some ground-truth data of the emotional state to train your classifier. This would mean that you would need to somehow 'measure' your emotional state during the EEG recording. You could avoid this by separately 'measuring' your emotional state when watching the media but then you would have to assume that it's always the same emotional state which might not be true.

If you don't want to measure the emotional state, you could also try to do unsupervised learning on the EEG signal, maybe saying that you want to find 3 different emotional states and in the best case the algorithm will give you a nice partition of your stimuli into three categories but there is no way that it can know what emotions those categories stand for.

For the second question I guess it would make sense start with a set of stimuli for which you are sure that they induce strong emotions.

All of this is speaking of general emotional states. Reducing the problem to only distinguishing enjoyment vs. no enjoyment would make it a bit easier of course but the aspects to consider remain the same.


Some time ago a contrarian (a concept more usually found in literary or journalistic circles), in psychology would be called 'contra suggestive' or 'contra suggestible'. The two are, however, subtly different.  A contra suggestible person simply believes or does the opposite of something suggested by someone else.

Being a contrarian on the other hand usually involves going against cherished societal beliefs, or against prevailing group norms, and can be related to iconoclasm.

Contra-suggestibility (sometimes hyphenated) came out of the psychoanalitic literature, with all the fun and games that entails.


Are hallucinations mostly 'real' fantasies or are they 'real' memories?

Hallucinations involving a person or odour can be either from memory or completely made up (constructed) within the mind.  Where they are from memory they generally, but not always, take the form of flashbacks which are very intrusive in the sense that they are unwanted, and can be triggered by something the person sees or hears, but again, not always.

Neuroses and psychoses which involve flashbacks can take on any form in any combination of any 1 or more of the senses of the body:

Sight (Visual flashbacks)
Sound (Auditory flashbacks)
Smell (Olfactory flashbacks)
Touch (Kineasthetic flashbacks - sometimes referred to as tactile flashbacks)
Taste (Gustatory flashacks)

Psychoses such as Schizophrenia can involve the same hallucinations but they are different to flashbacks as they are not necessarily recalling an event from the past.  They can be completely constructed.

When a psychiatrist is making a diagnosis, using their knowledge of ,or through reference to, the DSM, they will need to be aware of the form and source of the hallucinations which will play a part in how they will form the diagnosis and treatment plan through medication and/or therapy.  The latest edition of the DSM is the Fifth Edition (DSM-5)

Therapists will need to be aware of how the hallucinations form with their client in order for the therapist to effectively help their clients to deal with them.


How do the motor system and Central Pattern Generators interact?

Descending inputs onto the central pattern generating circuit provide stimulus in the form of neuromodulatory chemicals and synaptic currents (Marder 2012). The leech heartbeat pacemaker and the stomatogastric ganglion in crustaceans are well-studied model systems that show descending input from higher functions.

Specifically, in humans, we are not sure. This type of question is best answered in invertebrates for the time being. In invertebrate electrophysiology, the circuit can be "decentralized," by chemically or physically destroying the inputs from the ascending ganglia. In the stomatogastric ganglion, this results in a less-stable but still very robust central pattern (Hamood et al., 2015).


What is the cognitive cost of switching contexts?

Depending on your exact definition of what you call a "context switch" there is some research available. There is plenty of research on a more high-level (multi-tasking) definition of context switches. Usually when I read about context switches they refer to this higher level concept, unlike the study you linked to which compares the cost of switching between two separate views of the same data.

Organizational contexts

Existing research suggests that people organize their work in terms of much larger and thematically connected units of work. González and Mark (2004) introduced "the concept of working spheres to explain the inherent way in which individuals conceptualize and organize their basic units of work. People worked in an average of ten different working spheres. Working spheres are also fragmented; people spend about 12 minutes in a working sphere before they switch to another."

  Individuals spend part of their day on a set of activities that is not
  connected with any specific working sphere but rather related to the
  management of all of them. We call these activities metawork. People
  spend an average of 44 1/2 min. per day conducting metawork, and
  similar to working spheres, this work is also conducted in shorter
  chunks of about six and a half minutes at any one time.

Czerwinski et al. (2004) from Microsoft Research found "that the reinstatement of complex, long-term projects is poorly supported by current software systems" by conducting a diary study.

  Beyond simply remembering, successful prospective memory requires
  recall at the appropriate  moment in time. Increasing numbers of
  interruptions and items to be remembered can wreak havoc with both
  aspects of prospective memory, and hence, can reduce an office
  worker’s daily productivity.

  ...

  Subjects reported that more complex tasks, especially those that
  lasted longer and included more documents, were more difficult to
  switch to. Tasks that required “returning to” after an interruption
  were rated significantly more difficult to switch to than others.

