How did the concepts of left and right direction develop in the human mind?

There is a perspective called the "sociological imagination" that can be used to "frame," or interpret, perceptions. In part, this perspective involves an awareness toward the linkages between history and biography, between social structure and consciousness, and between "knowledge" and its socio-cultural contexts.

The words you question are simply tools or descriptive labels applied to some "sense" and useful for both individual and communal understanding of space-time.  There is a class of words (called "closed" class words) -- called so because, unlike nouns and verbs, it is tremendously difficult to invent new words (icons or symbols) for the associated concepts.  These words fall into a class of words that have their foundation in protolanguage -- with associated, generally-accepted, emerging concepts from early hunting and gathering societies 100,000BC-80,000BC.  At this early stage, knowledge transfer (education) was through socialization of the young (largely an informal process where children learned both through their play and through observing and imitating their elders).

Specifically to your question, some close class words indicate relative direction (to, from, through, left, right, up, down) in the manner of vectors.  Other words such as above, below, in, on, at, next to, and by serve to orient relative to other objects.

Suppose one had to explain the meaning of the words “left” and “right” to someone who had never heard those words before. Further suppose, that you had to explain such in a purely verbal manner -- without drawing pictures or pointing at things or otherwise making gestures.  One would perhaps start by appealing to a shared experience, communal concept, or draw upon mathematics (geometry).  But what if one were constrained to make no assumptions about where the person is coming from or how much geography he or she knows? You then might hope that they knew something about the stars or the sky.  One could begin with up and down and move on to the motions of objects in the sky.

Another way the concept of "left" and "right" could have emerged to common understanding is through anatomy (human or otherwise).  Socializing methods of butchering flesh, combat training, and burial rites all would include relative orientation, placement, and direction.

The cognitive origin of the notions of "left" and "right" emerge from common experience and/or how experience relates to tangible objects or phenomenon.

This rabbit hole goes a lot deeper; however, for the sake of being cogent and succinct, I am observing some self-imposed boundaries.  There are egocentric coordinate acculturation conventions and spatiality (geo-centric, stellar-centric, (sub)atomic-centric) traditions that can shake things up a bit but I believe such begin to tangent off point.

References:

Calvin, W. (2004). A brief history of the mind: From apes to intellect and beyond. New York: Oxford University Press.
The New Ambidextrous Universe: Symmetry and Asymmetry from Mirror Reflections to Superstrings: Third Revised Edition. By Martin Gardner. 2005.
The Handedness of the Universe. Roger A. Hegstrom and Dilip K. Kondepudi in Scientific American, Vol. 262, pages 108-115; January 1990.
Alien Pizza, Anyone? On other worlds, biochemistry could have taken a different turn. Davide Castelvecchi in Science News, Vol. 172, No. 7, pages 107-; August 18, 2007
THEORIES. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3, 2015, from  http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/theory.html#imag


How to obtain well-written demographic items?

So I revisit this question every once in a while, constantly starting an answer with some resources, and then deleting it. Long story short: I think that there are several places where such items could be found, though I think "good" can be hard to define (as it is so situational)!

First off, here is a link that provides a few options for most of the contexts you described. I like this particular list as it describes multiple options (though sometimes there is little to distinguish) for each class of question. Perhaps this is a resource that could be used.

Let me emphasize that, in my experience, demographic questions are very context specific. For example: why are you using the questions? Is it for sampling weighting purposes, where you wish the sample to match population values? If so, then the "correct" demographics to use would be those that best match the provided population information. Is it to be included in analysis of some kind? If so, what are your research questions? A question asking the relationship between age and weight would ask for very different information than a question focused on the differential functioning of a psych evaluation between those college aged (18-22) and elderly (65+). In the first, a demographic question with a write in answer would likely be most appropriate (albeit perhaps biased), while in the second categories would serve best (with the categories being dependent on the question: so 18-22 and 65+ should be two of the categories).

As I believe that these are so connected to the situation, I'll also recommend ICPSR as a place where questions from multiple surveys can be looked at side by side. I've used this to compare many different versions of demographic questions to see which one fits the situation best (though again, I wouldn't say any are "good" out of context). This type of feature, that which compares multiple versions of the same class of question, may the best recommendation that I could give. It gives multiple options, while leaving room for professional judgement in the context of the use of the measurement instrument.

A final thought. If there is not a particular purpose for the use of demographic information, then strongly consider not including such questions in your measurement. Often researchers wish to all sorts of information (as "what if I need it later?"), but this can have some adverse effects: it increases fatigue, increases the time it takes for participants, and can increase the ability to identify individuals based off of the information (potentially changing it from anonymous to confidential, or even open!). It is not hard to imagine a researcher studying teachers who wishes to know a whole series of demographics, in addition to the grade, school, and subject an individual teaches. The degree of specificity from these demographics can make participants easily identifiable. All this to say: if you don't need them, don't use them!

In closing, I recommend only using demographic questions that are necessary for your research (this includes exploratory research). If used for a specific purpose, I would challenge that the purpose often dictates the structure of the demographic question to be used (as can the population). As the purpose and population can be so different from situation to situation, I suggest the comparisons of multiple versions of the class(es) of demographic item(s) that you need, and selecting from them the one that best fulfills your purpose. For this goal, I suggest ICPSR as a great place to look at surveys who speak to a wide audience (and are well designed).


LSD and tryptamines harmless or neurotoxic?

Short answer
All neuropsychopharmaceuticals, including the tryptamines, are potentially neurotoxic depending on the dose at which they are ingested.

Background

Neurotoxicity is, arguaby, a broad definition. According to the NIH, neurotoxicity can be caused by processes ranging from radiation to transplants, and from chemical toxins to cosmetics. NIH defines neurotoxicity as:

  Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade toxic substances (neurotoxicants) alters the normal activity of the nervous system. This can eventually disrupt or even kill neurons, key cells that transmit and process signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system. Neurotoxicity can result from exposure to substances used in chemotherapy, radiation treatment, drug therapies, and organ transplants, as well as exposure to heavy metals such as lead and mercury, certain foods and food additives, pesticides, industrial and/or cleaning solvents, cosmetics, and some naturally occurring substances.

LSD is a tryptamine (Shulgin, & Shulgin, 1997), see Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. LSD contains the tryptamine structure (in red). source: Shroomery

Secondly, every compound is toxic when taken in large quantities. For instance, water can kill, referred to as water intoxication, for example as seen in people tripping on MDMA and taking in too much water (Ballantyne, 2007). Oxygen, another key to life, is a deadly gas when taken in artificially high concentrations for too long. Likewise, neuropharmacologically active compounds will hence eventually become neurotoxins. This, because the definition of neurotoxic is indeed quite broad (source: NIH):

  Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or manmade toxic substances (neurotoxicants) alters the normal activity of the nervous system. This can eventually disrupt or even kill neurons, key cells that transmit and process signals in the brain and other parts of the nervous system.

Thus when you ask

  are tryptamines, including LSD [sic] generally neurotoxic?

Then the answer is yes, depending on the dose.

Reversely, then, every neurotoxin becomes non-toxic once taken below a certain threshold dose. If this is what you refer to by 'microdosages', then yes, even the most potent toxin becomes harmless.

To specifically answer your question with regard to LSD and psilocin: LSD is suspected to be neurotoxic at clinically applied dosages (Larsen, 2014), and psilocin can result in convulsions and death follow massive overdose (Gold et al., 2003).

