The two legs upon which speed reading rests, in short, are chunking and seeking. Chunking is reading multiple words at once, while seeking allows you to find those chunks quickly and efficiently. The first exercise below will solve your subvocalization problems, but I recommend doing both in order to read text more effectively.

You'll need:

A computer with internet access for the first exercise
A stopwatch and notecards (or a flashcard system of any sort) for the second exercise

Practice Chunking with Spreeder

Many combinations of words can be comprehended simultaneously, which negates the need for subvocalization. Reading multiple words at once is called chunking. A useful tool to drill this skill is Spreeder, which breaks text into arbitrary chunks and displays them a chunk at a time.

Go to www.spreeder.com
Click to speed read the introduction
Click "spreed!"
At the bottom right, click "settings" and increase chunk size to 3
Increase wpm as desired

Practice Seeking with flashcards

After you are comfortable speed reading on spreeder at a high level, which should have solved your subvocalization problem, move on to seeking. Spreeder displays chunks right in the middle of the screen, which is predictable. Real world text, however, is not that convenient.

Still, Spreeder can be helpful.

"Spreeder" some text with chunk size 3
Write those chunks down on your flash cards
Pull up or print out the original text
Shuffle the flash cards and pull them at random
Identify the random chunk in the text as fast as possible
Use the stopwatch to time yourself after identifying 10 chunks

Doing this for 15 minutes a day will vastly improve your reading speed.

  This was the basis of the speed reading course I took at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I can't cite any research from this coffeehouse, but give it a shot and see for yourself. Personally, I read casually at 500wpm at 90% comprehension and I can read up to 800wpm at 60% comprehension. I've been able to read like this since before the class, though, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.


Intelignece is a combination of nature and nurture, like most human attributes. The exact percentage is not possible to measure, at least with todays knowledge.

Extract from the article by Neill, J.T. (2004). "Nature vs Nurture in Intelligence" :

  In the overfocus on nature vs. nurture issues, the attempts to
  estimate the relative contribution rests on the somewhat naive notion
  that there is a constant, true value. In reality, "gene expression is
  environment dependent" and it impossible to obtain pure estimates of
  genetic vs. environmental contribution - one could not exist without
  the other.


Term for remembering the location/position of text on a page as part of the memory recall process?

How would you describe that experience or classify someone that often used that type of memory retrieval process.

Based on what I think you are asking, you might call this "eidetic memory". Less formally it is known as "photographic memory", or sometimes "perfect recall". However, these abilities do not generalize to all domains of memory. Usually the memory is limited to certain experts of specific domains who have just developed an ability to recognize certain meaningful patterns. This is evidenced by the fact that random arrangements of pixels are not nearly as memorable as learned special patterns, even for people supposedly having perfect recall.

  Is there a name for the phenomenon of remembering the position on a page or location in a book as part of the process of recalling a memory?

There is no term I am aware of that is so specific to describe the memory of book pagination, let alone where on the page something was located. Eidetic memory essentially covers that.


Are males more likely to view homosexuals as mentally ill than females?

Craig Waldo (1999) is the only study I can find at the moment which sheds any light on the subject.

  Although negative social attitudes toward gay men and lesbians are often referred to as homophobia, several authors have argued that the term heterosexism is a more appropriate and inclusive concept (e.g., Herek, 1989; 1992; Lorde, 1984; Neisen, 1990). The distinction is an important one, as it focuses on the normalizing and privileging of heterosexuality (rather than merely a fear of homosexuality) and calls attention to the prejudice and social stigma, both institutional and interpersonal, faced by GLB people. In contrast to homophobia, heterosexism includes a wide range of experiences of discrimination not limited to those related to phobias or violent episodes, and it conceptually includes prejudice toward bisexual men and women as well.

As you said, men generally are less tolerant to those in the LGBTQIA community than women and Waldo suggests that it may be down to tolerance for hetrosexism.

  This study represents the first examination of a model of the process of heterosexism in the workplace, demonstrating that organizational factors such as tolerance for heterosexism contribute to its prevalence and that it is associated with undesirable job-related, health-related, and psychological sequelae. As such, this study provides insight into not only the costly effects that can be expected in workplaces that tolerate heterosexism, but also possible ways to counter it. By preventing heterosexism in the first place, both organizations and individuals alike will prosper.

References

Waldo, C. R., 1999. Working in a majority context: A structural model of heterosexism as minority stress in the workplace In: Journal of Counseling Psychology, Vol 46(2): pp 218-232.http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0167.46.2.218


Inability to associate a face with a name

recognize familiar faces

The distinction between familiar and unfamiliar faces with the prosopagnosia seems to be more a wiki thing than in clinical or common usage. The defintion does not seem fixed. NINDs defines it as "characterized by the inability to recognize faces" rather than only just familiar faces. So sufferers "use other ways to identify people, such as relying on voice, clothing, or unique physical attributes".

The Merck manual provides a different naunce "inability to identify well-known faces, including those of close
   friends, or to otherwise distinguish individual objects among a class
   of objects, despite the ability to identify generic facial features
   and objects."

This phenomenon is distinct from anomic aphasia (also known as amnestic aphasia and nominal aphasia) where there is an impairment of word recall especially nouns and verbs.

Just remember humans and brains are not compartmentalized like computers or objects. Phenomenons that occur due to how the neurons or the lobe is organized. Brain damage are not random too, so common patterns form strokes and injuries result in well known and well described phenomenons. The distinction between naming familiar faces and naming strangers/unknown people would not be a useful clinical distinction. If you think about it, name association exercises of strangers seems too difficult to be used clinically.


Which experiment design is this? Between and within combined

If I understand your description correctly, you have one within-subject factor with two levels (certain/uncertain) and one between-subject factor (based on how you assign the different text snippets to different group, but I'm not sure I understand what exactly you are doing there). So, this would be a repeated-measures design with different groups (based on the assignment of different text snippets) which I would refer to as is a mixed design (https://www.discoveringstatistics.com/statistics-hell-p/porus-comparing-means/mixed-designs/), and you could analyse it, e.g., with a mixed ANOVA (https://statistics.laerd.com/spss-tutorials/mixed-anova-using-spss-statistics.php). I think crossover-design refers to something similar.


There are different varieties of the Token Test (e.g., Moreira (2011)). Several of them using physical tokens are explained pretty well and can likely be me made at home (e.g. here). I wasn't able to find free digital versions.

Reference
- Moreira, Rev psiquiatr clín (2011); 38(3)


Does chewing gum mentally help basketball players make foul shots?

Chewing gum increases heart rate and blood pressure through muscular exercise (Farella, Bakke, Michelotti, Marotta & Martina, 1999) and enhances mental performance through improved delivery of glucose to the brain (Stephens & Tunney, 2004).

I could not find any references to embodiment playing a role in the effects of chewing.

Sources:

Farella, M., Bakke, M., Michelotti, A., Marotta, G., & Martina, R. (1999). Cardiovascular responses in humans to experimental chewing of gums of different consistencies. Archives of Oral Biology, 44, 835-842.
Stephens, R., & Tunney, R. J. (2004). Role of glucose in chewing gum-related facilitation of cognitive function. Appetite, 43, 211-213.


What is the conceptual relationship between higher order thinking and inductive reasoning?

A few thoughts:

I think of higher order thinking as a  fuzzy concept. It is often used in educational psychology to between surface and deeper levels of subject engagement. It can also be used to discriminate between the kinds of thinking processes often seen as unique to humans.

Inductive reasoning is also a multifaceted construct, but it has both rich links both with philosophy and with cognitive psychology as can be seen in literatures on category learning and causal inference.

Certainly the principled and methodical processes of scientific induction (e.g., inference from data) involves many higher level thinking processes. However, many of the implicit processes of inferring categories and causal processes from experience might not be seen as higher order thinking.


The answer is that we don't really know (for non-clinical populations). The relationship between weather and mood isn't straightforward, and the impact of weather on mood may be very small (on average).

