Based on the scenario you mentioned, it resembles more as Learned Helplessness or Self-Fulfilling prophecy than negative reinforcement.

Learned Helplessness,is a belief that an individual could not make a change to the outcome after being exposed to the aversive stimuli for a number of times (Seligman, 1972).To the point where he/she stop attempting to address the issue as they thought it is inevitable. As an example: a person who failed multiple times for a subject despite constant revision eventually stop trying to take the test because he/she thinks that their effort is "pointless" and do not bother about it anymore since he/she believed their failure is unavoidable.

Self-fulfilling prophecy,is a phenomena when a prediction of an outcome of a situation (directly/indirectly) becomes a reality due to the inclination on false belief of the individual (Madon, Willard,Guyll & Scherr, 2011). Example, if a person thinks he/she is not good in Mathematics and continues to think or feel such way, he/she will likely to fail in an upcoming test. Although the person might not have failed the test, just because of the belief that he/she is terrible at math,which discourage the person to even make an effort to practice and study. Thus, making the individual's statement of "terrible at maths" true.

As for Negative Reinforcement, is when a stimulus that is deemed unpleasant to the individual is removed to increase the possibilities of the behaviour to occur in the future (Skinner, 1953).

In order to better explain negative reinforcement, an example: a teacher decided to cancelled additional classes (removed the unpleasant stimulus) to an individual when he/she did well in exams (increased the likelihood of a behaviour to occur).

Unpleasant stimulus: Additional Class

Behavior to reinforce: Maintains academic grades

References:

Madon, S., Willard, J., Guyll, M., & Scherr, K. C. (2011). Self-fulfilling prophecies: Mechanisms, power, and links to social problems. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(8), 578-590. doi:10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00375.x

Seligman, M. E. (1972). Learned helplessness. Annual review of medicine, 23, 407-412. doi:https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.002203

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behaviour. New York: Macmillan.


Does short-term memory decrease after working memory, or does it decrease before working memory?

It doesn't really make sense to talk about whether "short-term memory" or "working memory" decline first, so I think there is some confusion of terminology. It seems the reference comes from the second linked article, which colloquially suggests that 'short-term' face memory declines before working memory. In modern working memory research, the relationship between short-working-long term memory generally is as follows.

Short-term memory: A few seconds.
Working memory: As long as consciously maintained.
Long-term memory: Permanent.

This ontology goes back to Baddeley and Hitch's work on the modal model of working memory from the 1970's, and has largely been maintained in subsequent item-based models (how most people think of human memory today).

Short-term memory isn't used as a formal construct very often in memory research anymore because it's a rather vague term, though I think perception researchers still use the term when they don't want to tread too far into memory theory. Instead, it's simply used colloquially as any means of remembering something over short time scales.


What sort of things are considered as "data" in cognitive science?

In The Personality Puzzle (2012), David Funder describes a taxonomy of four different kinds of data  that I've always found useful. The Personality Puzzle is a textbook in personality psychology, so its take on psychology is somewhat more as a social than biological science (though biology has its place too).

Briefly, here are the four kinds of data as described therein:

Self-reports: information provided by oneself about oneself, especially subjective info to which no one would otherwise have access; e.g., attitudes, beliefs, emotions, opinions, preferences, etc. This is often the domain of the Likert scale, though that's only one of very many assessment methods.
Informant reports: info provided about one person by others that is intended to describe the first person (not project info of interest about those reporting on that person). This info may also be subjective or socially constructed, but may be best operationalized as descriptions or judgments polled from people in a manner that welcomes this subjectivity. For example, a person's reputation or other characteristics may be assessed through the perspectives of others who may (or may not) know that person. Methods are otherwise similar to self-report in general.
Behavioral data: strictly objective and often observed in controlled environments or otherwise collected with a repeatable, classically empirical sampling method. This includes counts, measurements, or categorizations of behaviors like lever presses, choices or performance in a game or test, reaction time, stimulus discrimination accuracy, etc. These also include observations about autonomically regulated biological processes such as results from f/MRI, PET, CAT, EEGs, EKGs, heart rate or blood pressure readings, GSR, pupil dilation, etc., even enlargement of erectile genital organs (those studies are always interesting).
Life outcomes: also strictly objective, but generally less available to experimental manipulation, naturalistic, and often historical (i.e., already recorded or otherwise resolved to the state of interest). Examples include info about birth, graduation, employment, marriage, childbirth, divorce, death, etc., such as age at the time, location, partner, etc.


Name needed for psychological practice which uses objects that represent humans [dolls/pictures/etc.] during patient treatment

It's often referred to as "doll therapy" or "play therapy" and applies to adults as much as it does to children. For example, this new product, the "Inner Critic Doll" enables adults to hold a physical manifestation of their inner critic and start a dialogue with it. It has a zipper mouth which can be zipped shut to physically silence this inner voice.

The doll enables adults to confront an otherwise "formless" part of their psyche and has proven to be highly effective.
It's used frequently by writers, artists, those suffering low self-esteem, etc., and I've even seen family members address each other on challenging topics via their inner critic doll, as it was easier than talking face-to-face.


What is the psychological function of nostalgically reenacting activities from before we were born?

Historic reenactment and historically themed social events may serve a variety of functions for the different people that participate in different events:

Some people in virtually all societies value traditionalism (Schwartz, 1992).

Traditionalism relates to religiosity (among Judeo-Christian faiths; Schwartz & Huismans, 1995).

Some hold romantic ideals of the past (e.g., the notion of "simpler times"). Personality traits related to these attitudes may (I'm speculating here) include the past-positive type of time perspective (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999) and low openness to experience, which also relates to traditionalism.
Some may desire an escape from the ordinary environments they're used to in daily life.
Some enjoy dated fashions that don't seem quite right to wear in ordinary, modern contexts.
Some events involve celebration of history, which is valuable in its own right.
Some attendees probably enjoy any opportunity to dress up, act a part, or socialize in general.

Extraversion and self-monitoring may be relevant traits for understanding these motives.
The motive itself may be the need for affiliation, which is stronger in some individuals.
Social contact serves many psychological functions, including the enhancement of well-being.

Surely some celebrants are ignorant of the social issues of those times, but some aren't. Either way, many choose to celebrate the times for their good aspects, and at least a few probably feel the good aspects include the less modern social views of those times. It's conceivable that some people would even feel more comfortable in situations where attitudes such as misogyny or racism could be expressed more freely by excusing them as part of an act. However, my mere intuition and very limited personal experience suggest that most celebrations of the past aren't celebrations of the more controversial aspects such as these.

References

Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and structure of values: Theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 25(1), 1–65. Retrieved from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.220.3674&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

Schwartz, S. H., & Huismans, S. (1995). Value priorities and religiosity in four Western religions. Social Psychology Quarterly, 58(2), 88–107.

Zimbardo, P., & Boyd, J. (1999). Putting time in perspective: A valid, reliable individual-difference metric. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1271–1288.


Can an autistic person have very advance language skills?

They may be referring to hyperlexia (rather than hyperverbal ability):

Hyperlexic children are characterized by word-reading ability well
above what would be expected given their age. ... Some experts believe
that most children with hyperlexia, or perhaps even all of them, lie
on the autism spectrum.

But as far as verbal ability goes, since autism is a spectrum disorder, there is bound to be a spectrum of verbal abilities in those afflicted.  Wikipedia summarizes:

Language impairment is also common in children with autism, but it is
not necessary for the diagnosis. ... It is also common for individuals
with ASD to communicate strong interest in a specific topic, speaking
in lesson-like monologues about their passion instead of enabling
reciprocal communication with whomever they are speaking to.

In other words, "hyperverbal" autistics are hardly unusual.  However, they often struggle with perspective-taking, and hence may speak out of turn, failing to assess their audience's level of interest.
For recent reviews of language acquisition and verbal abilities in individuals with ASD, see for example:
Eigsti et al (2011); "Language acquisition in autism spectrum disorders: A developmental review":

... early studies indicated that some 50% of affected individuals
never acquire functional speech, though more recent estimates find a
smaller proportion of non-verbal individuals, typically around 25%.
Language acquisition in ASD is characterized by dramatic delays, with
first words produced at age 38 months, on average, compared to 8–14
months in TD.

Volkers (2017); "Untangling the Language Challenges of Autism":

... on average, children on the spectrum produce their first word one
to two years later than typically developing children. And we know
that language ability among children on the spectrum varies
greatly—some may be fluent conversationalists, while others can barely
speak.


A good place to start learning Behaviorism for a Newbie?

It would be better to follow a series of instructional courses provided on the internet. MIT in their Opencourseware has provided an Introduction to Psychology class lectures through iTunesU. They also provide a structured study guide for the rest of their Psychology courses (some have videos). Each course has a syllabus and assigned book reading.


How does the brain create original thoughts?

To understand how the brain "knows" what to do, we can look at how children learn language.

At first, children randomly create all kinds of sounds, including those that aren't part of the language(s) spoken in their environment. Parents and other people react to these sounds, repeating them, speaking their language, smiling, etc., and the children in turn react to these reactions to their sounds, learning which sound elicit which reactions (e.g. which sounds lead to a smile, which sounds are ignored, etc.), until they slowly begin to build a repertoire of sound and "pre-words" which give the most pleasurable results.

With time, children learn to recognize parts of the language spoken in their environment and begin to emulate these sounds, learning their first words, and eventually to speak.

So what we have here is a brain creating random behavior (in this case with the speaking apparatus), and learning from the effects this behavior elicits in the environment which behavior leads to the desired results. Whatever happens in the brain when a desired result is achieved, is stored as the "internal behavior of the brain" to do to achive that result, e.g. what to say to get that ball.