References
- Ballantyne, Sci Am 2007
- Gold et al., Atlas of Clinical Neurology, Springer. pp 503-24
- Larsen, Hist Psychiatry (2016); 27(2):172-89
- Shulgin & Shulgin, Tihkal - The Continuation, pp. 490-99


What does speaking in third person denote?

Speaking about oneself in the third person is known as illeism.

It is not a symptom of any mental condition listed in the DSM. As Wikipedia notes, it is sometimes used in speech and literature for stylistic reasons.


What does Lumosity's Flexibility measure?

I believe they are attempting to measure Cognitive Flexibility (there is a citation linking to Lumosity at the very end of the article).
From the Wiki article:

Cognitive flexibility has been described as the mental ability to switch between thinking about two different concepts, and to think about multiple concepts simultaneously....
Other terms for cognitive flexibility include mental flexibility, shifting, mental set or cognitive shifting, task switching/shifting, and attention switching/shifting....
Most commonly, cognitive flexibility refers to the mental ability to adjust thinking or attention in response to changing goals and/or environmental stimuli....
Lastly, the ability to simultaneously consider two aspects of an object, idea, or situation at one point in time refers to cognitive flexibility. According to this definition, when sorting cards based on specific rules, children are considered cognitively flexible rules if they can sort cards based on the color of the objects and type of objects on the card simultaneously. Similarly, cognitive flexibility has been defined as having the understanding and awareness of all possible options and alternatives simultaneously within any given situation.

I hope that helps!


If that same effect is happening with the "99% fat free" labeling, consumers would over-perceive the amount of fat

I think you are misunderstanding the desired effect here. I don't see how "99% fat free" would lead to the impression that a product contains a lot of fat. My read is, "This is 99% fat free! That's really good!" as opposed to "1% fat" which more emphasizes the fact that fat is still present than the fact that it's not. Said another way, because 99 is a far higher number than 1, the brain is more positive about getting something that is really good (much higher fat-free percentage) than something that is slightly bad (very small fat percentage)

The other thing you may be overlooking is that "fat free" is a marketing term in and of itself. Products claim to be "fat free" in order to attract dieters / those looking to eat healthy. When comparing products people may choose the ones which have actively tried to reduce the amount of fat; this is what the "fat free" term is intended to convey. Compare that with milk, where "1% fat" really means "1% milkfat", a technical description of how rich the milk is (where "whole milk" is 3.25% - 4% milkfat typically), so the terminology is not used as a means to advertise that product as being better than the competition but rather as a means to identify the content of the product itself.


At what impedances should one gold plate 12.5-µm diameter nichrome wire tetrodes for targeting different brain areas?

The ideal impedance of any electrode aimed at recording low-amplitude neural signals (barred suction glass-pipette electrodes for patch clamping) is simply: as low as possible.

In case of tetrodes, i.e., electrodes consisting of a bundle of four microwires that can record from multiple neurons simultaneously in the brain of freely moving animal, they are usually electroplated to reduce their impedance from 2-3 MΩ to 200-500 kΩ (measured at 1 kHz). Low impedances increase the signal-to-noise ratio and allow for the recording of small-amplitude signals. Tetrodes with lower impedances could theoretically further improve SNR, but this is technically not possible with the standard electroplating methods, per an article from 2009 (Ferguson et al., 2009).

A straightforward way of reducing impedance is to increase the surface of the electrode. Increasing the absolute size may very well be detrimental to the purpose of collecting single unit recordings, as larger electrodes inherently pick up the activity more neurons. A more feasible way is to increase the surface by means of altering the microstructure of the electrode, i.e., increase its roughness (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. smooth (A) and rough electrode surface (B). source: Jeff-Du et al (2015)

A method where tetrodes were plated with a gold solution with added polyethylene glycol (PEG) or multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) solutions was reported to to lower the impedance further to 30-70 kΩ. MWCNTs and PEG reportedly act as inhibitors in the electroplating process and create a larger surface area, thereby lowering the impedance on the tetrode tips (Ferguson et al., 2009).

References
- Ferguson et al., Sens Actuators A Phys (2009); 156(2): 388–93
- Jeff Du et al., J Mater Chem C (2015); 3: 6515-24


Rated model of driving-related processes and objects

A 2006 study by Horrey, Wickens and Consalus implemented a computational SEEV (Salience, Effort, Effort, Value) model for driving behavior that predicted scanning behavior, which I surmise is what was meant. The authors conclude:

  The most important practical implication of the current results is
  that a simple expected value version of the SEEV model provides
  a plausible and effective predictive model of scanning in driving.

This seems to fit your request.

References

Horrey, W. J., Wickens, C. D., & Consalus, K. P. (2006). Modeling drivers' visual attention allocation while interacting with in-vehicle technologies. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 12(2), 67.


Is hypnotic susceptibility associated with responsiveness to rapid vs. standard hypnosis induction?

I am studying hypnotherapy myself and from what I am led to believe, there is no "spectrum of how able people are to be hypnotised".  Everyone who wants to be hypnotised can be.  How quickly they are hypnotised depends on the experience of the hypnotherapist and their methods used.

Take a look at Elman and Ericksonian Inductions in Google.  There are good videos on YouTube showing you the different methods.  Milton H. Erickson developed a permissive style of induction which is considered slower than Dave Elman's authoritarian style.  The thing you would need to consider is what style is suited to your client.  You would need to develop your own induction routine based on these 2 styles and you may then have to tailor the induction to their modality (Kinaesthetic, Visual, Auditory, Olfactory, or Gustatory).

Hope this helps


What is the lifetime of the synapse in the mature brain?

In adult mouse cortex, synaptic spines can last anywhere from days to months.

I'm not sure that any such work has been done on human Broca's area, but keep in mind that many synapses are experience dependent.  One study found that fear conditioning and fear extinction lead, respectively, to synapse formation and elimination.  So the lifetime of a synapse could depend largely on environmental conditions.


Why is it easier to see black text on a white background?

The short answer is that it is not necessarily easier to read black on white. Contrast is more important in lightness and colour, it just so happens that black and white is the highest contrast. So its no accident that most books are in black and white. There is a plethora of research on perceptual processing which is easily found on google scholar if you which to investigate this further.

Colour and Reading
In 1984 a study was conducted comparing 24 colour combinations of text and back ground, this was of course on an older monitor, but there wasn't any significant difference between individuals in there ability to detect text targets relative to colour different colour combinations. This included black and white. However research with colour contrast, has found that variations in contrast of colour rather than colour itself influence reading speeds, and errors in reading. Greater colour contrast between text and back ground is reported to enhance speed of reading and reducing errors. In addition improving speed of reading, high colour contrast has been found enhance retention of text based information when compared to lower colour contrasts.

fig 1. low colour contrast

fig 2. high colour contrast

In addition to colour, contrast in luminescence (lightness) between text and background also influences readability. According to Knoblach et al (2001) high contrasts in luminescence between background and text enhances reading speed to a greater degree than colour contrast, although colour contrast keeps reading speed high when luminescence is low. In other words greater differences in the lightness and the colour of text and background is optimum for reading ability. Industrial researchers have taken this further with a 2009 study by Hewlett Packard (HP) specifically stating that 30 units CIE lightness contrast is optimum for reading rates and reduced error, this is not the highest contrast, although still high. However high colour contract and luminescence contrast are not additive, as they are coded in the same way in the visual system. Essentially so as long one of the contrasts is high reading speed and errors should low, meaning you don't need to use back on white.