Victor M. González and Gloria Mark (2004) "Constant, constant, multi-tasking craziness": managing multiple working spheres. DOI=10.1145/985692.985707 (Free PDF)
Mary Czerwinski, Eric Horvitz, and Susan Wilhite (2004) A diary study of task switching and interruptions. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 175-182. DOI=10.1145/985692.985715 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985692.985715 (Free PDF)


Which experimental design is this? Factorial vs within groups

Let us see first what it is not:

Not a within subjects design. To be an within subjects experiment, you need a repeated measure, something that you would test for each individual multiple times. E.g.:

  In this experiment, subjects diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder were each tested on a delay of gratification task after receiving methylphenidate (MPH). All subjects were tested four times, once after receiving one of the four doses. Since each subject was tested under each of the four levels of the independent variable "dose," the design is a within-subjects design and dose is a within-subjects variable

Not a factorial design. For factorial designs, you need an interaction between different levels of your independent variables, which is not the case with age and gender. One might argue that your third variable might have levels that interact with the independent variables, but that is not an independent variable.

At the end of the day, you will have to look at your design this way: each combination of gender and age variables is a separate group of people, and you are testing the same variable on 3(male)+3(female)=6 or 4(male)+4(female)=8 groups of people, depending on how many age groups you are taking in consideration.

That is a between subjects design. For a study, not an experiment.

Note: I looked up the best explanation for it on several websites, here is the clearest I could find, which ended up being my source:


What's the psychological concept behind mobile game design and marketing?

Old question, but still relevant. I think that the success of these kind of simple (and stupid?) games have several explanations but the game makers are less interested in why simple and stupid games are very financially successful and instead they just follow the trend.
It is not only games but also many other products and marketing which are created in this way: Simple and often stupid. Simplicity has advantages because the customer and consumer has limited time and limited energy to learn the new thing, and if it were a complicated advanced computer game where you have to fly around in deep space for a week before anything ever happens, then your brain would not receive a reward and you would get bored (like I got). On the contrary if the game quickly rewards you and is simple to learn then it becomes more addictive.
The cuteness of game characters has been around for long and in Japan many products are created and marketed with cuteness which has been successful now also in the Western world.
There was a major hit game called Candy Crush saga which is very simple, tries to look cute and it rewards the player almost directly just when you get three in a row...That way it will be tempting for the consumer to continue because you got rewarded. Compared to more complicated games which are more difficult to learn.


What are the key examples of the use of computational methods in the study of biological neural networks?

I'd like to add to Chuck's excellent answer; the computational approach is very well-represented in neuroscience, and actually involves a large number of very heterogeneous methods.  Thus, a very different set of neuroscientists and examples have sprung to mind for me.

To my mind, the best single example of the utility of a computational approach to interpreting neural data is the reward prediction error hypothesis of dopamine function.  Early investigations in machine learning led to the development of the temporal difference reinforcement learning algorithm.  Subsequently it was noticed, by Wolfram Schulz, that the pattern of firing in dopaminergic cells appeared to closely correspond to what would be expected of a temporal difference error signal - the very core of this form of reinforcement learning. Subsequently, similar reinforcement learning algorithms (e.g., Q-learning) have been applied to a variety of neural data - albeit at the much coarser scale of fMRI - and provided a variety of evidence that is strongly supportive of this hypothesis. This work has been absolutely crucial to progress in the last 10-15 years in cognitive and systems neuroscience.

The second example that springs to mind also pertains to dopamine; in this case, the utility of the computational approach was in understanding the pattern of effects produced by release of dopamine, rather than in characterizing the pattern of dopamine release itself.  At the cellular level Jeremy Seaman's work is a great example of this approach; he has used Fisher discriminant analysis and other multivariate techniques to better characterize multi-unit activity recorded in prefrontal cortex, under various dopamine conditions.  Ultimately his work has been the primary computational approach contributing to what is now the modal understanding of dopamine's effect in the prefrontal cortex, which is to enhance signal to noise ratio.

A third example has to do with the application of graph theory to neural networks, and in particular our understanding of small-world connected graphs.  The implication of this work for neuroscience was not lost on the mathematicians that originally pursued this line of work, but its actual utility for neuroscience has been most famously demonstrated by Olaf Sporns in understanding what is coming to be called the "connectome" - that is, the graph of structurally- and functionally-connected neural systems.  Although this is still an active line of research, small-world connectivity appears to be a ubiquitous feature of cortex.

I would be remiss not to mention the work of a large group of researchers trained in the "parallel distributed processing" or connectionism tradition, including Matt Botvinick, Jon Cohen, Michael Frank, Ken Norman, Yuko Munakata, Randy O'Reilly. There are too many excellent examples from their work to name, but all of these researchers have used behavioral and neural data to build neural network models of cortical and subcortical processing, at varying levels of biological detail; validated these models in terms of their fit to existing behavioral and neural data; and used these models to derive predictions that have subsequently been tested using a variety of approaches. The following is a woefully incomplete, but at least representative, list of the progress made by these researchers: the discovery of parallels between the dimensionality-reduction or "abstraction" techniques that can be useful in reinforcement learning to cortical processing (in the case of Matt Botvinick); the discovery of parallels between the exploration/exploitation dilemma in reinforcement learning and the function of the locus coereleus/norepinephrine system (in the case of Jon Cohen); the understanding of fine-grained functional consequences of differences in dopamine receptor subtypes, as well as prefrontal/striatal interactions (in the case of Michael Frank), the discovery of the large-scale consequences of cellular-level long-term depression and potentiation phenomena for hemodynamic patterns in memory tasks (in the case of Ken Norman), the discovery of the role of prefrontal inhibitory neurotransmission in tasks requiring "selection" of information under competition (in the case of Yuko Munakata), and the discovery of the computational underpinnings of the tri-partite division of labor between hippocampus, posterior cortex, and prefrontal cortex (in the case of Randy O'Reilly).  Jay McClelland, David Rumelhart, David Seidenberg, Geoff Hinton, and many others laid the groundwork for much of this progress, although their contact with detailed neural phenomena was more limited than that made by their trainees (and their trainees' trainees), above.