Perfectionism, and approval addiction: how are these two generated from a trauma?

I want to say that this kind of issue is environmental. Behaviours of perfectionism are developed because of certain factors that may stem from early childhood (as in how the parents treat the child). If self esteem is measured based on the standards that the authority sets, but the child cannot reach them, they may come to know themselves as inadequate. Freud talks about this in his theory of psychoanalysis and in the psychodynamic theory.

I don't think it's specifically one case of trauma, but a series of evaluations that causes the development of low self esteem.

Before the child has a complete theory of mind he may not seperate himself from his environment and in turn mirror or internalize the negative image of how his parents treat him.
Some evidence suggests that perception becomes more global with age (which may reflect the development of a pragmatic perceptive system that allows faster identification of objects in the environment. ) (Akshoomoff et al., 1995).

Its possible that this global perceptive system may become tied to negative emotional trauma. Which makes negative behaviours more easily developable.
Predictions of outcomes of events have also been tied to perception, as perception as been shown to be constructive (in the sense that it builds on itself from past experiences, even emotional ones)  (Sinke,  et al., 2012)

Individuals who experience abuse may unconsciously recall the outcomes of that abuse during similar situations, causing distress.

Also, some Self theorists may also see the traumatic experiences as negatively affecting the sense of self. Approval addiction may be seen as an act taken to strengthen self identity, as the authority figure did not properly bolster the self esteem during development, so the individual may try to compensate for that by seeking approval.

Reference

Developmental trends in visuospatial analysis and planning: I. Copying a complex figure. Akshoomoff, Natacha A.; Stiles, Joan
Neuropsychology, Vol 9(3), Jul 1995, 364-377

Sinke, Charlotte B. A. et al. “The Constructive Nature of Affective Vision: Seeing Fearful Scenes Activates Extrastriate Body Area.” PLoS ONE 7.6 (2012): e38118. Web.


Theorem of uncertainty in cognitive science

As you say in your last comment, this is clearly fictional as a theorem, but the argument has been raised in less fictional works. The "theorem on uncertainty" phrase probably is intended to hint to the uncertainty principle and/or the no-cloning theorem from  quantum mechanics. For instance, Scott Aaronson writes

  Does quantum mechanics (specifically,
  say, the No-Cloning Theorem or the uncertainty principle) put interesting limits on an
  external agent’s ability to scan, copy, and predict human brains and other complicated
  biological systems, or doesn’t it?

  I regard the
  above as an unsolved scientific question, and a big one. Many people seem to think the answer
  is obvious (though they disagree on what it is!), or else they reject the question as meaningless,
  unanswerable, or irrelevant.

Note that he is far from being the first to ask the question (e.g. Alan Turing did in 1951), although Aaronson did perhaps help sharpen it.

So with respect to brain function, this "theorem" is just a hypothesis, and it may well prove to be false. The empirical evidence on the relevance of quantum processes for understanding brain functioning is questionable at best, although you do see occasional "breakthroughs" reported in the press, e.g. on Orch OR; see the long list of comments under the abstract for a review paper for more. On the other hand, other researches continue to pursue brains simulators like the Blue Brain Project, although it's computatinally very expensive just to simulate a part of a rat's brain.


How does language change the understanding of a complex concept?

This question is pretty broad, but perhaps these studies address your question.

In 2006, Daniel Oppenheimer won an Ig Nobel prize for his paper Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly, which demonstrated that using overly-complex words when a simpler word would suffice resulted in lower intelligence ratings of the author. Additionally, this may lead readers to rate the content as less true (Reber & Schwarz, 1999). So to answer one of your questions, yes, the language one chooses to use can change a reader's perception of it.

More to the point, your question is related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that language determines thought (or the weaker hypothesis, that language influences thought). The strong version of this hypothesis (language determines thought) has been pretty thoroughly debunked. However, there is some credence to the idea that language influences thought. Many studies have examined this hypothesis, but one example is that of Frank et al. (2008). In this article, Frank tests an Amazonian tribe (the Pirahã) who have no number words-- purportedly, not even a word for 'one' or 'two'. Frank tested them on a variety of counting tasks and found that overall, their performance suffered in comparison to nearby tribes who did have number words. His claim is that number words serve as a cognitive tool to perform basic counting and arithmetic, but the lack of those words does not affect their ability to perceive quantity.

So overall, there is very little evidence to support the strong hypothesis that not having a word for a particular set of semantic features affects our ability to conceive of those concepts. However, not having those words may have subsequent affects on other areas of our cognition, such as (in the case of the Pirahã) our ability to count.

  Oppenheimer, D. M. (2006). Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized
  irrespective of necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly.
  Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20(2), 139-156. PDF

  Reber, R., & Schwarz, N. (1999). Effects of perceptual ﬂuency on
  judgments of truth. Consciousness and Cognition, 8, 338–342. PDF

  Frank, M. C., Everett, D. L., Fedorenko, E., & Gibson, E. (2008).
  Number as a cognitive technology: Evidence from Pirahã language and
  cognition. Cognition, 108(3), 819-824. PDF


How common is the form of amnesia depicted in fictional works?

What you are referring to is something called dissociative fugue. It is characterized as an official psychiatric disorder and dissociative disorder in the DSM-5, and its prevalence has been estimated at 0.2%, though it is much more common in connection with wars, accidents, and natural disasters.
The disorder is characterized by reversible amnesia for all aspects of the self: identity, personality, memories, personal history, etc. These episodes of 'fugue' can be caused by stress (in those with the characterized disorder), but similar episodes are not considered to be 'fugue' if they were induced by other factors, such as drug ingestion, head trauma, or other conditions such as dementia. The fugue itself typically lasts anywhere between a few hours and a few days, but can occasionally last a lot longer (up to several months). It usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and in some cases can lead someone to form a new identity.
After recovery, the person typically has no recollection of what happened during their amnesiac state. However, they typically remember everything that they had previously forgotten about their identity. If the episode was caused by a specific stressor (e.g. an abusive figure), the stressor may remain forgotten upon recovery.
For the cases in which the amnesia was caused by a traumatic event, drug use, or physical trauma, then it is usually referred to as retrograde amnesia. Similar to dissociative fugue, those who undergo retroactive amnesia typically make a spontaneous recovery.

Retrograde amnesia usually follows damage to areas of the brain other than the hippocampus (the part of the brain involved in encoding new memories), because already exisiting long-term memories are stored in the neurons and synapses of various different brain regions...It usually results from damage to the brain regions most closely associated with declarative (and particularly episodic) memory, such as the temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex. The damage may result from a cranial trauma (a blow to the head), a cerebrovascular accident or stroke (a burst artery in the brain), a tumour (if it presses against part of the brain), hypoxia (lack of oxygen in the brain), certain kinds of encephalitis, chronic alcoholism, etc.
Retrograde amnesia is often temporally graded, meaning that remote memories are more easily accessible than events occurring just prior to the trauma (sometimes known as Ribot's Law after the 19th Century psychologist Théodule-Armand Ribot), and the events nearest in time to the event that caused the memory loss may never be recovered. This is because the neural pathways of newer memories are not as strong as older ones that have been strengthened by years of retrieval and re-consolidation. While there is no actual cure for retrograde amnesia, “jogging” the victim’s memory by exposing them to significant articles from their past will often speed the rate of recall.

(Source)


To what degree is emotional state visible in a person's eyes?

This question has mostly been asked in reverse in the research literature--not whether the eyes can show emotion (which is often called affect by psych researchers), but whether humans can accurately judge affective state based only on the eyes.  That ability varies somewhat depending on demographic parameters (age, gender, and socioeconomic class, as well as autism spectrum disorder status).

The "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test, developed by Simon Baron-Cohen, tests exactly that, using stimuli like these.

Participants are asked to choose the most applicable emotion word for a picture restricted to the eye area.  Neurotypical controls are more successful at this task than autism spectrum participants; since most of the research has focused on showing differences between populations on this task and not on quantifying normal performance, the reported data on controls alone is difficult to interpret by itself. The test has fairly good test-retest reliability, but it has been criticized for gender bias since there are considerably more male eyes in the stimuli set than female eyes.  This is particularly problematic in light of Baron-Cohen's "extreme male brain" theory of autism.


Easy-to-use simulations of human behavior

Nicky Case is a tough act to follow, but there are a lot of simulations available for a variety of different theories in social psychology and behavioural economics.  As such, I won't try to list them all, but provide a "list of lists" that should help you to find more.

Wikipedia maintains a list of games in game theory.  This does not link to any simulations, but it's easy enough to search Google for them.  For example, here are a couple of interactive online simulations of the hawk-dove game: Single population, 2 population, and an interactive version of the Blotto game can be found here.  Wikipedia also has a "list of lists".  There are also several interactive simulations that are capable of modelling multiple game theory games, including the prisoner's dilemma: GTE, Oyun, Axelrod.
NetLogo, from Northwestern University, lists a number of psychology and social science simulations in its models library (sorry no jump-to link, you'll have to scroll down to see the categories), including Rebellion "... an adaptation of Joshua Epstein's model of civil violence (2002)", the Piaget-Vygotsky Game "... to shed light on the ongoing debate between two theories of learning, constructivism and social constructivism", and Ethnocentrism based on a model by "Robert Axelrod and Ross A. Hammond".
AnyLogic Cloud offers a variety of simulations for its platform, including agent-based models such as reinforcement learning, epidemic model, and schelling segregation, and market models such as restaurant business.  Several other simulation platforms for social science and human behaviour are listed in Wikipedia's comparison of agent-based modelling software.
A list of interactive online  economics simulation games.
An old simulation on the evolution of social norms.