There have been some great experience-sampling studies that have looked at this. For example, in a sample of 1233, Denissen, Butalid, Penke, and van Aken (2008) found that:

Daily weather had no significant effects on positive affect
Higher temperature was associated with higher negative affect
Lower wind power and lower sunlight were associated with higher negative affect
Lower sunlight was associated with greater tiredness
Being outdoors moderated the impact of some weather variables on affect
The impact of weather on mood varied significantly across individuals
The overall effect of weather on mood was very small

Kööts, Realo, and Allik (2011) found that:

Higher temperature was associated with increased positive and negative affect
More sunlight was associated with increased positive affect (but not with negative affect)
Temperature and luminance were inversely related to feelings of fatigue
Being outdoors interacted with weather variables to predict negative and positive affect
Neuroticism may account for some individuals' greater reactivity to weather

Keller et al. (2005) found that:

The interaction between more time spent outdoors and higher temperature and barometric pressure predicted greater positive affect.
Interestingly:

  Among participants who spent more than 30 min outside, higher temperature and pressure were associated with higher moods, but among those who spent 30 min or less outside, this relationship was reversed.

  Conclusion: As stated, the effects of weather on mood aren't linear. Sunlight can boost serotonin levels, which may explain why spending time outdoors improves mood (even when controlling for physical activity). This is corroborated by studies using light therapy for SAD or other forms of depression. And more obviously, we feel fatigued/tired as sunlight lessens. But overall, these effects aren't very big, and they vary quite a bit across individuals (indicating the effects of moderating variables like neuroticism).


What are the effects of the "blue eyes/brown eyes" racism exercise?

In addition to the descriptions of these particular students, at the site mentioned above by Kate Gladstone and also shown a bit in the documentary (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Elliott)

You might consider what's known from the broader set of studies using this type of manipulation. This rich literature is valuable for your question because the Blue eyes/Brown eyes study was more a demonstration than a study and has not been repeated much (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimal_group_paradigm)


Short answer

Yes, they are actually similar, and they can be thought as two extremes of the same continuum. Many studies (here's a review by Lang and McTeague)suggest that the psychophysiological reactivity in the anxiety spectrum disorder is threat-related.

Long Answer

Ohman (2009) noted how predator-prey relationship is asymmetrical because there’s a larger pressure on prey than on predators.

Failure in defense against a predator determines the end of reproductive potential of prey animals. A hunting failure does not preclude future breeding.

This simple asymmetry implies that prey animals are evolutionarily shaped to exaggerate caution and avoidance of danger and this may provide a biological foundation for human anxiety disorders. In prey-predator race, prey arms became a strong capacity to associate subtle cues (smell, sounds) to the presence of a predator before its actual appearance. Learning to identify subtle signs is likely to be an evolutionary prepared ability, in the sense that very little environmental input is required.
Therefore, from an evolutionary point of view, the organisms which learned to fear environmental threats faster had a survival and reproductive advantage.

LeDoux (2000) proposed a model according to which we have preferential pathways to encode emotional stimuli and particularly threat stimuli. The Thalamo-Amygdala pathway is a very fast road that brings the information to the amygdala (which extrapolates emotional contents from the stimuli) bypassing the cortex. It is a subcortical pathway which allows us to orient the attention toward the stimulus and to prepare our organism for responding (by sending of information from the amygdala to the brainstem which controls physiological responses).
This "quick and dirty" pathway (dirty because it brings raw information that has to be integrated with the information from the cortices)is in common for fear and anxiety.

References

Of snakes and faces: an evolutionary perspective on the psychology of fear. Ohman (2009)

The anxiety disorder spectrum Lang and McTeague (2009).

LeDoux's model


Computational model of biological object recognition

The question is resolved :

The name HMAX ( Hierarchical Model And X ) was coined by “Mike Tarr”, who wrote the “News and Views” accompanying the paper in Nature Neuroscience.

What was meant by Hierarchical?

The model has a hierarchical architecture : it contains different stages (layers).

-- Increase in receptive field size and complexity in unit feature preferences along the
   hierarchy.

What was meant by X?

I think it is the pooling operation (it refers to the MAX).

Selectivity in S layer

The activity of each S unit is highest if all the afferents have the specified values.

Invariance in C layer

In contrast to S units, the C cells pool over their afferents, and the response is high if
one of the afferents is high. This increases invariance if the afferents are tuned to the
same feature, but at different positions or scales.


Is it physically possible to laugh while being angry?

As with all questions about emotion, the answer depends on how you define "emotion." Long post ahead… :P

Anger as basic

On the one hand, we have basic emotion theories, most famously advanced by Ekman, Tomkins, and Friesen and rooted in the work of Darwin. Basically, these theories suggest that emotions correspond to circumscribed regions of the brain (e.g., the amygdala for fear) and respectively involve specific and consistent patterns of facial, behavioral, physiological, neural, and experiential responses.

According to this view, anger is a basic, universal emotion that is constituted by a specific set of facial movements, with which laughter would be incompatible.  So this theory would not predict that you could laugh while angry.

Anger as constructed

The most recent theories of emotion are called "constructionist"--although their ideas date back to William James (late 19th century).  Constructionist theories have been most famously advanced by Lisa Feldman Barrett and James Russell.  This view deeply challenges the basic-theory assumptions that emotions are discrete, universal, and modular.

Instead, according to one constructionist account (Conceptual Act Theory), emotions emerge when we make meaning out of our situated affective experiences (to put it very simply).  In this sense, emotions are just concepts that can be applied to a heterogeneous population of experiences/contexts that share some statistical regularity (e.g., instances of fear often share the presence of threat/danger).

So, one instance of anger need not look like another (e.g., many different facial expressions, CNS/PNS patterns, etc.), but in general I'll know what you mean when you say you're angry. Not to mention, your concept of anger may even be different than mine.  This means that you might conceptualize some instances as "anger" that I would not. So you would experience anger in situations that I would not.  One such situation might be where you're laughing. If you thought laughter signaled anger, then you might infer from your laughter that you are angry.

So this theory would predict that it is definitely possible to laugh when angry.  Although, the more precise prediction would be: it is possible to be angry when you laugh.

Conclusion

I realize these theories are slightly confusing/complex (especially the second one)! I've read at least 600 pages about constructionism, and I still have to remind myself what it says exactly (it gets much more abstract).

I'll be frank and say that I completely reject the "Anger as basic" account.  Basic emotion theories are hanging on by a thread at this point, in my opinion--there's a huge and still growing body of evidence against them.  So my inclination is with the latter prediction: you can certainly be angry when you laugh.


Why did Karl Popper criticize Freud's theories?

I will go about this by answering two questions. First, what is Popper's general approach when attempting to distinguish science from pseudo-science? Second, what specifically did he dislike about Freudian psychoanalysis? (Historically, Popper actually developed his general theory in response to his particular dislike of contemporary marxism and Adlerian and Freudian Psychoanalysis.)
Falsificationism
Popper proposes that in the empirical domain, nothing can ever be proved true. No swans are black because you've never seen a black swan, and you've seen thousands of swans? Well, maybe the next swan you'll see is black. This may be unlikely, but not impossible, and thus, there is no proof. (The general problem is the problem of induction, as discussed by Hume, which leads into an infinite regress.)
Thus, science is not what is proved true. Science is also not what can explain a lot of observed phenomena, because telling stories about the past is easy and always open. Instead, Popper proposes science is that which contains the means of its own refutation. Everything may be wrong, and a quality of the good ways of exploring the world is that they make clear how to see if they could be wrong. Thus, good science

makes bold conjectures about how the world is like, that is, claims the world is in a state which would be surprising unless the theory were true