I would conclude by seconding Chuck's suggestion to do a PubMed search.  Your question is too broad for a comprehensive answer conveyed in anything shorter than a book!


How do people estimate smoking's impact on their mortality?

"How accurate are people in estimating their mortality risk?" "How well can people estimate smoking's impact on their mortality?" (I grouped these.)

Not accurate at all. One problem with your question is that the accuracy of predicting/estimating risk is difficult to do without the actual outcome: if a smoker predicts he will get cancer, and does develop it, that's 100% accuracy. (See [1] and [2].)

Many studies show that smokers underestimate their relative risk of all smoking-related disorders (including cancer, heart disease, chronic lung infections, etc.) compared to non-smokers. Also, smokers believe they have a lower risk of developing lung cancer than the average smoker. This has been labeled by some as “unrealistic optimism”. [1][2]

  Together, the accumulated data demonstrate convincingly that smokers have a very imperfect understanding of the risks of smoking and of risk statistics in general. Furthermore, regardless of what they may acknowledge about the risks faced by other smokers, they believe that their own risk is less. Given the accumulated evidence, the argument that people begin to smoke or continue to smoke with adequate knowledge of the potential risks appears indefensible. [2]

Smokers do react behaviorally to bad news. In one study of smokers who received annual spiral CT scans x 3, 48% of smokers quit after three abnormal scans; 28.0% quit after two abnormal scans; 24.2% quit after one abnormal scan (compared to 19.8% with no abnormal screens).[3] A larger, later study (the Danish Lung Cancer Screening Trial [DLCST]) confirmed that quit rates were higher and relapse rate lower among subjects with initial CT findings that necessitated a repeat scan 3 months later.[4]

Regarding other forms of "bad news", the effect was less pronounced:

  Of the fifteen included studies, only two detected a significant effect of the intervention. Spirometry combined with an interpretation of the results in terms of 'lung age' had a significant effect in a single good quality trial but the evidence is not optimal. A trial of carotid plaque screening using ultrasound also detected a significant effect, but a second larger study of a similar feedback mechanism did not detect evidence of an effect. Only two pairs of studies were similar enough in terms of recruitment, setting, and intervention to allow meta-analyses; neither of these found evidence of an effect. Mixed quality evidence does not support the hypothesis that other types of biomedical risk assessment increase smoking cessation in comparison to standard treatment. There is insufficient evidence with which to evaluate the hypothesis that multiple types of assessment are more effective than single forms of assessment.[5]

I hope this is enough to get you started.

[1] Smokers’ unrealistic optimism about their risk, N D Weinstein et. al.,
Tob Control 2005;14:55-59 doi:10.1136/tc.2004.008375
[2] Perceived risks of heart disease and cancer among cigarette smokers, Ayanian JZ, JAMA. 1999 Mar 17;281(11):1019-21.
[3] Relation between smoking cessation and receiving results from three annual spiral chest computed tomography scans for lung carcinoma screening, CO Townsend et. al., Cancer. 2005 May 15;103(10):2154-62.
[4] Effect of CT screening on smoking habits at 1-year follow-up in the Danish Lung Cancer Screening Trial (DLCST). Ashraf H et. al., Thorax. 2009 May;64(5):388-92.
[5] Biomedical risk assessment as an aid for smoking cessation. Bize R, et. al., Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012 Dec 12;12:CD004705.


What do anatomical substrates of conditioned taste aversion tell us about  treatment?

Your question presupposes that 'deep' (in the brainstem) is the same thing as difficult to extinguish. But the anatomical location doesn't tell us how difficult it is to unlearn a CTA. One reason CTAs are difficult to extinguish is because extinction relies upon exposure to the cue (taste, in this case). And not many animals (including humans) will voluntarily re-expose themselves to unpleasant tastes. The resistance to extinction usually claimed for CTAs is more likely due to avoidance behaviour, rather than anatomical location of the neuroplasticity involved. When CTAs are extinguished by forcing the animal to taste the cue (e.g,. by gavaging), extinction occurs at the same rate as other flavour preferences. Source: http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/372

An implication for treating CTAs in humans (e.g., after chemotherapy) is that re-exposure to the taste will eventually be successful. Obtaining voluntary re-exposure in the patient might be achieved by counter-conditioning such as combining the taste with a sweet additive.


Difference between reverse inference and decoding (e.g. MVPA) in fMRI

Note. I initially scan read the question, I have rewritten my answer as a consequence, and due to the comments given.

