How do features of the work environment such as type of pen or color of paper influence productivity and workplace well-being?

Environment can be highly motivating through positive and negative forces. The conditions of the world motivated the scientists of the Manhattan project to violate some of their ethics and risk destroying the world in order to create the atomic bomb. Likewise also the oppressed scientist some of which where Jews who were forced into labor on the same project destroyed and sabotaged their work in order to prevent the weapons control by the Nazi's. Then also the USSR was not capable of creating an atomic bomb because of their culture conformity to a specific tenant of Bolshevik and Stalinism stating the atom cannot be subdivided. Galileo also comes to mind yet slaves built the pyramids. These principles of being open free to create, having every comfort of home and preference then motivated in a social and personal way free from tyranny of governmental and cultural oppression allow people to do their best work.
Freud would say your maternal or paternal figure may have wore a blue and white dress during a birthday party or Christmas or other extremely positive event in your childhood which caused you to associate those colors with successes. Which no one could prove unless you happen upon some memory of why those colors are important to you. Likewise also you (or someone else) may have had success with some kind of work or test with a specific kind of pen or pencil. This irrational association connecting certain operating items and conditions with success is fundamental to the human condition.
See below paper for further information:

Effects of Perceived Work Environment on Employees’ Job Behaviour and Organizational Effectiveness
A.K. Srivastava
The study examined the effect of two constituents of work environment (i.e. physical and psychosocial on employees’ job satisfaction and performance, and organizational effectiveness in a sample of 360 technical supervisors and operating core personnel. The analyses revealed that participants who perceived their work environment as to be adequate and favourable scored comparatively higher on the measures of job satisfaction, performance, and perceived organizational effectiveness. The two constituents of work environment were also found causing significant variance in employees’ job behaviour and their perception of organizational effectiveness. Regression analyses revealed that among the various components of work environment, working condition, welfare provisions, interpersonal relations, and trust and support predominantly contribute to employees’ job behaviour and organizational effectiveness. The results also specified that psycho-social environment in work-place exert more impact on employees’ job behaviour and organizational effectiveness than the physical environment does.


In SPSS, should you change the significance level for One way ANOVA post-hocs?

Leave it at 0.05 . SPSS corrects it properly. Only when you want to test with different alpha's (.10 or 0.01 e.g.) you should change it.


The article you linked to (Holmes, 2018) is talking about both senarios.  The therapist must not be a friend before or during therapy sessions.  Dual relationships can interfere with the efficiency of the therapy due to the fact that it can create transference and counter-transference issues.

Transference

Transference as a psychological concept refers to the redirection of feelings about one individual to another individual (Short & Thomas, 2015).
Another definition would be

  Transfer of feelings originally experienced in an early relationship to other important people in a person’s present environment (Luborsky et al., 2008)

Transference is feelings about another person (including the therapist) being transferred (maybe acted out) towards the therapist.

Imagine a therapist, who is also a friend, says something which upsets the client unintentionally because

  (s)he shouldn't say that. (S)he is my friend!

This is where the friendship can affect the client/therapist relationship.

Counter-transference

  The term ‘counter-transference’ has been applied to a large number of psychological concepts in the therapeutic setting (Little, 1951)

  Counter-transference refers to a specific unconscious attitude towards the client in response to transference from the client (objective transference – responding to
  transference from client)
  Counter-transference refers to repressed elements of previous events leading to the
  displacement of past feelings from the source to the client (subjective transference
  – similar to transference in the client but acting in the opposite direction) (Short & Thomas, 2015).

Counter-transference is feelings about another person (including the client) being transferred (maybe acted out) towards the client.

Imagine something is said by the client, who is also a friend, which changes the therapist's view about that friend.  Maybe the revelation changes the dynamics within the friendship they have.  This can affect client/therapist relationship through both counter-transference (feelings about the revelation from the client being bounced back to the client) and transference (resulting feelings from the client being bounced back to the therapist).

Dual relationships, no matter how and when they form cause big problems within ethics and efficacy of the therapy sessions, and therefore they are not to occur.

A friend (or family member) should never give therapy to another friend or family member.  If dual-relationships do form during sessions, this must be discussed immediately (or as soon as reasonably practicable) with the clinical supervisor in order for discussion to take place regarding signposting and transfer to another therapist.

References

Little, M. (1951). Counter-transference and the patient’s response to it. In: Langs, R.J. (ed.) Classics in psychoanalytic technique, pp. 143-151.

Luborsky, E.B., O’Reilly-Landry, M. & Arlow, J.A. (2008) Psychoanalysis. In: Corsini, R.J. & Wedding, D. (eds) Current Psychotherapies. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Short, F. & Thomas, P. (2015). Core Approaches in Counselling and Psychotherapy. Hove: Routledge


The reptilian brain is the oldest part of the triune brain. And the triune brain is a unified account of brain function and brain evolution.

The story goes like this. The brain can be divided into three sections:

The reptilian brain, named so because it encompasses structures that did not change much from reptile to man. It includes the basal ganglia and cerebellum, and controls pretty much everything that a reptile can do: breathing, walking, appetite, sensation, simple motor reactions to the environment, etc.
The mammalian brain (sometimes called paleomammalian), which encompasses structures that are unique to mammals but similar across mammalian species. These structures belong to the limbic system and are dedicated to processing emotion and memory. Anything your cat can do, should be either in the reptilian or the mammalian brain. Anything it can't do, is in the third part of the triune brain.
The neocortex, found in primates, which is involved in higher order functions such as language.

Now, this is an oversimplification both structurally and functionally. For example, birds don't fit this theory very well because they don't have much of a limbic system, but do have some impressive problem solving skills. And functionally, these functions are interrelated in man, who can, for example, experience moral disgust which bridges higher-order and emotional functions. This is why the triune brain is the kind of thing you would find in an undergraduate psychology textbook, but it's not the kind of thing neuroscientists talk about among themselves.


How is light processed by the human brain when awake and in dreams?

There is a range of evidence to suggest that our brain processes self-generated visual information in much the same way that we process visual information from the environment.

There is a really great review article by Kosslyn, Ganis, and Thompson (2001) that goes over evidence for activity in modality-specific brain areas during visual, auditory, and motor visualization.  One interesting effect is that damage to areas of the brain that process object properties yields the inability to visualize shape, and damage to areas of the brain that process spatial properties yields the inability to visualize location in space.  Similar deficits have been observed in imagery deficits for color and faces following specific types of brain damage.

One question that is still debated is whether the very early visual processing areas (V1, Brodmann areas 17 and 18) are involved in visual imagery.  These are areas that receive input from the eyes, provide the first cortical processing of light properties, and have a spatial layout similar to the retina.  From the review, 34/50 neuroimaging studies have shown evidence of activity in the early visual cortex during visualization. More evidence has emerged since the Kosslyn review supporting the role of early visual areas during mental imagery (e.g. Slotnick et al., 2005).

Because early visual areas are thought to be active during self-generated imagery, it sets the stage for being able to "read out" what you are visualizing.  Horikawa et al. (2013) trained a set of machine learning classifiers on awake subjects, and were then able to create crude reconstructions of what the subjects were visualizing while they were dreaming.  No joke!

Horikawa T, Tamaki M, Miyawaki Y, Kamitani T. (2103) Neural decoding of visual imagery during sleep. Science, 340(6132), 639-642.
Kosslyn SM, Ganis G, and Thomson WL. (2001) Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 635-642.
Sotnick SD, Thompson WL, and Kosslyn SM. (2005) Visual mental imagery induces retinotopically organized activation of early visual areas. Cerebral Cortex, 15(10), 1570-1583.


What is the consequence for the MBTI in not having a neuroticism factor?

General observations:
As a general observation, I find that the MBTI is very popular in professional development contexts such as team building. In contrast, the Big 5 is very popular in research contexts.
Several obvious reasons exist for this.

MBTI is typically interpreted in terms of types rather than position on a continuum, whereas Big 5 is interpreted as a position on a continuum. Continuous models of personality are a more accurate representation of reality. Types are easier for people to understand and talk about.
MBTI aims to have no "bad poles" and is based on a Jungian theory. The Big 5 aims to describe personality in a parsimonious way and has been empirically developed through large-scale factor analytic work. Thus, MBTI types are more acceptable to people, whereas the Big 5 has a degree of social loading on several factors, in particular this can be seen in neuroticism.

Neuroticism in the MBTI: The McCrae and Costa (1989) study that you cite suggests that neuroticism is poorly captured by the MBTI. Neuroticism is a very robust personality dimension capturing various tendencies to experience stress, anxiety, depression, and various other negative emotions. It is generally the best correlate of many well-being and life satisfaction measures. It correlates highly with many outcomes. Thus, I would find the absence of something like a neuroticism factor to be a major shortcoming of a personality test, particularly were it to be used for research purposes.