derives from this predictions of what should never be the outcome of experiments

would appears as false - falsified - if those outcomes were in fact to turn up

Thus, something that is never false is unscientific, and if it claims to be science, it is pseudo-science. That which could easily be shown false, but has so far withstood many genuine attempts at falsifying it can be scientific.
A few notes: Popper did not claim that anything that is not falsifiable is bad, or false. Something may be true and unfalsifiable, and it may be good and unfalsifiable. But to claim the status of being scientific, it needs to be falsifiable.
Psychoanalysis
Popper used to be a fan of psychoanalysis, especially of the Adlerian brand influential in Vienna in that time. His friends, he observed, were especially impressed by the ability of Adlerians to explain any and all phenomena. A man is honest? It's this kind of early-childhood event that caused this. A man is dishonest? It's that kind of early-childhood event. The Adlerians were never wrong. And it was not clear how they could ever be wrong, as they could post-hoc tell a story about how any given phenomenon fit their theories perfectly. Everything in the world was to them evidence for their theory.
This eventually came to appear to Popper as deeply misguided. Adler himself, with whom Popper worked, was exclusively telling stories about how the past proved or confirmed his theory, never claiming how a possible future state of events could disprove it. He had no predictions, and thus, no truly scientific experiments.
This made Popper not only give up on psychoanalysis, but led him to use it as one primary example of what he considered pseudo-science.
The same story also applies to Freudian psychoanalysis; between all the different complexes and drives, every possible human action or mindset could be explained as originating from childhood experiences and conflicting unconscious mental agents. But Freudians did not make bold conjectures, and did not attempt to falsify their theory with truly scientific experiments.
Sources
Popper lays this out in SCIENCE: CONJECTURES AND REFUTATIONS, in the 1st chapter. It is a great read and accessibly written.
Although Popper's own words are probably the best explanation on this (as they are so clear here), it probably won't hurt to skim by the Stanford Encyclopedia for a secondary source.


How do deaf people get feedback on their speech?

Many "deaf" individuals still have some functional hearing. Even in the case of a total loss of hearing, there are proprioceptive cues that provide useful feedback for speech production. The typical way of teaching pre-lingually deaf children how to speak involves hours of one-on-one time with a speech-language pathologist. The child learns to speak by placing their hand on the throat/mouth of the instructor and feeling the vibrations and movements of the articulators. There is also software that process speech in near real-time and helps the talker adjust their speech to match a target pattern. These same techniques could be used for the post-lingually deaf. That said, I think it is pretty rare for post-lingually deaf individuals to learn a second spoken language.


How to set up a binocular rivalry experiment which splits a single image in two separately controlled ones?

This is an interesting methodological problem. On the one hand, it seems that any method which would present the halves to the correct eye, and only that eye, would entail a visible boundary, and any method with an invisible boundary would be unable to present the halves as desired. Virtual reality systems present stimuli to each eye separately (e.g., the commercial Oculus Rift), and may therefore present a solution here. It is, however, conceivable that the brain will not correctly integrate two separately presented halves of a face into a percept, and I am not aware of any direct studies, nor can I find any.

One related and interesting example of using virtual reality to study complex visuo-motor behavior, the outfielder problem, was provided by Fink, Foo and Warren (2009). They equipped participants catching baseballs in the air with a Cybermind Visette-Pro HMD virtual reality helmet in order to manipulate the perceived motion of the baseballs. Their ability to successfully execute such a complex visual manipulation suggests that virtual reality systems should be a viable solution for presenting halves of faces independently to each eye.

References

Fink, P. W., Foo, P. S., & Warren, W. H. (2009). Catching fly balls in virtual reality: A critical test of the outfielder problem. Journal of Vision, 9(13), 14.


Does stimulus-independent ERP make sense/ exist?

An ERP is an Event Related Potential, making it inherently connected to an event. Having stimulus/response independent ERPs is thus impossible. There do exist potentials that seem to be stimulus independent, or at least vary in timing, but these are often the result of cognitive processes. These potentials are the result of Event Related (De-)Synchronization (Pfurtscheller, 1999), for which you need to look into the time-frequency domain, instead of the time domain (in which the ERP is visible).

By use of a Fourier transform you can subdivide brain activity into sinussoids with different frequencies and amplitudes. These sinussoids are grouped based on their frequencies in the groups commonly referred to as the "frequency bands". These include the delta- (0-4 Hz), theta- (4-8 Hz) alpha- (8-12 Hz), beta- (12-±30 Hz) and gamma frequency band (30+ Hz). The exact frequencies and groupings tend to vary between researches however (wiki).

It is the time-frequency domain that you can study independent of stimuli. The power in the frequency bands can be computed in real time by use of a time-frequency analysis. The steady state potentials are often used to compare brain activity between doing (nearly) nothing, and performing a particular task. This allows you to investigate what frequency bands show more (or less) activity (i.e. a higher or lower power) in particular brain areas. See Method/Unit for measuring activity in specific frequency band for EEG and Are brain waves electromagnetic waves? for some more specific info on EEG and analyzing data in the (time-)frequency domain.

Pfurtscheller, G., & Da Silva, F. L. (1999). Event-related EEG/MEG synchronization and desynchronization: basic principles. Clinical neurophysiology, 110(11), 1842-1857.


Is it possible for humans to conceive of being dead?

Sort of, think of what it's like when you're asleep, not dreaming. Or if you've ever been knocked-out via anesthesia. No-consciousness, just a gap in time.

The question can't really be answered though because it's asking how one might perceive a lack of consciousness, consciously.

Here's an interesting study on the transition from an unconscious to conscious state via the use of anesthetics:

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/32/14/4935.full


How does psychoanalytic theory explain the way in which projection works?

Short answer:

Interestingly, even though the notion of projection has been intuitively appealing and plausible to many, the psychoanalytic explanation of how projection works has always been vague.

Long answer:

Sigmund Freud (1915) defined the "mechanism of projection" by explaining that engaging in it, the "ego" of a person "expels whatever within itself becomes a cause of unpleasure" (p. 136).

In a similar way, Anna Freud, who later worked on clarifying various defense mechanisms further, thought that projection allows people to get rid of painful thoughts: "The effect of the mechanism of projection is to break the connection between the ideational representatives of dangerous instinctual impulses and the ego" (p. 122).

Critics have noted that psychoanalytic writings have never explicated how exactly (by which process) projecting negative thoughts to others helps them in disconnecting these thoughts from the self.

Pointing to these criticisms and noting that empirical evidence in support of defensive projection has been scarce, Baumeister, Dale, and Sommer (1998, p. 1091), summarize

  In retrospect, it was never clear how seeing another person as dishonest (for example) would enable the individual to avoid recognizing his or her own dishonesty. The notion that projection would effectively mask one’s own bad traits was perhaps incoherent.

Newman, Duff, and Baumeister (1997) propose and test an alternative, social-cognitive account of defensive projection. They posit that people often try hard to suppress unwanted thoughts. However, ironically, doing so makes such tthoughts all the more accessible (because when you try not to think about something, you constantly think about it). These accessible thoughts can then also color people's impression of others. This would then just be a by-product of trying to suppress unwanted thoughts about the self and not the core of a defense mechanism.

In addition, it is important to note that the term projection is also used in a more general sense, to describe people's tendency to overestimate the presence of their own characteristics, beliefs, and attitudes in others. This tendency results, for example, in the false consensus effect (see this earlier question), for which there is ample evidence. This general notion of projection is different from the Freudian one in that it is not limited to negative attributes but happens also for positive attributes the self. Various cognitive and motivational mechanisms have been proposed for this more general phenomenon (see Baumeister, et al., 1998, for example, for some pointers).

References

Baumeister, R. F., Dale, K., & Sommer, K. L. (1998). Freudian defense mechanisms and empirical findings in modern social psychology: Reaction formation, projection, displacement, undoing, isolation, sublimation, and denial. Journal of Personality, Defense mechanisms in contemporary personality research, 66, 1081–1124. doi:10.1111/1467-6494.00043

Freud, A. (1936/1992). The ego and the mechanisms of defence. London: Karnac Books.

Freud, S. (1915). Instincts and their Vicissitudes. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 109-140

Newman, L. S., Duff, K. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). A new look at defensive projection: Thought suppression, accessibility, and biased person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72, 980–1001. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.5.980


How to build a high sensitivity EEG headset for continual monitoring?

There are a few commercial EEG makers that do allow monitoring of raw EEG data. For instance, I know the Muse headband and OpenBCI allow you to do this with little trouble. These both support sampling rates up to 250 Hz. (The OpenBCI in principle could have a higher sampling rate, but i don't know anyone who has done this.)