As highlighted by others here Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) is an application of machine learning, used for decoding vast quantities of complex information (neural activation patterns to particular asks). This is a form of decoding may be used to infer a cognition, otherwise known as reverse inference.

The problem of reverse inference is largely summed up by the following comment from Poldrak's (2011)...

  The use of reasoning from activation to mental functions, known as “reverse inference”, has been previously criticized on the basis that it does not take into account how selectively the area is activated by the mental process in question.

Poldrack (2011) goes on to explain that informal reverse inference, which is based on a researchers knowledge, is flawed because an individuals knowledge is limited by what the remember and have read. Additionally poor interpretations are compounded from one researcher to another.

The problem with reverse inference comes not from understanding general cognitive processes, such as sight, movement, language, decision-making etc. General patterns for general processes have been established, the problem as Poldrack (2011) points out is when we interpret patterns to more well defined cognitions, for example instead of looking at merely reward processing, we might want to compare patterns of pleasure derived from seeing highly palatable e.g. cake, and less palatable food e.g. fruit. At this level, comparing the data requires far more specific analytical approach. If we were a researcher making an inference based on our knowledge, we would have a strong chance of error.

MVPA deals with a far higher resolution of data than an individual could deal with, and compares data to prior trials or previous experiments, see Fig 1. However it is critical to remember that we are comparing participants within similar contexts.

Fig 1. MVPA diagram of testing and inference Norman et al (2006)

Poldrack (2011) gives an excellent example of how to use MVPA, which was conducted by Kay et al (2008). Simply Kay et al (2008) scanned participants viewing natural images n= 1750. In the following trial 120 images were added, MVPA of the neural data was able to accurately predict which images were being viewed. This method has seen substantial development to the point that using a similar method researchers have accurately analysed neural patterns observed in a participants waking brain into decoding what participants are dreaming. Basically the quantity and quality of when taking account of context may be used to conduct reverse inference, but this does require previous data, within context, for the MPVA and other machine learning methods to compare too.

This does not mean that machine learning can not be wrong if incorrectly applied. It is a statistical method in which humans set the parameters, the post below by Arnon Weinberg accurately defines the issues and pot holes that must be avoided to make this method viable for reverse inference.

Norman, K. A., Polyn, S. M., Detre, G. J., & Haxby, J. V. (2006). Beyond mind-reading: multi-voxel pattern analysis of fMRI data. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(9), 424–430. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2006.07.005


Murphy & Cleveland (1995) mention, that a good way to reduce rater errors in general is to inform raters of the existence and nature of these errors and then to simply urge to avoid them. While this reduces rater errors, it also decreases the accuracy of ratings, though. These findings come from the literature on performance assessment, where halo is usually thought of as the opposite of accuracy. The unexpected association has been termed the halo-accuracy-paradox.

Some authors have proposed that the paradoxical effect is due to different operational definitions of halo (Fisicaro, 1988). Apparently there is some evidence that the paradoxcal effect vanishes when this problem is taken care of.

An interesting explanation comes from Latham (Woehr & Huffut, 1994). For him it's all in the way that raters are informed about halo. If raters are told that halo is a global tendency across different ratings and that it is a bad thing, then raters are going to avoid exactly that. But that does not make the ratings more accurate. So when training raters one has to be careful not to create this kind if effect.

In contrast, a meta-analysis by Woehr & Huffcut (1994) that investigates the effectiveness of different kinds of rater trainings does not find the paradoxical effect. Instead, rater trainings moderately decreases halo and increases accuracy. The authors also found support for Latham's hypothesis. The mean effect size when rater training was in accordance with his view was bigger compared to the other cases.

Still, Murphy and Cleveland (1995) are quite radical in their proposal. To them, there are serious problems with all operational definitions of halo (and rater errors in general). Therefore measurements of rater errors should be abandoned altogether. Hence, in their view it doesn't make sense to speak of a paradox.

References:

Fisicaro,  S. A. (1988). A reexamination of the relation between halo error and accuracy. Journal of Applied Psychology. 73(2), 239.
Murphy, K. R. & Cleveland, J.N. (1995). Understanding performance appraisal: Social, organizational, and goal-based perspectives. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Woehr, D. J., & Huffcutt, A. I. (1994). Rater training for performance appraisal: A quantitative review. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 67(3), 189-205.


The feeling a person gets when they finish a series

I am not sure if there is a specific name for sadness or feelings of emptiness following the completion of a long task, such as finishing the last book in a series. I will need to research this further to see if I can find any studies related to it. I can speak from personal experience and state that I too have felt this, so I believe it is a natural phenomenon. I would be interested to see what others say about it.

Regarding how Psychology would treat an individual complaining of such thoughts, one of the things covered in the Landmark Forum is how to change your conscious, logical thinking as a means of affecting your emotions. As an example, if one felt sadness or loss at the completion of a task, a therapist might encourage the individual to think about the positive: what they accomplished, what they enjoyed during their experience, what they learned or how they grew. By consciously thinking about specific things one can draw emotions connected with those thoughts.