What I haven't discussed here the two systems which process light: the magnocellular and parvocellular systems. So yes we are hardwired to process colour differently from grayscale.

fig 3. Diagram of Visual system

note. Mi = Magnocelluar (grayscale, low resolution, movement) Pi = Parvocelluar (colour and high resolution)

The magnocellular visual pathway which is dominate for processing text, and uses gray scale (black to white). However dyslexics, like myself, appear to have a preference and adaption toward utilising the parvocellular visual pathway (colour processing). This is likely due to differences in visual processing using the magnocellular system between controls and dyslexics, which suggests that dyslexics do not process greyscale as well as non-dyslexics. However this isn't to say that you need to be dyslexic to prefer processing with the colour system than grayscale. THIS SECTION IS SPECULATION BASED ON NEURAL MECHANICS There is also the possibility that prolonged activation of the magnocelluar system, by reading, may fatigue the neurons or/and photoreceptors, consequently reducing ease of reading. Hence why e-readers tend to use grey backgrounds.

Summary

There is more stuff to add in about positive and negative contrasts, for instance there is little difference in reading ability for black on white in comparison to vice versa. Overall, however, there is little difference in reading performance so long as colour and luminescence contrasts are high, meaning that black on white (highest contrast in both) is not necessarily better. Some individuals have a preference for using colour over grey scale, which while activating different visual pathways is still coded similarly for contrast in the brain. The preference against black on white may be due to the fatiguing nature of over activation of neurons in the visual pathways, or other factors such as dyslexia.


Which animals are thought to possess some degree of a theory of mind?

Well, the areas most responsible for social cognition (or theory of mind) appear to be the right and left temporoparietal junctions, the right anterior superior temporal sulcus, the posterior cingulate, and the medial prefrontal cortex. [1][2] Of those, the right TPJ is perhaps the most important; for example, the response in the rTPJ shows a peak just at the time when someone’s thoughts are described. [3]

Given the perceived importance of the temporal lobe to theory of mind, it is probably a safe bet that you wouldn't find many non-mammals that experience ToM the way a human does.

Furthermore, among the many hypothesized 'signs' of ToM possession is the ability to recognize oneself in the mirror. This ability implies a level of self-awareness and identity awareness in the individual, and it appears that primates (chimpanzees and orangutans) are the only non-human animals that have successfully recognized themselves in the mirror. [4] Monkeys are also the only other animals to have confirmed rudimentary mirror neurons, which are hypothesized to play an important role in empathy and social cognition. However, there are pieces of evidence that suggest that mirror neuron networks may possibly exist in elephants, dogs, dolphins, and whales.

That being said, the evidence isn't wholly clear on this one, and is further augmented by the fact that we don't necessarily have a working cognitive model for ToM (outside of our verbal conceptual models, which are not exactly scientifically rigorous). Some researchers even believe that ToM is a uniquely human experience. However, until we can lock down what exactly it is we are looking for, this remains a tricky question to make any sort of scientifically rigorous assertion.

Sources used:

[1] Dodell-Feder, D., Koster-Hale, J., Bedny, M., Saxe, R. (2010). fMRI item analysis in a theory of mind task. NeuroImage.

[2] Deen, B., Koldewyn, K., Kanwisher, N., Saxe, R., (2015) Functional Organization of Social Perception and Cognition in the Superior Temporal Sulcus. Cerebral Cortex

[3] Young, L., Cushman, R., Hauser, M., & Saxe, R. (2007). The neural basis of the interaction between theory of mind and moral judgment. PNAS, 104(20), 8235-8240

[4] G.G. Gallup (1982). Self-awareness and the emergence of mind in primates.
Am. J. Primatol., pp. 237–248


By definition, current-based synapses are biologically implausible.  After all, biological synapses are conductance-based [1].  It is possible that current based synapses are sufficient to answer the question you are asking.  It is also possible that they are not.  Generally, biological plausibility is not a matter of the parameter values you are using but rather a matter of whether the question you are asking has biological relevance. After all, unless you have a morphologically accurate simulation including every single receptor type, etc. your model is not biologically realistic.

The question you are asking doesn't have a good answer because you are asking a biologically non-sensical question:  what is the value of current based synapse magnitudes?
The only way one could possibly answer that question is if one knew why that question needs an answer.  Maybe you don't even need a reasonable value for the question you are trying to answer because the phenomenon is robust.  Maybe you need the answer to the fifth decimal place because your model is very sensitive to that value.

Point is, biological realism is incredibly context-specific.

[1] Although I have heard a strange argument that the high resistance at the spine neck means that synapses are practically current sources.  I don't know anyone that relies on that.


Has there been any studies of pathological "nomad-ness"?

Although not a clinical diagnosis for mental disorder, the term Residential Instability brings up many articles discussing psychological problems associated with it in Google and Google Scholar.

Cotton, B. P. & Schwartz-Barcott, D. (2016). Residential Instability Among Low-Income Families: A Concept Analysis. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing 30(2): 257-261. doi: 10.1016/j.apnu.2015.11.006 pmid: 26992880
Residential instability is relatively common among low-income families and is associated with a host of negative outcomes, especially for children and adolescents. Psychiatric nurses, especially those in the advanced practice role, observe the consequences of residential instability within the clinical setting. Yet, to-date, the concept is somewhat vague and its essential meaning and definition remain unclear.


There is an entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica on Melatonin which gives a run-down on how melatonin is produced and it's use within sleep, regulating reproductive hormones, and helping the immune system.

  In humans, melatonin plays an important role in the regulation of sleep cycles (i.e., circadian rhythm). Its production is influenced by the detection of light and dark by the retina of the eye. For example, the production of melatonin is inhibited when the retina detects light and is stimulated in the absence of light. Special photoreceptor cells in the retina send signals about light status to the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) in the hypothalamus of the brain. These signals are then transmitted to the pineal gland. Melatonin generation by the pineal gland, which peaks during the nighttime hours, induces physiological changes that promote sleep, such as decreased body temperature and respiration rate. During the day, melatonin levels are low because large amounts of light are detected by the retina. Light inhibition of melatonin production is central to stimulating wakefulness in the morning and to maintaining alertness throughout the day.

Therefore, to correct points 1-3 in your question...

Melatonin is produced when the retinas do not pick up any light.
Melatonin accumulates in the body during sleep and is reduced when the retinas pick up light.
Melatonin regulates sleep cycles by inducing physiological changes that promote sleep, such as decreased body temperature and respiration rate.

Because melatonin regulates sleep cycles, melatonin has a big role to play in mental wellbeing.  Deregulation or misregulation of circadian rhythms can cause mood spectrum disorders, including bipolar disorder (BD), major depressive disorder (MDD), and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). (De Berardis, et al. 2015)

Reference

De Berardis, D., Orsolini, L., Serroni, N., Girinelli, G., Iasevoli, F., Tomasetti, C., Mazza, M., Valchera, A., Fornaro, M., Perna, G., Piersanti, M., Di Nicola, M., Cavuto, M., Martinotti, G. & Di Giannantonio, M., 2015. The role of melatonin in mood disorders. ChronoPhysiology and Therapy, 5, pp. 65-75DOI: 10.2147/CPT.S41761


What's the prevalence of interpersonal psychotherapy and cognitive behavior in the treatment of depression?