The Emotiv EPOC also has an option to get raw EEG data. You have to pay more for the research version of the SDK to get the data officially. However, someone has reverse engineered their protocol, so you can access the raw data that way. This has a sampling rate of up to 128 Hz.

That said, if you still want to build your own EEG, OpenBCI has documented all of their plans, so a good start would be to replicate their product.

There is also the older, but still useful, OpenEEG project, which also has open plans for an EEG device.


Do people have a tendency to stick to one opinion after they formed it?

Yes.  But why should it be so?  One can approach the question from a number of directions. For instance, Cass Sunstein talks about how information cascades can create the path-dependent effects you describe: person A says something, which steers person B toward the same opinion, with the result that group decision-making heavily overvalues inputs of early responders.  (James Surowiecki also did an excellent popular science treatment of this topic.)

So much for the hobgoblin of little minds for groups.  Within the individual, the topic has been addressed through the dissonance literature, in which cogitation contrary to an established position carries unpleasant consequences, both hedonic and adaptive.  Particularly, maintaining a consistent set of mental beliefs seems to be important for efficient action selection, possibly as a consequence of the way semantic information (including motor control programs) is represented in the brain.

The result of all this is that, as you suggest, people establish a position, and then are motivated to keep it, which is not news.  What is surprising is that this annoying behavior is probably highly adaptive and a consequence of our neural architecture for knowledge representation and decision-making.  In other words, a feature and not a bug.


How are tactile pleasure and pain differentiated in the somatosensory cortex?

Obviously, pain and touch receptors are represented by entirely different receptors in the skin, i.e. nociceptors and mechanoreceptors, respectively. Each has physically different afferents that carry the signal to the brain. Pleasant touch is mediated by C-tactile afferents to the brain, represented by low-threshold non-myelinated C-fibers (Nees et al., 2019. Pain is mainly mediated via Aδ and C fibers (Beissner et al., 2010). Hence, different afferent pathways to the S1 exist from the periphery to the brain.
Once in the brain, there is no such thing as a single localized 'pain center', as proposed by Descartes in the early days (Ha, 2000). In fact, SI cannot be called the 'pain center', as ablation of this cortical region leads to an altered perception of pain, rather than its disappearance (Backonja, 1996). Pain perception involves many more brain centers, including S2, and those involved in higher cognitive and emotional-motivational processes, such as the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the ventral striatum (VS), and the insular cortex (Nees et al., 2019.
In the brain, pleasant touch seems mediated by a set of brain regions overlapping with that of pain, involving the insula, considered to be the primary somatovisceral cortex and connections to the striatum (Migliorini et al., 2013) and ACC. Interestingly, however, pleasant touch was also shown to activate the nucleus accumbens (Kreuder et al., 2017).
In all, to me it seems the pathways largely overlap centrally, barred the activation of the nucleus accumbens for pleasurable tactile stimuli, which is consistent with it being a pleasure center. I think there must be specific connections that are separated very early in the very periphery through a different set of skin receptors that signal to different neurons in brain regions that largely overlap between the two modalities.
References
- Backonja, Pain Forum (1996); 5(3): 174-80
- Beissner et al., Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences 2nd ed., 2014
- Ha, MSc thesis, McGill University, Montreal, 2000
- Kreuder et al., Human Brain Mapping (2017); 38(9): 4525-34
- Migliorini et al., Drug and Alcohol Dependence (2013); 133(2): 661-8
- Nees et al., Neurobiology of Pain (2019); 5: 100025


What is the scope of the study of Neuroanatomy?

It is the traditional division of anatomy by systems. Neuroanatomy is simply another name for anatomy of the nervous system - both macroscopic and microscopic. As opposed to anatomy of skeleton and muscles, internal organs and topographical anatomy. And of course one remembers the division of macroscopic anatomy and microscopic (which further goes into cytology and histology). So in summary -- yes, the whole body - but just as far as the nerve cells and structures are involved. And please remember - an extremely precise definition here will defy the reason because a lot of these words and divisions are traditional - therefore to be viewed with their own history of use, which may change with time.
Source: Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Sobotta Atlas of Anatomy and Anatomy Textbook. It also helps if one has attended medical school.


Is there a reasonably valid and reliable self-measure of computer literacy?

I don't know of any well-validated general short scales. Here are a few thoughts:

A major distinction is between self-report versus ability based measures. Self-report measures will ask the participant to rate their knowledge, skills, and experience. Ability based measures will require demonstration of competence. If you are limited to "self-measures", ability based measures are still possible (e.g., set of multiple choice, or possibly short answer questions). An issue with self-report measures is that people may be inaccurate in their own self-evaluation. Ability-based measures do not have this issue.
Having more items generally increases the reliability of the test. It also permits you to assess statistically the item properties of the scale.
Computer literacy is a broad construct. The meaning and standards of computer literacy are probably also changing over time, as computing practices change and as the computers get further integrated into society. I assume this is part of the reason why a lot of people use customised instruments. For example, I once did a study of keyboard-based text-editing. To assess prior experience, I asked a number of general questions about computing experience, but I also assessed various specific measures related to knowledge of shortcut keys.

A quick search revealed a couple of scales (e.g., Wilkinson et al, 2010, Fogarty et al, 2001). None look like entirely what you are after, but I thought I'd mention them. Both followed a formal scale development process.

Wilkinson et al

For example, here's a subset of the items from Wilkinson et al

ICT skills
I know how to create a folder
I feel confident closing down a software program
I do not feel confident attaching a file to an email
I can use a word processing application
I know how to save a document to a folder
I would not recognise a PDF (Portable Document File)
I would have difficulty finding a web site∗
I feel confident making selections from popup menus∗
I would find it difficult to search a database of references to journal papers
I need help with using computers for learninga
I feel confident using a computer to write a letter or essay
I do not know how to find an article in an e-journal

Experience with computers
I have used computers at work/school∗
I feel disadvantaged by my lack of experience with computers
I communicate with people using email
I have used computers to look for information for example: Library catalogue/books
I have used computers to support my learning
I have used computers to find out about careers
I have used computers for leisure

Fogarty et al

Here's a subset of the items from Fogarty et al

The following statements refer to your confidence when using computers.
1. I have less trouble learning how to use a computer than I do learning other things.
2. When I have difficulties using a computer I know I can handle them.
3. I am not what I would call a computer person.
4. It takes me much longer to understand how to use computers than the average person.
5. I have never felt myself able to learn how to use computers.
6. I enjoy trying  new things on a computer.
7. I find having to use computers frightening.
8. I find many aspects of using computers interesting and challenging.
9. I don’t understand how some people can seem to enjoy spending so much time using
computers.
10. I have never been very excited about using computers.
11. I find using computers confusing.
12. I’m nervous that I’m not good enough with computers to be able to use them to learn
mathematics.

References

Wilkinson, A., Roberts, J. & While, A.E. (2010). Construction of an instrument to measure student information and communication technology skills, experience and attitudes to e-learning. Computers in Human Behavior, 26, 1369-1376.
Fogarty, G., Cretchley, P., Harman, C., Ellerton, N. & Konki, N. (2001). Validation of a questionnaire to measure mathematics confidence, computer confidence, and attitudes towards the use of technology for learning mathematics. Mathematics Education Research Journal, 13, 154-160. PDF


Do online mental age tests have any scientific validity?

No, these tests shouldn't be taken seriously.

The scientific term 'mental age' has a different meaning than the one implied by those tests. In its scientific sense, it's a historic concept dating back to the early days of IQ testing. It was defined by Binet, the inventor of the IQ test, as a means to compare the intelligence of children. The mental age corresponded to the age group which had, on average, the same test value as the child that was assessed.

Historically, the ratio of mental and chronological age formed the basis of the IQ score. However, today, the IQ scores is determined by assessing the norm of test results within age groups (see this earlier answer) and the concept of 'mental age' has lost its relevance. In addition, the definition makes clear that comparing the 'mental age' of adults does not make much sense, because at some point, the test scores are not so much related to chronological age anymore.

The online 'mental age tests' do not try to measure IQ (for the validity of online IQ tests see this earlier question). Instead they ask trivia and attitude questions that are supposed to reflect your age more in a cultural sense.