The above lists are all free; the catalogue would be much larger if you add paid services such as classroom education software.


What is the most unified functional model of the hippocampus?

I myself have not come across a complete end-to-end hippocampal model, but I would imagine that such an implementation would be quite broad in scope. Edmund Rolls has some nice papers on the hippocampus, one of which is a particularly informative and recent review:

Kesner RP, and Rolls ET. A computational theory of hippocampal function, and tests of the theory: New developments. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 48 (2015) 92-147 PDF here (Second page missing?)

I'll be very interested to read other answers to your question.


Could human decision making have evolved from food finding?

C. elegans is the simplest model organism whose nervous system has been studied extensively. C. elegans certainly makes decisions; I would feel pretty confident in saying that decision making is an ubiquitous feature in the nervous system of freely moving animals.

It is also non-controversial to consider more complex behaviors as having evolved from more simple ones (finding food/evading predation/mating). You can even reduce a lot of complex behaviors directly to those simple ones, and certainly neural mechanisms for grouping and distinguishing between different patterns (an essential component of language but also many other behaviors) are conserved across domains.

However, it is not correct to refer to all decision making as a tree search: a tree search is a particular family of algorithms and not what you describe. Even tree-like problems need not be solved with a tree search. Specifically, tree search is a computational algorithm that works well in the serial processing environment of computer science. Analogies between brains and computers often break down at the level of algorithms, because brains are massively parallel. That doesn't mean tree search-like algorithms are absent from the brain, but you should not take such a narrow view a priori.

Christiansen, M. H., & Kirby, S. (2003). Language evolution: Consensus and controversies. Trends in cognitive sciences, 7(7), 300-307.

Faumont, S., Lindsay, T. H., & Lockery, S. R. (2012). Neuronal microcircuits for decision making in C. elegans. Current opinion in neurobiology, 22(4), 580-591.

Fitch, W. T. (2005). The evolution of language: a comparative review. Biology and philosophy, 20(2-3), 193-203.


What's the difference between the neuroendocrine system vs endocrine system?

Neuroendocrine systems can be defined as the sets of neurons, glands and non-endocrine tissues, and the neurochemicals, hormones, and humoral signals they produce and receive, that function in an integrated manner to collectively regulate a physiological or behavioral state.
The neuroendocrine system is the mechanism by which the hypothalamus maintains homeostasis, regulating reproduction, metabolism, eating and drinking behaviour, energy utilization, osmolarity and blood pressure. (Source)

The central neuroendocrine systems serve as an interface between the brain and many of the peripheral endocrine systems. This chapter discusses the hypothalamic control of anterior pituitary systems regulating stress, basal metabolism, growth, reproduction, and lactation. Each of these systems involves one or more hypothalamic releasing or inhibiting hormones, released from hypothalamic neurons that terminate in the portal capillary vasculature that projects from the median eminence at the base of the hypothalamus to the anterior pituitary gland. There, the hypothalamic hormones act upon subsets of anterior pituitary cells to regulate pituitary hormone release and downstream physiological functions. Other hypothalamic neuroendocrine cells control water/salt balance, and lactation/parturition, through the release of vasopressin and oxytocin from nerve terminals that arise in hypothalamus and project to the posterior pituitary gland. Together, these hypothalamic neuroendocrine functions enable the central nervous system to respond rapidly to internal or external environmental change, and to maintain a response through endocrine hormonal transducers. (Gore, 2013).

The endocrine system is a group of glands and other structures that release internal secretions called hormones into the circulatory system.

Endocrine organs are richly vascularized ductless organs that produce hormones. The epithelial cells of the organ secrete their hormone product directly into the bloodstream where, upon binding with specific receptors in target organs, cellular functions are affected. The endocrine systemincludes not only the endocrine glands (pineal, pituitary, thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenal) but also single cells and small clusters of cells in the thorax and abdomen known as paraganglia. This chapter addresses the thyroid, parathyroid, adrenal, pituitary and pineal glands, and paraganglia. In addition to size differences, several features of endocrine tissues differ between rodents and humans, and often between rodents. (La Perle & Dintzis, 2018).

Question 1

When it comes to the brain, are the neurosecretory cells located in the hypothalamus or the posterior pituitary gland or both?

Neurosecretory cells are found in the hypothalamus. (Source)

There are two types of neurosecretory cells: magnocellular cells and parvocellular cells. Magnocellular cellsare large cells, having long axons that terminate in the neurohypophysis (also known as the posterior pituitary). Magnocellular cells release the hormones vasopressin and oxytocin to the general circulation; we will talk about the physiology of these hormones in Conjoint 403.  The parvocellular cells are small cells, with shorter axons that terminate at a capillary-rich bulge at the base of the hypothalamus known as the median eminence.

Question 2

Is the hypothalamus and the posterior pituitary gland classified as neuroendocrine glands...

No

...and is the anterior pituitary classified as an endocrine gland?

Yes.
The following is from: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ap/chapter/the-pituitary-gland
(emphasis mine)

The posterior pituitary (or neurohypophysis) comprises the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland and is part of the endocrine system. Despite its name, the posterior pituitary gland is not a true gland; rather, it is largely a collection of axonal projections from the hypothalamus that terminate behind the anterior pituitary gland.

The pituitary gland is an endocrine gland, about the size of a pea, that sits in a small, bony cavity at the base of the brain whose secretions control the other endocrine glands and influence growth, metabolism, and maturation.
While the pituitary gland is known as the master endocrine gland, both of its lobes are under the control of the hypothalamus: the anterior pituitary receives its signals from the parvocellular neurons, and the posterior pituitary receives its signals from the magnocellular neurons.
The anterior pituitary, also called the adenohypophysis, is a major organ of the endocrine system, and is the glandular, anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.
The anterior pituitary gland secretes 7 hormones: follicle stimulating hormone, luteinizing horomone, adrenocorticotropic horomone, thyroid stimulating horomone, prolactin, endorphins, and growth hormone.
The posterior pituitary gland does not synthesize any hormones.  Hormones known as posterior pituitary hormones are synthesized by the hypothalamus, and include oxytocin and antidiuretic hormone (ADH), also called arginine vasopressin or vasopressin (Liu, 2007). The hormones are then stored in neurosecretory vesicles (Herring bodies) before being secreted by the posterior pituitary into the bloodstream.
With regard to neurohormones mentioned in question 3, neurohormones are hormones that are produced by neurosecretory cells and released by nerve impulses (e.g., norepinephrine, oxytocin, vasopressin).
This is the part which can be confusing. Whilst ADH and oxytocin are released from the posterior pituitary gland, which is an endocrine gland, the hormones are produced by neurosecretory cells within the hypothalamus and they are stored in and released from neurosecretory vesicles within the posterior pituitary gland. Therefore they are classed as neurohormones.
References
Gore, A. C. (2013). Neuroendocrine systems. In Fundamental Neuroscience (Fourth Edition) (pp. 799-817). doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-385870-2.00038-X
La Perle, K. M. D., & Dintzis, S. M. (2018). Endocrine system. In Comparative Anatomy and Histology (pp. 251-273). Academic Press. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-415759-0.00058-3
Liu, K. D. (2007). Hyponatremia and Hypernatremia. In Critical Care Secrets (Fourth Edition) (pp. 285-290). doi: 10.1016/B978-1-4160-3206-9.10044-8


What extent is non linear dynamics and chaos helpful to study brain function?

Since this an active and relatively new area of research, nobody can tell you for certain where it will lead.

Whether it will "dead end" is perhaps the wrong way to think about it too. All lines of research have their limits, and when those limits are reached, those researchers who found the limits are often the ones best equipped to move on to the next "thing". If you choose to study it and it turns out to be a less productive area than you had hoped, you will still have learned a large set of useful skills that you can apply to other methods.

As for the usefulness of brain dynamics, the short answer is they have their place and are very promising in certain areas of behavioral science. In particular, coordination and motor control appear to be very well suited to these models. A small but growing body of scientists believe dynamics is the next big thing in cognitive science, though it is still unclear whether this is the case. It sounds like you already have a good primer on the utility of nonlinear dynamics for computational neuroscience with what you're reading. For a more general discussion of their promise and potential for other areas of cognitive science, and a proposal that dynamical systems can essentially replace computational neuroscience, see Chemero (2011). For a concise criticism of the approach see Wagenmakers, van der Mass, and Farrell (2012).

1: Chemero, A. (2011). Radical embodied cognitive science. MIT press.

2:
Wagenmakers, E. J., van der Maas, H. L., & Farrell, S. (2012). Abstract Concepts Require Concrete Models: Why Cognitive Scientists Have Not Yet Embraced Nonlinearly Coupled, Dynamical, Self‐Organized Critical, Synergistic, Scale‐Free, Exquisitely Context‐Sensitive, Interaction‐Dominant, Multifractal, Interdependent Brain‐Body‐Niche Systems. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4(1), 87-93.


How can I create computer based psychology experiments using OS X?

My research group has gone pure python for coding experiments; we've been burned too many times by glitches and implicit behaviour in boxed experiment-building software to bother trusting it. Moving from a point-and-click experiment design interface to pure code does have a large learning curve, and you want to be careful to model your own code on well validated code from others (esp. for ensuring that you're implementing timing properly, which can be nuanced).

It may be tempting to hire CS students to code your experiments, but the danger there is they don't come to the table with the same experimental design background as you do and we've encountered some implementation errors as a consequence (ex. failing to check for input during dead time between stimulus presentation, etc).