The mental health foundation (MHF) UK do some good work here, collecting data about prevalence of mental health problems and engagement with therapy. I have linked to a 2015 report which summarises a plethora of research on the depression, including MDD. You can follow the references to find information about the prevalence of MDD and engagement in therapy. For example, the paper references a 2006 meta-analysis of the prevalence of depression between 1965-1996 (USA statistics)..."overall prevalence estimates were: under 13, 2.8% (standard error (SE) .5%); 13–18 5.6% (SE .3%); 13–18 girls: 5.9% (SE .3%); 13–18 boys: 4.6% (SE .3%)" (Costello et al., 2006). A UK government report basically puts this prevalence at similar levels to the US. Going back to the USA, a 2014 report puts the incidence of depressive episode experiences at 11% of the US adolescent population. All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore!

Therapy engagement and age is a bit more difficult to obtain, especially for interpersonal therapy in younger age groups. In the UK 38% of all therapy in primary healthcare (basically non-hospitalised patients) was CBT in 2013/14. In the annual NHS report for Improving Access to Psychological Therapies 2014/15(IAPT) puts this at 34% (1.2 million) by contrast interpersonal therapy was only around was just over 1% (40,000) of appointments. Under 18s age groups are not given, but it is reasonable to assume given the kind of therapy available for adults in the UK the rates would be similar for children, particularly because CBT training is more readily therapy. If your in the US it may be important to consider that therapy engagement maybe lower in younger age groups.

TANGENT
Worryingly and personally the most horrible statistic I have read all week is that depression in children is a risk factor to mortality comparable to smoking. However meta analysis have reported that CBT is 51-87% effective in treating depression. A Canadian report puts psychotherapy (CBT and IPT included) as .66 (cohen's D) more effective than no treatment at all in children with depression. The report does not compare success rates of either therapeutic technique. However a study has been planned to compare therapeutic treatments in children and adolescence, it has not been published yet. Rates of recovery in adults (which is often lower than children) may be an indicator, with IAPT reporting 58.4% recovery with CBT and 53.9% with IPT (remember the small sample size for IPT in IAPT). Within anxiety research cognitive therapy is found to be far more effective than IPT. One study appears to suggest that CBT is also more affective with depression than IPT, although a slightly older study found no significant difference, which looking at the IAPT data would seem to be more likely.

I hope that is helpful, I would also recommend looking at the USA based Nation Institute of Mental Health website, they have a lot of information and links to research.


Research on aversion to cognitive effort?

Yes, if I understood your question correctly, there is a great deal of research in Social Psychology about humans being "cognitive misers". In layman's terms, it means that humans find mental effort aversive and hence tend to rely on heuristics, categories or mental shortcuts while making judgements or while making decisions.

The theory comes within the domain of Social Cognition, and it was first introduced by social psychologists Susan Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor. It challenges the assumption in traditional economics that holds consumers as rational decision makers, and as a consequence this theory has been influential in behavioral economics. Kahneman and Tversky's work on documenting human biases can be understood simply as an extension of human's inherent limitations in cognitive processing.

This theory is very useful in political science, where voter decisions are studied. Furthermore, it also explains social phenomenon such as stereotyping.

Sources:

Fiske, S.T., & Taylor, S.E. (1991). Social Cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0070211914.

Tversky, A.; Kahneman, D. (1974). "Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases". Science 185 (4157): 1124–1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124. PMID 17835457.

Macrae, C. N., Milne, A. B., & Bodenhausen, G. V. (1994). Stereotypes as energy-saving devices: A peek inside the cognitive toolbox. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 37–47. doi:10.1037/0022-
3514.66.1.37


How useful are neural circuits in psychology?

Contrary to one of the other answers, I will have to respectfully disagree. Neural circuity is both the pinnacle and future of cognitive neuroscience. We already know the large areas of the brain are associated with specific cognitive processes, for example the NAc shell is associated with desire to seek out motivational objects such as food, but this could just as easily facilitate gaming, dancing or sex. The problem comes with investigating these behaviours in humans. We can easily test circuits on animals, but humans are far more difficult as we can only use scanning equipment like EEG and fMRI. While scanning equipment has improved the spatial or temporal resolution makes studying these circuits in humans difficult. However animal research supplements this and can show us circuits that are involved in particular cognitions, while the patterns of neural firing tell indicate particular activity. For instance we know the visual pathways in great detail how light engages neural activity in the retina, and how this information is transmitted to the occipital cortex to create a representation spread across the neural activity of the occipital cortex. In fact we understand this so well now that cognitive neuroscientists can take an EEG recording of activity while you sleep and interpret the neural activity into an image under specific circumstances. This fascinating method is called neural decoding, and it was developed out from our understanding of neural patterns of activity and mapping of neural networks developed over decades. Of course the same neural activity can be used to map networks and model neural activity in computational models which mimic cognitive processes.

Of course this is easier for vision, hearing and somatic perception as these are straightforward cognitive processes which are generating virtual representations of the world we experience. What is far more difficult to assess are the memories and experiences that are recalled and how these influence decision making relative to the environment you find yourself in. However this is all being investigated, research starts with large neural structures like the NAc shell and then moves down to more specific areas followed by the circuits connecting it to other parts of the brain relative to particular cognitions. An example may help, motivation like hunger drives you to eat this is used by both information coming from your environment and internal changes. For instance once food has been consumed our brains assess the value of the food, did we like it? was the food more or less pleasurable than last time? did it make us happy? This activates the pACC, PAG, OCC, lOFC, rACC. The areas mentioned largely deal with attention, affective assessment (feelings), and pleasure. The activation of these areas helps an individual to make future decisions about consuming food. In rats the order of area activation is well understood, in humans there is still work to be done. But overall the fundamental mechanisms are the same, and can be modelled computationally. Understanding how the fundamental structures and there activity in context for both people and animals is essential in understanding disorders ranging from schizophrenia to obesity, and helps other researchers to develop assessments and interventions, such as drugs or government legislation. Or for companies to taylor their products to their consumers needs. Crucially, to the question at least, this information can be used to predict behaviour, in fact that basically the role of any computational model.

Fundamentally our hard wiring is relatively similar, it is this that we investigate, and it is these hard wired mechanisms that have the greatest impact on our behaviour and cognition.  Cognitive scientists use the activation patterns of neutrons as a means of mapping these cognitive processes in neural circuitry. Finally I will say that overall the brain isn't really so complicated, its quiet simple really if you consider it from an evolutionary perspective. We and all other animals have developed by means of natural selection to survive long enough to pass on our genes, both our behaviour and neural development demonstrate this. The extra complications in behaviour are merely complexities that enhance gene survival, until they are lost or supersede within the same selection process.


What are the cognitive effects of increasing testosterone levels in men?

I've discussed a lot of this recently on my answer to this question: Are there recent theories on physiognomy? In summary, yes.

Can't remember which of the tons I referenced mentioned well-being, but if you run a search function (Ctrl F, or ⌘F if you don't like good computers) on the text of the freely available articles I provided hyperlinks for, I guarantee you'll find it, and it was a positive relationship with testosterone.
Testosterone ($T$) might affect concentration, but I'd bet it's not a beneficial effect if so, or at least that it's moderated strongly by context. $T$ relates to spatial intelligence, but also to aggression, which may reflect some effect on impulsivity.
$T$ affects motivation, but again, I wouldn't call it a benefit, as the specific motives it affects probably aren't optimally healthy to say the least, and every action has its opportunity cost. Specifically, $T$ increases dominance and competitiveness in men, which is probably to say that it increases the need for power. It also increases sensation seeking and risk tolerance / decreases risk aversion, which is probably to say that it affects the behavioral activation and inhibition systems. Some evidence suggests testosterone interacts with competitive experiences differently for women.
For logical/math/engineering problems, $T$ is probably more unequivocally beneficial, because it relates to spatial intelligence.