None of the ones I looked at reported any scientific backing. However several noted they were for entertainment, only.


As a percentage of their endeavours, do those with a tendency to use
  bullying focus more or less on sociopaths as a per capita of their
  targets?

Thanks for this interesting question. Based on my research the short answer appears to be that there is no clear evidence either way. The longer answer is that this is probably too complicated a question to easily answer.

Explanation

Based on psychology today I take sociopaths to be those who have:

A disregard for laws and social mores
A disregard for the rights of others
A failure to feel remorse or guilt
A tendency to display violent behavior

It is also important to consider that sociopaths develop these traits rather than being born with them, like psychopaths are (see quote from psychology today 1).

  Psychopathy is related to a physiological defect that results in the
  underdevelopment of the part of the brain responsible for impulse
  control and emotions. Sociopathy, on the other hand, is more likely
  the product of childhood trauma and physical/emotional abuse. Because
  sociopathy appears to be learned rather than innate, sociopaths are
  capable of empathy in certain limited circumstances but not in others,
  and with a few individuals but not others.

The literature on child bullying suggests that both bullies and victims tend to be more likely to have psychiatric disorders, such as sociopathy. The rates are 13% for bullies/ 8% for victims {1}. This suggests that 92% of those who are bullied are not sociopaths, but it fails to control for the fact that fewer individuals have sociopathic tendencies at that age. What is really needed is a test comparing two samples of children, on with sociopathic tendencies and one without.

An additional complication with this question is that it may be the case that children become sociopaths due to being bullied rather than being bullied because they are sociopaths {2,3}

Indeed some research {e.g., 2} suggests that anti-social personality disorder (which includes sociopathy) is the most common disorder amongst victims of bullying.

I hope this answer has been useful. Please let me know if you would like more information or need clarification on any points.

References:

{1} Copeland, W. E., et al. (2013). "Adult psychiatric outcomes of bullying and being bullied by peers in childhood and adolescence." JAMA psychiatry 70(4): 419-426.

{2} Sourander, A., et al. (2007). "What is the early adulthood outcome of boys who bully or are bullied in childhood? The Finnish “From a Boy to a Man” study." Pediatrics 120(2): 397-404.

{3} Arseneault, L., et al. (2010). "Bullying victimization in youths and mental health problems:‘Much ado about nothing’?" Psychological Medicine 40(05): 717-729.


Reference request in Circuit and Signals for Computational Neuroscience

Signals and System by Oppenheim (and others) was developed while he was teaching 6.003 at MIT. Similarly Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits by Agarwal (and others) was developed while he was teaching 6.002 at MIT. Circuits, Signals and Systems by Siebert was written while he was teaching at MIT. Siebert was before my time, but I believe 6.002 and 6.003 where separate even when he was teaching and that despite the name, there is not much circuits in the book. I would suggest the Oppenheim book over the Siebert book, purely because it is newer, but unless you have an EE background, there are probably better references.


How can you forgive (and not only forget) evildoers without any remorse?

The prerequisite for forgiveness is actually completely straightforward and easy to comprehend:
Understand and accept the humanity of the perpetrator.
Most people are convinced that there is a fundamental difference between themselves and those that commit heineous crimes. Once you understand that the difference is at best gradual; once you face your own propensity for cruelty and violence; once you understand how an unfortunate combination of hereditary and environmental factors have lead to the deed -- you have laid the foundation upon which you may forgive the individual guilt.
This is really a broad topic, but think how the Milgram experiments showed how almost anyone could be talked into torturing another even without any valid reason. Now add to that everything that can go wrong in a person's life and it becomes quite understandable how someone can break and turn into a "monster". I am often surprised there is actually so little major crime!
For some victims it is helpful to learn what made the person that abused them who they are.
The second part is the wish to forgive. For that you need to understand the futility and destructiveness of revenge. Revenge does not bring back a killed loved one; it does not undo the experience of torture; all it does is turn you into the kind of person you despise: a person that tortures and kills. Successful revenge does not lead to happiness. Where forgiveness can cause a feeling of enlightenment and release, revenge fixes the state of loss and trauma and adds to it your own guilt.
Therapy will grant you a space and time for sorrow and rage and then attempt to help you let go and realize that a good and happy life are still possible if you turn towards it and allow it to happen.
This is usually not something that can be achieved by reading books. If you suffer from trauma you will profit from seeing a qualified therapist.


Check out the two articles below:

Meyer, J. C. (2000). Humor as a double-edged sword: Four functions of humor in communication. Communication Theory.

Two of the functions unite communicators through identification and clarification of norms, while two other functions divide communicators through differentiation of unacceptable behaviors and enforcement of norms. "Inside jokes" unite communicators.

Flamson, T., & Barrett, H. C. (2008). The encryption theory of humor: A knowledge-based mechanism of honest signaling. Journal of Evolutionary Psychology, 6 (4), 261–281.

They posited that humor acts as a high-accuracy signal of shared but tacit background knowledge, including social norms. To “get” a joke requires understanding tacit knowledge assumed by the joker, and “getting” a joke virtually guarantees shared tacit knowledge. "Inside jokes" signal you're on the inside.


Are life positions in transactional analysis accurate aides in diagnosing personality disorders?

Personality disorders are diagnosed with the DSM manual save for a few which have targeted assessment tools (like the PCL-R).

TA is not considered a well supported technique research wise and lots of schools don't teach it except by way of a history lesson. I'm quite certain that both Berne and the authors of the DSM would agree that it doesn't actually map onto any specific personality disorders currently recognized. At best there would be a relationship between many of the addictions and related dependencies but they're certainly not seen the same way.


Is neurolinguistic programming effective in influencing sales processes?

Section "Scientific Evaluation" in the Wikipedia article on NLP sums up current research nicely:

None of the claimed effects have been validated.

Scientists consider NLP a pseudoscience with aggressive marketing and a name and jargon that deludes people seeking help by "[giving] the impression of scientific respectability" (quoted from that section).


Theoretical grounding for Agile/Scrum methodologies in software development

Theoretical integration is unknown to me, and i suspect that many I/Os have not yet heard of scrum and agile. These are relatively new even in their native industry(software).
If i had to write my comprehensive exam paper on it, I'd pitch you two models. First, an oldie but a goldie, the Job Characteristics model (Hackman and Oldham). This model has identified reliable job environment features that tend to drive engagement. You could map these features onto some of the features of an agile environment:

Skill variety (agile can offer that);

Task identity (if they let you see through your project, and the execs don't override creative control, this may be available in
agile)

Task significance (this is probably independent of agile; may or may not get this)

Autonomy (agile can really offer this for the development team; this is probably the number one reason agile may be effective because it
separates the development team from the command and control of
management that is typical of waterfall methodologies)

Feedback (i think this is one of the goals of agile is more quick and dirty feedback on your prototypes; anyway feedback motivates people)
The second pitch I would make is a social psychological/sociological theory referred to as social exchange theory (e.g., Blau). The core of this theory is that people develop certain quality relationships with others they exchange with. The way this exchange occurs and how frequently can affect relationship quality. There may be two really general types of relationships: economic and social. Economic exchanges are highly equal, visible, short-term and focused on the thing being exchanged (this characterizes a lot of employee-employer relationships). Social exchanges are less concerned with the urgency and equality of transactions, and are more concerned with longevity, empathy and belonging in the relationship (many organizations try to create this with culture; people want this because it can cause employees to give effort selflessly).

Agile may in some cases appeal to this social exchange type of relationship. A lot of effort, creativity, and risk is exchanged and tolerated among teammates without any immediate monetary reward or sometimes without much awareness from management. Due to the frequency of exchanges with team members in agile methodology, perhaps the relationship development process is accelerated. This would yield more committed and engaged team members, at least when they're working within those teams.
Oh, and the goal setting theorists will insist that it boils down to frequently setting challenging, specific and committed to goals.
Hope this helps.