The Wikipedia article on the Landmark Forum describes this as:

  There is a big difference between what actually happened in a person’s life and the meaning or interpretation they made up about it
  People create their own meaning to life – none is inherent in the world
  People can “transform” by simply declaring a new way of being instead of trying to change themselves in comparison to the past

At it's root, this school of thought comes from the Socratic method, a form of inquiry based around allowing logic to overrule emotion. To address the sadness one feels, one might ask themself a series of questions:

Why am I feeling sad?
What reasons do I have to feel sad?
Haven't I accomplished something good?
Am I not proud of myself for finishing the task?
Did I enjoy doing the task?
Is feeling sad helping me?
Do I want to feel sad?

By using logic in such a fashion, the idea is that one can change their feeling by reinforcing the positive emotions.

Edit: Note that upon further research, I have found that representatives of the Landmark Forum themselves state:

  What we do is personal and professional growth training and development. It's not therapy, it's not psychology, it's not psychological in nature

That's a quote from Deborah Beroset Miller, Director of PR for Landmark Education. Therefore my answer is anecdotal and not actually based on any specific Psychology research that I can find at this point. I will continue to search for actual research to back up my claims...


The brain is an interconnected whole, when we have high activity in one area of the brain other connected parts are affected.

The writting is mostly controlled by the part of the brain that controls movement (lateral and medial precentral, motor cingulate and primary motor cortices, and postcentral gyrus). Research revealed that there is a direct path between amygdala and the parts of the brain that controls movement. Subsequntly writting will be affected when the amygdala is highly active.

  Using diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging and probabilistic
  tractography on a cohort of 40 participants, we provide evidence of a
  structural connection between the amygdala and motor-related areas
  (lateral and medial precentral, motor cingulate and primary motor
  cortices, and postcentral gyrus) in humans. ... a direct
  amygdala-motor pathway might provide a mechanism by which the amygdala
  can influence more complex motor behaviors.

Reference

Grèzes J., Valabrègue R., Gholipour B., Chevallier C., A direct amygdala-motor pathway for emotional displays to influence action: A diffusion tensor imaging study.


Does sexual orientation influence gender bias?

The issue around attraction needs to be clarified and assumptions challenged and proven.

To imply that sexual orientation is solely and wholly responsible for attraction is a severe and gross oversimplification verging on stereotyping and discrimination. As Wiki argues physical attractiveness is distinct from sexual attraction. Just because someone is physically attractive and also falls within one's sexual orientation, that person may also not be attracted to the person. The person may already be in a fulfilling relationship or the other person has a wedding ring, to imply that humans are animalistic and therefore their desires translate into behaviour without much other consideration is quite improper and unscientific. You should not draw a specific scenario like studies on hiring interviews to imply that the evidence is not present. There are enough studies on attraction and behaviour in other fields to disprove the specific example of hiring interviewers. I am sure you would not like your race, age or any other stereotyping physical attribute to be the sole determinant for how people and the public assess you? Would you?

On that note, there has been research on attractiveness according to sexual orientation. If attraction is the basis of hiring decision-making process, this study disproves this. However, if you are implying sexual orientation goes through a different mechanism to affect the decision-making process at the hiring interview, then I would be keen to hear it. This 1992 study of 52 subjects (four groups of 13) found minimal or no difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals on the assessment of attractiveness. Both heterosexual and homosexual men rated younger sex subjects higher than older subjects. Your question implies that homosexual men should rate women lower than men as they are not sexually attracted to them. If there are no differences between attractiveness depending on sexual orientation, it seems hard to argue that asexual people should be used on hiring interview panels.

References:

Jankowiak, W.R., Hill, E.M., Donovan, J.M., (1992). The effects of sex and sexual orientation on attractiveness judgments: An evolutionary interpretation. Ethology and Sociobiology. Volume 13, Issue 2, Pages 73-85.


The term you are looking for is illeism: the tendency in some individuals to refer to themselves in the third person. It can be used as a literary device, but it is used to refer to when real people change vantage point and - through a mental condition or social context - refer to themselves in the third person, possibly after referring to themselves in the first person.


One hypothesis about the molecular basis of memory is CaMKII
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 13, 169-182 (March 2012) | doi:10.1038/nrn3192
Mechanisms of CaMKII action in long-term potentiation
http://www.silvalab.com/LMcourse/Lisman2012.pdf


What is the proper term: optical Illusions or visual illusions?

ad 1. Difficult to answer, but I found an article from as early as 1825 that links the rotating spokes illusion to the retina (Roget, 1825).
ad 2. Interesting question, but more a question of semantics I think. Personally, I think optical illusion is fine, as used by a master of illusions Michael Bach. Admittedly, he is German, so if this is linguistically the best term may be better off at English.SE. Visual illusion may be better targeted for (pathological) phenomena associated with the use of hallucinogens and psychotic states such as those seen in episodes of positive symptomatology. Although here, visual delusions and hallucinations are more appropriate terminology, in my opinion. One way or the other, for the use of referring to benign brain trickery, I would stick to optical illusion, but visual illusions is fine too.
ad 3. Reportedly, one of the most well-known contributions in optical illusions are his writings on the motion-after effect. He believed, erroneously, that the motion aftereffect was a form of visual inertia, a tendency to continue seeing things move in the same direction because of the inertia of some physical movement stimulated in the brain (Ramachandran & Ramachandran, 2012).