References

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1989). Reinterpreting the Myers‐Briggs Type Indicator From the Perspective of the Five‐Factor Model of Personality. Journal of personality, 57(1), 17-40.


Human vision detection of faint blinking or moving point of light, guidelines for sensitivity versus frequency

I'd like to check the limits of visibility of a (presumably green) LED at large (kilometer) distance, and I'm assuming that modulation of intensity (blinking) or position ("wiggling") would make the same brightness noticeable at larger distances than a steady, stationary point of light.

If you want to 'do the math' Wikipedia provides this webpage on attenuation coefficient, that allows you to calculate intensity versus distance in a medium.
As for your belief that green is most easily visible, that's not strictly true since the human eye has four photoreceptors each tuned to a different frequency, but a slightly different frequency of monochromatic light that was slightly brighter would be perceived as the same color.
It is wide spectrum light acting on different photoreceptors that is interpretated by the brain as being the seeing of a particular color. It's not what you see, it's what you (unconsciously) think you see. It's the addition of wide spectrum light between the frequencies of 498 and 534 nm acting on two photoreceptors that gives the impression that one color is brighter, when in fact it's a range, monochromatic light wouldn't be brighter.
From Wikipedia: Human photoreceptors:

"The photoreceptor proteins in the three types of cones differ in their sensitivity to photons of different wavelengths (see graph). Since cones respond to both the wavelength and intensity of light, the cone's sensitivity to wavelength is measured in terms of its relative rate of response if the intensity of a stimulus is held fixed, while the wavelength is varied. From this, in turn, is inferred the absorbance.[15] The graph normalizes the degree of absorbance on a hundred-point scale. For example, the S cone's relative response peaks around 420 nm (nanometers, a measure of wavelength). This tells us that an S cone is more likely to absorb a photon at 420 nm than at any other wavelength. If light of a different wavelength to which it is less sensitive, say 480 nm, is increased in brightness appropriately, however, it will produce exactly the same response in the S cone. So, the colors of the curves are misleading. Cones cannot detect color by themselves; rather, color vision requires comparison of the signal across different cone types.

So you would want to use 4 different LEDs of 420, 498, 534, and 564 nm each to maximally stimulate each photoreceptor. You could just use a 'white' light with a green filter but that isn't efficient.
As you can see from the graphic, assuming no color blindness (which you probably want to consider) each photoreceptor is equally sensitive.
From Wikipedia's webpage: Color vision - Wavelength and hue detection:

"In very low light levels, vision is scotopic: light is detected by rod cells of the retina. Rods are maximally sensitive to wavelengths near 500 nm, and play little, if any, role in colour vision. In brighter light, such as daylight, vision is photopic: light is detected by cone cells which are responsible for colour vision. Cones are sensitive to a range of wavelengths, but are most sensitive to wavelengths near 555 nm. Between these regions, mesopic vision comes into play and both rods and cones provide signals to the retinal ganglion cells. The shift in colour perception from dim light to daylight gives rise to differences known as the Purkinje effect
The perception of "white" is formed by the entire spectrum of visible light, or by mixing colours of just a few wavelengths in animals with few types of colour receptors. In humans, white light can be perceived by combining wavelengths such as red, green, and blue, or just a pair of complementary colours such as blue and yellow.

That is how the simplified explanation: "green is brighter" comes about.

Photopic relative brightness sensitivity of the human visual system as a function of wavelength (luminosity function).
Having decided upon using a wide spectrum light with a filter or four separate LEDs of a particular frequency we come to flash rate.
Way too slow leaves a lot of 'off time' which saves power but might make it less noticeable (though speed of travel is also a consideration, lighthouses flash slowly and ships travel slowly).
Moderately fast and you run the risk of photosensitive epilepsy (PSE), in particular red light at 4 Hz is most likely to affect 1 in 3000 people.
Continuous light is power inefficient and not attention grabbing, how well would a distant green light with a background of tall trees be seen?
Physiologically amber is the color chosen to avoid red green or blue and is common for stobe lights used on warning signs. Amber is not 'calming blue', 'stimulating / annoying red' nor 'overabundant green'.
The "Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices: Inserts Only", by the Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration is worth a look.
The approved, presumably well tested by many Standards over many years, road sign is designed and described this way in North America:

These demo videos: "Feniex Industries - Flash Patterns" show that ready-made devices with a wide range of preset flash patterns in various color combinations can be extremely attention grabbing.
Choosing a ready made strobe light will save the time and cost of designing your own.


Is there a way to make oneself more sleepy?

If you google "Sleep Hacks" you'll get a lot of good answers.

Start by tracking your sleep with My Sleep Bot for Android or iPhone, or Sleep101 for iPhone. This will help you know more precisely what does and doesn't work. Each app also provides a lot more helpful features for better sleep.

Turn off bright lights within an hour before going to bed. Your body is trained to wake up with the sun and go to sleep when it's dark. Also decrease as much light and sound as you can while you sleep.

Condition your body with the environment. Only use your bed for sleeping, nothing else. Once you train your body to associate your bed with sleeping, it'll have a better chance of going to sleep.

Condition your body with routine. Always have the same routine for going to bed. If you can train your body that the same routine happens followed by sleep, the body will follow the pattern and be primed for sleep. This is classical conditioning. Reading, stretching, breathing exercises, mindfulness, meditation, etc are all excellent ways to help relax before bed.
As a personal example, I made a CD with some really soothing music that I would listen to every night. Because it conditioned me, I went from taking 20-30 minutes to get to sleep to 10-12 minutes. If I heard any of those songs during the day, I was so conditioned that my entire body would get really relaxed and I'd want to go to sleep. It was amazing.

Psychology Richard Wiseman used the best research available to make the most relaxing music possible. You can check out the video about it along with the link to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqvD8H32wYA

Caffeine not only increases energy, it also increases tension. Although caffeine can be alright early in the day, avoiding caffeine altogether will decrease tension, stress, and help you relax more effectively.  Which in turn will help with sleep at night.

Eat healthy and exercise during the day. Getting your body what it needs and building in better rhythms during the day will help it sleep better at night.

Here's a list of 40 awesome sleep hacks from optimizing psychology, diet, using technology, and much more: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3932344/40-Sleep-Hacks-The-Geek-s-Guide-to-Optimizing-Sleep

And here's another resource which supports some of the tips above and provides some more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/17/better-sleep-tips-best_n_4958036.html

Best of luck!

Tips in a visual form:


Let's break this down into two terms: affect and emotion.

Affect

Affect corresponds to two dimensions that underlie emotional experience: valence and arousal.

Valence - feelings of pleasantness and unpleasantness
Arousal - feelings of activation (e.g., alert, energized) and deactivation (e.g., de-energized, sleepy)

So what are the sources of these two basic sensory dimensions?

One answer is... immunologic, metabolic, and autonomic changes in the body, whose sensory input flows up and is processed by primary interoceptive cortex (posterior insula) (Barrett & Simmons, 2015).  Think of the body as a source of sensory input, just like any other modality (visual, auditory, etc.).

Additionally, there are top-down predictions descending from agranular interoceptive cortex, which are actually responsible for most of our interoceptive sensations (i.e., conscious affect).  That is, most of your affective feelings are produced by top-down predictions about input from the body rather than bodily input itself.  Weird!

Another part of the answer is... endogenous opioid and cannabinoid signals in certain "hotspots" of the brain (e.g., nucleus accumbens, ventral pallidum), which are thought to mediate pleasure (Berridge & Kringelbach, 2013).

But in general... this is still being figured out.

Emotion

The answer to this part depends on your theory, about which I'll be very brief.

Basic emotion theorists (e.g., Ekman & Cordaro, 2011) argue that emotions correspond to discrete, circumscribed parts of your brain (e.g., the amygdala and fear, the insula and disgust).  We have "affect programs," that when activated, produce a discrete emotion (fear, anger, etc.).

Constructionists (e.g., Lindquist et al., 2013) argue that emotions are essentially interpretations of your affect (valence and arousal) in a given context.  So "fear" is just a concept that you deploy in certain situations (e.g., when you feel negative, highly aroused, and are running from a bear). On this view, emotions emerge from interactions among distributed brain networks that are involved in more basic psychological processes (e.g., exteroception, interoception, conceptualization, language).

The meta-analytic evidence seems to favor the latter view, but there's still a buttload of work to be done on this end.

As far as controlling emotions--well, that's an entirely different question.  But see James Gross for more info.


How does syntax highlighting affect the learning of a new programming language?

Human-computer interaction describes the creation of programs that use colors effectively. Here we are not discussing how effective the implementation of the HCI colors are, but instead are focusing on the learned pair association and repetition of color training in the psychology of learning programming.