There has been a lot of research into this topic in the recent years. My understanding is influenced by the following :   1. The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. 2. Mastery by Robert Greene. 3. The Mundanity of Excellence.4. Why Skills trump Passion by Cal Newport.
The best thing for you to do would be to read these for yourself.
CHOOSE THE CHALLENGE : This is something really important. You need to choose a challenging problem you want solve or a skill you want to master, which lies just outside your comfort zone. If it is easy, you'll feel bored. If it is too difficult, you'll feel overwhelmed. Choose something which lies just outside your comfort zone. This leads to what is usually called as the flow experience.
 THE PROCESS : To simply put it, mastering a skill is a process with approximately the following steps.
1. Watch someone perform it and visualize yourself doing it.
2. Break the skill into its fundamental building blocks(fbb).
3. Choose one of the small fbb's and try to perform it.
4. At this point, you will not be able to get it right. So, slow down the performance drastically . Go step by step, making each step perfect.
5. Then, make it faster again. Play around with the pace of performance till you are fluent.
6. Repeat the performance everyday.
THE MOTIVATION : As you can see, the process is painful. You need to understand how to replenish the motivation fuel. Talent Code gives a good approach. But I prefer the one given in "The Mundanity of Excellence". Basically, motivation comes from three things : Fun, Reward and Challenge. Everyday you must try to experience these things to remain motivated.  Have fun at the workplace. Attack a small challenge which lies just outside your comfort zone everyday. Achieve small targets everyday and reward yourself for doing so.
THE ATTITUDE : You need to get the attitude of a craftsman. The goal is to achieve mastery over your craft. So, when choosing jobs, prefer areas where you can achieve mastery instead of fame or money. Cal Newport explains this really well.
THE TOOLKIT - BECOMING A CRAFTSMAN : This is something out of my experience. So, how exactly can you be a good craftsman ? It's all about your tools. Imagine an empty toolkit in your hand. Now, all you got to do is fill it up with all sorts of tricks of the trade. If you can master tools that are valuable and rare, you will stand out from your peers. Enjoy collecting different tools and mastring how to use them. While learning programming, just imagine this toolkit. Everyday learn some new trick or technique and put it into your toolkit.After a few years , you will have a big toolkit and you will have the capacity to solve the big problems in your field of expertise.


There are many different possible obstacles to motivation:

Physical issues,
Emotional Issues,
Environmental Issues,
Relationship Issues,
Personality Issues,
Historical Experience,
Financial Issues, and
Practical Issues;

and they all need to be borne in mind.  We could look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, however, studies in motivation started long before he came up with this.

The link you provided gives a lot of what you are asking about.

Sigmund Freud, as far back as 1927 said that a drive theory was what was lacking most in psychoanalysis.  He rejected systematics in psychology as a form of paranoia, and spoke of the drives towards life and death; and sexual/ego drives (Mélon, 1996).

Yet, from 1927 to 1935, Hungarian psychiatrist and psychologist, Leopold Szondi aimed at working towards a systematic drive theory and he developed a “Drive Diagnostic Test” (Mélon, 1996).  On top of that, there were studies conducted by William McDougal in 1932 where it was suggested that a range of animal behaviours could be associated with some form of drive, developing Instinct Theories of Motivation whereby all activities, thoughts, and desires can be drawn from being caused by nature – our biological make-up (Psychology Notes HQ, 2012).

Then attempts were made by Clifford Morgan in 1943 to establish the classifications of Primary Drives (basic needs of the individual) and Secondary Drives (learned or social drives).

Later, in 1961, David McClelland stressed the importance of social needs and specifically the need for achievement, affiliation and power (Mind Tools Ltd., n.d.), whilst in 1967, Grossman proposed the categories of Homeostatic drives (internal drives of the physical body to seek and maintain a balance within its internal environment like hunger, thirst and body temperature), and Non-homeostatic drives (situations external to the body like sexual activity, and other physical or emotional arousal).

I believe Grossman’s categories are categories of Morgan’s Primary Drives, where McClelland’s points refer to Morgan’s Secondary Drives.

References

Mélon, J., 1996. Notes on the History of the Szondi Movement. [Online]
Available at: http://www.szondiforum.org/t419.htm

Mind Tools Ltd., n.d. McClelland's Human Motivation Theory. [Online]
Available at: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/human-motivation-theory.htm

Psychology Notes HQ, 2012. Instinct Theory of Motivation. [Online]
Available at: http://www.psychologynoteshq.com/instincttheoryofmotivation/


Which parts of the brain are used when identifying and sorting email messages?

The insular cortex seems to play a role in sorting based on salience - how important something is to us (Uddin, 2015). In addition, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), commonly associated with error detection, is relevant. Some parts of the insular cortex have also been linked to a sense of self, so this seems reasonable.

The mental activities involved include: detection (What?), attention (Where?), categorical learning (How?), and planning (Which - when?). There are thousands of studies on visual search, visual attention, stimulus detection, salience processing, and categorical learning. Categorical learning implies that one can improve in the process of categorization, but attention is a prerequisite for learning to occur, so multiple brain areas are involved.

Reference

Uddin, L. Q. (2015). Salience processing and insular cortical function and dysfunction. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 16, 55–61. doi:10.1038/nrn3857

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v16/n1/abs/nrn3857.html


Does initial 0-3 years of age have any effects for a permanent bonding to happen between the parents and their children?

Disclaimer:

~ Firstly I would like to say that there could be many factors as to why your brother is least attached to your parents, that may have nothing to do with the separation between 0-3 years. ~

For the purposes of keeping this succinct, I will discuss only the effects of bonding from 0-3 years of age.

Introduction:

This is an interesting question, as much research has been done on the effects of child abuse and neglect on attachment, in this case you are discussing a (I'm assuming) healthy child from within a loving family environment.

A number of factors would also affect the attachment of such as child, in terms of why he was separated from his parents for those years.

Overview of Development:

Firstly there is no denying that the first three years have significant affect on how brain development, including attachment styles.

I have added yellow boxes for highlighting.

Image courtesy of:
 Rethinking the brain: new insights into early development - book by  Rima Shore

Attachment 0-3 years:

Studies would suggest that the first three years are vital for forming attachments with caregivers. A child cannot form an attachment with someone they have not met.

  A central component of attachment theory is the notion that caregivers
  must be present and accessible in order for their children to become
  attached to them.  (1)

Separation:

It has been shown that any separation between mother and child within the first three years is detrimental to that relationship. This is assuming the mother and child already have a relationship.

  His early work demonstrated that separations as brief as one week in
  duration could negatively impact the quality of the relationship
  between mother and child (Bowlby, 1969/1982).  (1)

So the same theory would apply for other caregivers in the first three years of life, in this case the grand parents.

  According to attachment theory, a secure attachment is derived from
  the child’s appraisal of his/her mother’s (or other attachment
  figure’s) availability. (1)

At this age, a child is not able to reason and can only process experience emotionally, so any parental absence is beyond comprehension of the child. The more damaging aspect of this, however, is the removal of the child at the age of three years from his/her primary caregivers (in this case the grand parents). I do not know what the situation was after your brother was returned to his parents, so it would be conjecture to discuss this in any detail.

  As previously mentioned, the reason for the separation, where the
  child stayed, and who provided care are all potentially informative
  for helping to understand the effects of separation on parents and
  children. A maternal separation is quite likely not as distressing to
  an infant if he/she is left in the care of another attachment figure
  to whom he/she is securely attached (1)

In conclusion:

It would seem that a child's complete separation from his/her parents until three years of age, would have an impact on the degree of attachment within those relationships. The people in the childs life in the first three years of life, would have closer attachments.

An observations, it is even shown in cases where children are left in abusive homes fare better with attachment styles than children who are removed and placed into foster care. Given this, the disruption to early relationships between child and caregiver is significant and has long term outcomes; in this case, the long term effect of such absence would damage the attachment to his parents.

References:

(1) Early Mother-Child Separation, Parenting, and Child Well-Being in Early Head Start Families
Kimberly Howard, et al PDF
doi:10.1080/14616734.2010.488119
Reversing the Real Brain Drain
Early Years Study  PDF
Unicef, Early Childhood Development
The key to a full and productive life  PDF


In NEURON simulator, what is the command for "Init & Run" button?