While I recognize and indeed support the push to specialization in cognitive science, I do think that in the same way that we require all researchers to have a bit of background in statistics, we should also require all researchers to have a bit of background in coding, not least because it helps engender a mindset amenable to considering formal models of mind.


How do moral judgments change for older adults?

Moral Judgement:

From Wikipedia:

  ... moral judgment ... is "the ability to reason correctly about what
  'ought' to be done in a specific situation."

Research on moral judgement was pioneered by Jean Piaget, summarized in his book "The Moral Judgment of the Child" (1932), in which he implies that moral development levels off in adolescence.  Piaget introduced the standard moral judgement task paradigm that is still often used today to assess moral development by asking subjects to make moral judgements on particular stories or dilemmas.  In his research, peak performance on these tests was achieved around mid-adolescence, and he never bothered to test older subjects.  Interestingly, performance of older adults was only finally put to the test in 1996.  This study showed that (a) moral development does not peak in adolescence, as adults perform slightly better, and (b) older adults do not differ much in overall performance than younger adults, but the details are mixed - in some areas of morality they perform better and in others worse.

Beginning in the 1960's, Piaget's work was extended by other researchers such as Kohlberg and Gilligan to include moral development throughout people's entire life-span.  This spurred much research on moral development in adulthood.  For example, a study published in 1997 summarizes the dubious state of the research at the time as follows:

  In sum, findings to date suggest three possible developmental paths of
  moral reasoning development in adulthood: (1) a plateau effect in
  adulthood; (2) ongoing development throughout adulthood; or (3)
  on-going development in earlier adult-hood with decline in later
  adulthood.

Results of that particular study are depicted in the image below:

As you can see, it's not really that clear what happens in later adulthood, but it doesn't seem to be much different from early adulthood.

Moral Sensitivity:

From Wikipedia:

  ... moral sensitivity ... is "the ability to see an ethical dilemma,
  including how our actions will affect others."

Research on moral sensitivity is much more recent.  Even in his early works, Piaget was aware of this effect on moral judgement task performance.  In the original paradigm, very young children were asked questions like "should a child who accidentally broke 15 cups while washing the dishes be punished more than a child who accidentally broke 1 cup while stealing a cookie".  Although the children were often aware that stealing a cookie is wrong and washing dishes is not, the large amount of damage caused would outweigh that due to its emotional impact on the child.  By around age 8 or 9 however, children understand that the amount of harm is not a relevant factor - only the intention is.

However, later research suggested that moral sensitivity is still correlated with emotion much later in life.  By adolescence, this emotional reaction no longer affects moral judgements, but it continues to impact other aspects of moral reasoning such as deserved punishment.  An early attempt to measure sensitivity (2001) used the speed of word associations as an indirect indicator, and found no significant difference between the performance of younger and older adults once the age-related decrease in overall performance was taken into account.

Modern research on moral sensitivity uses fMRI to detect changes in activity in areas of the brain associated with emotion (limbic system) and moral reasoning (prefrontal cortex).  This approach is relatively new, and still fairly expensive, so sample sizes tend to be small.  The study cited in the question also concludes, as is well established, that:

  ... judgments about how wrong an action was did not differ significantly
  by age

but as for moral sensitivity:

  ... with increasing age, subjects reported feeling less upset when viewing
  objects being damaged ... With age, agents were rated as even more
  mean if they had harmed a person intentionally than if they had harmed
  a person accidentally ... with increasing age, participants were less
  willing to punish agents who intentionally damaged objects than those
  who intentionally harmed people ... Comparison across the three groups
  showed a significant difference ... between the early childhood group
  and the adult group in the connectivity between the vmPFC and amygdala
  reflecting increased functional integration between these 2 regions in
  adults.

It would certainly be interesting to see how these results extend to later adulthood - ie, if they continue in a linear fashion, or taper off as in moral judgement scores.

Most modern research on older adults focuses on the effects of brain damage (eg, 2006, 2010, 2010), which is naturally more common with age.  When compared with same-age controls, patients with damage to the prefrontal cortex perform worse on a variety of moral judgement tasks.  Degradation in brain function may be responsible for a decline in moral sensitivity with age in some cases.


What are the neurobiological triggers for sleepwalking?

You know where I'd start if I were you?  I'd start looking at the sleep medications that cause people to sleepwalk whom normally don't (or if they already do, it exacerbates it) - such as ambien.  What are they doing?  How do they work in the brain on a physiological level?

I'm sure there are some studies that directly study the physiology of what is happening in the brain during a sleepwalk, but when it involves a big drug with big pharma behind it - alot more research tends to go into the area.

That will help you put a sturdy frame around the potential answer, then the rest of it is just extrapolating the Y out of when scientists thought X drug caused Y physiological response, which caused Z (sleepwalking).  Then you gotta do some reverse engineering.

You'll find there to be no real true answer as the extent of human knowledge only goes so far, but this might be a credible path to start down.  Here's a good starting point:

  Desensitization of GABAergic receptors as a mechanism of zolpidem-induced somnambulism.
  Juszczak GR.
  Source Department of Animal Behavior, Institute of Genetics and Animal Breeding, Jastrzebiec, Poland. gjuszczak@yahoo.com
  Med Hypotheses. 2011 Aug;77(2):230-3. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2011.04.019. Epub 2011 May 11.
  Abstract
  Sleepwalking is a frequently reported side effect of zolpidem which is a short-acting hypnotic drug potentiating activity of GABA(A) receptors. Paradoxically, the most commonly used medications for somnambulism are benzodiazepines, especially clonazepam, which also potentiate activity of GABA(A) receptors. It is proposed that zolpidem-induced sleepwalking can be explained by the desensitization of GABAergic receptors located on serotonergic neurons. According to the proposed model, the delay between desensitization of GABA receptors and a compensatory decrease in serotonin release constitutes the time window for parasomnias. The occurrence of sleepwalking depends on individual differences in receptor desensitization, autoregulation of serotonin release and drug pharmacokinetics. The proposed mechanism of interaction between GABAergic and serotonergic systems can be also relevant for zolpidem abuse and zolpidem-induced hallucinations. It is therefore suggested that special care should be taken when zolpidem is used in patients taking at the same time selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.
  Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
  PMID: 21565448 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21565448


Can we truly random choose which finger to raise by counting to 10 in your mind?

I think your question ultimately is about whether people can or are able to behave like a uniform random number generator drawing numbers from 1 to 10.
I don't think the fact that the participant needs to raise a finger changes things much.

Note that there is a distinction between what people do, and what people are capable of. A lot of research suggests that people are not very good at simulating randomness. That said, one can think of strategies that would allow a person to simulate randomness more effectively (e.g., drawing on sources of random information in the environment, or even applying a formula similar to that used to sequentially generate numbers using random number generators).

The broad question has already been posed on the site:
How well can a human-generated "random number" be predicted?

I also note that a participant could just report sequentially 1,2,3..., 10, 1, ... This data would show 100 of each number for 1000 signals. Of course, this would exhibit structure that would not be present were each trial independent.


How is music preference related to personality traits or particular qualities?

As your luck would have it, there is a study by Schwartz et al. (2003) that examines just that.

They found that there was a specific personality type associated with music preference in adolescents. The paper is freely available on familywise.ca.

Schwartz, K. D., & Fouts, G. T. (2003). Music preferences, personality style, and developmental issues of adolescents. Journal of youth and adolescence, 32(3), 205-213. (PDF)


Why does an image seem smaller or larger through a pinhole when viewing with human eye

I suspect this is related to distance perception and size constancy. The retinal size of an object (the actual projection of the object on your retina) decreases with 1/distance. However your visual system is compensating for this effect, which is called size constancy. For example if you put one thumb at arm length (~60cm) in front of you and another at half that distance, they will appear roughly the same size, the farther one a little smaller, while it is actually half the size of the closer one. Similarly when you look at yourself in a mirror, your face seems regular size. Next time your are in front of a mirror with condensation, draw the contour of your face in the condensation. You'll be surprised by how small it actually is. Your visual system uses distance cues to perceptually "rescale" objects so that they appear closer to their real size, and not just the size they have on the retina. This is the basis of illusions such as the corridor illusion or Ames' room.

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

To go back to your question, when looking at the keyboard through the wrapper you basically eliminate all distance cues (binocular vision, perspective...). Now in an uncontrolled experiment using uncontrolled stimuli it is a bit hard to predict what will happen perceptually, but you can assume that you'll reduce the amount of perceptual constancy and objects will appear smaller (closer to their retinal size), which seems in agreement with your observations. Why does one of your friend perceive it as larger? A similar phenomenon occurs with prisms. With prisms you artificially increase or decrease vergence angle, a cue for distance perception, while preserving the retinal size of an object. Consequently objects appear larger when you decrease vergence (because an object that would elicit the same retinal size but is farther would actually be bigger), or smaller when increase it. However is small subset of the population report perceiving the opposite effect, and as far as I know no one has provided a good explanation of why.

Picture from: Gibson, J. J. (1966). The senses considered as perceptual systems. pp 315.


Yes, a norming experiment is an experiment looking to establish what (if any) is the perceptual norm for a given stimulus, i.e. the level of the stimulus that appears neutral. In the paper you referenced, the stimuli are the size(s) of various objects, and the subjects were instructed to pick for each object a size that appeared neither too big nor too small, thus psychologically "just right" or neutral.

More generally, quoting from another paper:

  Many sensory dimensions are thought to be represented relative to a norm, which itself appears psychologically neutral
  or unbiased. In vision, classic examples of these norms include “white” in the perception of color, or “static” in the
  perception of motion. Norms have also been implicated in the representation of higher-level stimulus attributes. Thus
  current models of face perception assume that faces are represented by their “identity trajectories” relative to a
  prototype or average face [...]. Such diverse examples suggest that norms may in fact be central to most perceptual
  judgments.