References
- Ramachandran & Ramachandran, Sci Am (March 2012)
- Roget, Phil Trans Royal Soc B (1825); 115: 131-40


Why do we not remember things from the first couple of years of childhood?

Well, I have some few memories of my very early childhood, but it is undisputable (and the articles quoted by PEEJWEJ don't dispute it either) that most children don't remember most things from their earliest years. The number of events that adults remember from their childhood, and the memory span of a child, clearly increases with the age of the child:

Maximum memory span in weeks (on y-axis) by age in months (x-axis) for operant conditioned tasks. From chapter 5.2 in the German edition of Berk, L. (2010). Development through the Lifespan (5th ed.), Pearson.

As for why, the reason is very probably four-fold:

(1) At birth, the brain is not yet fully developed. Areas which play a role in memory (like the frontal lobe), are still growing.

(2) Memory needs understanding. We don't just memorize sensory input, but the results of the processing of these inputs. If we don't yet understand the world and cannot process the sensory input, it cannot be "elaborated" and memorized. Another similar opinion is that we need a sense of self that we can relate our experiences to, and small children lack this sense of self.

(3) Because small children cannot yet speak, their memory is purely non-verbal. Adult memory is in large parts verbal. This discrepancy might make it difficult for the adult brain to access those non-verbal childhood memories that are in fact still there. [I don't believe this, because much of my mental processes today are non-verbal. Maybe I am different than the average person in this, but verbal thought does not play such an overwhelming part in my brain.]

(4) During later childhood and adolescence large parts of the neural structure are being degenerated (around age 6) and restructured (adolescence). During these processes, information that is not used, gets lost. [Anecdotally: I clearly remember a childhood memory I still had during my teens. I could "see" the scene in my mind's eye. Today, that memory is either lost or unaccessible to me. I only have a memory of the memory.]

This is what I remember from and looked up in some text books on developmental psychology. All of them are a few years old and not completely up to date with recent research, so there might be more and different information in journal articles. Anyway, I guess this can serve as a starting point for other answers.

If you have the English edition of the book by Berk, feel free to replace that image. Wanted to post another graphic that shows the development of different functions of the brain, but there is too much German text in it to make it useful for an international audience. Again, feel free to supply images of your own and edit them in, if you have any.


Is it possible to quantify/measure the effect of certain medication on our neurotransmitters and hormones?

Yes it is possible, but it is difficult. The way it would be done currently is to insert a needle into the base of your spinal cord to measure the concentration of a metabolite of serotonin, 5-HIAA, in the fluid surrounding your brain.

It is also possible to measure levels of this metabolite in saliva, urine, or in the bloodstream, but these measures would not necessarily represent the levels of serotonin in your central nervous system (brain). This is because serotonin plays a role in other (non-brain) bodily functions, and serotonin can not cross the blood-brain barrier. In other words, only serotonin that has been produced in the brain can be used by the brain.


Length of neuro-physiological signals of emotion compared to feeling time

In "Simultaneous acquisition of corrugator electromyography and functional magnetic resonance imaging: A new method for objectively measuring affect and neural activity concurrently" Aaron et al. use face EMG to measure emotional reaction to photos. As shown in the figure below, the response only lasts a few seconds:

Getting a GSR response is more complicated due to the noise in the reading. In "Time-series analysis for rapid event-related skin conductance responses" by Bach et al., the authors figure out a mathematical approach for figuring out the event-related response. Both via a smoothed fitted gamma distribution and PCA component analysis are used below:

Both response measures seem to return to reference levels after 30 minutes.


Split-brain syndrome is caused when the corpus callosum is cut to prevent epileptic seizures from spreading from one side of the brain to the other. After some time passes from the procedure most patients are indistinguishable from a "normal" person because they adapt.

In a typical split-brain experiment, two stimuli are presented to the patient in such a way that one will be processed by the left hemisphere and the other by the right hemisphere. For example, the word ‘key-ring’ might be projected such that ‘key’ is restricted to the patient’s left visual field (LVF) and ‘ring’ is restricted to the patient’s right visual field (RVF). The contralateral structure of the visual system ensures that stimuli projected to the LVF are processed in the right hemisphere and vice-versa. Other perceptual systems can be studied in a similar manner. For example, tactile perception is examined by asking the patient to compare, either by verbal report or by pointing, objects presented to each hand.
Such studies have revealed two kinds of disunities in the split-brain: behavioral disunities and representational disunities. Behavioral disunities are most striking. When asked to report what she sees the patient in the key-ring experiment will typically say that she sees only the word ‘ring’; yet, with her left hand, the patient may select a picture of a key and ignore pictures of both a ring and a key-ring. Generally speaking, visual information projected to the RVF cannot be verbally reported, and visual information projected to the LVF is unavailable for behavior involving the right hand. In the tactile modality, the patient cannot describe, or use her right hand to respond to, objects palpitated by her left hand, and objects palpitated by the right hand cannot be reported via left-handed actions.
Representational disunities involve a lack of integration between the contents of the
patient’s conscious states. These states do not enjoy the inferential promiscuity that
conscious states typically enjoy. The patient in the key-ring experiment appears to have
representations of the words ‘key’ and ‘ring’ without having a representation of the word ‘key-ring’. Similarly, a patient might appear to be conscious of the identity of the objects palpitated by each hand but have no conjoint awareness of both objects. As we shall see, the precise nature of behavioral and representational disunities differs from patient to patient, but the foregoing description captures the core features of the split-brain syndrome.

