This is not my area, but I did a little research and found a few things:

Silverman (2000) has an interesting article discussing children who are gifted but also have a learning disability. The article makes a number of interesting points about how other skills are often developed in order to compensate for a given disability (e.g., like how people who are vision impaired are better able to use their remaining senses).

In relation to dyslexia, Silverman summarises the work of Ron Davis. Specifically, Silverman  stated that:

  Ron Davis (1994), in The Gift of Dyslexia, describes the benefits of
  dyslexia. He lists the basic abilities that all dyslexics share:

  They can utilize the brain’s ability to alter and create perceptions (the primary ability).
  They are highly aware of the environment.
  They are more curious than average.
  They think mainly in pictures instead of words.
  They are highly intuitive and insightful.
  They think and perceive multi-dimensionally (using all the senses).
  They can experience thought as reality.
  They have vivid imaginations. (p. 5)

That said, I haven't read the book, and I'm unclear on the degree of empirical support for these claims.

References

Davis, R. D. (with E. M. Braun). (1994). The gift of dyslexia. Burlingame, CA:
Ability Workshop Press.
Silverman, L. (2000). The two-edged sword of compensation: How the
gifted cope with learning disabilities. In Uniquely gifted: Identifying
and meeting the needs of twice exceptional learners, pages 153-159. FREE PDF


Normalized values usually refer to a ratio, which is not the same as percent change.

Percent change is usually bad because increases and decreases aren't the same:

40 to 60 is a 50% increase. 60 to 40 is a 33% decrease. A 50% decrease from 60 would be 30. It gets especially complicated and unwieldy if you have multiple contributing factors.

Instead, I recommend taking logarithms and using differences between logarithms: then "0" means no change. Alternatively you can use ratios, which are the same as subtracting logarithms, but then you interpret no change as "1" because it's a ratio; x/x = 1, not zero. Logarithms are great because different additive factors act on the outcome as a product, but you can use linear statistics.


Attributing change in DV to IV manipulation: between-groups (control group) vs mixed-model (pre&post measure)

There's a short straightforward answer, and a more nuanced answer.

The short answer is that people were randomly assigned to the two groups. Any baseline differences between people will be equally likely to affect both groups. Will there still be differences? Absolutely. This is why researchers use statistical inference to rule out the possibility that baseline differences are responsible for the observed difference.

The more nuanced answer is that we can't be certain that the observed differences aren't due to these random baseline differences. In any experiment, there will always be noise that causes differences in the groups. When researchers use statistical inference, they aren't able to say with certainty that the effect was due to the manipulation. They are merely assessing the probability that random noise could account for the data. If the probability that random noise can explain the data is very low, then researchers claim that the manipulation had an effect. However, this is a probabilistic inference and sometimes the researchers will be wrong and the difference really is due to noise. Within-subject designs help remove some of this noise, but not all of it, because people change over time, even over the short timescale of a social priming experiment.


Which possible methods can be used to determine if a certain part of the brain is active?

PET (positron emission tomography) will measure glucose consumption, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2147116
fMRI will measure changes in blood flow, or more precisely measuring the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) response. https://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/brain-metrics/what_does_fmri_measure

Note that I'm being a bit simplistic here, as with PET you can measure a lot of different things (like activation of circuits depending on specific neurotransmitters) depending on the tracer used. Here's a table from the book PET and SPECT in Neurology:

The downside is that PET has lower spatial resolution than fMRI and substantially lower temporal resolution, meaning chnages over time are hard to pick up with PET. If you care about quick changes, then MEG or EEG are the fastest, but you have solve a difficult inverse problem to figure out where the changes came from, which requires making quite a few assumptions to get a (unique) solution.

And let me add (for infotainment purposes) "[f]MRI Killed The Radiotracer".


Does stopping hard tasks midway through negatively affect your chances of success?

Here are some thoughts on potentially important moderating factors for any such basic effect:

Whether stalling is voluntary
Whether there are social or environmental reasons for stalling
How long one stalls
Whether one has made a complete break from the undertaking

Whether one turns in the meantime to related matters that might facilitate or conflict with it

I'm not implying you have to narrow your question down to get a general answer, but the general answer might not be a noticeably influential factor in specific subsets of the general question. For instance, going to sleep before trying to finish something one has been working on all day might replenish momentum the next day; this is a short, voluntary stall that probably addresses a particular reason for stalling (e.g., fatigue, or maybe needing daylight or businesses to be open to make progress), and people consolidate experiences and replenish energy resources during sleep, so sleep is a facilitating matter to turn to in the meantime.

In contrast, stalling for months because of setbacks in one's personal life might better represent the kind of scenario you have in mind that would more likely prove detrimental. For example, say you're working on a research project, but happen to be living in an apartment you share with a crazy roommate. If your roommate suddenly becomes so disruptive that you have to find new housing, negotiate a breach of your lease, move out, and settle in to your new spot before you can get back to work a couple months later, your new rate of progress might be slower at first than when you left off. This stall is essentially involuntary, due to disruptive social influences in one's environment, long enough to potentially result in forgetting some aspects of how you were doing your work (which could require refamiliarizing with even your own organizational structure! My former advisor warned me about keeping detailed notes for this reason), and it's a complex enough reason to stall in the meantime that you might stop thinking about your research entirely, and have to focus on something completely unrelated...Then again, the result still might facilitate your rate of progress if your research was being hampered by living with that crazy roommate, and your new roommates aren't equally crazy.  (Based on a true story! :)

I suppose the implications for your question are that moderating factors like these may overwhelm any basic, duration-independent effect of stalling. Again, this is not to say the basic effect hasn't been studied, much less that it can't be...but my recent dissertation was on goal progress, and I haven't yet come across any sufficiently sophisticated research to address your basic issue, whereas there's plenty of research out there on relationships between progress and goal characteristics like environmental support and goal conflict, including a little bit of my own research. That being said, I'd love to see any research others might be able to contribute to this discussion, as I do find the basic issue interesting!


Why are we so possessive of our significant others?

The big hot potato here is the evolutionary hypothesis that men are more sexually jealous whereas women are more emotionally jealous.
Contrast Harris (2003) totally dissing it (but also giving a nice summary of it, which is why I'm quoting it first):

The specific innate modular theory of jealousy hypothesizes that natural selection shaped sexual jealousy as a mechanism to prevent cuckoldry, and emotional jealousy as a mechanism to prevent resource loss. Therefore, men should be primarily jealous over a mate's sexual infidelity and women over a mate's emotional infidelity. Five lines of evidence have been offered as support: self report responses, psychophysiological data, domestic violence (including spousal abuse and homicide), and morbid jealousy cases. This article reviews each line of evidence and finds only one hypothetical measure consistent with the hypothesis. This, however, is contradicted by a variety of other measures (including reported reactions to real infidelity). A meta-analysis of jealousy-inspired homicides, taking into account base rates for murder, found no evidence that jealousy disproportionately motivates men to kill. The findings are discussed from a social-cognitive theoretical perspective.

Harris (of course) has her preferred counter-theory (as the last quoted sentence suggests; more on that in a moment). The contrast I want to make on the evolutionary issue is with Frederick and Fales (2016):

One hypothesis derived from evolutionary perspectives is that men are more upset than women by sexual infidelity and women are more upset than men by emotional infidelity. The proposed explanation is that men, in contrast to women, face the risk of unwittingly investing in genetically unrelated offspring. Most studies, however, have relied on small college or community samples of heterosexual participants. We examined upset over sexual versus emotional jealousy among 63,894 gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual participants. Participants imagined which would upset them more: their partners having sex with someone else (but not falling in love with them) or their partners falling in love with someone else (but not having sex with them). Consistent with this evolutionary perspective, heterosexual men were more likely than heterosexual women to be upset by sexual infidelity (54 vs. 35 %) and less likely than heterosexual women to be upset by emotional infidelity (46 vs. 65 %). This gender difference emerged across age groups, income levels, history of being cheated on, history of being unfaithful, relationship type, and length. The gender difference, however, was limited to heterosexual participants. Bisexual men and women did not differ significantly from each other in upset over sexual infidelity (30 vs. 27 %), regardless of whether they were currently dating a man (35 vs. 29 %) or woman (28 vs. 20 %). Gay men and lesbian women also did not differ (32 vs. 34 %). The findings present strong evidence that a gender difference exists in a broad sample of U.S. adults, but only among heterosexuals.

And what's the (alternative) social-cognitive theoretical perspective? Based on Wikipedia's summary (since Harris' own is waaay too long):

The social-cognitive perspective proposes the transactional model of jealousy, which can be used to explain why there may be differences in the degree to which individuals experience sexual jealousy within genders, as well as between genders. This model examines how three variables – (1) arousability, (2) commitment and, (3) insecurity – moderate jealousy.

Individual differences in sexual jealousy are determined by the difference in levels of physiological arousal: individuals who are easily aroused have more intense jealous reactions, than those with lower physiological arousal.
Commitment refers to the degree of dedication a person has in the relationship: the more committed a person is to a relationship, the greater the threat of loss, which leads to greater feelings of jealousy
Insecurity refers to the perceived level of commitment of the partner: if we perceive our partner to be uninvolved or disinterested in the relationship, we feel more insecure.

The degree to which these factors are experienced together determine the intensity of sexual jealousy felt by an individual.