Typing the following into the NEURON console will reset and run the simulation:

  run()


Distortion of faces presented serially in peripheral vision

Seems this is a newly discovered phenomenon! Tangen, Murphy, and Thompson (2011) describe this as a result of their method of presentation: alignment of the pupils and fast cycling through faces with different proportions. It is also important that the cycle of new images remain uninterrupted. They say "relative encoding seems to drive the effect," and list several other references for related phenomena.

Dvorsky (2013) offers (slightly) further explanation [emphasis added]:

  The answer may have to do with the lack of information going to our visual cortex. Neuroscientist Mark Changizi explained it to me this way:

    Because the faces are in the periphery, there's not enough information for the brain to realize it's a bunch of different people's faces appended one after another — something that's very non-natural. Instead, the brain presumes the reasonable: that it's a single person's face in the periphery, and then the face-changes are treated as this person's facial expression changes. Basically, each of those photographs has a different resting face expression, relative to the one before it, and these become drastic, cartoon-like, facial expressions on a single dynamic monstrously cartoon-like expressive creature.

I'm not entirely convinced of this explanation (much less satisfied), but it seems plausible enough, I suppose. More research may be necessary to explain this, as the authors themselves don't seem to fully comprehend what's going on here. Maybe more is out there already, but Google Scholar indicates only one citation at the time of this post, and it seems they only cited it for the materials used; no other substantive connection is apparent.

I would warmly welcome any better answers than this. I've taught intro psych classes and collected a pretty decent trove of optical illusions, because these are always popular instructional material. This one is definitely getting filed away with the rest of them, but strikes me as quite unique among them all. (Not to mention mysterious and disturbing!) Compare the Thatcher effect, which reduces distortion when presented abnormally; staring at it right-side-up makes the distortions more obvious!

   Thatcher effect demonstration by Alex Dodge

References
· Dvorsky, G. (2013, September 19). An explanation for why your peripheral vision is completely borked. io9. Retrieved from http://io9.com/an-explanation-for-why-your-peripheral-vision-is-comple-1349170436.
· Tangen, J. M., Murphy, S. C., & Thompson, M. B. (2011). Flashed face distortion effect: Grotesque faces from relative spaces. Perception, 40(5), 628–630. Retrieved from http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/~jtangen/TanMurTho2011.pdf.


What is the study which shows that babies can teach young children empathy?

I found the actual report on the PBS NewsHour. The program which teaches children empathy using infants is known as Roots of Empathy. It's Wikipedia article states:

  The Roots of Empathy program effectiveness has been evaluated nine different times by independent reviewers. Overall, the results were positive. The results showed that students who participated in the demonstrated several qualities including an increase in social knowledge, a decrease in aggression, an increase in sharing/inclusive/helping behavior, and an increase in emotional perception. These effects appeared to be lasting.

It does not, however, name these nine different reviews. It does name three publications:

  Roots of Empathy: Changing the World Child by Child Gordon, Mary. Toronto: Thomas Allen, 2005.
  Family Literacy in Canada: Profile of Effective Practices, Edited by Adele Thomas. Chapter: "Parenting and Family Literacy Centres of the Toronto District School Board" by Mary Gordon, editions Soleil publishing inc., 1998.
  Child Honoring: How to Turn This World Around, Edited by Raffi Cavoukian, Sharna Olfman. Chapter: "The Power of Empathy" by Mary Gordon, Homeland Press, 2006.

On the Roots of Empathy website I was able to find a PDF Report on Research, which states:

  Researchers at the University of British Columbia have taken a lead role in
  early evaluations of ROE, under the direction of Dr. Kimberly SchonertReichl. Starting in 2000, the team conducted several studies across
  different grades and populations

and it also mentions eight "Research outcome evaluations to date":

  UBC 2000-2001 Primary Grade Evalution,1-3
  HCMO 2001-2004 Randomized Controlled Trial
  UBC 2001-2002 National Evaluation
  UBC 2002-2003 Rural/Urban Evaluation
  UBC 2003-2004 Randomized Controlled Trial
  UA 2006 Whole Schools Project
  UA 2006 Grade One Project
  UBC 2008 Fifth and Sixth Grade Evaluation

But does not provide actual links to the methods, data and results of those evaluations. I was able to find one of them: searching Google for "HCMO 2001-2004 Randomized Controlled Trial" yielded Effectiveness of School-Based Violence Prevention for children and Youth (Robert G. Santos, Mariette J. Chartier, Jeanne C. Whalen, Dan Chateau, Leanne Boyd) which appars to be one of the studies I was seeking.

I would still welcome a complete list with links, but I expect I might not be able to get that, the articles might be behind paywalls.


Volition v.s. Cognitive Control v.s. Motivational Salience

I would argue that they are not the same, but you are correct that there could be some overlap. I think you will also find that people in different schools of thought might prefer a particular term for philosophical reasons in some situations, and in others the terms are more clearly distinct.

I would say that volition involves conscious decisions to do certain behaviors: that's it. In my experience, "volition" isn't often used in neuroscience and psychology, it comes up more often in philosophy. It may also be used in psychiatry but that is a field I am less familiar with. Similarly, self-control and willpower are not typically used in studies of the biological basis of behavior, except to relate to more colloquial discussions.

Cognitive control (see Miller, 2000 and Ridderinkhof et al., 2004) is similar but often involves inhibition of some unwanted behavior. It often comes up in the context of addiction as something that is absent/lacking, or in suppressing attention to an otherwise distracting stimulus. Cognitive control is also used to refer to error detection and behavioral correction, keeping focus towards some future goal. The neural correlates of cognitive control are usually identified in the prefrontal cortex.

Motivational salience (see Berridge & Robinson, 1998, Ventura et al., 2007, and Bromberg-Martin et al., 2010) is in many ways the opposite of cognitive control. Often, cognitive control is marshaled against other salient motivations. For example, in addiction, you could say that there is a high motivational salience towards the rewarding features of a drug: in someone with an addiction, those salient rewards motivate future use of the drug. Suppressing motivational salience in order to achieve some other goal (for example, sobriety) requires cognitive control. The neural correlates of motivational salience are usually identified in the ventral striatum or amygdala.

Berridge, K. C., & Robinson, T. E. (1998). What is the role of dopamine in reward: hedonic impact, reward learning, or incentive salience?. Brain research reviews, 28(3), 309-369.

Bromberg-Martin, E. S., Matsumoto, M., & Hikosaka, O. (2010). Dopamine in motivational control: rewarding, aversive, and alerting. Neuron, 68(5), 815-834.

Miller, E. K. (2000). The prefontral cortex and cognitive control. Nature reviews neuroscience, 1(1), 59.

Ridderinkhof, K. R., Ullsperger, M., Crone, E. A., & Nieuwenhuis, S. (2004). The role of the medial frontal cortex in cognitive control. science, 306(5695), 443-447.

Ventura, R., Morrone, C., & Puglisi-Allegra, S. (2007). Prefrontal/accumbal catecholamine system determines motivational salience attribution to both reward-and aversion-related stimuli. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(12), 5181-5186.


One way to measure love is to look at behaviors that people engage in to express love.

Chapman (1995) theorized that there were five broad classes of behaviors that people would engage in to express love: (1) words of affirmation, (2) spending quality time, (3) giving gifts, (4) acts of service, and (5) physical touch.

Goff, Goddard, Pointer, and Jackson (2007) developed a survey instrument to measure expressions of love. They created a series of questions that were designed to measure one (and only one) of the different behaviors that Chapman laid out. These involved asking questions about how a lover does things like: "giving presents," "offers encouragement," "spends time with me," "holds my hand," and "does yard work."

The goal of this work was mainly to see if the Chapman classes of expressions of love matched the kinds of behaviors that people wanted in a lover. The researchers administered the survey to a few hundred people, and in general found that the Chapman classes were a good set of high-level descriptions. People who tended to want one kind of behavior in a lover, e.g., receiving words of affirmation, also wanted other kinds of behavior from that class, e.g., receiving compliments.

References

Chapman, G.D. (1995). The five love languages: how to express heartfelt commitment to your mate. Chicago, IL: Northfield Publ.