Learned pair association is a way of memorizing information by associating it with another set of information. In the United States and many other countries, when driving, there is an association between red traffic signals and "stop." When people see the color red in a light or at a sign for a distance, they know to stop.

Repetition is the process of repeating the same association with and without exposure time delay until it becomes memorized.

Association with color reinforcements take advantage of the Stroop effect. After sufficient training the brain sees the color green and thinks "comment" or the color purple and thinks "text string":

  Such interference was explained by the automation of reading, where the mind automatically determines the semantic meaning of the word (it reads the word "red" and thinks of the color "red"), and then must intentionally check itself and identify instead the color of the word (the ink is a color other than red), a process that is not automatized.

-wikipedia

Other research has been done with more alternations of text type. Consistency seems to reinforce learning.


I believe the hype about brain training got started with Susanne Jaeggi's paper  on n-back training and its alleged improvements to fluid intelligence (Gf) and working memory (WM):

The experimental design was called into question by papers that followed and tried to replicate similar results. Most of them could not detect a maintained improvement in WM and Gf. Further, most studies did not find it to generalize to other skill domains.

I'm not sure how to interpret the third question.

Numerous studies have shown that mental stimulation is effective in reducing the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The more interesting question is probably whether brain training can ameliorate attention deficit...


Do alpha waves vanish when I open my eyes in a dark room?

Yes they do.

That is to say, light conditions do not generally affect alpha waves, only the eyelids do (and other factors).  This has led to alpha waves being interpreted as reflecting an active inhibitory process in the visual cortex (relaxation) rather than a reduction of stimulus (resting).

The following image is from an Israeli study published in 2013 called "The dark side of the alpha rhythm":

Notice how all the graphs show no significant difference between light and dark conditions in both eyes open and eyes closed cases.

Mounting evidence from studying blinking, saccades, and stimulating the retina from behind the eyelids (through the oral cavity) suggests that closing the eyes initiates an inhibitory process that actively blocks visual processing (rather than passively relying on darkness), so darkness is not necessary, only shutting the eyes is sufficient.


There certainly isn't a single cause of depression. Wikipedia does not list inflammation, so that seems to be sufficient disproof of universal acceptance, and at least one candidate for representative of mainstream opinions. Berk and colleagues (2013) make a pretty convincing case though, so it may only be a matter of time, exposure to the evidence, and someone bothering to update Wikipedia.

For another, partially independent (probably cites some of the same studies), preexisting reference on the matter, check out Psychology Today's article, "The Brain on Fire: Inflammation and Depression: Inflammation and Its Effects on Mood" (Greenblatt, 2011, November 23). It too supports the potentially causal relationship, though I don't see any direct evidence of inflammation causing depression here. You may want to scrutinize it more closely than I have; if you find anything, please comment or edit!


Names of branches of neuroscience and related fields dealing with hunger, taste, attachment, and digestion, and their relationship to other perception

Short answer / Intro
This question is (superbly) broad, and I've merely attempted to try to give some pointers, without even trying to be complete in any way.

Background

  I would like to know what the branches of neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and psychiatry related to what happens when the tongue touches...

Neuroscience: neurophysiology
Cognitive science: theoretical neuroscience
Psychology: psychophysics
Psychiatry: ?
Health sciences: Otorhinolaryngology

In terms of disorders, Hummel et al (2014) say:

  These functions reflect the complaints of patients with smell and taste disorders: Patient complaints include loss of “fine taste”, inability to detect the odour of a partner or child, and the occurrence of, for example, food poisoning. In general the value of these senses is only recognised when they are lost. It is assumed that about 5% of people exhibit functional anosmia.

Anosmia being:

  the loss of the sense of smell, either total or partial. It may be caused by head injury, infection, or blockage of the nose.

In terms of psychiatric illness I'm moving into unfamiliar territory, but there seems to be mention in the literature of a correlation between taste dysfunction and psychiatric disorders (Mott et al., 1993)

References
- Hummel et al., GMS Curr Top Otorhinolaryngol Head Neck Surg (2011); 10: Doc04
- Mott et al, Dental Clinics North Am (1993); 37(1): 33-71


What causes fetishes? Are they sexual disorders?

Having one or more fetishes is very widespread, and thus rather normal.

  The prevalence of fetishism is not known with certainty.[21] The
  majority of fetishists are male.[21] In a 2011 study, 30% of men
  reported fetishistic fantasies, and 24.5% had engaged in fetishistic
  acts. Of those reporting fantasies, 45% said the fetish was intensely
  sexually arousing.[23] In a 2014 study, 26.3% of women and 27.8% of
  men acknowledged any fantasies about "having sex with a fetish or
  non-sexual object".
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_fetishism

A disorder is per definiton something abnormal

  disorder [dis-or´der] a derangement or abnormality of function;
  http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/disorder

So the answer to your question would per definition be: No. Having fetishes is normal and not a disorder.


What can be inferred about the strength of the synapse from an electron microscope image?

Vesicle count and spine morphology are two of the better-known predictors of synaptic strength.  But they are not the whole story.

Glia, like astrocytes can also modulate synaptic strength by releasing their own neurotransmitter or co-agonist, but you need more than just images to detect that process.  There is also the matter of receptor distribution in the postsynaptic cell inside the synapse.  Even if you make more vesicles, it won't matter if there's not enough receptors.  It also depends on how much agonist, co-agonist, and antagonist are present, which could be the result of any particular molecular signaling cascade.  There are also modulators which can increase or decrease the effectiveness of a particular receptor.


Is it really the case that children are showing brand preference, preferring one brand over others when presented options, because of a specific affinity for that brand?

According to research, it does seem that way.

A longitudinal study of 20 years (Guest, 1964) found that brand preferences originally expressed during the ages of 7–18 correlated with brand usage reported 20 years later, with the average amount of agreement between 1941 preferences and 1961 use being 23%. Guest concluded that early childhood experiences exert considerable influence upon later brand purchasing behaviour.

Your belief that such children aren't showing a brand preference, but are simply not familiar with the other products.

Ji (2002) whilst talking about the effects of brands such as Barbie and McDonalds on children, pointed out that parents, mass media and peers do play a part in it all:

  Parents are probably the most instrumental in teaching children basic rational aspects of consumption, such as satisfying basic consumer needs in the marketplace (Riesman, Glazer, & Denny, 1956), understanding price–quality relationships (Moore & Stephens, 1975), handling money wisely (Marshall & Magruder, 1960), and shopping for different qualities among products (Ward, Wackman, & Wartella, 1977). Although parents are considered the primary socialization agents of children, no other agent of consumer socialization has received more attention (in the literature) than the mass media (Moschis, 1987; John, 1999). Through massmedia, including both advertising and editorial/program content (O’Guinn & Shrum, 1997), children may learn about new brands and products (Goldberg, Gorn, & Gibson, 1978), how to use products and who uses them (Atkin, 1978), realities and beliefs about them (Gorn & Florsheim, 1985), and preferences for them (Gorn & Goldberg, 1977). Peers also have input to children’s consumer socialization process. Studies show that young people learn the symbolic meaning of goods or expressive elements of consumption from their peers (Moschis & Moore, 1982). In addition, peers play an important role in the development of children’s preference for stores (McNeal, 1964), products (Hawkins & Coney, 1974), brands of selected products (Moschis, Moore, & Stanley, 1983), and things to collect (Baker & Gentry, 1996).

The thing is, a great deal of people do stick with what they know, and you could say this is in part due to people's comfort zones.  Whether this phenomenon is the cause of people favouring certain brands is open to opinion.  What is definite is that 100s of billions of dollars in business expenditure is spent looking at how they can use leverage such as television advertising, product design and even packaging, to encourage people to buy their product (Scheybani, 2015; Quelch & Cannon-Bonventre, 1983; Spanier, 2018).  As well as with children, this affects adult behaviour, which as pointed out by Ji (2002), is passed onto children who in turn influence their peers through peer pressures.

Your title question: Do children really show brand preference at age 2?

Ji (2002) wrote (emphasis mine):

  Why Study Children’s Relationships with Brands?
  Studying the child–brand relationship phenomenon has its practical
  implications. First, children consume a wide range of products from the
  time they are born. For example, parents use J&J baby powder on their
  babies, feed them with Gerber baby food, and cover them with Huggies
  diapers. At around age two, children begin to eat their first solid food,
  often cereal (Cole & Cole, 1996), and develop relationships with certain
  brands, such as Cheerios, that may last a lifetime. As children grow
  older, they not only consume more brands such as McDonalds’ food and
  Barbie dolls through the purchases of their parents, but also begin to
  make purchases using their own income (McNeal, 1999). In all, children
  consume a wide range of brands and these early experiences may serve
  as definite influences on their choices in adulthood (Guest, 1942).