Wikipedia's summary seems mostly based on Erber, R., & Erber, M. W. (2016). Intimate relationships: Issues, theories, and research. New York, NY: Routledge.
The latter book actually has a chapter (TLDR) and the cheat-sheet at the end lists more theories:

• Prototype model defines jealousy as a subtype of anger
• Cognitive appraisal approaches contend that jealousy is a bona fide
emotion
• Bringle’s (1991) transactional theory of jealousy proposes that it arises
from the interplay between the individual and the situation
• Cognitive motivational approaches emphasize attributions and how we
think about jealousy-provoking situations
• The SEM [self-evaluation maintenance] approach focuses on the interaction between rival characteristics
and the jealous person’s self-evaluation
• Attachment model of jealousy predicts the intensity and frequency of
jealous reactions based on attachment type


Is it dangerous to take an antipsychotic drug irregularly?

Haldol (haloperidol) is mainly known for its antipsychotic properties to treat schizophrenia. It's an aged antipsychotic with a lot of side effects. Because of this, haloperidol is nowadays mostly replaced by the atypical antipsychotics, such as clozapine as first-line treatment.
Haloperidol's primary mechanism of action is believed to be related to its antagonistic effects on the dopamine D2 receptor (Seeman, 2002). However, it indeed also finds use in controlling tics and vocal utterances that are part of Tourette's syndrome (Messiha et al., 1971).
Given that it may take several weeks before haloperidol's effects become apparent, it should be taken continuously. But perhaps even more importantly,  sudden termination of taking haloperidol can lead to unpleasant withdrawal symptoms, including

Delusions, hallucinations and psychotic episodes;
Breathing problems
Tremors, tightening of the muscles;
Dry mouth, loss of control of your tongue;
Blurry vision;
Restlessness.

In all, haloperidol looks like a medicine that should be taken regularly.
However, I couldn't find evidence that it is in any way dangerous to take it on an irregular regimen.
References
- Messiha et al., Life Sciences (1971); 10(8-1): 449-57
- Seeman, Can J Psychiatry (2002); 47(1): 27-38


Is a safe driving record correlated with any psychometric test scores?

A lot of organisations are concerned about work place safety and integrity. Some jobs require driving as part of the job. Furthermore, in some jurisdictions personal injury that results from accidents that occur while commuting to work are covered by workers compensation. Thus, in some cases, driving behaviour is directly relevant to the job. In other cases, asking such a question could be seen as an example of a biodata item.

It seems reasonable to me that, in general, frequency of getting driving infringement notices would be a rough and approximate measure of a general tendency to drive safe. No doubt there would be many other factors that would contaminate the measure (e.g., people who drive more are more likely to et a ticket; some jurisdictions or areas enforce speeding, drink driving, etc. more rigorously).

Research has correlated personality with various dimensions of driving behaviour. Oltedal and Rundmo (2006) provide one example based on a sample of 1356 Norwegians. The table below shows the correlations between various measures of personality and driving related variables. Excitement-seeking, anxiety and agression were all taken from the NEO (i.e., a typical measure of personality). Risky driving behaviour was a composite measure that incorporated self-reported levels fo speeding, driving rule violations, and self-assertiveness. Accident involvement measures were obtained were binary measures based on whether the participant had ever been in such an accident.

These results suggest that there are correlations between several personality traits and self-reported risky driving behaviour, particularly excitement seeking and low anxiety. These measures seem less related to actual accident incidence. However, the accident measure has a number of issues (accidents are uncommon; they are confounded by amount of time a person has spent driving; many accidents are not the fault of the driver).

Anyway, if you are interested in learning more, have a read of some of the many articles returned by a search on Google Scholar for "personality driving behavior".

References

Oltedal, S., & Rundmo, T. (2006). The effects of personality and gender on risky driving behaviour and accident involvement. Safety Science, 44(7), 621-628.


Can we use a scale even if one of the answer levels was not added?

I think you'll come unstuck if you don't have a balanced scale.

If you consider a typical five-point scale:

Strongly disagree
Disagree
Neither agree nor disagree
Agree
Strongly agree

If we forget to put Strongly disagree on the scale, it is positively biased, because it is heavier on the Agree side of the scale. If we forget to add Strongly agree we have a negatively biased scale.

If you intend the questionnaire to be used for research purposes, you'll need to ensure the scale is correct - otherwise it may affect your findings, and it will definitely cause people to question whether the outcome would have been the same as if the correct scale was used.


What's the name of this visual search task?

Aren't you just looking for a conjunction search task?

Normally it works like this: objects are described in terms of their features (e.g., colour, shape, etc.). If you tell people to search for a target with a given colour AND shape, then this is a conjunction of features, and is termed a conjunction task.

Note that there are complex dynamics in terms of how this works, and the second link below discusses this at length.

Here's some links on this type of thing:

http://www.mendeley.com/research/guided-search-an-alternative-to-the-feature-integration-model-for-visual-search/

http://www.mendeley.com/research/visual-search-stimulus-similarity-2/

Here are examples of Feature Search vs Conjunction Search from Wikipedia:
Feature Search:

Conjunction search:


Is there an upper limit to the number of channels in an EEG system that would provide additional useful data points?

For EEG, mostly diminishing returns. Because the contacts themselves are relatively far from the neurons generating those signals, there is a lot of correlated signal on adjacent channels. Statistical methods like clustering are often used to treat signals of interest coming from multiple channels as just a single signal. Increasing the spatial sampling density just means more channels will be included in that cluster.

There could be some improvement to SNR, but that would really only be helpful in the case of single bad contacts (effectively you are adding redundancy) and uncorrelated noise. It's also worth considering that more channels means more data to store and analyze which can increase processing time.

There's also the practical issue that equipment for recording EEG can be quite expensive, so if a lab owns a 256-channel system, increasing the density to allow for 512 channels is a substantial investment. If most EEG labs' systems allow for no more than 256 channels to be recorded, there is little incentive to create commercially available caps that record more than 256 channels, which further makes it less likely for someone to upgrade to more than 256 channel recording, etc.

If you move recordings closer to the brain, like in ECoG, or with depth electrodes, much higher sampling densities are relevant, but in that case for human subjects placement will be based on clinical needs rather than some theoretical limit.

As far as the contributions of sulci versus gyri to EEG signals, that's an active field of research and in summary "it's complicated": a lot depends on which neurons in cortex are involved, and how spatial patterns of activity are organized. You can make general statements about, for example, EEG versus MEG, but otherwise you are just making claims about relative contributions. Increasing sampling density on the scalp will have little to no impact on which brain regions contribute most to the signal.


Are there any cognitive models for image interpretation?

I have tried to find some specific models which can be used for image
interpretation but have not been able to find any model.

This question is broad and as you have stated that you have failed to find models, I thought I would provide you with references where visual cognition is researched.
The UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience   has a visual cognition group.

The research in this group is concerned with detection, discrimination and short-term memory of visual stimuli. A key part of the approach to the work is to study interactions between different regions of visual cortex, and interactions between visual and non-visual areas by using transcranial magnetic stimulation, psychophysics, eye movements and electrophysiological recording methods. Human vision is a dominant force in our behaviour and the study of vision therefore takes research questions into many different areas of perception outside of our more obviously visual work on visual search, the functions of the parietal cortex, the frontal eye fields and how the brain changes with learning. These include the perception of time, visuomotor learning, music, and mathematics - apparently different functions which often draw upon the same brain resources. The group is engaged in extending the use of TMS in combination with other methodologies, in particular electrophysiological recording and work with neuropsychological patients.

This wikipedia entry on perception; discusses how perception between individuals has a wide variation, including the ability to interpret  visual cues.
The Duke Visual Cognition Laboratory has extensive research articles about this topic. I have provided some suitable excerpts.

The visual system has developed to transform an undifferentiated and continuous flow of information into discrete and manageable representations, and this ability rests primarily on the uninterrupted nature of the input. 1
Recent laboratory work has indicated that low target prevalence can lead to disturbingly high miss rates in visual search. 2
Change blindness, the failure to detect visual changes that occur during a disruption, has increasingly been used to infer the nature of internal representations. If every change were detected, detailed representations of the world would have to be stored and accessible. However, because many changes are not detected, visual representations might not be complete, and access to them might be limited. Using change detection to infer the completeness of visual representations requires an understanding of the reasons for change blindness. This article provides empirical support for one such reason: change blindness resulting from the failure to compare retained representations of both the pre- and postchange information. Even when unaware of changes, observers still retained information about both the pre- and postchange objects on the same trial. 3
The input to visual processing consists of an undifferentiated array of features which must be parsed into discrete units. Here we explore the degree to which conscious awareness is important for forming such object representations, and for updating them in the face of changing visual scenes. 4

There is a wealth of information here, it's quite fascinating. I hope you enjoy this, and feel free to come back with the questions you have about this.
1. Appelbaum, L. G., Cain, M. S., Schroeder, J. E., Darling, E. F., & Mitroff, S. R. (2012). Stroboscopic visual training improves information encoding in short-term memory. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics.
2. Fleck, M. S., & Mitroff, S. R. (2007). Rare targets are rarely missed in correctable search. Psychological Science, 18, 943-947.
3. Mitroff, S. R., Simons, D. J., & Levin, D. T. (2004). Nothing compares 2 views: Change blindness can occur despite preserved access to the changed information. Perception & Psychophysics, 66, 1268-1281.
4. Mitroff, S. R. & Scholl, B. J. (2005). Forming and updating object representations without awareness: Evidence from motion-induced blindness. Vision Research, 45(8), 961-967.


Is there a name for reading things how you meant to write them?

Unofficially, it has been called "illusion of expectation" by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, the guys famous for the Invisible Gorilla experiment.

Technically it falls under inattentional blindness (or perceptual blindness):

  ... the event in which an individual fails to recognize an unexpected
  stimulus that is in plain sight.


How well does the NEF capture neuronal heterogeneity?

To review how neurons encode information, please check out these class notes review encoding.