The brain doesn't do trig at all for this problem. It uses a lot of tricks to estimate the solution.

First we should be careful, though. Your example isn't an example of calculating the trig, it's an example of assuming or completing an image. This is in line with gestalt psychology, where the brain takes less information than necessary to truly know an answer and guesses the best solution based on several rules.

Now if our example is an actual moving object, such as a ball, we come to the aforementioned tricks.

One trick is constant re-estimation. Imagine you had a computer with a very naive way to calculate the movement of our ball - it looks at where the ball has come from and assumes a linear path. This path is probably wrong, but let's say we do this ~50 times a second. Each path is wrong, but they will be increasingly accurate, and each one may be sufficient to have a general idea of where the ball is headed, until it is accurate enough that we can catch the ball. Our brain probably does a lot better than a linear estimation, but it still takes some form of this shortcut, trading accuracy for a less difficult computation because we can redo and correct our calculations as we go.

Another trick is our short term knowledge of the path an object has taken and the fact that most objects take very simple paths. If I gave you a graph of the ball's movement from 0-10 seconds, chances are you can draw 10-20 seconds pretty accurately. This helps us with objects that are moving slowly or are far away, where we get to see them for long enough time to see an overall pattern.

These first two aren't so successful for predicting living organisms, which often move too fast and complexly for them. In this case, we largely rely on previous knowledge. We know few things leave the ground, and if they do they usually come down again very soon (often in an arc). We know most things accelerate downhill, decelerate uphill, and follow the curves of the surface they are on. For the things that are even less predictable, we learn to see the subtle preparatory movements involved: we see the slight turn of the leg before a runner changes direction, the crouch before a jump, the raising of wings before flying. Indeed when things don't follow these rules, or optical illusions make things appear to not follow these rules (rooms that look normal but are weirdly shaped), it amuses or confuses us.

Depending on the type of programming you do/your formal education, you may be very aware that when the optimal solution takes more resources to find than it is actually worth, programmers opt for estimations of near-optimal solutions. In a living creature, the priority is coming up with a solution that is near-optimal in enough time to react to potential danger (something flying towards you). In this way, the brain's sensory problem is an extreme version of the programming problem of coming 'close enough' in the time allotted. Specifically this is most similar to online problems where solutions must be optimal for an unknown amount of inputs as each input comes in.


If we do not consciously perceive a sound at a time, can we sometimes still later consciously recall it?

This question is related to subliminal perception, often studied in vision but sometimes also in hearing. This remains a bit controversial, and that is mostly because of arguments about how ones measures whether something has been perceived or not.

My answer to your main question would be "no", but that is speculation. You use the word "recall", which in memory research generally suggests an explicit, conscious recollection and you would normally only get this if you had consciously perceived something and encoded it the first time round. There are, however, examples of subliminal sounds which are not identified at the first presentation but which nevertheless affect later behaviour (e.g., here).


Is there a "foreplay" equivalent, priming activity for thinking or conversation?

Yes, there is such an activity and it is called priming.  It is the same technique that involves mental, sexual foreplay. There has been a fair bit of research about the psychological effects of priming. I have limited the discussion, purely to priming, but there are many other interesting, associations with priming that could be discussed within another post.

I find the following points provide a good summary of the various modes of priming.

  Priming is providing a stimulus that influences their near-term future
  thoughts and actions, even though they may not seem to be connected.
  Conceptual priming occurs where related ideas are used to prime the
  response, for example 'hat' may prime for 'head'.
  Semantic priming
  occurs where the meaning created influences later thoughts. Semantic
  and conceptual priming are very similar and the terms may be used
  interchangeably.
  Non-associative semantic priming refers to related
  concepts but where one is less likely to trigger thoughts of the
  other, for example 'Sun' and 'Venus'.
  Perceptual priming, is based
  on the form of the stimulus, for example where a part-picture is
  completed based on a picture seen earlier.
  Associative priming
  happens when a linked idea is primed, for example when 'bread' primes
  the thought of 'butter'. This particularly applies to 'free
  association' word pairs.
  Masked priming occurs where a word or image
  is presented for a very short time but is not consciously recognized.
  Repetitive priming occurs where the repetition of something leads to
  it influencing later thoughts.
  Reverse priming occurs where people
  realize they are being primed and, feeling they have been biased,
  over-respond in their choices which are now biased in the reverse
  direction

Meyer and Schvanveldt (1971), Neely (1977), Bargh and Pietromonaco (1982), Marcel, (1983), Draine and Greenwald (1998), Sherman and Kim (2002)

On the down side:
I have been unable to find studies investigating the neurotransmitters involved in priming (at this stage). One thought occurred to me from when I studied Neuroscience (many years ago). That arousal (as in attention) is required to LTP cells. Although, this specific example may not apply to priming, it is a parallel between the effects of psychological priming and physiological priming. I am sure there are better articles, I, currently, have limited access to journals.

Learning-facilitated long-term depression and long-term potentiation at mossy fiber-CA3 synapses requires activation of β-adrenergic receptors.
Hagena H, Manahan-Vaughan D.
Source
Medical Faculty,
 Department of Neurophysiology,
Ruhr University
Bochum Bochum, Germany.


What time range between 2 measures for test-retest reliability?

Although I don't know the answer, I think it would be important to explain what you exactly wish to do with the re-test? If you solely wish to know how reliable the score is, you could do the test on day 1 and the re-test on day 2? The longer the time, the higher the chance that a person's life is subject to change (e.g., the loss of relatives, or medical intervention), and that it's not a re-test per se, but a different time point in a person's life. Regardless, I think it would be good to have a look at some of the best-cited papers in your arena of research and see what they do, and perhaps contact the authors of why they choose 2 years.

If it is for a review meta analysis paper, as you say in your comments, then the answer to your question is all about your research question. If indeed you wish to minimize that intervening time (t), the best thing might be to map all the papers, organize them in ascending order of t and then decide what the minimum #papers is you wish to include in your review. A kind of reversed approach, but if the #papers is the bottle neck, it may in fact be a proper, and maybe even the only way to go.

P.S. -- for what it's worth -- I don't like to write unreferenced answers, but in this case it seems warranted and in fact I was urged by a long-time user to convert my comments into an answer


How to quickly estimate the person's level of stress with a mobile based relaxation app?

Anxiety and stress are very available states, and since you want to know how people currently feel (rather than some more implicit construct), you probably can't do much better than just asking them. A single-item anxiety measure as suggested by mlt should work.


Is there any scientific evidence that nootropics improve synaptic plasticity / learning ability?

I'll have to leave it to someone else to provide real expert advice and references on this point but I do offer the following skeptical points.

Brain Training Doesn't Work

To my knowledge, there is no reliable data whatsoever that says domain general brain-training has any effect. Basically, you can spend as long as you like practice pitch recognition, or anagrams, or any other cognitive task, but the transfer to unpracticed tasks will be minimal - you'll simply improve at the task you've practiced. You cannot increase IQ/Working Memory/Cognitive Capacity in this way. See, for example, Owen et al, 2010. The only benefit accrued from these games is in cases of cognitive decline, such as dementia, Alzheimers, and other neurodegenerative conditions, where training can slow decline.

Nootropic Drugs Don't Work

I've seen no evidence, ever, that shows long term benefits of nootropics, beyond the usual, possibly valid claims about fatty acids found in fish. I can't find references for this right now, unfortunately, but really the onus is on those who claim that these supplements do have an effect to point to unbiased evidence.


According to this research paper by Lockary and Goodman, the resting membrane potential of C.Elegans is two fold because its a stepped resting potential of -70mV and -35mV. After an initial activation a resting potential of -35mV is held following a higher depolarisation, so on your graph the initial depolarisation would be a little higher, and then drops to -35mV for roughly 60+ secs. When terminated, or receiving a inhibitory signal this drops to -70mV. I don't see any reason why the receiving neuron would respond any differently so long as the activation strength was enough to create positive depolarisation. As mentioned by Izhaki in the comments, the strength of the synapse connections plays an important role. Here is a good thesis on transfer between neutrons in C.Elgans, it also explains the methods to investigates neutrons in the central nervous system of C.Elegans, and seems to see two patterns of activation depending on the method applied. Only a few of the neutrons have been fully recorded in C. Elegans so its possible that different potential patterns may occur, nervous systems are far from homogeneous, humans appear to use more than one type.

I can't respond anymore than this at the moment as I don't have time for the extra reading but I hope this is at least useful.


Learning of new concepts being impeded by an error in previous work

There is a difference between being wrong and knowing you're wrong.

I like to think of this with the analogy of Wiley the Coyote from looney toons. He would usually try to catch the runner, and run off the cliff, but keep running for a while, and only fall when he realizes that he ran off a cliff.

The point in which your student is doing the assignments based on incorrect previous calculations is that point between coyote running off the cliff and realizing he has done so.

I'm not sure of the terminology about this phenomena, but here's my theory on why people tend to do this:
Most of the students nowadays are conditioned to feel right about everything because knowing, that you are wrong feels bad, they feel like there is something wrong with them (rather then just being wrong), while the alternative, of being wrong and not knowing about it that feels exactly as being right.

This conditioning is introduced in our educational system very early and often results in not taking chances that could result in them being wrong, or (more related) in not even considering the possibility that they might be wrong at some point (when most of the time they are).

I think that the only way of fixing this is deconditioning ourselves (or your students) in this case, that being wrong is something bad. Instead, indicating being wrong as a sign of progress. I think Einstein said:

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

Encouraging your students questioning even things that might be established as truth by others is the key in my opinion.