$T$ is probably most studied in men; I'm not sure effects are similar for women in general. Estradiol in women may act more like testosterone in men in some ways.  I can copy content from my other answer here if desired, or expand on particular points if there is further interest. Please comment if so; I would also welcome collaborative edits.


Why do suicide has been kept in natural selection?

This assumes that tendency to suicide is hereditary. It seems that currently, the consensus is that suicide risk can be increased by environmental factors as well as by family history, so it may only be partially encoded in our genes.

For that part of the 'suicide genes' that does survive the natural selection, some of the possible explanations could be that people who commit suicide may have already had children, so their genes have been passed on to the next generation.

Another explanation could be, linked to what Yuval Noah Harari mentioned in "Sapiens". Hunter-gatherers were constantly on the move and it was not uncommon for them to kill or leave behind the elderly or individuals who would otherwise be a burden or slow down the tribe. It became a social norm, potentially to the point where the sick individuals would be ready to commit suicide themselves. The tribes which practised this were able to hunt and gather more, increasing their chances of survival.

All this is, however, a speculation, it is very hard to prove the evolutionary causes of suicides under scientific rigour, especially when running a controlled study is almost impossible. Even if we were able to run a controlled study, we'd most likely find that there is a large number of factors that allowed suicide genes to prevail.


Why do some people believe that life is a zero-sum game and that if you harm someone, you will benefit?

There is definitely more than one aspect to this question. One of them is if there is a certain type of person that views life as a zero-sum game. What I looked into is if there is a certain type of person that actually gains something from hurting others.
There seems to be: The everyday sadist.
Buckels, Jones and Paulhus (2013) mean that there is a sadist personality type that is expressed in everyday life. (See: http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/11/2201 and http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/everyday-sadists-take-pleasure-in-others-pain.html for an article summing up the scientific article).
These researchers have been looking into traits that they call the "Dark Triad". "When aggression was easy, sadism and Dark Triad measures predicted unprovoked aggression. However, only sadists were willing to work for the opportunity to hurt an innocent person."
People strong in this trait would probably feel affirmed by a world view that enables them to fund pleasure with a rationale behind it.
This answer is inadequate as a complete response to your question.
Something I'd like to look into further is the Just World hypothesis, where the belief that the world should mete our justice leads us to act in a certain way.


Does mental rigidity cause psychological problems?

I've read that a tendency to "jump to conclusions" has an impact on certain psychological afflictions, such as having delusions.  As you may know, the definition of a delusion is as follows (this is just from Google dictionary):

  an idiosyncratic belief or impression that is firmly maintained despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality or rational argument, typically a symptom of mental disorder.

I am assuming that that sort of uncritical thinking is at least part of what you meant by "mental rigidity."


What is the meaning of “the inner leaflet of their lipid bilayer corresponds to the outer leaflet of the plasmalemma.”

I don't have Kandel in front of me but I am pretty sure I know what your book is trying to say. The specific language they've chosen for this section is quite odd and I believe old-fashioned, though, which might be leading to your confusion.

Transferring membrane-bound material from intracellular organelles to the surface of a cell involves or vice-versa involves fusing vesicles with the plasma membrane or budding vesicles from the plasma membrane. The process is more or less the same, just in reverse. See the diagram below:

Adapted from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golgi_apparatus#/media/File:0314_Golgi_Apparatus.jpg
Notice how the "protein" has its purple plus-shaped domain on the outside of the cellular membrane? If it were to be secreted in a vesicle (as pictured here) or taken up by endocytosis (just imagine the arrows pointing the other way), fusing or pinching the membrane would mean that this "outside" part is actually on the inside of the secretory vesicle, Golgi apparatus, any lysosome/endosome, etc. What stays constant is the part facing the cytosol.
Therefore, you can say that the "inside" of any of these compartments "looks like" the outside of the cell, whereas the outside of these compartments (facing the cytosol) looks like the inside of the cell membrane (also facing the cytosol).
For another intuitive way of thinking about this, imagine you have an inflated balloon. You press a marble into the side of the balloon and pinch inside so now the marble is entirely inside this little bubble inside the whole balloon. It's still covered by "outside balloon", but yet it is inside this little compartment you've created.
For more general thoughts on "topology" (what is referred to by "topologically") see the general mathematical concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topology


How can we be formed by our childhood's environment if we don't remember much of it?

It all comes down to the type of memory.

Infantile amnesia is largely associated with the loss of episodic memory, a type of explicit memory that can be consciously recalled (eg, remembering a past event).  Implicit memory, such as learned skills (eg, remembering how to tie your shoes), the learned part of personality, and priming associations, are largely unaffected.

Though the reasons for infantile amnesia are not well understood, it has some similarity to retrograde amnesia, that also affects mostly episodic memory, but not implicit memory (so again, you lose memories of past events, but not your personality).  The hippocampus, an area of the brain associated with memory consolidation, is an important factor in both types of amnesia.

PS: The first article you link to is about genetics, or specifically epigenetics, that is to do with gene expression.  This is a completely different factor that is also immune to amnesia since it is not related to memory, and so far it is only implicated in a very few traits.


Studies of how people learn to solve puzzles

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for, but the big umbrella term in the literature for puzzles like the Tower of Hanoi is problem solving.

A Google Scholar search for "tower of hanoi" and "problem solving" generates ~5000 hits. Another related puzzle is the Tower of London, and that Scholar search generates an additional ~5000.


Can the brain work better in stressful conditions?

A little stress is good, as it leads to greater psychological arousal, but lots of stress will decrease performance. This is known as the Yerkes–Dodson law, from the famous experiment by Yerkes and Dodson (1908) which related strength of motivational electric shocks to performance; performance increased up to a point and then plummeted.

One more comment about something you said:

  For example; if you know that you are about to die because your house is on fire, the brain will perceive everything more quickly than normal.

People do report subjective time dilation for scary events but quantitative attempts have found no evidence for such, see Stetson et. al. (2007).

References

Stetson, Chess, Matthew P. Fiesta, and David M. Eagleman. "Does time really slow down during a frightening event?." PLoS One 2.12 (2007): e1295.

Yerkes RM, Dodson JD (1908). "The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation". Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology 18: 459–482.


Is there an explanation for concepts or situations that are repeated within a short amount of time?

Short answer
The repeated encounter of a word or object after just having been introduced to it is linked to the frequency illusion, also called the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

Background
It may be an example of the frequency illusion:

  The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly afterward

It's also referred to as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, colloquially described as

  [T]he phenomenon where one stumbles upon some obscure piece of information—often an unfamiliar word or name—and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly.

It's also related to things like buying a brand new car that was just newly released and suddenly it pops up all around the neighborhood.

The Frequency Illusion is thought to be the result of two psychological processes:  selective attention (noticing things that are salient to us, disregarding the rest) (Yantis, 2008), and confirmation bias (looking for evidence that supports a hypothesis and disregarding counterevidence). source: Stanford University

Reference
- Yantis, Curr Dir Psychol Sci (2008); 17(2): 86–90


What is the relationship between psychological entitlement and locus of control or other personal characteristics?

Psychological entitlement (the belief that one should get preferential treatment) is positively related to an external locus of control (the belief that personal outcomes are due to chance or powerful others).