In those notes, you'll notice the intercept $J_{bias}$ and the maximum firing rate $\alpha$ are randomly selected when encoding functions in large populations of neurons. These variations can account for heterogeneity in attributes of neurons.


What variables allow one to empirically and scientifically quantify trends for learning curves?

Short answer
In psychophysical tests, often %correct rates are determined. Hence, training effects are often measured by determining correct rates. The ultimate outcome measures can be wildly variable, as they are dependent on the physical characteristics of the stimulus (visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory etc).

Background
Learning curves can be measured by measuring the performance on a certain task.

From what I understand of your question you are:

  ...trying to quantify trends in learning for certain mediums of audio-visual communication...

and you are looking for

  What one measure...success rate over time and that's it? Or what?

Taking a personal vantage point here, I have measured learning effects using various auditory, tactile and visual psychophysical tests (though not a combination of them like an audio-visual test as you are planning). I will provide a few tests I have done so far to look at training effects and I will provide some basic background information on psychophysics. Please following the links if you wish to learn more on specific subjects. I have measured the following, among others:

Speech understanding by measuring the speech-recognition threshold (SRT) in noise using the Dutch Matrix test (Houben & Dreschler, 2015). The SRT basically shows you the signal-to-noise ratio where speech understanding is 50% correct. In other words, it shows how much noise a listener can handle to still understand 50% of the words in the sentences heard. I've performed this test for 12 times over four several sessions and within as well as between-session learning effects were observed, and also within-run training effects (unpublished observations);
Vibro-tactile detection threshold. Basically we asked the subject to answer in a yes/no task if they felt a stimulus and the outcome measure was that stimulus level where the correct rate was 50%. There was no learning effect observed within and between sessions. A within-run training effect was observed, which may have been due to procedural training effects (unpublished observations);
Tactile spatial acuity using (2-point discrimination); here a person was asked to answer whether one or two stimuli were felt and then, again, a percent-correct rate (here: 62.5%) score was determined ultimately expressed as that distance where correct rate was 62.5%. No training effects other than procedural learning were observed (Stronks et al, 2017);
A vibrotactile intensity-difference (JND) task, where the subject was asked to indicate whether they could feel the difference in intensity of two stimuli. Again the correct rates were measured and expressed as that intensity where the %correct scores equaled a certain threshold (Stronks et al, 2017).
Visual acuity was measured with a grating task - again percent correct is measured, but there the outcome is visual acuity, namely an angle of resolution where the %correct rate exceeds a certain threshold. There was procedural learning observed (unpublished observations).

Note that most of the above tasks were alternative forced choice (AFC) tasks, where the threshold (%correct) is dependent on the number of choices.

References
- Houben & Dreschler, Trends Hear (2015); 11(19): 1-10
- Stronks et al, Artif Organs (2017); in press


I take it you want to use eye movements for data input (rather than reading people's thoughts, which would be silly to consider). It's not the greatest idea, efficiency wise, but may have its strengths in terms of convenience. From a fairly recent (2014) review of eye based HCI:

  It should be noted, though, that gaze control of WIMP is
  noticeably slower and more error prone than control by conventional mouse
  and keyboard (e.g. gaze typing reaches about 20 wpm which is far from the
  80 wpm by a touch typist, see Majaranta et al. 2009a).

And the 2009 paper they refer to for state of the art is "Fast Gaze Typing with an Adjustable Dwell Time". It's basically displaying a large virtual keyboard (like your phone/tablet does) and uses a specialized algorithm to reduce errors. I'm not familiar with the details of the latter, you'll want to read the paper for that.

Microsoft Research has a more recent (2017) paper using a cascading virtual keyboard and it claims improvements for the average user. The latter paper also makes me wonder if the previous research overstated its results, because

  Participants were able to achieve
  typing speeds of 12.39 WPM on average with our cascading
  technique, whereas participants were able to achieve typing
  speeds of 10.62 WPM on average with a static dwell time
  approach.

I don't know what discrepancies are due to; methodology or what is being reported, I guess.

By the way, there's a HCI stack exchange where I'm sure there are more knowledgeable people on this.

As for the title of your question "Can I read what the person thinking through electrodes or something similar?". This is a somewhat different topic, and perhaps too broad to address here. Most of the results in this latter area
are much more experimental in nature, i.e. farther from a practical technology right now. Wikipedia's article on thought identification
 is probably a resonable start.


Does schizophrenia cause a loss of intelligence?

Regarding schizophrenia and loss of IQ:

I don't know how much we can say about the 'loss' of IQ in schizophrenia patients. If anything, it appears to me that a decrease in overall IQ is augmented by the cognitive deficits associated with schizophrenia. This isn't to say that you can't increase your IQ with certain interventions, which I will touch on briefly in a second.

But first, understand that IQ depends on a number of neuroanatomical factors. Among them is volume of grey and white matter in the brain, which is notably decreased at an accelerated pace in early-onset schizophrenic patients.

General intelligence (g) is also highly correlated with fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence generally correlates with measures of abstract reasoning and puzzle solving, whereas crystallized intelligence correlates with abilities that depend on knowledge and experience, such as vocabulary, general information, and analogies (see: Factor structure). Administered IQ tests, such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) are particularly concerned with measuring fluid intelligence. For this reason, a deficit in one usually mandates a deficit in overall IQ.

Fluid intelligence is more susceptible to brain injury, and in particular appears to be affected by both frontal lobe damage and deficits in working memory. There is evidence that suggests that patients with schizophrenia have dysregulated prefrontal cortices among other frontal lobe abnormalities. Furthermore, schizophrenia patients often have abnormal deficits in working memory. For these reasons, schizophrenia may be associated with impairments in cognitive / executive functioning and fluid intelligence, thus lending towards a lower overall IQ.

That being said, there are studies that have not found conclusive evidence that suggests a direct link between schizophrenia and low IQ in adulthood (though there may be some link in childhood).

Regarding the recovery of lost IQ:

Medications used to treat cognitive deficits (such as those used to treat ADHD) have repeatedly shown an increase in overall IQ score after long-term use, so I am thinking that medication would be the best route for IQ recovery. Note that this effect does not apply to otherwise high-functioning individuals. In other words, those without cognitive impairment tend to react to psychostimulant medication in ways that are wholly negative and harmful.

I also mentioned above that there is no clear link between adulthood schizophrenia and low IQ, though there is a 7-8 average point decrease found in children. This is similarly consistent with other neurodevelopmental disorders, and may be related to the malleability in the brain. In other words, time and dedication (possibly including brain training, though there is controversy surrounding its benefits) can help restore cognitive abilities that may be reduced or damaged due to schizophrenia.

On a related note, it is worth mentioning that there is a modern-day theory going around surrounding the topic of latent inhibition and schizophrenia. The assumption is that schizophrenia is linked to low latent inhibition (with LI referring to the ability to ignorant irrelevant sensory stimuli), and this persistent cognitive overload leads to psychosis, difficulty in focusing on cognitively-intensive tasks, and occasional creative genius. This effect appears to be reduced in patients who seek medical treatment for their schizophrenia.

  With human subjects, there is evidence that acute, non-medicated schizophrenics show reduced LI compared to chronic, medicated schizophrenics and to healthy subjects, while there is no difference in the amount of LI in the latter two groups. [....] In summary, the basic LI phenomenon represents some output of a selective attention process that results in learning to ignore irrelevant stimuli. It has become an important tool for understanding information processing in general, as well as attentional dysfunctions in schizophrenia, and it has implications for a variety of practical problems.


Short answer
"Perceptual competence" is "the ability to perceive".

Background
I Googled "perceptual competence" and the first hit was an open source article (Lencz et al., 2003). They define perceptual competence as:

  [The] initial representation of to-be-remembered material [in the context of working memory]. Perceptual competency itself can include multiple subprocesses, including sensory representation, attention, executive processes, and possibly verbal memory processes, if the stimuli are easily recognized or verbalized.

Reading their use and interpretation, I think "perceptual competence" can be simply literally semantically translated, namely:

PERCEPTUAL - of, relating to, or involving perception especially in relation to immediate sensory experience and
COMPETENCE - the ability to do something well : the quality or state of being competent

Reference
- Lencz et al., Arch Gen Psychiatry (2003); 60(3):238-43


Short answer:
Yes, but it does not matter

Long answer:
Each question has some inner mechanism that you either know or you don't. Usually you should know how to do it, but you don't know, that you should do it that way. Once you know the right method, next puzzle you would solve much faster - most IQ tests are like this. If you don't know the mechanism, it could be very hard to solve - IQ tests should be like this.
For example this one - once you know, that there are 4 squares all the time, next puzzle of this kind will be much easier. Most puzzles use Subtraction and Addition - once you try this two things, you will solve lots of IQ tests. You are expected to know this methods, and that it will be used in test.
Problem with IQ tests is insufficient number of respondents - since it needs lots of people to create norm.
For example I created test with possible score 0-100, and 50% of people reached 80 points. When you take the test and had 80 score, your IQ should be 100. But when (because of better education for example) most scores begin to be above 80, norm will change and for 100IQ you would have to score 82 or more.

So yes, you can study for it, but when more and more people do it (and knows about using subtraction, 4 squares all the time and so), norm will change and tests would be harder for everyone anyway, since there will be always exactly 50% of people that could reach at least 100IQ. ( = take some online tests, since most people do it, otherwise it would put you into disadvantage.)

Sources:
Flynn effect  - raise in IQ due to education and also health (notice not genes).
More about norm
Tests commonly used - in it you can hide math operations without using numbers.


What is the scientific support for Einstein's claim about the negative effects of reading too much?