Tragedy of the commons is an economic theory (specifically game theory) that considers both littering and crime.
See:

Pires, S.F., Moreto, W.D. Preventing Wildlife Crimes: Solutions That Can Overcome the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’. Eur J Crim Policy Res 17, 101–123 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-011-9141-3

Cataldi, J. (2019), The Commons: Separating Tragedy and Triumph at a City Park. City & Community, 18: 88-108. https://doi.org/10.1111/cico.12360


Has anyone done a thorough comparative review of psychotherapeutic approaches?

Yes. The best reviews are done circumscribed to certain areas of focus, like disorder. For example, here is a study that examines the comparative efficacy of all "bona fide" treatments for trauma (e.g., prolonged exposure, EMDR, cognitive therapy, etc): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18055080

There are also wider comparisons, but these are fraught with controversy. Lester Luborsky and colleagues performed one of the first comparative studies in 1975. Their conclusions were that there were few significant differences between in outcomes across different therapies. This became known as the Dodo Bird Effect: "Everybody has won and all must have prizes." You can read more about this here, and also find the long list of comparative studies that have been produced ever since: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict


How would losing episodic memory affect a person's functioning?

The best evidence for what you are asking comes from amnesic patients. The most famous and most close to the condition you describe was patient H.M.

See below some extracts from wikipedia :

  Molaison's general condition has been described as heavy anterograde
  amnesia, as well as temporally graded retrograde amnesia (Smith &
  Kosslyn, 2007).Since HM did not show any memory impairment before the
  surgery, the removal of the medial temporal lobes can be held
  responsible for his memory disorder. Consequently, the medial temporal
  lobes can be assumed to be a major component involved in the formation
  of semantic and episodic long-term memories

...

  Despite his amnesic symptoms, Molaison performed quite normally in
  tests of intellectual ability, indicating that some memory functions
  (e.g., short-term stores, stores for words, phonemes, etc.) were not
  impaired by the surgery (Smith & Kosslyn, 2007; Corkin, 2002).
  However, for sentence-level language comprehension and production,
  Molaison exhibited the same deficits and sparing as in memory (MacKay,
  James, Taylor & Marian, 2007).

...

  In addition to his intact working memory and intellectual abilities,
  studies of Molaison's ability to acquire new motor skills demonstrated
  preserved motor learning (Corkin, 2002). In a study conducted by
  Milner in the early 1960s, Molaison acquired the new skill of drawing
  a figure by looking at its reflection in a mirror (Corkin, 2002).

...

  Experiments involving repetition priming underscored Molaison's
  ability to acquire implicit (non-conscious) memories, in contrast to
  his inability to acquire new explicit semantic and episodic memories
  (Corkin, 2002).


Group differences reflecting different use of a rating scale vs actual difference in perception

I indeed think that it is not possible to conclude that the scales are used differently, based on variance alone. Normally one would assume the scale is used properly and the effect you see is indeed the result of (not) having a trained ear.

There do exist ways to investigate how one uses a subjective scale. In a paper I presented, we looked at how people interpreted a subjective workload scale. This scale contained verbal descriptors that conveyed a particular amount of workload, and this amount was estimated by the participants. This scale was designed to be linear and cover workload from "no workload" to "work too demanding". Therefore, we would expect a linear line that starts at 0 (no workload) to 150 (complete overload; we used 150 instead of 100). The results indeed confirmed this and the groups perceived the items on the scale similarly.

So far, the method is kind of similar to your paper. The difference is that we gave the participants anchor-points to help them rate the items: The zero-point (no workload) and the 150-point (complete overload). This way the participants had the same reference points, which should enable them to use the entire range, regardless of their experience or something.

You could also use these anchor points to see how consonance ratings differ. Let them listen to a perfect dissonant and a perfect consonant tone and say they are rated zero and ten respectively (or something like that). If the two groupsc rate the sounds similarly now, they have probably interpreted the scale differently before. However, if you still find the same difference as before, it may suggests that untrained musicians can indeed not distinguish the sound very well (and the scale was interpreted properly before).


Resources for learning how best to learn fine motor skills

I think the search term you're looking for is 'skill acquisition', but it's a super broad area. There's relevant stuff in memory, second language acquisition, sports science, and teaching surgeons surgery... it's all over the place.

There's a pretty sizeable literature looking just at music specifically, one review article that hits a few of the points you mentioned is this one:
 Hallam, S., Rinta, T., Varvarigou, M., Creech, A., Papageorgi, I., Gomes, T., & Lanipekun, J. (2012). The development of practising strategies in young people. Psychology of Music, 40(5), 652-680.

The references (and the people citing it) are probably as useful or maybe more useful than the specific results they present, although those are interesting too!

If you want something more pop-sci and readable with a bit of a human story The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin is a nice one. It's a personal story, not a scientific study, but not everything has to be an RCT, gotta generate hypotheses from some life experience first, right?

I think you might find that the main take-homes are pretty common sense... feedback is important, get lots of it and get it as close to real-time as possible, distributed practice schedules are better than cramming, and 'chunking' is super important, so focus on learning sensible `atoms', automatize them, and then combine them.

I know this answer only really scratches the surface of a huge area but anyway I hope it helps.


How can I structure this question to check for availability bias?

it seems that you can use randomization of options to decrease bias. That is, present every respondent with multiple choices but in completely random order.
Also, bias might be directly tested on two groups, say A&B.
Only difference will be the order of available answers.

This manual seems to be very helpful: Handbook of Survey Research, Ch.9 Question and Questionnaire Design

This is shorter insight: SurveyMonkey Blog: Question Order Matters


How effective is cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety disorders?

Meta-analyses are usually pretty accurate, as they essentially bring together the data from many studies that investigate the same topic of interest together and use statistical methods to effectively get the most conclusive answer possible, throughout all of the studies assessed, just HOW effective is a certain treatment?

For your specific question, there's one in particular that strongly supports CBT for anxiety.  It looks at 71 different studies (that's a ton).  It also investigates it's effectiveness in a variety of different environments and versions of it's therapy.
 It was even published only last month.

  Clin Psychol Rev. 2013 Jul 20;33(8):954-964. doi:
  10.1016/j.cpr.2013.07.003.

  A meta-analysis of nonrandomized effectiveness studies on outpatient cognitive behavioral
  therapy for adult anxiety disorders. Hans E, Hiller W. Source
  Department of Clinical Psychology, Johannes Gutenberg University
  Mainz, Germany. Electronic address: hans@uni-mainz.de. Abstract
  OBJECTIVE: The primary aim of this study was to assess the overall
  effectiveness of individual and group outpatient cognitive behavioral
  therapy (CBT) for adults with a primary anxiety disorder in routine
  clinical practice. METHOD: We conducted a random effects meta-analysis
  of 71 nonrandomized effectiveness studies on outpatient individual and
  group CBT for adult anxiety disorders. Standardized mean gain effect
  sizes pre- to posttreatment, and posttreatment to follow-up are
  reported for disorder-specific symptoms, depression, and general
  anxiety. The mean dropout from CBT is reported. RESULTS: Outpatient
  CBT was effective in reducing disorder-specific symptoms in completer
  (d=0.90-1.91) and intention-to-treat samples (d=0.67-1.45). Moderate
  to large (d=0.54-1.09) and small to large effect sizes (d=0.42-0.97)
  were found for depressive and general anxiety symptoms posttreatment.
  Across all anxiety disorders, the weighted mean dropout rate was
  15.06%. Posttreatment gains for disorder-specific anxiety were maintained 12months after completion of therapy. CONCLUSIONS: ****CBT for
  adult anxiety disorders is very effective and widely accepted in
  routine practice settings.**** However, the methodological and reporting
  quality of nonrandomized effectiveness studies must be improved. ©
  2013.

Across 71 studies, the conclusion used the word "very effective," which is very rare to see in any study in the conclusions section, especially a meta-analysis,  the weighted mean dropout rate across all different types of its application was only 15.06%, AND gains were generally maintained for 12 months (maybe more, I don't have full text) after beginning therapy.

The only caveat they mention is that the methodology and reporting quality must be improved, but I feel that's a general trait that almost all studies need improvement in.
Plus when you investigate SEVENTY-ONE (71) studies, statistical laws start to take over anyway.

Based on this, I'd have to say that there is very, very strong evidence that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an effective treatment for anxiety disorders.

In my opinion, and as an analogy, it's almost just as if not more proven than using aspirin or acetaminophen to relieve a simple headache.  It just works according to the literature, which, if you have that many studies then "routine clinical analysis" really does become reality.  More and more clinical psychologists are switching over to this method or attempting to make some sort of derivative of it.


You have to break down the question in two parts.

(1) Is it possible to entrain brain oscillations by presenting oscillating lights or tones?

Yes, it is possible to evoke "response phenomena" in the brain by presenting participants with oscillatory stimuli. The technical term for this phenomenon is "steady state evoked potential" and it was demonstrated for the visual (e.g., Herrmann, 2001) and as well as for the auditory domain (e.g., Zaehle et al., 2010).

(Please note that these references are only examples from one group. A more comprehensive overview can be found at PubMed.)

Thus, the devices you linked to might work in principle, that is, they might be able to entrain different brain oscillations.

(2) Is it possible to put someone into a trancelike meditative state by entraining certain brain oscillations?

It has been shown that the different frequency bands in which brain oscillations can be found are connected to perceptual and cognitive phenomena. (For a short introduction see Wikipedia on brain oscillations). Furthermore these frequency bands are not isolated, but the interweaving of these bands (i.e., cross-frequency coupling)  is not fully understood yet (see for example Jensen & Colgin, 2007).