For example, Anderson et al. (2013), report that the Personal Entitlement Scale (Campbell et al., 2004) is correlated with r=.43 to more external answers on the Locus of Control Scale by Rotter (1954). Similarly, for entitlement beliefs in the academic realm, Kopp et al. report positive correlations of entitlement beliefs with the Locus of Control - Chance and Locus of Control - Powerful Others subscales of the Levenson (1973) scale.

The last part of the question (what are other correlates of entitlement?) is very broad. Campbell et al.'s (2004) scale is frequently cited in research on entitlement, this should be a good starting point into this research field.

References

Anderson, D., Halberstadt, J., & Aitken, R. (2013). Entitlement Attitudes Predict Students’ Poor Performance in Challenging Academic Conditions. International Journal of Higher Education, 2. doi:10.5430/ijhe.v2n2p151

Campbell, W. K., Bonacci, A. M., Shelton, J., Exline, J. J., & Bushman, B. J. (2004). Psychological Entitlement: Interpersonal Consequences and Validation of a Self-Report Measure. Journal of Personality Assessment, 83, 29–45. doi:10.1207/s15327752jpa8301_04

Kopp, J. P., Zinn, T. E., Finney, S. J., & Jurich, D. P. (2011). The Development and Evaluation of the Academic Entitlement Questionnaire. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 44, 105–129. doi:10.1177/0748175611400292

Levenson, H. (1973). Multidimensional locus of control in psychiatric patients. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 41, 397–404

Rotter, J. B. (1954). Social learning and clinical psychology. New York, NY: Prentice Hall. doi:10.1037/10788-000


Why are autistic people more likely to be savants than nonautistic people?

Disclaimer, this is less of an answer and more of a critique of the demographics behind Savant Syndrome.

Currently there are very few issues with finding a decent answer to this question: This 10% of autistics being savants seems tenuous, there is no clear cut unambiguous research from current and respected journals analysing the prevalence of savant syndrome. The last paper to back these claims was in 1988, and that is the only one reporting these numbers. This 1988 paper seems to be to source of the statistics reported in the question and on websites such as the autism institute. However there have been no repetitions of this reported prevalence. Savant syndrome is a popular idea that people with learning disability can be brilliant too, and they can, there are real cases of Savant Syndrome. A few journal articles describe the workings of Savant Syndrome, such as the brain function and abilities. However these are not common, much like Savant Syndrome, if Savant Syndrome was as common as reported by the 1988 paper we would see savants amongst autistics as we do left handers across Europeans. From personal experience I would say we do not, I spent many years working with people who have ASD, I meet any savants, even though I would have liked too. Of course it is entirely possible that I could I just happened to be statistically unlucky. The lack of further prevalence data is suggests that these results haven't been replicated, and may therefore be misleading.

So whats causing this statistic? In my opinion its likely to be two factors. First the over diagnosis of autism, many children are diagnosed with Asperger’s who are not later in life. Secondly intelligent children are often diagnosed as autistic or with mood disorders, intelligent people may think differently to the general population and some of their tendencies may seem 'autistic', like there fascination with particular subjects/objects, such behaviours might contribute to a ASD diagnosis in children.

There is no prevalence data for savants in 'normal' populations, but you could say anyone who is talented and passionate about a particular skill or subject is a savant, from footballers to scientists, many 'normal' people are exceptional. Personally, I work in an academic departments, and I meet people that would fit the definition for the abilities of a savant on a daily basis, but they don't have a disorder. You probably do as well, yet because they don't have a disability you wouldn't use the same term savant, and technically you shouldn't.

Conclusion: More data needed! Their clearly isn't enough support to make the claim that 10% of autistics are savants, and additionally there seems to be no real comparison with 'normal' functioning individuals. And the definition of savant is also dubious, can normal people be savants?


You are making two mistakes, one in relation to the identification of the factors or what they represent (and factor analyzes have to be studied a lot by correlations with the tasks that each factor represents). And two, the relationships between the factors.

You do not take into account that each factor would represent very different abilities or processes (for example, the closing speed and the sequential reasoning is very different), the factors can be independent of this way, there does not have to be a linear relationship and in case if correlation exists, it will be correlation for a specific task, which leads me to indicate that it is proposing wrong relationships about completely different abilities or processes. This should clarify and is the model to start studying the factorial analysis:

x1 = a1.F1 + a2.F2 ... + b1.S1 + c1.E1

x2=...

x3=...

x1 (score on the task of a specific person) = a1 (factorial weight of common factor). F1 (common factor) + a2.F2 .... + b1 .S (specific factor) + c (factorial weight of the error factor) + E1 (error)

(In the majority of analyzes, an error for a specific factor is not studied)


Can synesthesia make a person feel "new" color (or any other experience)?

The answer may be yes. You can find this quote “V. S. Ramachandran and E. M. Hubbard (in their 2001 PRSL paper) described a partially colorblind man with letter-color synesthesia who said that when synesthetically stimulated, he saw colors he had never seen with his eyes—he called these “Martian colors.” Ramachandran and Hubbard subsequently found that “the Martian color effect” might occur in noncolorblind synesthetes as well.” from several websites, such as this site and this site.

But I can’t find the original paper of V. S. Ramachandran and E. M. Hubbard. So, it’s impossible to verify the finding. Also, I can’t find any other reports of such a patient in the literature or any report of non-colorblind synesthetes who experienced “the Martian color effect” either. So, personally, I think this finding and the speculation that “the Martian color effect” might occur in non-colorblind synesthetes as well needs more confirmation.

Anyway, is there evidence that a person who is color-blind since birth can experience a color that he/she has never experienced before? Will his/her cortical color perception areas, which have never generated the missing color perception, able to generate it when given appropriate stimuli, such as from the eyes after gene therapy that restores the missing cone function in the retina? The answer from animal experiments is yes (for example see Ref1 and Ref2). So, potentially, a colorblind brain can still generate a color percept that it has never generated before, when given appropriate stimuli. Theoretically, then, synesthesia may be able to make a person feel “new” color he/she has never felt before if it can deliver appropriate stimuli to the color perception areas.


How is saccadic movement managed in the brain?

The superior colliculus can be regarded as the center of saccadic eye movement. It contains a topographically organized representation of the visual space in its upper layers, and saccade-related activity in its deeper layers (Van Gisbergen et al., 1987).
Ablation of the superior colliculus unilaterally eliminates saccades contralateral to the lesion, and hence bilateral ablation will likely eliminate all saccades (Schiller et al., 1987). However, the superior colliculi do not mediate conscious vision, but mediate eye movements. Blindness results after ablation of the primary visual cortex, and obviously after removal of the retinae, or the optic nerves. Also note that "not being able to look around" is not dependent only on saccadic eye movement, because head-scanning is still possible.
A number of conditions may affect saccades. For example, stroke in the brain stem affecting the superior colliculi or cranial nerves may slow saccades and lesions in the brain stem may abolish them completely (Ramat et al., 2007).

References
- Ramat et al., Brain (2007; 130: 10–35
- Schiller et al., J Neurophysiol (1987); 57(4): 1033-49
- Van Gisbergen et al., Neurosci (1987),  21(2): 541-55


How image orientation influences perception

No life can emerge in chaos - for life to emerge the environment has to be orderly. Organisms have to adapt to their environment, meaning optimise (or satisfice) output in light of input. In a patternless environment, there is no chance doing so.