Goff, B. G., Goddard, H. W., Pointer, L., & Jackson, G. B. (2007). Measures of expressions of love. Psychological Reports, 101, 357-360.


Study showing how different ages of children learn about balancing objects

I suspect you are thinking of Karmiloff-Smith's work. Here's an excerpt from an '88 article almost exactly matching the description.

    Children were asked to balance a series of blocks on a narrow metal support. Some of the blocks had their weight evenly distributed and balanced at their geometric centre. Others had been drilled with lead in one end and, although they looked identical to the first type, they actually balanced way off centre.

    [...]

    Very briefly, it was shown that 4 and 5 year olds could do this task very easily. They simply picked up each block, moved it along the support until they felt the direction of imbalance, and corrected that by using proprioceptive feedback until the block balanced. By contrast, 6 to 7 year olds placed every block at its geometric centre and were thus incapable of balancing anything but the blocks where the weight was evenly distributed. Finally, 8 to 9 year olds were able to balance all the types of block, as had the youngest subjects.

I'm not super familiar with the author, but given the publication time and terminology, this seems like a theoretical predecessor to the more recent work on embodied cognition, dynamic systems and ecological psychology.

  Karmiloff‐Smith, A. (1988). The Child is a Theoretician, Not an Inductivist*. Mind & Language, 3(3), 183-196.


Why aren't any advancements being made in physically diagnosing Bipolar and other psychiatric disorders?

Short Answer

Science is hard, brains are complicated, and the premises of your question that there is not work being done or advancements in this area is false.

Longer Answer

There is no known specific cause of bipolar disorder (as for many other psychological disorders). There is no simple statement like "bipolar disorder happens when you are low on XYZ so let's test for XYZ." Bipolar disorder and many others are in fact defined by the DSM based on symptoms - diagnosing them in another way is not the gold standard.

That said, you seem to be implying especially in your comment "why isn't one being developed" that this isn't an active area of research. It is - a helpful search term for you will be 'biomarker'; Google Scholar returns 4,480 results since 2017 for ("bipolar disorder" "biomarker").

However, all of the suggested biomarkers are some combination of A) Not specific (i.e., are positive for other conditions), B) Not sensitive (i.e., are negative for people that do have bipolar disorder), C) Expensive or invasive (i.e., not really worth doing if they have issues with A and B), or highly dependent on other individual factors.


Problem understanding the calculation of normative (Bayesian) base rates

I think you are doing the computation correctly, but Gigerenzer and Blank did not provide us with the full results of their experiment, preventing us from repeating their computations exactly: The data provided in columns 1 and 2 of the table are only the averages. The data in column 4 (Bayesian) is not a transformation of the average value using some formula (see below), but the original data transformed, and then averaged:

  For each subject in the 70% base rate group we predicted, by using Bayes's theorem, how this subject would have responded in the 30% base rate group

If you divide the first equation of the footnote by the second, and derive a formula for p30 as a function of p70, you get:

$$p_{30}(E|D) \approx \frac{p_{70}(E|D)}{5.44-4.44p_{70}(E|D)}$$

Notice that this function is strictly convex in the region [0,1], meaning that if you compute it on the average p70, you'll get a value that is lower than the value you would get by averaging the values for several data-points.

As an example, lets examine the Jack row: If you transform the mean p70 of 0.813, you get p30 of 0.44, which has a deviation of 0.27 from the observed mean p30 (as you probably found). Let's assume that the data in the Jack row, in the p70 column was obtained from two subjects, that responded 0.968 and 0.658 (yielding the average 0.813 that is reported in the table). Transform both of these values, and you'll get 0.848 and 0.261, respectively, yielding an average p30 of 0.553, which would give a Bayesian deviation of 0.161 exactly as reported in column 4.


What psychological factors account for code readability?

Using the English language, given two sentences that say the same thing, what makes one more readable than the other? Usually terseness while retaining clarity and removing ambiguity.

The exact same things make code more readable. Remove everything that doesn't add anything, but don't remove things that do add information. And avoid ambiguity.

In code, we have the advantage that we can reuse similar pieces of text and replace specific values within them. If only we could do that with books, we could save a small rainforest.

On top of terseness, we have good use of punctuation and spacing. Ever tried to read a blog piece where there are no paragraphs whatsoever? That's what it's like reading code that isn't neatly spaced out.

The psychology of this is simple. Your brain receives all sorts of hints as to what it's reading. Try taking a long piece of text and printing it out (with a serif font) without paragraphs, then without periods and commas, or maybe switch punctuation marks (? => ., ! => :, etc), then in a sans-serif font.

You'll quickly see how much you rely on your brain's instincts when you're reading. Code is exactly the same. And herein lies a problem, because some things are certainly subjective. Or rather they are a matter of habit.

If you're used to seeing underscores preceding member variables, then you move to a company where they don't do that, your brain will still expect the same hints and it will be harder to read. But to change it would mess up everybody else in the team. It would be like moving to Spain and telling them to stop using the preceding inverse-question mark because it throws you off.

Design patterns are a similar thing. If everyone knows what a Builder Pattern does, then adding Builder to a class name gives everyone a lot of information. But if I have my own Bracksfort Pattern, that information only helps me, at least until other people start to ask me, or I document it and get the community to buy into it.


Is there any evidence that language is the limit of the world?

This is not quite your question, but it's the closest thing I know of.  There's a significant amount of work suggesting that purely morphological attributes can shape conceptualization: looking at the impact of grammatical gender on the attributes assigned to the nouns that have a specific grammatical gender--that is, grammatically male nouns are rated higher on stereotypically masculine attributes and lower on stereotypically feminine attributes.  You could argue that morphological sway on the semantic content of the noun is a "limit", I suppose.

Some studies have done nice pairing of languages to demonstrate reverse effects on the same nouns according to different grammatical gender. If you're interested in reading the studies, Konishi 1993 is a good place to start.


Paper finding that explicitly welcomed minorities felt less welcome

I think the description provided (if accurate) should be enough to find the paper, unless it is not available online, or is only available in a different language.  Sometimes authors of books and certain review papers will reference unpublished research, so it may have come up in that context.  Or it may not exist at all.

The results described are in line with what diversity training guides often recommend, for example:

  Do talk about everybody’s differences. Teaching about cultural differences must be inclusive of all people, at all times.

  Don’t single out particular groups, such as ‘ethnic groups’.

Unfortunately, such materials rarely provide references to support recommendations.

This area of research falls under "multiculturalism vs colorblindness" - the question of whether it is best to highlight differences between groups, or to ignore them.  A recent review (2018), that also references 3 other recent comprehensive reviews, echoes the findings of over 25 years of research (eg, see earlier review (1993)) that the multicultural approach is generally superior across a wide variety of outcome measures.

That said, there are certainly many ways in which attempts to foster diversity can go wrong, and can be more clearly refined.  Perhaps singling out specific groups, as suggested by some training guides, is one of those pitfalls (for a similar example, see the minority spotlight effect).  It would be interesting to see a study that addresses this question directly.


Is the SPAD-T textual analysis software still available?

After a little bit of googling, it seems that the original developer of SPAD-T, CISIA (dead link), is no longer in business, and the software appears to have become unavailable. I found the company off this list, so maybe it will be of some help in finding an alternative.

(I'm mostly answering this because I suspected that it otherwise never would be.)


Can our auditory perception be used to trick our visual perception?

I don't buy it the claim made in the quote. The speed of sound is roughly 1 foot per millsecond so even if you take a large 3 foot step you are changing the audio visual onset asynchrony by only 3 ms. What this means is that if you present a flash and a click with various onset asynchrony to subjects you would expect there to be a narrow range of lags (less than 3 ms) over which they stop reporting that the flash occurred first. This study was run by van Eijk et al (2008):

The relevant data are the temporal order judgements (TOJ) and it is clear that it is a smooth transition between thinking the flash was first and the click was first and not an abrupt step. Further, the transition takes around 200 ms or to get back to the original claim, about 100 steps. The 80 ms claim seems reasonable in that you do not consistently report the visual stimulus as occurring first more than 70% of the time until it occurs more than 80 ms before the sound.