This answer is a bit more anecdotal, but perhaps it's useful.

From the perspective of an academic researcher (which perhaps is similar to Einstein's perspective), there is a balance between reading the literature and conducting your own research. There is a balance between learning new skills and applying those skills to your own projects. Even within the context of learning, there is a balance between reading how something is done and practicing actually doing it.

The very process of conducting your own research reveals challenges and gaps in understanding. Reading allows you to take on new information, however, doing good research also requires time to re-arrange ideas, refine your own theories. Furthermore, reading can vary in the degree to which it is a passive or active process. As an active process, choosing what to read, critically evaluating reading, is all part of building knowledge and ideas.

These ideas manifest in many places in curriculum design. A PhD thesis in particular is a good example of a project that requires a balance between understanding the existing literature and independent thought.

I presume that the quote is just a useful linguistic device to get people to think about this balancing process.


Why are some people good at algebra and bad at geometry and vice versa?

In short, algebra and geometry are different type of cognitive abilities. Geometry is more spatial and algebra more verbal-logic.

Kestenbaum, C., Williams, T. D., Handbook of Clinical Assessment of Children and Adolescents, NYU Press, 1988.


Can the Go/No-Go Association Task be faked?

I've never looked at the GNAT before but, even though it's just about as transparent as IAT, the critical thing making it difficult to fake bias is the deadlining.  In order to fake one would would have to respond in no-go trials where one would not and that also misrepresented their association.  That calculation would be difficult to do in the time window and possibly result in overall very high error rates.  I'm not a fan that they just throw out RTs.  Furthermore, calculating d' values does not by itself make a task better.

There's a general problem with many of these tasks in that the requested response is directly along the tested dimension.  What's implicit about that?  Asking you if bad goes with bug does not make for an implicit tests.  However, with something like the ALPS (Lebrecht et al 2009) you select an orthogonal dimension for the response (lexical decision in that case).  That seems much more like an implicit task and since people tend to be very response focused it makes it much less likely that subjects will pick up on how the test works and attempt to manipulate it.  You could also deadline that to make it even less likely that it's cheated.


Kendrick et. al version of Maslow's Hierarchy

Peterson & Park (2010) provided a commentary on Kenrick et al (2010) whereby they pointed out that although the revision makes an important contribution by grounding the hierarchy in modern evolutionary thought, it may be premature to remove self-actualization from the hierarchy by reducing it to other needs associated with status and reproduction.

  We suggest that it is premature to jettison self-actualization from this revised version of Maslow’s hierarchy. We write from the perspective of positive psychology, which regards what is good in life to be as genuine as what is bad (Peterson & Park, 2003). What is good is not secondary, derivative, illusory, epiphenomenal, or otherwise suspect—at least until the data show otherwise. In their revision of Maslow’s hierarchy and their dismissal of self-actualization as a motive in its own right, Kenrick et al. seemed to reflect business-as-usual psychology by reducing what is good to something more mundane and perhaps not so good.

  However, Kenrick et al. mentioned positive psychology in their article and concluded that their evolutionary perspective is consistent with the view that human nature indeed has positive aspects. So, their revised pyramid may well accommodate the various emphases of positive psychology. And someday, if we take the pyramid metaphor literally, psychologists may follow the earlier examples of Egypt and Mexico and build several, including one that reflects Maslow’s (1971) deficiency needs and another one that reflects his growth needs.

It is important to note that Maslow's (1943, 1954) five-stage model was expanded to include cognitive and aesthetic needs (Maslow, 1970a) and later transcendence needs (Maslow, 1970b).

More can be read on that in an article by McLeod (2018).

So answering your question on generalizing the top portion of the pyramid by Kenrick et al. beyond peaking out at parenting may not be relevant as Maslow went beyond parenting with his expanded pyramid.

References

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-96. doi: 10.1037/h0054346

Maslow, A. H. (1954). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper and Row.

Maslow, A. H. (1970a). Motivation and personality. New York: Harper & Row.

Maslow, A. H. (1970b). Religions, values, and peak experiences. New York: Penguin. (Original work published 1966)

McLeod, S. A. (2018). Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Retrieved from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Peterson, C., & Park, N. (2003). Positive psychology as the evenhanded positive psychologist views it. Psychological Inquiry, 14(2), 141–146. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1449822

Peterson, C., & Park, N. (2010). What happened to self-actualization? Commentary on Kenrick et al.(2010). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5(3), 320-322. doi: 10.1177/1745691610369471


Features for blink detection in real-time single channel EEG

The EEG signature of eye blinks is typically visible for about 200ms of data. When you want to move a window of 50 to 200 samples, I assume that your sampling frequency is 1000Hz (you should specify this in your next question).

A classical feature for eye blink detection is the peak-to-peak amplitude, which is the absolute difference of the maximum amplitude and the minimum amplitude of the EEG within your window. Another feature could be the variance within your EEG window.

Pseudocode:

peak_to_peak_amp = abs(window.max() - window.min())
variance = var(window)

Note that both of these features are rather unspecific to eye blinks and will have a hard time to distinguish blinks from other peaks in the data. For this reason, the methods are often combined with filtering of the data and converting the amplitudes in microvolts to z-scores.

For reading I suggest chapter 6 in the canonical book by Steven Luck: An Introduction to the Event-Related Potential Technique


Does self-actualisation happen during the journey or after achieve the goal

Short answer
According to Maslow, you reach self-actualisation when you reach the goal.  Not juring your journey.  The arrival fallacy refers to the fact that if you reach that goal, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will stay there.
Take away any of the levels below self-actualisation, and you will not reach the top goal. If once you reach there, one of the lower levels goes for some reason, you will lose the position of having been self-actualised.
Maslow himself said:

Though, in principle, self-actualization is easy, in practice it rarely happens (by my criteria, certainly in less than 1% of the adult population.  For this, there are many, many reasons at various levels of discourse, including all of the determinants of psychopathology that we not know. (Maslow, 2013)

Full answer
My answer to Is self-actualization really a need? gives a clue.
We need to determine what self-actualisation actually is.  Maslow described it (emphasis mine) as follows: (Maslow, 1943)

This term, first coined by Kurt Goldstein (1939), is being used in this paper in a much more specific and limited fashion. It refers to the desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.
The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions. It is not necessarily a creative urge although in people who have any capacities for creation it will take this form.
The clear emergence of these needs rests upon prior satisfaction of the physiological, safety, love and esteem needs. We shall call people who are satisfied in these needs, basically satisfied people, and it is from these that we may expect the fullest (and healthiest) creativeness (Kardiner, 1941). Since, in our society, basically satisfied people are the exception, we do not know much about self-actualization, either experimentally or clinically. It remains a challenging problem for research.

Maslow's hierarchy is visually put together as follows:

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons Under Creative Commons CC BY-SA 3.0)
In the triangle's levels, Physiological, Safety, Love and Belonging, Esteem, and Self Actualization which are on the left are the goals at each level. The items inside each level are your needs for each goal. If, for example, you don’t have all your needs for the physiological goal level, you cannot have safety, even if you have all the prerequisite needs in the safety level.
To attain the sixth level or stage: self-actualisation, is the goal of Maslow's Theory, not a need.  Take away any of the levels below self-actualisation, and you will not reach the top goal. And as stated by Maslow (1943) — see above — and in the TLDR summary of @NickStauner's answer to Does evidence support Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?,

One sequence can't fit all (it didn't claim to), but it makes sense in general, and so do the exceptions, and so do other motive models.

Maslow himself said:

Though, in principle, self-actualization is easy, in practice it rarely happens (by my criteria, certainly in less than 1% of the adult population.  For this, there are many, many reasons at various levels of discourse, including all of the determinants of psychopathology that we not know. (Maslow, 2013)

also, the fact that "most of us function most of the time on a level lower than that of self-actualization" he called it the psychopathology of normality. (Loevinger, 1976)
References
Goldstein, K. (1939). The organism: A holistic approach to biology derived from pathological data in man. Salt Lake City, UT: American Book Publishing.DOI: 10.1037/10021-000
Loevinger, J. (1976) Ego Development: Conceptions and Theories (Jossey-Bass Behavioral Science Series). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Inc
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50 (4), 370–96.DOI: [10.1037/h0054346][14]FREE via http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm.
Maslow, A. H. (2013). Toward a psychology of being. Simon and Schuster [eBook].


Could you maybe check in simulation?
I'm a huge fan of the workflow described here:
https://betanalpha.github.io/assets/case_studies/principled_bayesian_workflow.html

You are asking question #3 of 4, the "inferential adequacy" one, right? Can you run some simulations with varying 'true stimulus-set gap' and just see how big a gap you can tolerate with your design?

You don't need to know the true data generating process to do this, generating responses from the model tells you something useful about the model+design setup, in this workflow reality has to wait until question #4. Also an important question, but checking against reality comes after passing the tests you're talking about.

Although you don't need to know how people actually come up with their responses, you do need to be Bayesian enough to be comfortable putting priors on all the parameters. If it's important to convince a colleague with the results, might be worth checking that's not a dealbreaker for them!


There are capacity limitation, especially at the working memory, that makes it impossible and inefficient to process everything we experience in the past. Our brain creates abstractions of things i.e. we do not remember every dog we have seen, but we remember the dog category. We forget unimportant details, but we maintain episodic memory for things that are important or recent.

The dysfunctional aspect of remembering everything can be demonstrated through a Hyperthymesia patient called AJ.

  Hyperthymestic abilities can have a detrimental effect on cognitive
  capacity. The constant, irrepressible stream of memories has caused
  significant disruption to AJ's life. She described her recollection as
  "non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting" and as "a burden".