It has been shown, however, that the manipulation of brain oscillations can alter perception (see for example publications on phase resetting.)

In general, the topic of brain oscillations and its experimental manipulation is quite hot at the moment and receives a lot of attention, especially since new non-invasive methods for oscillatory brain stimulation are available (namely  repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial alternating current stimulation). For a review, see Thut et al. (2011).

To come back to your initial question: no, I am not aware of any study connecting the entrainment of brain oscillations to trancelike meditative states. This, however, does of course not mean that there are no studies. Furthermore, that does not mean that you cannot reach meditative states while using this device. (Personally, I would think that you can reach meditative states with almost any stimulation - if you are good at mediation.)

  References

  Herrmann CS. (2001). Human EEG responses to 1-100 Hz flicker:
  Resonance phenomena in visual cortex and their potential correlation
  to cognitive phenomena. Experimental Brain Research, 137: 346-353.
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/rldm5p6rt912phw2/fulltext.pdf

  Jensen O, Colgin LL. (2007) Cross-frequency coupling between neuronal
  oscillations. Trends in Cognitive Science 11(7):267-9.
  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661307001271

  Thut G, Schyns GP  & Gross J (2011) Entrainment of Perceptually
  Relevant Brain Oscillations by Non-Invasive Rhythmic Stimulation of
  the Human Brain. Frontiers in Psychology 2011; 2: 170.
  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3142861/?tool=pmcentrez

  Zähle T, Lenz D, Ohl FW, Herrmann CS. (2010). Resonance phenomena in
  the human auditory cortex: Individual resonance frequencies of the
  cerebral cortex determine electrophysiological responses. Experimental
  Brain Research, 203, 629-635.
  http://www.springerlink.com/content/w264045p1j5532pg/fulltext.pdf


When was cognitve dissonance discovered?

Glen McGhee's "A Cultural History of Cognitive Dissonance," (2005/2014) notes that Gustav Ichheiser (1897-1969) dealt with personal dissonance and dissonance reduction in 1928 (212 Note 2). Also Kurt Lewin's tension theory, and Festinger's level of aspiration work in 1940.

Lorne L. Dawson also has an interesting chapter, "Clearing the Underbrush: Moving Beyond Festinger To A New Paradigm For The Study of Failed Prophecy" (2011) that reminds us of the seminal role that Festinger/Riecken/Schachter, "When Prophecy Fails" (1956) plays in the development of cognitive dissonance theory.

Cognitive dissonance has been a part of social psychology and experimental psychology for a long time -- but what do you mean by "mental health professionals"? How were they trained? Where did they go to school? In the 1970s, there were numerous therapies, including Gestalt, Rogerian, Reichian, Freudian, Jungian, etc. Or are you talking about social workers? MSWs?


There are 2 common definitions of "reflex":

The technical definition of "reflex" is an action that is not voluntary - ie, not mediated by cognition.  From Wikipedia:

  ... sensory neurons do not pass directly into the brain, but synapse
  in the spinal cord. This characteristic allows reflex actions to occur
  relatively quickly by activating spinal motor neurons without the
  delay of routing signals through the brain ...

So asking if there are any mental or cognitive reflexes is like asking if there are any behaviours that go through the brain that don't go through the brain.

The colloquial definition of "reflex" is an automatic or involuntary action, like the way an experienced tennis player reacts to the ball without thinking.  In cognitive psychology, this is typically referred to as "unconscious" (rather than reflex) action.  Some authors have compared conscious to unconscious using the iceberg metaphor, so if you prefer the lay definition, then the number of mental reflexes far outweighs voluntary actions.  The entire field of perception (just as a simple example) would be included.


I think you're misunderstanding the concept of chunking. If the items are arbitrary with no connection to each other, chunking will do you no good since grouping them is meaningless and thus you're still memorizing the individual items in the groups instead of the groups themselves. This paper from Brady et al. goes into depth about the limits of working memory, I also recommend looking up the references mentioned. Here is a relevant passage about the definition of chunking from that paper:

  Cowan (2001) defined a chunk as a group of
  items where the intrachunk associations are greater than the interchunk
  associations. In other words, in the sequence FBICIA the letters
  F, B, and I are highly associated with each other and the letters C,
  I, and A are highly associated with each other, but the letters have
  fewer associations across the chunk boundaries. Thus, observers
  are able to recall the sequence using the chunks FBI and CIA,
  effectively taking up only two of the four chunks that people are
  able to store in memory (Cowan, 2001; Cowan, Chen, & Rouder,
  2004). By comparison, when the letters are random, say HSGABJ,
  they are more difficult to remember, since it is more difficult to
  chunk them into coherent, associated units.


Short answer: Not a debugger, but possibly a control flow override.

Long answer:

This is a common fallacy known as the introspection illusion:

  The introspection illusion is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly
  think they have direct insight into the origins of their mental
  states. ... In certain situations, this illusion leads people to make
  confident but false explanations of their own behavior (called "causal
  theories"1) or inaccurate predictions of their future mental states.

It was long thought that self-focus, meditation, concentration, hypnosis, self-reflection, psychoactive chemicals, and similar techniques can help improve one's insight into their brain's functioning, mental state, decision-making process, cause of emotions, buried memories, and other such private information.  However, research has repeatedly demonstrated that this is not the case - it is at best an illusion, where people fill in gaps with confabulated self-knowledge that they do not actually have access to.

There are too many examples of this to list here, but check out choice blindness (people give explanations for decisions that they did not make), misattribution of arousal (people misattribute the causes of their emotions), and memory confabulation (people confidently recollect incorrect memories) for some well-known cases.

More in-depth literature on the subject can be found in a review by Silva & Gendolla (2001) of over 30 years of research into an informal theory called the "perceptual accuracy hypothesis" that claims (but no evidence supports this) that self-focus increases accuracy of self-knowledge in a wide variety of aspects of the self.  Another review by Wilson & Dunn (2003), notes the lack of evidence for any potential for improvement of self-knowledge using introspection.  A more modern review by Bollich, Johannet, and Vazire1 (2011) comes to essentially the same conclusion:

  ... we conclude that the road to self-knowledge likely cannot be
  traveled alone but must be traveled with close others who can help
  shed light on our blind spots.

For some decades now, computer scientists have been attempting to reproduce the function of the brain using artificial neural networks, with some success.  An interesting aspect of neural networks is that they, like the brain, also do not have a debugger - at least not a useful one.  Ask a programmer to explain why their neural network misclassified a training input, and they will respond with a statistical analysis and abstract mathematical model that describes the overall system, not a coherent reason like “it thought this R was an A, so assumed the word was gain instead of grin…”  The only way to get such an explanation is to look at the result, and then guess.

The kind of "talk therapy" psychotherapy (such as CBT) that you ask about has been demonstrated to be more effective than placebo, so we know that something about it works, but what about it works is not well understood.  Perhaps even the illusion of insight has some therapeutic effect, or perhaps there is a cognitive override mechanism at work.

Dual process theory is a well established idea that suggests that we have such a mechanism of control override that allows us (like some debuggers) to change the progression of mental processes mid-way.  This is typically the role believed to be played by our "conscious" mind.


How to distinguish introvert personality, social anxiety disorder and mild autism?

There is an ongoing debate as to whether it is best to view personality disorders as being categorical or dimensional in nature. Your question infers the perspective of the categorical view.  The alternative dimensional perspective suggests that the three disorders you mention are very similar, that is, these three conditions overlap to a large extent with a slight shift along an (as yet unnamed) dimension.
Hopwood, C. J., Kotov, R., Krueger, R. F., Watson, D., Widiger, T. A., Althoff, R. R., Ansell, E. B., Bach, B., Michael Bagby, R., Blais, M. A., Bornovalova, M. A., Chmielewski, M., Cicero, D. C., Conway, C., De Clercq, B., De Fruyt, F., Docherty, A. R., Eaton, N. R., Edens, J. F., … Zimmermann, J. (2018). The time has come for dimensional personality disorder diagnosis. Personality and Mental Health, 12(1), 82–86. https://doi.org/10.1002/pmh.1408


What are the possible causes of coulrophobia?

Coulrophobia is a fear of clowns.

It is a phobia not (yet?) acknowledged by the WHO or the APA as a disorder. Nonetheless it seems to be an accepted phobia in hospitalized children (Meiri et al, 2017).

The Guardian has a very interesting popular scientific account on the causes of coulrophobia. The author brings up the following two convincing arguments why clowns can be scary (and others arguments as well - I encourage you to read the article itself):

The “uncanny valley” effect: A phenomenon whereby things that look human, but are in fact not quite human appear as highly unsettling. Think of a dead body for example. In case of a clown their elaborate make up and weird behavior contradicts our sense of 'normal'.
Unpredictability is something which causes distrust and apprehension in humans. Clowns are by their very nature unpredictable, as they always act weird and do not adhere to social standards.

Reference
- Meiri et al., Eur J Pediatr (2017); 176(2):269-72


How can items from a general self-esteem/efficacy measure be changed to measure context specific self-esteem/efficacy?

It depends on the types of changes you are looking to make. In general, my experience has been that changes to a response scale can be done with minimal threats to validity (e.g. looking to change the 4 item Likert type scale to a 6 item Likert type scale). On the other hand, changing question wording itself usually can't be done "without losing validity" (Goodman, Iervolino, Collishaw, Pickles, & Maughan, 2007).