References

Atkin, C. K. (1978). Effects of drug commercials on young viewers. Journal of Communication, 28, 71–79. DOI: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.1978.tb01658.x

Baker, S. M., & Gentry, J. W. (1996). Kids as collectors: A phenomenological study of first and fifth grade. In K. P. Corfman & J. G. Lynch (Eds.), Advances in consumer research (Vol. 23, pp. 132–137). Minneapolis, MN: Association for Consumer Research.Available at: http://acrwebsite.org/volumes/7928/volumes/v23/NA-23

Cole, M., & Cole, S. R. (1996). The development of children (3rd ed.). New York: W. H. Freeman

Goldberg, M. E., Gorn, G. J., & Gibson, W. (1978). TV messages for snack and breakfast foods: do they influence children's preferences?. Journal of Consumer Research, 5(2), 73-81. DOI: 10.1086/208717

Gorn, G. J., & Florsheim, R. (1985). The effects of commercials for adult products on children. Journal of consumer research, 11(4), 962-967. DOI: 10.1086/209030 PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Renee_Florsheim/publication/24098404_The_Effects_of_Commercials_for_Adult_Products_on_Children/links/5925cee3aca27295a8f054a7/The-Effects-of-Commercials-for-Adult-Products-on-Children.pdf

Gorn, G. J., & Goldberg, M. E. (1977). The impact of television advertising on children from low income families. Journal of Consumer Research, 4(2), 86-88. DOI: 10.1086/208683

Guest, L. P. (1942). The genesis of brand awareness. Journal of Applied Psychology, 26(6), 800. DOI: 10.1037/h0055390

Guest, L. (1964). Brand loyalty revisited: A twenty-year report. Journal of Applied Psychology, 48(2), 93. DOI: 10.1037/h0046667

Hawkins, D., & Coney, K. (1974). Peer influences on children’s product pref-
erences. Journal of Academy of Marketing Science, 2, 322–330. 10.1007/BF02722335

Ji, M. F. (2002). Children's relationships with brands:“True love” or “one‐night” stand?. Psychology & Marketing, 19(4), 369-387. DOI: 10.1002/mar.10015

John, D. R. (1999). Consumer socialization of children: A retrospective look at twenty-five years of research. Journal of consumer research, 26(3), 183-213. DOI: 10.1086/209559 PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Deborah_John/publication/24099029_Consumer_Socialization_of_Children_A_Retrospective_Look_At_Twenty-Five_Years_of_Research/links/02e7e52bb53593d1a7000000/Consumer-Socialization-of-Children-A-Retrospective-Look-At-Twenty-Five-Years-of-Research.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Marshall, H. R., & Magruder, L. (1960). Relations between parent money education practices and children's knowledge and use of money. Child Development, 253-284. DOI: 10.2307/1125902

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Sage Publications, Inc.


Does the brain's architecture change while growing up?

Short answer
The brain is a highly dynamic organ that changes constantly through life. During adulthood, there is a general decline in the number of cells. Memory formation is generally thought to be regulated through synaptic connections rather than at the whole-neuron level.

Background
First of all, aging results in a steady decline of the number of nerve cells, so the 'architecture' of the brain changes dramatically regardless its function.

Secondly, memories and other dynamic processes in the brain are typically controlled by altering synaptic connectivity and not so much at the level of the whole-neuron.

Thirdly, neuronal regeneration is confined to but a few areas in the brain, for example the hippocampus where it may, or may not be directly involved in memory formation.

But yes, the brain does dynamically control the synaptic connectivity and notably the synaptic strength of synapses. As Fizz here correctly states, that is called neuroplasticity. Intensive use of certain synaptic connections may result in synaptic strengthening,for example by long-term potentiation (Lynch, 2004). Reversely, abandoned connections may be downregulated through long-term depression.

A general reference work best suited for your basic question would really be a general Neuroscience text book, such as the following online work:

- Purves et al. (eds). Neuroscience. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates; 2001.

Or for something more up-to-date, yet not online, the bible of Neuroscience:

- Kandel et al. (eds.). Principles of Neural Science

Reference
- Lynch, Physiol Rev (2004); 84(1): 87-136


Correlation between BIS and BAS responses

I haven't used BIS and BAS scales in my research, so I will only point out some general considerations.

Correctness of your correlation analyses.: Double-check your data analysis. Maybe you missed a sign somewhere or you didn't encode some scale correctly.

Interpretation of your correlation analyses. Significant correlation isn't that interesting. You should consider its magnitude. Note that the correlation between two measures is bound by the reliability of those measures. You should compare your correlation estimate with the upper bound and ask how much of the potentially available correlation it explains. In theory, the correlation can't exceed $\sqrt{r_a r_b}$, where $r_i$ is the reliability of measure $i$. (Carver and White provide the reliability estimates on page 323.) In practice this can happen due to measurement error and you should consider the confidence interval of your correlation estimate.

Measurement error or Systematic bias? On page 323 Carver and White (1994) write:

  In theory, the sensitivity of the BIS and BAS physiological systems
  should be independent. Consistent with this assumption, the BIS scale
  was relatively independent of the BAS subscales in this sample,
  although the degree of independence varied across subscales. The BIS
  scale correlated -.12 with Drive, .28 with Reward Responsiveness, and
  -.08 with Fun Seeking.

You should compare these values with your correlation estimates and ask whether your estimates are consistent with those of Carver and White. Again, confidence intervals may be helpful.

Regression with correlated predictors. Wikipedia explains why linear regression requires independent predictors and has (under Lack of multicolinearity) some suggestions for situations when independence can't be assumed. In addation you may want to look at this question on cross validated SE.


What is the relationship between dopamine and mathematical ability (if any)?

A study Evidence that methylphenidate enhances the saliency of a mathematical task by increasing dopamine in the human brain suggests that using of Methylphenidate that is prescribed for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) increases the performance in mathematical tasks in healthy subjects. Methylphenidate primarily acts as a dopamine-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor.

  Methylphenidate, when coupled with the mathematical task,
  significantly increased extracellular dopamine, but this did not occur
  when coupled with the neutral task. The mathematical task did not
  increase dopamine when coupled with placebo. Subjective reports about
  interest and motivation in the mathematical task were greater with
  methylphenidate than with placebo and were associated with dopamine
  increases.


It seems like a few distinctions are relevant here. First there is a distinction between morality and evolutionary adaptiveness. Overt displays of arrogance are often considered a character flaw and immoral. Whether being arrogant is beneficial from an evolutionary perspective is a very different question. Thus, it would not be a contradiction to say that something is both immoral and adaptive. At least it would not be a contradiction unless your morality was synonymous with whatever is evolutionarily adaptive. Similarly it is possible for someone to be immoral in some aspects of their life yet be functioning quite well and contributing something useful to society.

Second, there are a range of constructs that you are touching on including, self-esteem, arrogance, narcissism, and ego-cenrtricism. Self-esteem is generally seen as both a morally good thing and as an adaptive thing. Self-esteem is assumed to protect you from life's set backs and is often associated with more positive life behaviours. However, arrogance is different to self-esteem because arrogance is generally predicated on feeling that you are superior than someone else. Furthermore, I think that with arrogance and narcissism the assessment often extends to a deeper level, that not only does the person think they are more competent than someone else, but that they might even be a "better person" on some level.
Narcissism is often thought of as an unstable sense of superiority that can be threatened by others which in turn can lead to abusive behaviours by the narcissist. Ego-centricism is also complex in that it relates to a pre-occupation with one's own self with the concept grounded a lot in developmental processes from childhood, to adolescence, and then to adult hood of forming a better appreciation of private and public, and building a better representation of the external world.

In general scientific psychology does not directly concern itself with the morality of behaviour. You could apply moral principles to judge behaviour, but this would largely be a process of philosophical reasoning. By most moralities, treating others as less human than oneself would  be considered immoral. But more generally moralities differ in whether beliefs that never manifest in action are subject to moral judgement.

That said, scientific psychology is concerned with adaptiveness. So for example, ample research supports the idea that higher self-esteem is associated with greater adaptiveness. Similarly much evolutionary psychology speaks to the balancing of self-interest with effective social functioning. Thus, it make sense that a degree of self-interest may be adaptive, but when it gets to the narcissistic end of the spectrum, I would assume that this would be more inclined to interfere with effective social and life functioning. If anything, the need to feel superior to others may even imply a sense of inferiority.


Eye movement tendencies for shades, sizes, shapes, and colours

If the question means in which of the option pairs is the second one more attention-grabbing, I would guess d.

a. Light to dark (shade) - I would say that visual attention is automatically drawn to bright areas in the visual field, so, exactly the opposite.

b. Large to small (size) - exactly the opposite again, bigger objects would be more attention-grabbing

c. Regular to irregular (shape) - This one is a tricky one because there is evidence for both. But from the options given in the other answers, I assume the question is about stimulus-driven attention, and there, attention would spontaneously go to the gestalts in the visual field (here's a recent example).

d. Unsaturated to saturated (colour) - And voila, I would say that the more saturated is the more attention-grabbing of the two. (see here for a randomly googled reference, it also supports not choosing answer a)


Do non-human primates exhibit the Kiki/Bouba effect?