...

  At school, AJ was an average student, clearly unable to apply her
  exceptional memory to her studies.

...

  Deficits in executive functioning and anomalous lateralisation were
  also identified in AJ. These cognitive deficiencies are characteristic
  of frontostriatal disorders.


Short answer

It depends on the definition you are referring to on "touch them against their will?"

If you are referring to violent touching in the form of physical punishment/restraining etc. then it is proven by the accounts given by may people who advocate physical punishment.

If you are talking about sexual touching, spanking does not necessarily teach them that it's ok for another person to touch them against their will, but it can lead to someone touching them against their will.

Long Answer

Preable before answering the question

To cover the point raised by @user13275 in the comments, physical punishment (also known as corporal punishment) has been defined as

  the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience bodily pain or discomfort so as to correct or punish the child’s behavior” (Gershoff, 2008, p. 9)

This includes: spanking, hitting, pinching, squeezing, paddling, whipping, ”whupping,” swatting, smacking, slapping, washing a child’s mouth with soap, making a child kneel on painful objects, and forcing a child to stand or sit in painful positions for long periods of time. (Holinger, 2015)

In a 2012 editorial piece within the Canadian Medical Association Journal, John Fletcher, MB BChir MPH, Editor-in-Chief says

  Is spanking wrong? Clearly, hitting anyone in anger or when losing an argument is bad behaviour. To do this to children sets a bad example and may only teach them that violence is a means to getting their own way. But what about a slap as the ultimate sanction and a means of enforcing boundaries and discipline? It’s an obvious question and one in which parents will be interested. Are those who use physical punishment bad parents?

  If they are, then they are in the company of roughly 90% of my parents’ generation, including 70% of family doctors and 60% of pediatricians, who thought spanking acceptable in some circumstances. The proportion of parents who spank toddlers now is still high but closer to 50%.

He also states in the editorial

  So heated is this debate, and so long-running, that the question of whether spanking is morally “right or wrong” is probably intractable. A more promising line of enquiry, however, is whether the physical punishment of children is effective.

Whilst there are opponents to the idea that physical punishment is wrong, Birbalsingh (2012) for example provides an argument for how physical punishment provides an ultimate form of discipline, a key piece or research on the effects of physical punishment on the child, which the editorial points to, is Durrant and Ensom (2012) which was also published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.  This article looks at lessons learnt from 20 years of research.

  Today, research showing the risks associated with physical punishment is robust, the convention has been integrated into the legal and policy frameworks of many nations, and 31 countries have enacted prohibitions against the physical punishment of children. These three forces — research, the convention and law reform — have altered the landscape of physical punishment.

  The growing weight of evidence and the recognition of children’s rights have brought us to a historical point. Physicians familiar with the research can now confidently encourage parents to adopt constructive approaches to discipline and can comfortably use their unique influence to guide other aspects of children’s healthy development.

One of the pieces of research that this article pointed to shows that spanking leads to escalated levels of Antisocial Behaviour from children 6-9 years of age (Straus, et al. 1997)

In a treatment study, Marion Forgatch showed that a reduction in harsh discipline used by parents of boys at risk for antisocial behaviour was followed by significant reductions in their children’s aggression. (Forgatch, 1991)

In answer to your question

  Does spanking a child teach them that it's ok for another person to touch them against their will?

If you are referring to sexual touch,

The way physical punishment is used will determine whether the child's autonomy is challenged or not.

  Controlling parents are motivated by the Authoritarian Personality Syndrome and therefore are compelled, by fear of loss of control, to restrict the child's self-directed, autonomomous efforts.  While parents motivated by the Authoritarian Personality Syndrome are controlling, it does not follow that the converse is true.  Some subgroups of controlling parents permit high autonomy in many areas of the child's life.  Hoffman, et al. (1960) described a subgroup of parents who were perceived by their children as both coercive and permissive of high autonomy. (Baumrind, 1966)

This indicates that a parent can use physical punishment but still provide the child some autonomy over their personal rights.  The other personal rights taken away contravene articles 19, 28(2) and 37 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) - which is legally binding in international law and signed by 140 signatories involving 196 UN States.

However, some may use physical punishment in order to take the child's autonomy away completely or deminish the child's feelings of self-worth, which can lead the child to look for love and affection elsewhere.

Spanking does not necessarily teach them that it's ok for another person to touch them against their will, but it can lead to someone touching them against their will.  Although with sexual touching, that there are other factors which can play a role including whether the concept of "good touch/bad touch" or the pants/swimsuit/underwear rule has been taught to them, but again, that does not necessarily completely prevent it when the child is really desperate for attention, love and affection.

Anthony (2008) on page 253, says that you can have the following initial belief (iB)

  "I absolutely must be loved by so-and-so, and if not it's awful and I am and inadequate person because he/she does not love me!"

  When you question and challenge this iB you often can come up with an Effective New Philosophy that is accurate but still in the infancy stages and therefore weak: "I guess that there is no reason why so-and-so must love me, because there are other people who will love me when so-and-so does not.  I can therefore be reasonably happy without his/her love."

From experience from talking to and supporting abused people, in the bid to find love elsewhere it can lead a child (or adult in later life) to get into an abusive relationship with someone in the belief that that person is doing the things they do (including inappropriate touching etc.) because that person loves them.

References

Anthony, R. 2008. Ending the Epidemic of Child Abuse. Raleigh, NC:Lulu.com
Paperback at Amazon.com
PDF eBook at Lulu.com at a much cheaper price

Baumrind, D. 1966. Effects of Authoritative Parental Control on Child Behavior Child Development 37(4): pp 887—907
DOI: 10.2307/1126611

Durrant, J. and Ensom, R. 2012. Physical punishment of children: lessons from 20 years of research. Canadian Medical Association Journal 184(12): pp 1373–1377
DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.101314 PCMCID: PMC3447048

Forgatch M.S. 1991. The clinical science vortex: a developing theory of antisocial behaviour. In: Pepler DJ, Rubin KH, editors. The development and treatment of childhood aggression. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Erlbaum; p. 291–315

Hoffman, L., et al. 1960. Parental coerciveness, child autonomy and child's role at school. Sociometry 23(1): pp 15—22
DOI: 10.2307/2786134

Gershoff ET (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behaviors and experiences: A meta-analytic and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin 128(4): pp 539-579.
DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.128.4.539

Holinger, P.C. 2015. Physical Punishment—and Violence Psychology Today [Online]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/great-kids-great-parents/201508/physical-punishment-and-violence

Straus M.A., et al. 1997. Spanking by parents and subsequent antisocial behavior of children. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine Journal 151(8): pp 761—767
DOI: 10.1001/archpedi.1997.02170450011002  PMID: 9265876


What exactly does paranoid mean in terms of psychoactive drugs?

Studies have shown that strong doses of THC can significantly increase paranoid thinking. See the article, "How Cannabis Causes Paranoia: Using the Intravenous Administration THC to Identify Key Cognitive Mechanisms Leading to Paranoia" by Freeman et al. for a more authoritative reference.

From the article:

  In this large study of intravenous THC (Schizophrenia Bulletin, Volume 41, Issue 2, 1 March 2015, Pages 391–399), it was definitively
  demonstrated that the drug triggers paranoid thoughts in vulnerable
  individuals. The most likely mechanism of action causing paranoia was
  the generation of negative affect and anomalous experiences.

And, certainly, anxiety over people “finding out” you are doing something that can be perceived as wrong or inappropriate can lead to paranoia.


Psychological effects of being recorded as genderless at birth

This is an interesting question and with the baby and his/her gender status, CNN reported that the baby

  was born in British Columbia, "outside the medical system," and did not undergo a genital inspection after birth, campaign group Gender Free I.D. Coalition said in a statement.

Short Answer

There seems to be no clinical consensus on any psychological effects of not being treated as either male or female, and as the case of this baby seems to be unique and the world's first according to many reports, in the sense of the fact that the baby has not been given an official gender status, there will be no information on any potential future psychological effects to this baby.

Long Answer

Before I answer the question, I will start with a commentary on the gender definitions often used for those who are  "genderless" at birth.

Gender Definitions

There are many different names given to gender identities which could be used to genderise the baby you mentioned (Searyl Atli).  They include but are not limited to:

Agender,
Androgynous,
Bigender,
Genderfluid
Genderqueer
Hermaphrodite (not generally used in modern times),
Intersex
Non-binary

People born "genderless" were previously referred to as hermaphrodites, "congenital eunuchs", or even congenitally "frigid".  Such terms have fallen out of favour; in particular, the term "hermaphrodite" is considered to be misleading, stigmatising, and scientifically specious.

There are plenty of well known people who were born without a specific gender (Non-Binary and Intersex) including a human rights activist.  Ruth Baldacchino has a "non-binary" gender identity, and describes the Maltese Gender Identity, Gender Expression and Sex Characteristics Act as providing

  freedom to an individual to develop, establish and express their gender, rather than having the State or the medical professionals deciding that. In other words, ... to be allowed to determine what identity fits ... best and how ... to embody that identity.

Human rights institutions are placing increasing scrutiny on medical practices and issues of discrimination against intersex people.

Rationale behind medical intervention

According to Wikipedia,

  Medical interventions take place to address physical health concerns, and psychosocial risks. Both types of rationale are the subject of debate, particularly as the consequences of surgical (and many hormonal) interventions are lifelong and irreversible. Questions regarding physical health include accurately assessing risk levels, necessity and timing. Psychosocial rationales are particularly susceptible to questions of necessity as they reflect social and cultural concerns.