Our brain evolved in light of this - we constantly learn and update what the "norm" is - let it be there's light if it's day or the hair colour of your partner. Equally, the brain constantly compares stimuli to the norm - if it's all good, no action needed, but a deviation from the norm shall raise an alarm bell.

Thus, we are 'programmed' to ignore what's normal, and be alert to the abnormal. Perhaps the most famous example of it is the sound of mechanical clock, which is simply not perceived once we spend enough time in the room it is in.

In your specific case, seeing the same image for a prolong time results in it becoming a norm in our brain, resulting in reduced brain activity.


Do widespread brain toxins explain violence rates?

There is some truth to this. I don't have the time to go into details but I've found an interesting link..

https://books.google.ch/books?hl=en&lr=&id=5lMP9ivOoxcC&oi=fnd&pg=PA11&dq=environmental+toxins+violence+rate&ots=SKB0rFeBnA&sig=w4g2Ne5JfwT0v36m5gFwPbqJCRw#v=onepage&q=environmental%20toxins%20violence%20rate&f=false


Where can I obtain a button box for reaction-time measurements under a Windows OS?

Short answer
You can try a Cedrus response pad. They are reasonably priced and my personal experiences with these boxes are good.

Background
Response latency (RT) measurements using standard USB input devices like a mouse or keyboard are possible, but USB devices limit accuracy. For example, the standard polling latency of any USB device is 8 msec. On top of that, the keys on a standard USB keyboard are serially polled, introducing additional latencies of up to 20 msec (Li et al., 2010). If you are measuring standard reaction times in the order of 150 - 200 ms, such a hardware delay may well be too much.

Response pads dedicated for RT measurements have internal hardware that take into account any such latencies and determine RTs typically with accuracies in the submillisecond range.

I have used the Cedrus RB-530 response box, which is one of the simpler models in the response box series the Cedrus Company offers. Admittedly, although I have used the Cedrus to register RTs, I have never actually analyzed these results in detail. However, as far as I can see, the RTs obtained made sense and the device seems reliable.

The good thing is that the Cedrus RB-530 response box is supported by a set of functions in the the Psychophysics Toolbox (PTB-3). The PTB documentation, as well as the PTB discussion forum (e.g., this thread) thrust forward by Mario Kleiner contain a wealth of tips, tricks and pitfalls in RT measurements. The PTB-3 Matlab extensions are specifically designed to cope with the hopelessly senseless and sluggish Windows-way of internal-process timing. Linux is by far the best OS for well-controlled timing operations, and also Mac outruns Windows substantially.

Note, however, that not all the reviews on the Cedrus RB-530 are unequivocally positive.

Reference
- Li et al., Behav Res Methods (2010); 42(1): 212-25


There's a huge amount of perspectives you could take in answering a question like this, but I would like to approach it from the perspective of dual process theories (see the Evans, 2008 Annual Review paper for an outline). I'm not going to reference this answer much beyond that, because almost all the information is adapted from this review, with some explanation.

There's any number of specific dual process theories, but they all state that cognition is divided between type 1 processes, which are fast, parallel, automatic, implicit, and generally don't vary between people, and type 2 processes, which are slow, serial, controlled, explicit, and crucially, rely on working memory.

The evolutionary side to this is type 1 processes are the specialized, domain specific evolved functions of our brain to deal with specific problems, like predicting the destination of moving objects, recognising faces, or figuring out how similar lions are to tigers. Type 2 processes (i.e. working memory), on the other hand, are domain general, in that they can be flexibly applied to any domain, rather than just the task they evolved to solve, but this flexibility comes at cost of limited capacity, increased mental effort, and so slower processing.

This limitation is referred to in the dual process literature as 'the singularity principle' (Evans, 2006) - system one, by processing in parallel, can deal with an incredible amount of information at the same time (and needs to, because it takes care of the basic functions that keep us alive from day to day), while the slower type 2 processes can only actively process one piece of information at a time (but can keep "7 plus or minus 2" "chunks" of information in mind if they don't have to be manipulated; Miller, 1956).

...By analogy, think of the difference between the old-fashioned telephone in your house, which was designed for only one function, and so performs it perfectly, with minimal resources, and a smartphone, which can theoretically perform any computational or communicative function, but occasionally disconnects your calls for no apparent reason.

Some References

Evans, J. S. B. (2008). Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 59, 255-278.

Evans, J. S. B. (2008). Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 59, 255-278.

Miller, G. A. (1956). The magical number seven, plus or minus two: some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychological review, 63(2), 81.


Is there any research showing success of teaching with smell?

I am a bit amazed, but there is, at least for scent as a memory retrieval cue:

Aggleton and Waskett (1999):

  This study determined the extent to which re-exposure to the unique combination of odours present in a museum (the Jorvik Viking Centre in York) aids the recall of a previous visit to the museum, which had typically taken place several years earlier. To test this, three groups of participants completed questionnaires about the contents of the museum, but in different conditions. One group completed the questionnaire in the presence of exactly the same distinctive odours as those present in the museum at the time of their original visit. Those in two other groups were given either a different (control) set of odours or no odours at all. After a brief delay, the same questionnaire was presented again to participants in all three groups. Those who had initially been given a novel (control) set of odours were now tested in the presence of the genuine Jorvik museum odours, while the group that had received the Jorvik odours were now tested with the control odours. The third group received no odours on either test. Only the novel odour-Jorvik odours condition led to a highly significant improvement in performance. This interaction showed that the museum odours could act as effective retrieval cues for this incidentally acquired, real-world episode.

Wow 1: The average time since the last museum visit was 6.7 years!
Wow 2: At the time of writing, the paper has been cited more than 120
times according to Google Scholar!
Wow 3: Vikings!

References

Aggleton, J. P., & Waskett, L. (1999). The ability of odours to serve as state-dependent cues for real-world memories: Can Viking smells aid the recall of Viking experiences? British Journal of Psychology, 90, 1–7.


Should I look at the data of an experiment before the dataset is complete?

Short answer
From an ethical standpoint, not including interim evaluations may be bad practice.

Background
I will start off with a more extreme case than in your question example, just for illustrative purposes, namely that of a clinical intervention study. If it appears that the treatment group (say, experimental medicine Y, instead of the standard of care treatment X) features substantially, if not significantly, more cases of serious adverse advents, or even deaths, that may (or may not) be related to treatment Y, the ethical best thing to do is put the study on hold until things are sorted out. This, to prevent any possibility of further physical harm caused by the experimental treatment. This happens quite regularly and should be followed by a report paper stating the results and a discussion on the best way to proceed this research, if applicable.

In a more experimental setting it may also be ethically best practice to evaluate preliminary data, as possible experimental design flaws, unexpected results (weird outcomes or artifacts in, say, left-handed people) or confounding factors may become apparent, and timely adjustments to the experimental protocol can be made. Why is this ethically correct? Because you may be subjecting people to a flawed experimental paradigm and wasting many hours of otherwise more productive time.

The case provided by the other answerer, where the experiment is stopped, while prior statistical power analysis was done, that is malpractice. Conversely, adding more subjects post hoc based on 'near-significance' is also questionable practice. But this is more related to what you do with the experimental interim data. In my opinion, they should be critically evaluated, but not so much on effect size, but rather on feasibility, correctness and validity - basically to sanity-check the study proceedings.


Is the ability to discern between living and non-living things learnt or innate?