Short answer
As far as I can see, testing the existence of the kiki/bouba effect in primates is technically impossible, because of their lack of speech and/or potential bias due to training effects inherently necessary for animal behavioral experiments.

Background
The reasoning in that other question was basically as follows:

  Cats [read: non-human animals] don't have that kind of repertoire of phonemes. So regardless the > similarity in some brain areas [of animals other than modern day humans], I dare to say a bouba/kiki or
  baluba/takete effect can never be found in cats [or any other non-human animals].

Hence - along those lines the answer to your question is 'no', as the bouba/kiki effect can simply not be tested in its current form in non-human animals, because the latter are not capable of uttering the words bouba or kiki. An interesting note on this are parrots and related species that are capable of reproducing human speech. However, they simply imitate the sounds, just like other species of birds imitate the sounds of ringtones and the likes. That, however, does not mean they associate those words or sounds with the meaning they have to us.

Further, as suggested in that previous answer; synesthesia and cross-modal associations can certainly not be ruled out by any means.

An interesting side track on your question would be the question wether there are cross-cultural differences within the human species. For example, folks speaking languages unrelated to Western languages, like the tonal language Chinese Mandarin, may produce a different outcome in the same bouba/kiki test.

The comment from ArnonWeinberg is an interesting one - why not train an animal to point at one of the two graphs when hearing bouba or kiki? Well, the issue here is that the animal needs training; the trick with the bouba/kiki effect is that naive people assign the same pointy structure to the work kiki and the blobby image to bouba. If one would train an animal the trainer needs to reward (or punish) the animal when it responds in a satisfactory way. That means the experimenter's influence on the animal's response will be paramount for the outcome of the experiment. In turn, a trained animal will respond the way it was taught, which is not the intention of this experiment.


Is exercise considered a 'fight-flight' situation by our brain?

Interestingly, intense exercise elevates levels of cortisol, which is the primary stress hormone. However, since this intense exercise usually only lasts for a short time (except maybe for ultra-marathon runners), it is considered acute rather than chronic stress. Other "intense" activities, like sex, also elevate levels of stress hormones. This just goes to show you that some stress is good. Generally, only chronic stress is bad (or brief very intense stress from trauma).


When counting a given letter in sentences, why do people tend to omit occurrences in certain common words?

What explains the tendency of people to not count the letter F's in the word "OF"?

One possibility to explain this effect is related to the phenomenon of word skipping. When we read, we do not fixate every word, but skip a certain proportion of words while making educated guesses instead. Whether or not a certain word is skipped seems to depend on its length and its predictability, that is, how likely a word is given its predecessor (e.g, Rayner et al., 2011). For your example, the preposition "of" might be very likely to be skipped because it is very short and some grammatical clauses always ask for this preposition.

Please see PubMed for a more comprehensive literature search on word skipping: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22word%20skipping%22

References
Rayner K, Slattery TJ, Drieghe D, Liversedge SP. (2011). Eye movements and word skipping during reading: effects of word length and predictability. J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform. 37(2):514-28


Yes. This field of research is known as social network analysis, or SNA. It existed well before Facebook et al. hijacked the term.

Various resources will include sample questionnaires and the mathematical analysis applied (Networks: An Introduction was for me by far the clearest text on the mathematics of networks; a lot of books on SNA are off-putting once you get to the maths part).

You may also want to google for graph databases (eg, neo4j). I'm pretty sure I've seen a few examples of such analysis floating about.


What's the difference between projecting and mirroring?

Mirroring is when one acts like others one is in the presence of. For example, an individual may pick up inflections, wording, or mannerisms of others they spend time with. From Wikipedia:

  Mirroring is common in conversation. The listeners will typically smile or frown along with the speaker. If one person throws in sports metaphors, the other will likely parry along similar ideas. Since people usually accept their mirror image with ease, mirroring the person with whom one is speaking generally makes them feel more relaxed and encourages them to open up.

Projection is a defense mechanism whereby an individual "projects" their own views, issues, or thoughts over someone else, preventing the individual from getting an accurate view of the other person and believing the thoughts come from the other individual rather than oneself. Again, from Wikipedia:

  Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person subconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings [...]

  An example of this behavior might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and by redirecting libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or "projecting," those same faults onto another person or object

Projection may be easily confused with Mirroring because with Projection, an individual sees their own traits in another, but the proper term can be remembered because the individual who is projecting "blanks out" others like a blank movie screen, and "projects" their own image, seeing what they are projecting instead of what is really there. WIth Mirroring, an individual is like a mirror themselves, as opposed to Projecting, when the individual is like a movie projector.


If babies were isolated, would they develop their own language?

This question would require an experiment that cannot ethically be conducted, but it is interesting.

Wikipedia has an article on historical attempts at language deprivation experiments:

  An experiment allegedly carried out by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II
  in the 13th century saw young infants raised without human interaction
  in an attempt to determine if there was a natural language ...
  "foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children,
  but in no ways to prattle or speak with them ... But he laboured in
  vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands,
  and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments." ...
  James IV of Scotland was said to have sent two children to be raised
  by a mute woman isolated on the island of Inchkeith, to determine if
  language was learned or innate. The children were reported to have
  spoken good Hebrew ...

While these experiments had the advantage of a lax ethical environment, they also had a major disadvantage of poor methodology, and the accuracy of their documentation is very questionable.

There are quite a few documented cases of feral children, but none that I'm aware of who were raised together so as to have had an opportunity to develop language.

The most compelling case for the innateness of language development that I'm aware of is the Nicaraguan sign language (ISN):

  ... a sign language that was largely spontaneously developed by deaf
  children in a number of schools in western Nicaragua in the 1970s and
  1980s. It is of particular interest to the linguists who study it,
  because it offers a unique opportunity to study what they believe to
  be the birth of a new language.

These children were in fact raised as normal children, but were language isolated, with no contact with other deaf children until school age.  Some variables not well controlled for here include that they were exposed to the concept of language, were aware that other people communicated with each other, and already had a proto-language (mimicas).  Nonetheless, they appeared to develop a proper structured language fairly quickly upon being introduced to each other, without any apparent support or encouragement from adults, who were entirely unfamiliar with any sign language.

There are similar examples of isolated sign-language development, such as ABSL and MVSL, but the problem with all of them is that the actual level of language isolation is not well controlled for, and hence not clear.


How to fix a nii or rec file with partial volume

I found the solution using the python package nibabel.
The code is rather simple. If filename is your nii, or rec file use:

import nibabel as nib
img = nib.load(filename,permit_truncated=True)
print("Saving image with shape:",img.shape)
nib.save(img,"truncated_{0}".format(filename))


What does "non-linear processing" mean, exactly?

The idea of linear/non-linear in neuroscience is the same as in mathematics. A process $f(x)$ is linear if $f(\alpha x) = \alpha f(x)$ and $f(x+y) = f(x)+f(y)$ for all $x$, $y$, and $\alpha$.


If you can't draw, is that an indication of low spatial IQ?

Spatial IQ refers to the ability to perform navigation tasks, mental representation, and mental rotation of objects. Therefore, if you have a clear idea or 3D model in mind of what you want to draw but you are not able to reproduce it on paper, I would say does not mean you have a low spatial IQ.
Simple answer:
No. Bad drawing does not mean low spatial IQ
However, the inability of drawing can depend on other factors. Check Neglect syndrome and clock-drawing test.


Since things like happiness, sadness, and grief are highly subjective, so I don't think there's any way you could measure those variables directly.

You could operationally define those emotions, such as measuring happiness by the number of hours someone spends doing something they enjoy, but you can imagine all of the confounds involved with that.

Or, you could define a general scale (see here for a list of those having to do with pain) and rank how people score on it.  Then, you could use principles of non-parametric statistics to compare your rankings.

You could also measure known anatomical correlates (e.g., activity in the amygdala as a basis of fear via fMRI), but so many emotions/feelings/other background processing overlap in certain brain regions that the validity would have to be shown through good controls.


Merriam-Webster's gives the following synonyms:

  conspiracy, design, intrigue, machination, scheme

Intrigue yields a number of hits on books in Google Scholar, e.g.:

Carlton, Apple: The inside story of intrigue, egomania, and business blunders (1997)
Price, Origins of the War with Mexico: The Polk-Stockton Intrigue
(2014)

Also, Machination AND intrigue yields a number of hits, such as

Pula, Polish Americans Protest Immigration Restriction: A Document,
Polish American Studies (2011); 68(1): 59-76

'Machination' alone yields a lot of unrelated (industrial) stuff, so I think it's important to use additional identifiers when searching for literature, such as synonyms, antonyms or couple them with the topic of interest, e.g. 'brain mechanisms', or 'gender differences'.