Medical description of intersex traits as disorders of sex development has been controversial since the label was introduced in 2006 (Lee, et al., 2006). The DSM-5 included a change from using Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria. This revised code now specifically includes intersex people who do not identify with their sex assigned at birth, using the language of Disorders of Sex Development, and this move was criticised by intersex advocacy groups in Australia and New Zealand (Kraus, 2015).

There remains no clinical consensus about an evidence base, surgical timing, necessity, type of surgical intervention, and degree of difference warranting intervention (Lee, et al., 2016)(Mouriquand, et al., 2016)(Creighton, et al., 2011). Such surgeries are the subject of significant contention due to consequences that include trauma, impact on sexual function and sensation, and violation of rights to physical and mental integrity (OHCHR, 2016).

In fact it seems that the opposite is true.  Whilst it is often believed that it is essential for gender assignment surgery at or near birth, medicalisation and stigmatisation of intersex people result in significant trauma and mental health concerns (IIF, 2013).  Whilst the IIF at the same meeting stated that

  [To ensure] the bodily integrity and well-being of intersex people, autonomous non-pathologising psycho-social and peer support [should] be available to intersex people throughout their life (as self-required), as well as to parents and/or care providers.

As for the case of Searyl Atli Doty, there will be no information on any potential future psychological effects to this baby for reasons stated in my short answer.

Having said that, gender is an important part of a person's sense of identification within society.  UCL (University College London) has an LGBT Student Support page which states

  Gender Identity is a person's individual sense of femaleness or maleness. It is also, to some degree, a social construction that categorises certain behaviours into male and female roles. Gender identity conflicts can stem from an individual's gender indentity not matching their biological sex, an individual's gender identity being neither completely male nor female, or an individual's biological sex not being uniquely male or female.

hence the reason why there are so many different gender identities and sexualities within the LGBTQIA community.

Because of the way society frames everyone based on gender, it seems important to have a gender identity, so aside from the possible legal issues such as

  which set of toilets is Searyl going to be legally allowed to use?

it will be interesting to the field of Psychology, how being registered and raised without a gender would affect Searyl's wellbeing.

References

Creighton, S. M., et al., 2011. Childhood surgery for ambiguous genitalia: glimpses of practice changes or more of the same? Psychology & Sexuality 5(1): pp. 34—43DOI: 10.1080/19419899.2013.831214

IIF, 2013. The statement of the Third International Intersex Forum, December 2013 [Online]Available at: http://intersexday.org/en/third-international-intersex-forum

Kraus, C., 2015. Classifying Intersex in DSM-5: Critical Reflections on Gender Dysphoria. Archives of Sexual Behavior 44(5): pp. 1147—1163DOI: 10.1007/s10508-015-0550-0

Lee, P. A., et al., 2006. Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders. Pediatrics 18(2)DOI: 10.1542/peds.2006-0738 PMID: 16882788

Lee, P. A., et al., 2016. Global Disorders of Sex Development Update since 2006: Perceptions, Approach and Care. Hormone Research in Paediatrics 85: pp. 158—180DOI: 10.1159/000442975

Mouriquand, P. D. E., et al., 2016. Surgery in disorders of sex development (DSD) with a gender issue: If (why), when, and how? Pediatric Urology 12(3): pp. 139—149DOI: 10.1016/j.jpurol.2016.04.001

OHCHR, 2016. End violence and harmful medical practices on intersex children and adults, UN and regional experts urge Intersex Awareness Day – Wednesday 26 October 2016 [Online]
Available at: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20739&LangID=E


How would I know if I've been brainwashed?

I'll go about this question focusing on the definitions, rather than jumping onto the answer proper. Clarifying definitions may already help you a step closer to an answer.

  On the other hand, the first id[e]ology [of children] got in their head by their parents. So is that not also brainwashing of a sort?

the definition of Brainwashing...:

  a forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic
  political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept
  contrasting regimented ideas

...readily answers this Q, namely a kid's brain is a clean slate, virtually devoid of "political, social, or religious beliefs". So no, this is not brainwashing.

  How would I know if I have been brainwashed...[?]

Brainwashing was coined by journalist Edward Hunter in September 1950 described how Mao Zedong’s Red Army used terrifying ancient hypnotic techniques to turn the Chinese people into mindless, Communist automatons. "Brainwashing” was a word-for-word translation from xi-nao, the Mandarin words for wash (xi) and brain (nao). In the Korean war later in the '50s, thousands of American soldiers, including high-ranked officers, petitioned to end the war, made false claims of war atrocities by the Us and even refused to re-enter the army after they were freed. The US jumped on it and said these people were brainwashed. However, when the media hype was over, scientific research revealed what truly made these soldiers following the ideas of the "communists"; they were tortured (source: Smithsonian Magazine).

Your question seems also to radiate the mystical origins of the word brainwashing, namely that the media can somehow hypnotize you and change your thoughts mysteriously. Those are false believes. Of course the media affects your thinking, but it cannot "brainwash" you.

  I believe that we can find out how the world works through science and experiment but maybe I've just been brainwashed to believe that and really the only way to find out about how the world works is by divine revelations by angels.

Some people believe God created the earth and all its life on it. Others choose evolution to be key to life, and the big bang for the creation of the universe instead. It's a choice you can make. Many scientists are also believers. In other words, you don't have to choose, and support both views. Nothing brainwashy about either side.


Do different methods of testing memory for character sequences result in different brain activation?

Yes, they do, but not all of these are different methods for testing memory.

Because of the way you've set up the stimulus presentation here, these are effectively all serial verbal working memory tests where the neurocognitive basis may differ or not depending on a number of unstated factors such as stimulus modality or type (e.g., Polyn et al., 2005), that I suspect you are uninterested in. Not all of these tasks would traditionally be considered memory tasks, either--everything involves memory to some extent, and in some cases it is more your choice of a complex stimulus, rather than the test as such, that adds the memory dimension.

I'm going to focus this answer on the test format (i.e., the retrieval aspect) where possible, and clarify where not.

1. Serial recognition

A multiple choice format that presents several control sequences along with the stimulus sequence corresponds to a serial matching recognition memory test. Habeck et al. (2005) reported fMRI evidence for increased activity in the cerebellum, thalamus and part of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions, plus decreased activity in a broad set of other regions, on a relevant delayed match-to-sample task.

  Areas of increasing activation across set size were found in the bilateral cerebellum, left lateral PFC (BA 9,46,47), and thalamus. Areas decreasing in activation were more widely distributed and located in parietal, frontal, temporal, and limbic lobes as well as basal ganglia (see detailed listing in Table 3).

2. Parallel recognition

A control sequence where you should point out differences from the stimulus sequence, assuming I am reading that correctly, corresponds to what I'm going to call a parallel recognition memory test, except I don't believe there have been any studies along these lines for serial memory. Usually, this is studied in the context of visual rather than verbal recognition memory, but even here, the neurocognitive evidence is sparse (probably because visual memory gets very little attention compared to verbal memory). Mazumder et al. (2015) reported the following from a "spot-the-difference" task in a recent chapter, which was primarily about novel EEG feature extraction methods:

  The results also suggests that the brain activation is dominant at the frontal, parietal and temporal region.

3. Go/no-go

A control sequence, displayed character by character, and the opportunity to push a button as soon as you spot a difference, corresponds to a complex go/no-go task. This is traditionally an attentional task, which of course involves memory, but does not in itself differentiate between retrieval processes. For posterity's sake, a large meta-analysis of go/no-go fMRI studies reported that neural activity for this task is largely task-dependent, but also finding support for an association with a small set of regions (Simmonds, Pekar and Mostofsky, 2008).

  The simple and complex tasks demonstrated distinct patterns of concurrence, with right dorsolateral prefrontal and inferior parietal circuits recruited under conditions of increased working memory demand.

4. Free recall

Just writing down what you've memorized corresponds to a free recall test (cf. cued recall). Free recall of serial items has often been studied within the context of the primacy and recency effects, referring to the dual tendencies for items at the beginning and end of a sequence to have markedly higher retention and/or faster response times than items in the middle of that sequence. Depending on the item's serial position, different brain regions may show increased activity (Zhang et al., 2003).

  Recalling the middle item was associated with more extensive activation in the left parietal and visual cortex, basal ganglia, and dorsal cerebellum. Recalling items from different serial positions also resulted in different activation time courses in the bilateral primary auditory cortex, left prefrontal cortex and left premotor cortex.

References

Habeck, C., Rakitin, B. C., Moeller, J., Scarmeas, N., Zarahn, E., Brown, T., & Stern, Y. (2005). An event-related fMRI study of the neural networks underlying the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval phase in a delayed-match-to-sample task. Cognitive Brain Research, 23(2), 207-220.
Mazumder, A., Ghosh, P., Khasnobish, A., Bhattacharyya, S., & Tibarewala, D. N. (2015). Selection of Relevant Features from Cognitive EEG Signals Using ReliefF and MRMR Algorithm. In Advancements of Medical Electronics (pp. 125-136). Springer India.
Polyn, S. M., Natu, V. S., Cohen, J. D., & Norman, K. A. (2005). Category-specific cortical activity precedes retrieval during memory search. Science, 310(5756), 1963-1966.
Simmonds, D. J., Pekar, J. J., & Mostofsky, S. H. (2008). Meta-analysis of Go/No-go tasks demonstrating that fMRI activation associated with response inhibition is task-dependent. Neuropsychologia, 46(1), 224-232.
Zhang, D. R., Li, Z. H., Chen, X. C., Wang, Z. X., Zhang, X. C., Meng, X. M., et al. (2003). Functional comparison of primacy, middle and recency retrieval in human auditory short-term memory: An event-related fMRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 16, 91–98. 10.1016/S0926-6410(02)00223-9


How to calculate the confidence interval for $d^\prime$ (d prime)?