-The Unity of Consciousness and the Split-Brain Syndrome
Your question specifically asks about what happens when there is conflict between the hemispheres. One side being pleasured and another side being tortured. In general the response mode will determine which action is taken. The right typically responding to visuo-structural similarities between two stimuli and the left functional-conceptual similarities according to Levy J (1976). However the left side of the brain tends to remain dominate in determining what the end result is during conflicting stimuli.

In general, not only partially but also fully split-brain patients behave in a coordinated, purposeful and consistent manner, belying the independent, parallel, usually different and occasionally conflicting processing of the same information from the environment by the two disconnected hemispheres. Free field performance often resembles that of the superior hemisphere (horse race), especially when the task is linguistic and performed better in the disconnected LH. Occasionally the LH dominates free field responses even when it is inferior to the RH. On rare occasions the RH dominates in spite of being inferior, particularly when the task has prominent visuospatial components. Thus, hemispheric dominance in responding is not al ways the same as the superior unilateral competence (Levy and Trevarthen, 1976).
When the two hemispheres receive competing stimuli at the same time, the response mode tends to determine which hemisphere controls behavior: Lh responses reflect RH decisions and Rh responses reflect LH decisions, even when these decisions are in mutual conflict. A variant of this technique presents brief chimeras consisting of competing half stimuli around fixation, divided along the vertical meridian (Levy and Trevarthen 2). In this case, both the nature of the task and the response mode interact to select a behaviorally dominant hemisphere.
Bimanual responses facilitate interhemispheric cooperation for compatible stimuli in the two VFs even in the split brain. It seems that motor responses tend to be unified so that in the chronic condition the two hands do not respond in conflict with each other even when the two hemispheres make conflicting decisions.
The disconnected LH can be said to be generally dominant for several reasons. First, it is more likely than the RH to assume control over behavior in unlateralized situations. Second, it has better ipsilateral visual and tactile-kinesthetic sensory motor control than the RH. Third, LH performance is more stable and less sensitive to small task differences. Fourth, although each disconnected hemisphere is hemianopic with respect to ipsilateral half space and does not deny ipsilateral perceptual experience, the disconnected LH does routinely express disbelief of correct RH responses to left sensory field stimuli.

-The Split brain


What are the differences between Asperger's Syndrome and Schizoid Personality Disorder?

Schizoid personality disorder is characterized by a lack of interest in social relationships. However, with asperger syndrome, it's a limited empathy and understanding of other's situations. In other words, asperger syndrome deals with the inability to empathize while schizoid personality disorder deals with apathy toward other's emotions. Additionally, people with apserger syndrome tend to be less withdrawn than people with schizoid personality disorder. People who have asperger syndrome show repetitive behavior and interests, while schizoid personality disorder does not show this fixation toward repetitive behavior. Asperger syndrome is probably genetically linked somehow and is placed on the autism spectrum. However, schizoid personality disorder is not on the autism spectrum. I hope this response helped!


Why do we see unknown people and places in dreams?

The mind/brain imagines things in a very uncontrolled way when we're asleep, and it basically does this by using various stimuli (sights/sounds/etc.) we've experienced before and combining them in expected or unexpected ways. By "expected" I mean that we may recall a known/real person in our dreams from memory, and by "unexpected" I mean that we may randomly piece together an imaginary person from various memories. As far as I know, there is very little conclusive research about why we dream what we dream (which is often unrealistic) - however, there are a few theories. The most popular (experimentally tested!) one is that we dream to consolidate memories. Accordingly, our dreams are often about the day's events - but reimagined by the brain in often very weird ways. So, for example, if one plays Tetris for a few hours before sleeping, one might have dreams with block-like shapes and falling-like movement. In general, it is very hard to predict what a person will dream, and it seems to be a relatively random reactivation of various connections between stimuli we've experienced previously. Some research suggests that we recombine 'pieces' of memories in creative ways during sleep because it might help inductive thinking/insight. A tentative suggestion is that dreams somehow help the brain predict things it hasn't experienced yet.


What is the difference between a bias and a heuristic explained in layman terms?

A heuristic is an approach to problem solving, a bias is a prejudice; so in what way do these terms confuse you?

I respectfully disagree. I have noticed that the term bias and heuristic are used interchangeably in the literature that could lead to confusion. The difference between them is subtle.