Phrase used by jordan peterson about "revealing"

Re-reading the whole quote and not just the first 3 sentences there does seem to be some ramblings which need citations to back his claims.
The crux of your question:

I am puzzled [with] what he means by [the] word reveal above?

why would you not want to reveal (whatever he means) yourself?
The first 3 sentences loosely refer to the concept of the johari window which I spoke about in another answer.
The basic concept of the johari window is that in order to reveal yourself fully to yourself (who you are) you need to reveal yourself to others.  There can be abilities you have, and maybe aspects to your personality, which are unknown to you but others may see if you allow them to see them.
As for why you would not want to reveal yourself, there can be numerous reasons.  One example was used by Peterson in the same part of the book (Rule 8: Tell the truth — or, at least, don't lie)

Consider the person who insists that everything is right in her life. She avoids conflict, and smiles, and does what she is asked to do. She finds a niche and hides in it. She does not question authority or put her own ideas forward, and does not complain when mistreated. She strives for invisibility, like a fish in the centre of a swarming school.

This person is hiding herself.  She is not revealing her thoughts and ideas, so therefore she is not revealing herself.
If she revealed her thoughts and ideas she would be seen and heard, therefore putting the knowledge out there that she can think for herself.
On the other hand, she may not see that she can think for herself.  Maybe she thinks her ideas are not going to be correct or even be considered.
To find out more about the concept of the johari window, the links in the other answer (linked above) could help.
After those first 3 sentences, the quote gives so-called explanations referring to genes in the central nervous system (CNS) which I cannot vouch for and feel maybe a bit far fetched, although I must point out that I am not fully conversant with the neuroscience.  The problem with this part of the quote is that nothing mentioned is referenced, just like the first 3 sentences.
What I have found through basic internet searches is as follows:

Genetics of the nervous system refers to the study of genetics affecting the development, physiology and functions of the nervous system and diseases thereof(nature.com n.d.)

Several diseases that directly affect the nervous system have a genetic component: some are due to a mutation in a single gene, others are proving to have a more complex mode of inheritance. As our understanding of the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders deepens, common themes begin to emerge...(National Center for Biotechnology Information 1998)

Whether this part of the quote can be relevant to the situation may be answered by others here, but seeing as you haven't asked about that directly I feel a separate question would be needed for that.
##References
National Center for Biotechnology Information (1998). The Nervous System. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22197
nature.com (n.d.). Genetics of the nervous system. Retreived from https://www.nature.com/subjects/genetics-of-the-nervous-system


In a forced-choice task, what proportion of responses is above chance level?

This is a binomial distribution and the answer depends on the total number of Type A and B questions as well as what confidence level you want to use for the cutoff. There is probably a formula for determining what you want, but I don't know what it is. You can compute it yourself using a permutation test.

Generate a null hypothesis distribution of random guesses and then use this to find the cutoff for whatever p-value (probability that randomly guessing will give a score greater than a certain value) you are comfortable with. The easiest way to get that value is to sort all of the null performance scores and get one that is 95% higher than all of the others (say Score #950 if you did 1000 random guesses and sorted the scores).

Here is some Matlab code to estimate this:

n_trials = 50;
p_cutoff = 0.05;
n_permutations = 100000;
% Create a vector of n_trials 'correct' responses and replicate it across n_permutations
expected_values = repmat(randi([0 1],[1 n_trials]),[n_permutations 1]);
% Create an array of n_permutations x n_trials random guesses
random_responses = randi([0 1],[n_permutations n_trials]);
% Compute the percent correct for each permutation
percent_correct = sum(expected_values==random_responses,2)/n_trials;
% Compute and print the cutoff percentage for desired p value
fprintf('\np=%1.3f Cutoff for %d trials: %3.1f%%\n\n', p_cutoff, n_trials, quantile(percent_correct,1-p_cutoff)*100);

Here are some cutoffs for p=0.05 assuming the same number of Type A and Type B questions:

n_trials cutoff
10       80.0%
20       70.0%
30       63.3%
40       62.5%
50       62.0%
75       60.0%
100      58.0%
250      55.2%
500      53.6%

More total questions (trials) and the cutoff gets closer to 50%.

Note this is all assuming that there is no kind of bias, say a participant choosing randomly will be more likely to choose A (like the first answer or something like that).

Here is an online calculator for computing some probabilities with the binomial distribution.


Does individual understanding or perception, determine dream lucidity?

I am unsure if you mean, if the ability to lucid dream comes with age? or if the type or degree of lucidity within the dream is different depending on the individual? So I will aim for a ballpark answer.

Lucid dreaming defined by a dream in which the dreamer is – while dreaming – aware that she/he is dreaming (Schredl & Erlacher, 2004).

A variety of different factors have been found to influence lucid dreaming. Though most people report having had a lucid dream at least once in their lives, only about 20% of the population reports having lucid dreams once amonth or more (Snyder & Gackenbach, 1988; in LaBerge, 1990).

Contrary to your suggestion, lucid dreaming has not been found to come with age, but rather is more common before the age of 16 (Voss & Frenzel, 2012). Additionally, much research has shown evidence supporting the idea that one can train oneself to lucid dream, hence suggesting that lucid dreaming does is not necessarily influenced by ones understanding of the world but rather is an acquired skill (see: Price & Cohen, 1988; LaBerge, 1980). However, it can perhaps be influenced by an individuals experience for example one study found a positive correlation between lucid dream instances and time spent playing video games (Gackenbach, 2006).

References:

Gackenbach, J. (2006). Video game play and lucid dreams: Implications for the development of consciousness. Dreaming, 16(2), 96.

LaBerge, S. P. (1980). Lucid dreaming as a learnable skill: A case study. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 51(3f), 1039-1042.

LaBerge, S., & Verified, L. D. P. (1990). Lucid dreaming: Psychophysiological studies of consciousness during REM sleep.

Price, R. F., & Cohen, D. B. (1988). Lucid dream induction. In Conscious mind, sleeping brain (pp. 105-134). Springer New York

Schredl, M. & Erlacher, D. (2004). Lucid dreaming frequency and personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 37(7), 1463-1473.

Voss, U., Frenzel, C., KOPPEHELE‐GOSSEL, J. U. D. I. T. H., & Hobson, A. (2012). Lucid dreaming: an age‐dependent brain dissociation. Journal of sleep research, 21(6), 634-642.


Waking around the same time without an alarm

Ever wondered why you wake up in the morning—even when the alarm clock isn't making jarring noises? Wonder no more. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a new component of the biological clock, a gene responsible for starting the clock from its restful state every morning.

http://www.salk.edu/news/pressrelease_details.php?press_id=521


Does straightening your back increase confidence?

Brinol et al (2009)  suggest that your intuitions generalize.
From the abstract:

  Building on the notion of embodied attitudes, we examined how body
  postures can inﬂuence self-evaluations by affecting thought conﬁdence,
  a meta-cognitive process. Speciﬁcally, participants were asked to
  think about and write down their best or worse qualities while they
  were sitting down with their back erect and pushing their chest out
  (conﬁdent posture) or slouched forward with their back curved
  (doubtful posture). Then, participants completed a number of measures
  and reported their self-evaluations. In line with the self-validation
  hypothesis, we predicted and found that the effect of the direction of
  thoughts (positive/negative) on self-related attitudes was
  signiﬁcantly greater when participants wrote their thoughts in the
  conﬁdent than in the doubtful posture. These postures did not inﬂuence
  the number or quality of thoughts listed, but did have an impact on
  the conﬁdence with which people held their thoughts.

References

Briñol, P., Petty, R. E. & Wagner, B. (2009). Body posture effects on self-evaluation: A self-validation approach. European Journal of Social Psychology, 39, 6, 1053-1064. PDF


Are recent affordable EEG devices any good?

The Emotiv system has been evaluated in a research setting. Badcock et al. (2013) recorded EEG activity with the Emotiv EPOC and a more conventional laboratory system simultaneously, and found that both systems produced similar results for ERPs with a relatively high signal-to-noise ratio, but it was harder to detect less reliable signals with the EPOC than with the standard lab setup they used.

Reference:

Badcock, N. A., Mousikou, P., Mahajan, Y., de Lissa, P., Thie, J., & McArthur, G. (2013). Validation of the Emotiv EPOC® EEG gaming system for measuring research quality auditory ERPs. PeerJ, 1, e38. fulltext


Reference request: the necessity of constraints in learning

If that suffices, I can give you the classical article from the domain of language learning: Gold 1967.