I haven't done much d-prime stuff for a long time, but perhaps check out the discrim function in the sensR package in R.

http://www.inside-r.org/packages/cran/sensR/docs/discrim

For example, if I understand correctly you could pass arguments like the following: a person had 60 items correct out of 100 and null hypothesis d-prime is 0 (you can specify either a null d-prime or a null probability of correct).

library(sensR)
discrim(correct = 60, total = 100, d.prime0=0)

This produces the  following output:

Estimates for the duotrio discrimination protocol with 60 correct
answers in 100 trials. One-sided p-value and 95 % two-sided confidence
intervals are based on the 'exact' binomial test.

        Estimate Std. Error Lower  Upper
pc         0.600    0.04899   0.5 0.6967
pd         0.200    0.09798   0.0 0.3934
d-prime    1.115    0.31360   0.0 1.6958

Result of difference test:
'exact' binomial test:  p-value = 0.02844
Alternative hypothesis: d-prime is greater than 0

I.e., you appear to get a lower and upper confidence interval on d-prime (e.g., 0 to 1.6958). The confidence interval can be specified with the conf.level argument but defaults to 0.95. There's more details in Christensen (2015).

Christensen, R. H. B. (2015). Statistical methodology for sensory discrimination tests and its implementation in sensR. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.192.6348&rep=rep1&type=pdf


Where could I collect UK participants for my survey?

You could obtain paid participants from https://www.prolific.ac/

That site allows you filter by country.

The prices are reasonable, especially if your survey is short and you don't need too many participants.


Cost of EEG devices suitable for neurolinguistic research

We were looking for an EEG device few years ago. The commercial offers were between 20,000 EUR for a 32 passive electrode to 50,000 EUR for an 64/128 active electrode. This included everything except the computers - some offers were without off-line data processing software. I never considered the EEG systems that were not mentioned in the method section of my research domain. And beware of the local regulations and ethical considerations concerning home-made devices for recording human biological signal.


What happened to self-administered aversion therapy (with a rubber band in particular)?

Out of the basically four possible ways to change behaviors, your rubber band lies at one extreme, being an example of positive punishment, which works by presenting an aversive stimulus after an undesired behavior is exhibited, making the behavior less likely to happen in the future.

There is also the lesser negative punishment when a certain reinforcing stimulus is removed after a particular undesired behavior is exhibited.

Further, there is positive reinforcement, which works by presenting a motivating stimulus to a person after a desired behavior is exhibited, and negative reinforcement where usually an aversive stimulus is removed after a particular behavior is exhibited.

Now all three alternatives are less extreme than your example and, anecdotally, I do see a tendency toward a more positive approach in efforts to change behaviors, for example in parenting (i.e. reward rather than punishment). Less anecdotally, according to wikipedia, punishment indeed seems to be used reservedly in psychotherapy nowadays and is mostly reserved to the more extreme cases to reduce outright dangerous behaviors such as head banging or biting.


Are there neurological conditions that can be worsened by B group vitamins?

People often fall under the spell of the "more is better" assumption when it comes to supplements, but, while B6 (pyridoxine) has many lifesaving applications (e.g., treating a specific type of seizure, or [protecting the system from acute neurotoxicity of chemotherapeutic agents, B6 can be downright toxic in high concentrations.

Patients with abnormally elevated B6 levels were found to experience numbness and burning pain among other symptoms.  A patient who ingested on the order of 10 grams per day over the long term was found to have muscle weakness and motor deficits in addition to sensory neuropathy.

The most famous anecdote of this was in Oliver Sacks "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" under the story entitled "The Disembodied Lady", where a prolonged megadose of B6 left a woman with no proprioceptive feedback about her body in space.  Certainly, there is little or no data about her actual ingested amounts in the popular press account, but this effect was seen frequently as a result of bodybuilding fads in the 1970s and 1980s.

So, the very act of taking the supplement in excess can exacerbate an existing neuropathic condition, or potentially create a pathology where none was present beforehand.

B12 (often supplemented as cyanocobalamin) is a bit of a different animal.  It requires a cofactor ("intrinsic factor") to be absorbed properly, so it's more difficult to inadvertently take in excess.


Automatic pseudo-randomization of stimuli in R

You can use the "sample" function: https://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-devel/library/base/html/sample.html
Start with a list of the stimuli you want to present. For example, if you have two stimuli that should be repeated 4 times each, your list would be c(1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2)
If you take 8 samples from this distribution without replacement, you have a random permutation of the list. This is the default behavior if you just give the original list, like this:
sample(c(1,1,1,1,2,2,2,2))


What is the effectiveness of self-prescribed marijuana for depression?

Question 1: I am unaware of any studies directly addressing the epidemiology of self-medication with cannabis in cases of treatment-resistant depression (it seems like that is what you are asking about). However, there are several lines of therapy that have demonstrated effectiveness in depression beyond the first line antidepressants (CANMAT Depression Guidelines). None of these include marijuana or cannabinoids.

Question 2: There is (to my knowledge) absolutely no evidence that marijuana is an effective treatment for depression. The article by Volkow et al. (2014) although titled "Adverse Effects," also reviews conditions for which evidence of effectiveness exists for symptomatic treatment with marijuana or cannabinoids. These conditions include glaucoma, nausea, AIDS-associated anorexia and wasting syndrome, chronic pain, inflammation, multiple sclerosis, and epilepsy (Volkow et al. 2014). That being said, the quality of that evidence is unclear to me.

It must also be mentioned that studies will generally be limited by heterogeneous cannabinoid content in the active compound. Not all cannabinoids are created equal, and from what I understand one of the potentially most medically useful cannabinoids is cannabidiol (CBD; Curran et al., 2016); THC and CBD may have opposing effects, with THC generally associated with impairments across several psychological functions (Curran et al. 2016). On the other hand, small studies have suggested a potential role for CBD (but not THC) in augmenting psychotherapeutic treatment of some anxiety disorders. The evidence thus far seems to suggest that marijuana would not have a role in treatment of psychiatric disorders in general, let alone depression, but that further research about the effects of isolated CBD might be warranted.

Reference

Volkow, N. D., et al. (2014). Adverse Health Effects of Marijuana Use. New England Journal of Medicine, 370(23), 2219–2227.
Curran, H. V, Freeman, T, P., Mokrysz, C., Lewis D, A., Morgan, C, J, A., & Parsons, L. H. (2016). Keep off the grass? Cannabis, cognition and addiction. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17(5), 293–306.
Baldwin, D. S., Anderson, I. M., Nutt, D. J., Allgulander, C., Bandelow, B., den Boer, J. a, … Wittchen, H.-U. (2014). Evidence-based pharmacological treatment of anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder: a revision of the 2005 guidelines from the British Association for Psychopharmacology. Journal of Psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 28, 403–39.


Is there a non-interactive alternative to the concept of SuperMemo/spaced repetition?

So basically [for me] this question is whether there exists a learning model informed by the structure and usage of the Chinese writing.
The answer is yes, see for example Loach & Wang (2016):

The question we address is the optimum order in which Chinese characters should be learned.
There are two orders that make intuitive sense: in order of usage frequency, from high to low, and in order of network hierarchy, starting with primitives and building up compound characters using components that have already been learned. The first of these follows directly from the goal of the learner but the second merits further discussion. In general terms, the desirability of learning characters in hierarchal order follows from a broad principle of human cognition, that mastery of a complex system rests on mastery of the relevant features of its sub-components [14, 15]. This applies to Chinese characters if one assumes that it is productive to treat them as a complex system rather than as a set of unrelated symbols to be learned by rote. A number of experimental studies indicate that this assumption is valid. They show that orthographic awareness is of critical importance to skilled native readers and in learning to read by both Chinese children and second language learners [16–22]. These also show that orthographic awareness is present whether or not it is taught explicitly and, among learners, that the extent of the awareness is correlated with performance [23]. We consider learning characters in order of hierarchy to be desirable because we infer that a learning order that explicitly reflects orthographic principles is more likely to generate accurate and productive orthographic awareness in students.
There is, however, necessarily a tension between learning by usage frequency and learning by hierarchy, because frequency is only weakly correlated with character complexity. [...] Learning characters in order of frequency would therefore often mean learning characters before their components had been learned, whereas learning them in order of hierarchy would often mean learning rarer characters in advance of more common ones.
When devising a learning order one can choose either of the extremes, of frequency or hierarchy, or attempt to find a balance between them in which some common characters are learned in advance of their components. One previous approach that searched for such a balance was a network theory-based approach by Yan et al. [24]. They demonstrated that an algorithmically-optimized, balanced order can be substantially more efficient than one that follows frequency. [...]
The tension between frequency and hierarchy is a dominant consideration in determining the learning order but it is not the only one. Small-scale character-to-character patterns are also known to be important, especially for encouraging orthographic awareness [25–27]. Patterns can be chosen to emphasize the logic of character construction, by introducing components directly before their compounds, or to emphasize the functional role of components, by presenting their compounds in sets. These patterns are often found in human-curated orders, and especially in books on learning Chinese characters (for example, those of Heisig and Richardson [28, 29]). They embody sound educational principles, which can be understood in terms of Marton’s variation theory [30–33]. [...]
Our algorithm is built on the fundamental assumption that hierarchal orders are the pedagogically desirable way to accumulate usage frequency and we search among this subset of orders for the one that is most efficient. The algorithm is implemented using the conceptual framework of network theory, within which we conceive the network of Chinese characters as a directed analytic graph [34]. The nodes in the graph represent characters and the edges represent the structural relationships between them. We devise a measure of node centrality that relates each character’s usage frequency to the effort required to learn it, and order the characters by this measure to provide a first approximation to the optimal learning order. We then sort this list into topological (hierarchal) order using an algorithm designed to minimally disturb the starting order. The algorithm can be applied to any scheduling task where nodes have intrinsic differences in importance and must be visited in topological order.