To answer the "what now" question, you can either use the survey as is, or modify it to better fit your needs (and "revalidate" as needed). This decision is ultimately up to you and should be based on what you think would give you the best information about what you are trying to measure. Based purely off of your brief description and the questions provided, you may prefer to modify the survey. It doesn't seem like the survey, as is, would give you the information you are looking to measure.

Reference

Goodman, R., Iervolino, A. C., Collishaw, S., Pickles, A., & Maughan, B. (2007). Seemingly minor changes to a questionnaire can make a big difference to mean scores: a cautionary tale. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 42(4), 322–327. doi:10.1007/s00127-007-0169-0


Exact Medical situation name for Guided Meditation/Visualization to "Re-live a moment"

Before I give the answer to your question, I must point out that pursuits into recalling past events through hypnosis etc. can lead to mixed results.  You can be lucky and gain true insight into a past event previously forgotten, but it cannot generally be relied upon in legal and forensic terms due to the risk of false memories being inadvertently implanted.  See my previous answer to a similar question and also this answer.

The term you are looking for is either

guided regression hypnosis,
memory recall therapy or
memory recall training

All involve trying to get you to recall one or more specific events in such detail that you can remember them clearly.  The problem is that these methods have been found through research to cause False Memory Syndrome.  Although as with many pieces of research, there are opponents to the idea.


Does the subconscious mind communicate its analysis through emotions?

First, there's not complete agreement in psychology nor neuroscience: you can find support for most any imaginable position. But in terms of the consensus of recent peer-reviewed work, here are some thoughts.

  “When a person is drawn to a specific item on the menu or a particular romantic prospect, the mind is trying to tell him that he should choose that option."

There's a false dichotomy here between a person's motivation and some external (?) agent called "the mind". Thoughts, feelings, and behaviors emerge from biological and cognitive processes, and if you dig into those operations there is no level that reveals a separate agent. See this link for a related theory called the Homunculus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Terminological_use_in_modern_science , or chapter 2 of the book, Waking Up by Sam Harris, for a deeper dive into agentic selves in the brain.

  "It has already assessed the alternatives – this analysis takes place outside of conscious awareness – and converted that assessment into positive emotion."

There were early reports of complex weighing of alternatives by unconscious minds by Dijksterhuis and others, but the higher-quality recent replication attempts suggest these claims were overblown. The unconscious mind may or may not be able to do basic arithmetic. That's the current level: nothing so fancy as suggested here. Recent coverage of this replication: https://retractionwatch.com/2017/05/08/can-math-unconsciously-replicators-prominent-2012-study-doubts/

  "The world is full of things and it is our feelings that help us choose among them.”

This is true, but is already well known. Feelings, thoughts, and motivations operate together to urge our organisms towards desired outcomes and away from unwanted outcomes. Here's an article that goes into more depth on how the body (including our mind) pursues desired states: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00332747.1955.11022996


Study on the learning of programming concepts in pre-university students

If you want to report the dispersion, add some error bars, or better do a box plot, or even violin plot, but the latter require understanding of less introductory concepts (for tuning purposes). For a non-graphical presentation of e.g. age by task (and by gender as well), see contingency table. These can be nested.

If you want to know if there are significant differences between the groups, read about the F-test. If want to test diffrences between individual tasks, you can do that too (e.g. t-test), but you have to worry about adjusting for multiple comparisons.

I will not go into further details because this board is unsuitable for giving you a stats 101 education. And so is Wikipedia, by the way; its articles on such topics are generally too technical for the mere practitioner of statistics. It's best you talk to someone who has had at least that stat 101 level of education, although it would be better with someone who at least [still] practices statistics on some level. All else failing, read an intro textbook of applied statistics; or see coursera for a free class etc.

You should also learn how to use a software package that does all of these, e.g. R or SPSS. Depending how good you are at programming you may find one or the other easier. With software like these, you can also easily do plot arrays that basically iterate over a covariate's (e.g. gender) level (i.e. values). There's no standard name for these, R calls them facets; SPSS calls them panel plots.


What is the name for the cognitive bias that ignores that extreme symptoms always tend to get less extreme?

The statistical phenomenon you are referring to is called regression to the mean. It describes the fact that extreme measurements which are affected by random fluctuation will tend to be closer to the average in subsequent measurements. This phenomenon is not limited to clinical symptoms but occurs for any measurement that is selected for its extremity.

As an example, you let students take two tests that are designed to assess the same underlying aptitude. Then you look at the 5% best and the 5% worst performers in the first test. In the second test, the score of the high performing students will likely drop to some extent and the score of the low performing students will likely rise to some extent, even though the aptitude has not changed. This is because the test results are affected by random variation (they are not perfectly correlated) that is independent from the aptitude.

The failure to take statistical regression into account gives rise to the so-called regression fallacy. The regression fallacy refers to the tendency to attribute the change of extreme scores to spurious causal reasons. As a frequent example, if a football team loses some games and fires the coach, subsequent increases in performance may be explained with this fact even though it was just due to chance.


How important is eye contact for attraction between a man and woman?

While eye contact is certainly important in social interaction I think you should beware pseudoscientific dating advice based on manufacturing "attraction" between men and women. Since this site is about science, let me point to a couple of areas of empirical research looking at eye contact.

First, there are quite a few experimental papers showing that (pictures of) faces with direct gaze (looking towards you) capture and hold attention, are remembered better, and that they are rated as more attractive. For details see this pdf. There are other similar papers.

Second, there is a long tradition of looking at gaze in non-verbal behaviour. Basically, although this shows that people are sensitive to direct gaze it is only one of many cues related to conversation etc. A classic review is here. Interestingly, the timing of direct gaze (when you look and when you look away) is very important in conversation.

This suggests to me that both looking at someone too long, and not looking at them enough or at awkward times, can cause interactions to suffer. Atypical eye contact is a diagnostic criterion for autism, which is normally associated with difficulties in socialising.


How does personality moderate or mediate the relationship between stress and burnout?

Personality is generally theorised to be a stable individual difference variable. Research has shown it to be highly stable over time. Thus, from a theoretical perspective it typically has a primacy in causal models.

Stress can be an ambiguous construct. It can refer to the objective existence of stressful stimuli or the way that individuals perceive those stresses.

From a theoretical perspective, personality is related to both the objective experience of stressors and the subjective perception of stressors. In particular, neuroticism refers to dispositions to experience negative emotions. Personality influences the world. For example, people put themselves into situations that may elicit more stressful experiences. Likewise, personality can influence the experience of stress through various mental models, interpretive schemas, rumination tendencies, and so on.

While one can imagine in the extreme that stress can alter personality (e.g., PTSD), in general personality makes more sense as a factor that has a causal influence on both the objective experience and perception of stressful experiences. In this sense, it personality does not mediate the effect of stress on burnout. This theoretically based conclusion is important. Statistical tests of mediation will provide rubbish information if you just plug in three intercorrelated variables like stress, personality, and burnout.

From a theoretical perspective personality should causally influence the objective presence of stress, the subjective perception of stress, and whether someone experiences burnout. It also makes sense that certain personality traits such as neuroticism would causally increase the relationship between objective stressors and subjective stress and ultimately more extreme forms of subjective stress such as burnout. However, in order to really test this idea, you need to get very good measures of objective stressors. Subjective measures of stress are likely to be influenced directly by personality which is likely to reduce the potential moderator relationship. Alternatively, you might just find that main effects are enough; i.e., that personality and objective stressors mutually contribute to burnout, but that there is no interaction effect (as would be implied by the moderator hypothesis).

There are thousands of empirical articles looking at correlates of personality, stress, strain, burnout and so on. I have read a lot of them many years ago. This answer focuses more on the theoretical underpinnings of any relationship.


Castro, Jones, and Mirsalimi (2004) examine the relation between parentification and impostor syndrome, but they also give a good overview of other literature on the subject. They enumerate a number of traits (low global self-esteem, introversion, neuroticism, perfectionism, and attributing success to external factors) and psychological problems (anxiety, depression, psychological distress, and generally poor mental health) that are associated with impostor syndrome, but when you refer to "causes", I assume you are most interested in childhood issues associated with the syndrome.

As mentioned, parentification (the child taking on emotional or other responsibilities that normally rest on the parent) has been researched as a risk factor for developing impostor syndrome; they were found found to be moderately correlated. In addition to this, King & Cooley (1995) found that a family culture that places a high value on achievement is associated with impostor syndrome. Sonnak and Towell (2001) found that having overprotective and/or controlling parents, and having low self esteem are the two best predictors for impostor syndrome, accounting for half the variation in feelings of being an impostor.

References

Castro, D. M., Jones, R. A., Mirsalimi, H. (2004). Parentification and the Impostor Phenomenon: An Empirical Investigation. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 32, 205-216.
King, J. E., Cooley, E. L. (1995). Achievement Orientation and the Impostor Phenomenon among College Students. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 20(3), 304-312.
Sonnak, C., Towell, T. (2001). The impostor phenomenon in British university students: Relationships between self-esteem, mental health, parental rearing style and socioeconomic status. Personality and Individual Differences, 31(6), 863-874.


Does procrastination imply knowledge of what is being delayed?

No. A person may claim to be procrastinating without putting any real thought into specific alternatives that are known to be better. For example, one might also claim this because one is aware of more socially desirable alternatives, which aren't necessarily better, or because one has been told by someone else (who isn't necessarily right) that one's behavior is procrastinatory.

A more general definition of procrastination may be found in the intro section of the Wikipedia article on procrastination, or on the procrastination tag wiki. I don't think the case you describe fits either definition, because not knowing a better approach implies that one's choice of approach (delay, presumably) isn't necessarily needless, but one may still choose this approach for purely rational reasons that have nothing to do with anxiety.