The basic intuition is that an infinite number of grammars could explain any given set of strings. Analogously, you can probably consider fitting a polynomial to a set of points, or instances of the inverse problem (reconstructing a source from observations). In language acquisition, without some prior constraint on the to be acquired grammar, therefore, no unique convergence will happen. This has led to the Poverty of the Stimulus class of arguments, and the wide range of responses to it. There is a wide range of responses to the Gold paper - if you want more, it really depends on what specifically you're looking for.

In practice, I don't think anyone can imagine a learner in the real world that is without constraints, first and foremost those of storage and computational power.


How and why can movies take us out of our everyday physical reality and into a fantasy world?

When we "enter" a fictional world, we imagine that we are there. The question therefore is: How can we imagine an experience? To answer this question, you have to understand how our perception of reality works.

When we perceive the world, we are not in direct contact with the world, but rather removed two steps: the physcial objects that (probably) surround us reflect light, cause sound, send out molecules and so on, and our sensory organs register these light particles, changes in air density, molecules (smell) etc. Our sensory organs then send signals to our brain, and our brains try to make sense of these signals by comparing them to information already stored in our memories. That information itself, of course, is only stored sensory input and the sense we gave it, so that in essence our knowledge of the world is like trying to decipher a text in an unfamiliar script: by observing regularities and repetition, i.e. a non-random structure, can we deduce the meaning that this text (or the world) has in relation to us. So in effect the "real" outside world, as we experience it through our bodies and in our minds, is an image.

Here is a graphic illustrating this idea (Velmans, 2008):

When we feel sad, because something sad happens in our lives, we do not actually experience any of the things that go on around us. What we experience is the image our mind creates from the sensory input. Our bodies may live in the outside phyisical reality, but our Self, as we are conscious of it, lives in a mental image of that outside world.

This image of the world is being induced in our minds by the sensory input. But there are experiences that feel totally "real", although they lack sensory input or are caused by input that does not resemble them, for example when we dream or when we halluciante. People who hallucinate cannot tell if what they "see" is real or imagined.

When you watch a movie, read a book or daydream, you know of course that you are merely reading or watching a movie or daydreaming, but you suspend that knowledge and allow the image that you create from that limited input to take up a large part of your thoughts. And like the image of the real world, this image created from text or moving pictures will of course trigger emotions. This image will be "weaker", somewhat "transparent" (in the sense that you can still see the real world through it), so the emotions it causes are weaker.

The basis of the influence of media on you is your motivation. If you watch a movie with a critical eye, refusing to forget that what you see are paid actors that will take a shower and go home after shooting that scene, no image will form in your mind, you won't "enter" that fictional world, and you will feel nothing special, except maybe a numb back from sitting in the cinema for two hours. But if you want to go to that wondrous place and allow your imagination to be transported there, then your imagination will use the movie or book to create an image that cannot but affect you.

Note:

The model of perception given above is the one most commonly held to be accurate by scientists and philosophers today. Max Velmans, from whose article I used an image to illustrate that model of perception, believes a different model, that of reflexive monism, "most closely follows the contours of ordinary experience, the findings of science, and common sense". Read the article linked to below, if you are interested in his views.

Sources:

Velmans, M. (2008). Reflexive monism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15(2), 5-50. Available online at http://cogprints.org/5730/1/reflexive_monism_final_version.pdf

I believe that this answer does not need any sources beyond the quoted image. All of the above follows logically from how our perception works, which, as it is taught in school, can be regarded as common knowledge.


How does the brain process concurrent visual or sensory data?

The tongue is made up of a surface area of about five different types of taste receptor.  They are:

salt
sour
bitter
sweet
unami

These inputs are handled by your gustatory system which can certainly parallel process them.  You may know or have heard of combinations of them.  Sweet n Sour, Sweet and Salty.

  The facial nerve (VII) carries taste sensations from the anterior two
  thirds of the tongue, the glossopharyngeal nerve (IX) carries taste
  sensations from the posterior one third of the tongue while a branch
  of the vagus nerve (X) carries some taste sensations from the back of
  the oral cavity.

From the wiki on the gustatory system

It's more likely that you've just never taste apple and orange at the same time, so you don't have the experience to remember.

But we do have a semantic memory that's specifically focused towards object identification.  This means we put things in little boxes.  You have a box for oranges and a box for apples.  There are neurons in your temporal lobe that Kristoph Koch could find that fire only when you see an apple or even the word apple[1].  There is no such thing as an orpple, so you've never required a box for it.  I don't think imagining it simultaneously is really beyond your imagination though if you worked at it.

(this article is actually somewhat similar idea, competition between two objects in the temporal lobe: here it's pictures of two people)
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/news/Cerf-et-al-10.pdf


Oddly enough, the place where you find the most information about this topic is where there's a lot of money to be made from it.   Facebook games or games in general.   If you focus on "why do people like to play some games and not others", then you're asking more of an economical question, and there will be a lot more information on the topic.

Example:
Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment (Human-Computer Interaction Series)

There's plenty of other works of this kind.

If you want things that are not related to games, I recommend Bruce C. Daniels's Puritans At Play: Leisure and Recreation in Early New England.

I believe both of these are available on Open Library.


Do we need a pre-test to compare the effectiveness of two treatments?

Answer based on your original depression example

Note that this answer was originally written based on your initial example, where you asked:

  Assume, I have developed a new intervention for people with light
  depression. I want to compare the effectiveness of this intervention
  (E) with an existing intervention (C). For this, I recruit test
  subjects from the local psychotherapeutic ambulance and randomly
  assign them to either the experimental (E) or control group (C). The
  interesting dependent variable is of course depressivity.

In general, you don't need to measure pre-treatment for the dependent variable. In the limit random assignment ensures that the groups are equal. Or to put it another way, random assignment ensures that the groups are not biased to be higher or lower on the dependent variable at baseline.  A typical between-subjects t-test comparing post-treatement scores would typically provide an unbiased test of whether the intervention had an effect on dependent variable (i.e., depression) relative to control intervention.

That said, there are many benefits to including a baseline measure:

Including a baseline measure of depression will almost always give you more statistical power because you are able to control for much of the stable individual differences in the dependent variable (i.e., depression).
If you participants drop out during the intervention, it can be helpful to see whether this is related to baseline levels.
You can begin to assess individual differences in the effect of the intervention.
Where there are questions about whether random assignment was performed correctly, you can test for baseline differences.

Note there are several options for analysing pre-post treatment-control designs including ANCOVA, difference scores, and interaction effects. See this discussion for further ideas.

Note also that there are good reasons to assess an intervention by measuring more than two time points. For example, you might obtain (a) multiple baseline measures to get a sense of the stability pre-intervention (b) multiple  you might measures during the intervention to assess depression during the intervention, and (c) multiple follow-up measures particularly to see both the immediate and the longer term effect of the intervention.

Updated points based on the teaching example

It is an empirical question whether first letter of last name is related to the effect of the teaching intervention or baseline differences. In general, it would be better to have a better form of randomisation of participants to groups.
Where there are questions about the randomisation procedure, the presence of a pre-test measure can be beneficial to check this.
There are several particular issues related to assessing the effectiveness of interventions relating to children in class rooms even when students have been randomly assigned to classrooms. (a) With just one classroom each, it is difficult to tease out what is the effect of the teacher and what is the effect of the curriculum; (b) there will typically be a lack of independent observations. Thus, for example, students within the classroom may influence each other. Thus, your effective sample size is not as great as it may seem.


You can start by checking out research on subliminal messaging. To summarize, subliminal messaging works to some degree, but it is much less effective than superliminal communication.

For example, will showing a dark gray coke bottle silhouette, so dark that you don't even know you're seeing it, in the momentary blank screen between movie previews cause people to decide to go buy a soda? It will probably influence a couple people, but not as many as would be influenced by just replacing the blank screen with a big, bright, picture of a coke, with the Coca-cola logo and condensation dripping down the glass. I say this because the benefits of conventional advertisements are well-established, but the effects of subliminal marketing are in doubt (Karremans et al., 2006).

That said, there is evidence that you can "prime" someone with subliminal information. Priming, though, is more about getting people to recognize something more quickly later than it is about getting them to change their behavior.

To your question, Greenwald has studied the effectiveness of subliminal messaging for self-help, and found it to be ineffective.

Refs:

Greenwald, A. G. (1992). New Look 3: Unconscious cognition reclaimed. American Psychologist, 47(6), 766.

Karremans, J. C., Stroebe, W., & Claus, J. (2006). Beyond Vicary’s fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42(6), 792-798.


What is the role of stress in the process of behaviour change (lifestyle)?

If you suffer stress or anxiety, a chemical warfare gets underway within the body and if not dealt with effectively, everything starts to self-destruct.