Looking at the quantitative evaluation section of this paper though, the prior work of Yan et. al seems "good enough" though, and it might less work to implement. I don't know if either of that is suitable for your application or not, as it might require you to redesign it from the ground up. (Also, beware that I can't write in Chinese myself.)


Why seemingly all the neuronal membrane-bound receptor are exclusively GPCR or highly homologous to GPCR family?

I think you're confused about proteins that are GPCRs versus having homology. GABA-B is another that is a GPCR (it is not particularly related to GABA-A). These are also called metabotropic receptors.

Ionotropic receptors are from separate families, many from the Cys-loop family (see Sine & Engel, 2006) with a characteristic 5-subunit composition, or the heterotetrameric structure shared among related glutamate receptors (see Dingledine et al 1999).

Your link for nAChR doesn't seem to argue that it is homologous to GPCRs, instead it describes a possible interaction with that channel with g-proteins.

Additionally, none of this is special for neurons: because all modern proteins evolved from previous ones, there is substantial homology within protein families that can often be traced even between vertebrates and bacteria. Within the GPCR family, many different proteins have evolved different sensitivities and different specific g-protein interactions, but the general concept is conserved: something binds outside the cell, causing an internal conformational change that affects a g-protein. The ionotropic receptors are much different.

Dingledine, R., Borges, K., Bowie, D., & Traynelis, S. F. (1999). The glutamate receptor ion channels. Pharmacological reviews, 51(1), 7-62.

Sine, S. M., & Engel, A. G. (2006). Recent advances in Cys-loop receptor structure and function. Nature, 440(7083), 448.


Is it possible to develop dementia by eating bone marrow?

You might be referring to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). It is transmitted through exposure to brain tissue and spinal cord fluid from infected individuals.

  CJD is characterized by rapidly progressive dementia.

The leading scientific theory at this time maintains that CJD and the other transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) are caused by a type of protein called a prion.

CJD is indeed caused by prions: proteins that occur in both a normal form, which is a harmless protein found in the body’s cells, and in an infectious form, which causes disease. The harmless and infectious forms of the prion protein have the same sequence of amino acids, but the infectious form of the protein takes a different folded shape than the normal protein. Sporadic CJD may develop because some of a person’s normal prions spontaneously change into the infectious form of the protein and then alter the prions in other cells in a chain reaction.

Sources
- NIH Fact Sheet
- WHO


What is the difference between "double dissociation" and simply having control and experimental groups?

In brain damage/lesion studies, a double dissociation gives evidence that function A and B are, to some degree, implemented in different regions of the brain. In general, a double dissociation shows evidence that A and B are independent of each other.

This is a different kind of claim than saying that function A is implemented in brain region X. For this kind of claim, performing an experiment that lesioned (removed) a brain region in some subjects but not others (obviously not an ethical experiment, but let's ignore that) would be a reasonable way to test the claim.

However, this kind of experiment wouldn't be able to provide evidence that functions A and B are implemented in independent regions. To illustrate why, let's consider the possible outcomes of the experiment:

Functions A and B both remain in tact or Functions A and B are both disrupted. Clearly this outcome doesn't provide any evidence that A and B are implemented in different regions, since both functions are affected equally by the lesion.
Only function A is disrupted, function B remains in tact. The most that this outcome shows is that region X (the lesioned area) is crucial for function A but not B. However, what is doesn't show is that function A is independent of function B. It could be the case that function A can be disrupted without disrupting function B, but that any disruption of function B will disrupt function A.


Is there a cognitive bias which describes expert communities' overestimation of their potential impact?

This sounds like a mix of biases "due to the effectiveness of a search set", "the illusion of validity" and "biases of imaginability". See judgement under uncertainty [Science, New Series, Vol. 185, No. 4157. (Sep. 27, 1974), pp. 1124-1131.].


Empathy (exists because cooperation can lead to better survival chances)
Elephants, apes (chimpanzee), donkeys.
Dolphins at least see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy#Evolution

https://books.google.ch/books?hl=en&lr=&id=tNaTfIlMh8wC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=empathy+death+animal&ots=2J8RPQfOy3&sig=BJuNrb4k7JtiVAFqmWEbeZjiFB8#v=onepage&q=dolphin&f=false


what is the "trial-averaged neural response function"?

ρ(t) in Equation 1.1 cannot be summed and averaged because the idealized spikes are infinitesimally narrow and the chance of two spikes from different trials occurring at the same time t is zero.

In Equation 1.2, the idea of convolving each idealized spike with a "well behaved function" h(t). If you use a rectangular function around zero as h(t), with a reasonable width (say 1ms), then Equation 1.2 will give you a timeseries that can be averaged. This is because the chances of two nonzero values from different trials occurring at the same t will become a more reasonable (nonzero) value.

If you have enough trials, then your trial-averaged neural response function using this more reasonable representation of spikes will give you a good sense of the average spike density.


First, I think you'll find that most cognitive scientists do not believe in free will. It definitely is relevant to your question, because if you believe in free will, then you basically don't believe that our thoughts have causes.

Second, you'll be interested, I think, in the idea of spreading activation. Models based on spreading activation capture the intuition that our train of thought has an associative character (I think of castles, which remind me of kings, which remind me of giant drumsticks, which remind me of chickens, etc etc.). But don't get too hung up on this model -- associationism like this can only be part of the story (often our train of thought has a much more hierarchical structure).


What is the difference between two models of situation awareness?

Short answer

Endsley considers SA to be a product. Smith and Hancock argue that SA is a process. Deciding for a definition is important, since it can determine the focus of the research and methodology.

Long answer

The Three-level model proposed by Endsley considers SA to be a product. In other words, SA is a mental picture that can be tested by testing an operators knowledge about the current situation. On popular mean of doing is the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (SAGAT; Endsley, 1988). With the SAGAT, researchers freeze the task (in a simulator) and present the operator with a set of queries, that cover each of the three levels. Examples of these questions in the domain of train traffic controlling is shown in Table 2 (taken form Lo, Sehic and Meijer, 2013).

The perceptual-cycle model argues that SA is a cyclical process of attention, in which perception, knowledge, anticipation and action-taking take place concurrently, in order to generate a `product of consciousness', that is, an understanding of the current situation (see Figure 3, taken from Smith and Hancock, 1995). The product can not be not be seen separately from the process, however; The perception of relevant information will lead to a better understanding, but a better understanding will also direction your attention.

Measuring one's SA as a process implies measuring how well the acquisition of SA is over time. This has, among others, been done with tools such as eye tracking and EEG (For a review, see Salmon, 2006). The perceptual-cycle model does acknowledge the existence of a product of consciousness (and the testing of it with the SAGAT), but this provides an incomplete picture.


What does dorso, ventro, and orbital mean in prefrontal cortext?

Those are anatomical terms of location.

The orbits are the cavities in the skull that hold the eyes. You can easily remember this if you remember that an orbit, in English, is a circular object or path: the Moon orbits the Earth. So

"orbito-" means "towards the eyes", i.e. on the underside of the prefrontal cortex

In a four footed animal like a dog or horse

dorsal means towards the back (i.e. where a rider would sit on a horse)
ventral means towards the belly (underside)

Because human beings no longer walk on all fours, their neuraxis is bent, with the bend between the brain stem and the diencephalon:

in the torso and old brain parts, dorsal means towards the back, ventral towards the belly and face
in the cerebrum and diencephalon, dorsal means towards the top, ventral towards the bottom of the skull

Here is an illustration ("oder" means "or" in German):

I find English a bit confusing as to what the word "back" denotes. In other languages, like Latin, the words for the spinal side of the torso (dorsum, back) and the tail end of the body (posterior, back) are distinct. In English, they are the same, and this makes an explanation of these anatomical terms confusing in English.


Hard to think when hearing audible speech

There are many things at work here. A lot of your sensitivity to human voice can be attributed to the tonotopic organization of the basilar membrane. Check out this image of the cochlea and notice how its sensitivity to different frequencies does not decrease linearly over space https://media1.britannica.com/eb-media/98/14298-004-99934987.jpg , this entails that we are most sensitive to frequencies in the 2-4kHZ range, which significantly overlaps with the frequency range of human speech https://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Dave.Marshall/Multimedia/node271.html .

There is also evidence for using a network of domain specific mental processes to do complex tasks like navigating a room. Specifically, it seems that linguistic processes make spacial navigation tasks easier(https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3572715/ ; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2745626/) --if this is true we could predict that overloading someone's linguistic capabilities by, say, speaking to them, would make spatial navigation tasks harder, which could explain how some stimuli can be "less distracting" than others within different contexts.


The lists of "character deficits" can be mixtures of judgements, beliefs, attitudes and emotions. The common denominator of the things on such lists is often just that they are not acceptable for some people, but they are not all necessary bad and some of them may not need to be changed or treated.

Examples:

Laziness can be a temporary mood, which, if excessive, can become a bad habit.

Anger is an emotion, which can help you refuse inappropriate attitudes of others or, when not controlled by proper thinking, can result in destruction.

Hate is an intense dislike for something or someone and it is not necessary bad; together with anger, it can help you refuse things that are not good for you. On the other hand, hate is often completely unreasonable.

Fear can be perceived as weakness, but it is also a warning emotion that can help you avoid a danger.