  Can anyone explain the difference in a way which can be explained to some one who does not a have

Heuristics, biases and algorithms are all related terms. The simplest way to describe them is as follows:

A heuristic is a rule, strategy or similar mental shortcut that one can use to derive a solution to a problem. A heuristic that works all of the time is known as an algorithm. Consider the following scenario: you get lost in a maze, what can you do to escape? The solution is to place your hand on the outer edge of the maze and keep walking until you find the exit. Heuristics can help us make sense of the world in a reliable way and reduce our mental load. However, they aren't always perfect and there is also a tendency to use them inappropriately to form beliefs. A systematic error that results from the use of a heuristic is called a cognitive bias.

EDIT:

Per suggestions, the following should be noted:

While the use of heuristics of can lead to cognitive biases, not all cognitive biases  are the result of heuristics. Generally, however, when an error in judgement or belief is identified empirically or anecdotally, there will be an attempt to account for it using heuristics.

Additionally, and more broadly, there is just as much ambiguity regarding the definition of cognitive bias in the literature.

For example, in this account of attribution biases, the following definition is provided:

  Cognitive biases refer to systematic mistakes that derive from limits
  that are inherent in our capacity to process information. Because we
  are not capable of perceiving everything in our environment, our focus
  is automatically drawn to the most prominent or “eye-catching”—that
  is, perceptually salient—stimuli. This can lead us to formulate biased
  and inaccurate causal attributions (Taylor & Fiske, 1975).
  Specifically, we are prone to equate the most perceptually salient
  stimuli with the most causally influential stimuli.

  Shiraev, E. B., Shiraev, E. B., & Levy, D. A. (2016). Cross-cultural psychology: Critical thinking and contemporary applications. Taylor & Francis.

Similarly:

  When the correct answer is described, they see for themselves how
  their own judgment is biased in systematic ways. Such personal
  demonstrations make Tversky and Kahneman's points in a salient,
  simple, and powerful way. What was innovative about their work was
  that it drew a connection between heuristics and biases: A heuristic
  is a rule of thumb used as such in different contexts. A cognitive
  bias is a systematic error in our thinking.

  Morvan, C., & Jenkins, W. J. (2017). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. CRC Press.

However:

  Heuristics are the "shortcuts" that humans use to reduce task
  complexity in judgment and choice, and biases are the resulting gaps
  between normative behavior and the heuristically determined behavior
  (Kahneman et al., 1982).

  Chipman, S. E. (Ed.). (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science. Oxford University Press.

Ditto:

  Cognitive biases are subconscious deviations in judgement leading to
  perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgement and illogical
  interpretation. From an evolutionary point of view, they have
  developed because often speed was more important than accuracy. Biases
  occur due to information processing shortcuts (or heuristics – see Box
  5.1), the brain's limited capacity to process information, social
  influence, and emotional and moral motivations.

  Cooper, N., & Frain, J. (Eds.). (2016). ABC of clinical reasoning. John Wiley & Sons.

Although this isn't a psychology reference, the definition is a tad weird:

  Architects rely on precedent knowledge to design their next
  building, believing the past buildings worked well and the knowledge
  can be transferred to their new design, promising similar
  performances. Cognitive biases (illusions) and potential errors can
  occur when using precedent knowledge for analogical, pre-parametric
  and qualitative design thinking.

  Zarzar, K. M., & Guney, A. (Eds.). (2008). Understanding Meaningful Environments: Architectural Precedents and the Question of Identity in Creative Design (Vol. 4). IOS Press.

Although I am speculating, I would suggest the following explanation: strictly speaking, an error in normative reasoning need only occur once for it to potentially be the result of a cognitive bias. However, a cognitive bias would need to occur in a systematic manner in a study sample before it could be identified in empirical research and reported in the literature.

And that, my friends, concludes my demonstration on overkill.


Cannabis can cause an acute and short-lasting episode of anxiety, which often resembles a state of panic. When taken in high doses these effects can be intense and turn into attacks of panic and phobia. About 20–30% of users show brief acute anxiety reactions after smoking the drug. These symptoms tend to occur more in drug-naive subjects and in novel or stressful environments. In contrast, long-term users typically report that cannabis reduces their anxiety (Crippa et al, 2009).

Anxiety is also one of the main manifestations of the cannabis withdrawal syndrome. Its onset is typically between the second and sixth day and lasts from 4 to 14 days.

The main active psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), affects serotonergic, noradrenergic, GABAergic and glutamatergic transmission, but there is relatively little known about how it exactly induces anxiety. One of the reasons being that the psychotic effects of cannabis consumption has received way more attention, likely because it is a more severe side effect than the anxiety symptoms. Cannabidiol has been associated with an anxiolytic effect, perhaps through its effects on 5HT1A receptors (Crippa et al, 2009).

It has been shown that the amount of anxiety also depends on the genetic make-up of the user (Otten et al., 2016).

Acute intoxication could also lead to anxiety secondary to impaired cognitive functioning and the clouding of consciousness (Crippa et al, 2009), as mentioned in the question by the OP.

References
- Crippa et al., Hum Psychopharmacol Clin Exp (2009); 24: 515–23
- Otten et al., Addict Biol (2016); [Epub ahead of print]