Stress and anxiety will activate the Autonomic Nervous System and cause Cortisol levels to increase to get us ready for conflict and prevent wind-down, which in turn will lower Serotonin levels. The low levels of Serotonin will affect our ability to have a restful sleep and because Serotonin helps to relay messages from one area of the brain to another, the low levels will also affect the ability of your brain to act on information received as efficiently as it should. (WebMD 2015)

Noradrenalin is affected by stress and anxiety, and noradrenalin is another “feel good hormone”, which when imbalanced will affect many aspects of our system, one of which is energy levels causing us to feel lethargic and not wanting to bother with life.  Dopamine and endorphins are other happiness hormones which are affected by stress and anxiety affecting our ability to enjoy things, therefore it is no surprise that it can lead to depression.

Endorphins trigger a positive feeling in the body, similar to that of morphine. For example, the feeling that follows a run or workout is often described as "euphoric", which indicates the endorphine boosting effects of exercise. That feeling, known as a "runner's high," can be accompanied by a positive and energizing outlook on life.

As high levels of Cortisol and high levels of the "feel good hormones" cannot coincide together, the increase in endorphines will in turn lower Cortisol levels and therefore increase the Noradrenaline, Dopamine and Seratonin levels boosting the positive outlook on life.


From David Myer's Psychology, 10th edition, Page 6,

  Psychology is the science of behavior and mental processes.

To answer your actual question, here is what David has said in general that there are 3 levels on which Psychology can be viewed at differently. Following image lists them.

Each level forms an independent yet dependent abstraction with other two. So, to answer your question, the person's current external environment(Socio-Cultural environment which could include his friends, family, lover, stranger, native or foreign society, etc.), internal environment (current biological state which includes hormones,health, other physiological processes, maybe some disease) and Psychological influences(Learned behavior and knowledge shapes the understanding and interpretation of context ) might have created a triad to give the resultant situation.

So, the person might have scored a perfect score in SATs but might have had a emotional breakup the same time which might lead to the situation mentioned by you. Of course, there are infinite possibilities.
I just listed one of the possible Socio-cultural factor. Use your imagination to figure out the rest of the infinite possibilities.

Good Luck.

P.S: It is not magic BTW!
From Wikipedia,

  Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures and
  language that are believed to exploit supernatural forces.


Why do some memories have a closer 'feeling' in time than others?

I've looked a bit into false memories/hearing, so my best answer to this would be that it has to do with emotional arousal and recency since the memory was last recalled. I don't think I've seen this exact question answered using neurological studies, but I have not really looked for a study addressing that specifically. So I'd say this could be a really interesting research project! I think the consensus is that emotional arousal leads to higher susceptibility to false memory because it would be more frequently recalled and therefore subject to alteration. Studying reported recall of dates and times would be really cool though.


Why do people make rants on Meta Stack Exchange sites?

rant, n. 1. a. An extravagant, bombastic, or declamatory speech or utterance; (now esp.) a long, angry, or impassioned speech; a tirade. (OED)

Why do people make rants on Meta SE? translates to What makes people get emotionally upset in a social situation and then express their emotions?

I'm not going to go into this, because the answer is at the same time banal and overwhelmingly complex.

The only aspect that differs between social life online and away-from-keyboard is the higher level of anonymity online. Otherwise it is a common fallacy to think of the internet as being somehow not like "real life".


How valid are reaction times collected from online studies?

Short answer: The data is likely to be noisier, the absolute reaction time can't be trusted, but given enough power (which is easy to obtain on the Internet) relative reaction time differences should be similar to those in the lab. However, web-based reaction time studies might pose other problems, because you have less control over stimulus presentation and about how participants behave.

Long answer: There is some research that has looked at Internet-based collection of reaction time data using different software approaches. The number of papers is small, but they converge in the conclusion that there will be more noise, but that it can be quite useful depending on the specific research question.

The effect of additional noise

Some noise stems from the fact that hardware and software is widely different "in the wild". For example, using a JAVA - applet Eichstaedt (2001) has shown much variation in reaction times depending on different PCs. Some of this variation between computers is based on factors that add some constant to the reaction time on a specific machine. These constants don't matter if you do within-subjects reaction time comparisons as they are common in cognitive paradigms. Other factors will add random noise. For example, some keyboards only transmit responses with some frequency (e.g. every 20 ms.). Thus, the timing resolution will be bound to this limit. Also, other software running in the background may result in random noise. Nevertheless, given enough trials and enough participants this random noise may be a manageable nuisance.

In fact, using simulations, Brand and Bradley (2012) have found that adding a random 10 to 100 ms delay to response times reduced statistical power only by 1-4% across a range of different effect sizes.

Research that has compared response times collected with online and lab-technologies suggests similar conclusions. For example, using the Flash-based ScriptingRT Schubert et al. (2013, Study 1) have shown that

  the SDs of [reaction times] stayed below 7 ms in all three browsers. That value is comparable to many regular keyboards and standard reaction time software. In addition, the constant added by measuring in ScriptingRT was about 60 ms. This result suggests that researchers using ScriptingRT should thus focus primarily on differences between RTs and be cautious when interpreting absolute latencies.

From Study 2:

  ScriptingRT resulted in both longer response latencies and a larger standard deviation than all other packages except SuperLab and E-Prime in one configuration. Nevertheless, in absolute terms, the SD of 4.21 is comparable to what was standard for keyboards for a long time [16]. It is thus clear that any test with ScriptingRT should be well powered and used to assess primarily paradigms with a large effect size.

Similarly, comparing JavaScript and Flash-based data collection Reimers and Stewart (2014) concluded that, in general,

  within-system reliability was very good for both Flash and HTML5—standard deviations in measured response times and stimulus presentation durations were generally less than 10 ms. External validity was less impressive, with overestimations of response times of between 30 and 100 ms, depending on system. The effect of browser was generally small and nonsystematic, although presentation durations with HTML5 and Internet Explorer tended to be longer than in other conditions. Similarly, stimulus duration and actual response time were relatively unimportant—actual response times of 150-, 300-, and 600-ms response times gave similar overestimations.

Replications of cognitive paradigms with online samples

Several papers have used online data-collection to replicate well known effects stemming from lab-based research.

For example, Schubert et al. (2013) replicated the Stroop-Effect with online-vs. lab technology and found that the size of the effect was independent from the Software used. Using JAVA, Keller et al. (2009) replicate a the results of a self-paced reading paradigm from the psycho-linguistic literature. The most comprehensive replication project has been published by Crump et al. (2013) who replicate  Stroop, Switching, Flanker, Simon, Posner Cuing, attentional blink, subliminal priming, and category learning tasks on Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Other challenges and limitations

There are several other challenges and limitations associated with online response time collection

A different question is the accuracy with which stimuli can presented online. There will be limits to time resolution (see, e.g., Garaizar et al. 2014, Reimers & Stewart, 2014, Schubert et al., 2013)  and visual differences (color and resolution) depending on hardware and environmental light
Often online samples will be more diverse with regards to age and education, some may have difficulties understanding difficult instructions. Also, in an online study it is easier to abandon boring RT-tasks than in the lab (Crump et al., 2013)
Participants' hardware may be confounded with other variables, thus that there might be confounds in the absolute reaction times because a systematic RT constant may added to certain demographic groups. This is not a problem for reaction time differences within participants. However, correlations of absolute reaction times with personality variables may be spurious (as warned by Reimers and Stewart (2014)

References

Brand and Bradley (2012). Assessing the Effects of Technical Variance on the Statistical Outcomes of Web Experiments Measuring Response Times. Social Science Computer Review, 30, 350–357. doi:10.1177/0894439311415604

Crump, M. J. C., McDonnell, J. V., & Gureckis, T. M. (2013). Evaluating Amazon’s Mechanical Turk as a Tool for Experimental Behavioral Research. PLoS ONE, 8, e57410. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0057410

Eichstaedt, J. (2001). An inaccurate-timing filter for reaction time measurement by JAVA applets implementing Internet-based experiments. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 33, 179–186. doi:10.3758/BF03195364

Garaizar, P., Vadillo, M. A., & López-de-Ipiña, D. (2014). Presentation Accuracy of the Web Revisited: Animation Methods in the HTML5 Era. PLoS ONE, 9, e109812. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0109812

Keller, F., Gunasekharan, S., Mayo, N., & Corley, M. (2009). Timing accuracy of Web experiments: A case study using the WebExp software package. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1–12. doi:10.3758/BRM.41.1.12

Reimers, S., & Stewart, N. (2014). Presentation and response timing accuracy in Adobe Flash and HTML5/JavaScript Web experiments. Behavior Research Methods, 1–19. doi:10.3758/s13428-014-0471-1

Schubert, T.W., Murteira, C., Collins, E.C., Lopes, D. (2013). ScriptingRT: A software library for collecting response latencies in online studies of cognition. PLoS ONE 8: e67769. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0067769