Imagine you see a picture of a tiger: You instantly recognize it being a living thing, more specific: Something you call "tiger". You have seen tigers before (or at least heard of them and saw pictures or so). You have somekind of (vague) concept of what a tiger might be and this thing fits perfectly in it. And you know that a tiger is a living thing and you believe that what you see is a tiger: So you believe that the thing you see is a living thing called tiger.

Human beings are wired to innately discern living from non-living things. It does not need to be taught. There are no particular features, other than it is living and human beings are capable of perceiving this.
It would appear it has nothing to do with conditioning or experience (except for the sake of providing words of other similar things to provide a description).

As to why this is innate, requires further investigation.

There are two theorised models of memory which pertain to the recognition and distinction between living and non-living things, both involving semantic memory.

A category-specific  model and a modality-specific model.

What optical features do we use to distinguish “life” from “non-life”? perhaps is a little ambiguous, but we do process a lot of information and memory through our visual cortex.

Semantic memory is created through the vision, naming and functionality. Non-living things tend to be remembered semantically for their function. Whilst living things are processed more through vision and the names attached, and learned semantically.

When there is damage to the visual part of semantic memory, the ability to  name living things is substantially damaged, whilst the ability to name non-living things, is  affected on a much smaller curve. Whilst damage to the functional part of semantic memory, has no effect on the ability to recall names, when being shown images of living things, but does impair the ability to name non-living things (though not as severely as the damage to the visual semantic memory and name recall for living things).
It's not the ability to discern living and non-living things that is affected, but identifying the name them.

Given this, it would seem, our brains are wired to automatically perceive and discern the difference between living and non-living things. So, even when shown a picture of a living creature, never be seen before, it is still instantly recognizable as a living creature. Just as the a person first recognizes each living creature they encounter in their lives, either in real life of through images.

There is a first time to see a tiger or a squid and the human being innately distinguishes this as a living thing. Just as they would the first time they see an image of a Nasobēm. Even mould, moss, fungus can be perceived as living (an eclectic example of unusual contenders).

Conversely, the first time an individual sees a rock, or a rocket, they can distinguish this as a non-living thing. Just as the first time someone sees an image of a flying cars. It does not have to exist to be distinguishable from living/non-living.

  ... the most straightforward interpretation of the double dissociation between knowledge of living and nonliving things is that these two bodies of knowledge are represented by two separate category specific components of the functional    architecture  of  semantic memory.  (1)

image courtesy of Neural Network Models and Cognitive Neuropsychology (1)

  For example, our knowledge of an animal  such as a  leopard, by which we distinguish it from other similar creatures, is predominantly visual. In contrast, our knowledge of a desk, by which we distinguish it from other furniture, is predominantly functional (ie, what it is used for). Thus, the distinctions between impaired  and  preserved   knowledge in the cases reviewed earlier may not be "living/ nonliving" distinctions   per se,  but   "sensory/ functional"  distinctions ...  (1)

image courtesy of Neural Network Models and Cognitive Neuropsychology (1)

This being said, convoluted or abstract art work, could, possibly, be an area of crossover depending upon the individual's cognitive processes and so interpretation of lines and movement and what may appear out of a mess, as threatening. This is totally another topic altogether and my own hypothesis.

References:

(1) Neural Network Models and Cognitive Neuropsychology
by MARTHA J. FARAH , PhD, and JAMES L. McCLELLAND, PhD PDF


Have any drugs been shown to increase the neuroplasticity of adult brains?

I read recently in the book "meet your happy chemicals" that the hormones of puberty are neurochemicals that cause your neurons to connect and myelinate more easily.

I will presume that you're referring to brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which is involved in neurogenesis and neuroplasticity.

If this is true have any studies been done to see if injecting those same hormones into the body of an adult enables a similar rate of accelerated learning?

You may want to look into Cerebrolysin which is an injectable preparation of fractionate porcine brain. Essentially they take pig brains, spin them in a centrifuge and extract the heavy fraction that contains the neuropepties, including BDNF.
Enclosed is some of the research. There is evidence that Cerebrolysin facilitates neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, but to my knowledge, does not promote learning or cognitive performance in healthy individuals.
Properties of Cerebrolysin
Here's a brief summary Cerebrolysin's effects on the brain:

Cerebrolysin (Cbl) is the only drug available for clinical use containing active fragments of important neurotrophic factors. The active fragments are small neuropeptides which cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) and mimic the action of endogenous neurotrophic factors such as BDNF, GDNF, CNTF and NGF and others. The neurotrophic action of the Cbl helps in the survival of neurons and prevents the cell death. In addition, several reports suggest that Cbl induces neuroprotection when there is a damage of the brain and also induce neurogenesis. These two actions (neuroprotection and neurogenesis) maintain... In addition, recent reports suggest that Cbl increases synaptic communication by increasing dendritic arborization as well as the number of dendritic spines in cortical regions such as PFC and hippocampus.

Flores, G., & Atzori, M. (2014). The potential of cerebrolysin in the treatment of schizophrenia. Pharmacology & Pharmacy, 5, 691–704. https://doi.org/10.4236/pp.2014.57079
Pharmacotherapy in Alzheimer's disease
Here's one on Alzheimer's disease:

Cerebrolysin is a neuropeptide preparation mimicking the action of
endogenous neurotrophic factors. Positive effects of Cerebrolysin on
β-amyloid- and tau-related pathologies, neuroinflammation,
neurotrophic factors, oxidative stress, excitotoxicity,
neurotransmission, brain metabolism, neuroplasticity, neuronal
apoptosis and degeneration, neurogenesis and cognition were
demonstrated in experimental conditions... The clinical efficacy of Cerebrolysin in Alzheimer's disease
was evaluated in several randomized, double-blind, clinical trials,
showing consistent benefits on global clinical function and cognition,
improvements in behavior at high doses, and minor effects on daily
living activities in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's
disease, as well as in subgroups of moderate to moderately severe
patients.

Alvarez, X. A., & Fuentes, P. (2011). Cerebrolysin in Alzheimer’s disease. Drugs of Today, 47, 487. https://doi.org/10.1358/dot.2011.47.7.1656496
The main problem with all the studies with Cerebrolysin or other candidate drugs is that even though the study findings may be statistically significant the effect sizes are nothing to write home about. Though granted, to some, even incremental benefit is better than no benefit at all.
Recovery from stroke
This one demonstrates efficacy in recovery of motor control following stroke:

Cerebrolysin is a neuropeptide preparation with neuroprotective and neurorestorative effects. Combining Cerebrolysin
treatment with a standardized rehabilitation program may have a
potential synergistic effect in the subacute stage of stroke. This
study aims to evaluate whether Cerebrolysin provides additional motor
recovery on top of rehabilitation therapy in the subacute stroke
patients with moderate to severe motor impairment...
In the stroke patients with severe motor
impairment, the Cerebrolysin group exhibited significantly more
improvement in motor function compared with the placebo group. Effects of Cerebrolysin were demonstrated as restricted
increments of corticospinal diffusivity and as recovery of the
sensorimotor connectivity... The combination of standard rehabilitation therapy with Cerebrolysin treatment in the subacute stroke has shown additional benefit on motor recovery and plastic changes of the corticospinal
tract in patients with severe motor impairment.

Chang, W. H., Park, C., Kim, D. Y., Shin, Y.-I., Ko, M.-H., Lee, A., … Kim, Y.-H. (2016). Cerebrolysin combined with rehabilitation promotes motor recovery in patients with severe motor impairment after stroke. BMC Neurology, 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12883-016-0553-z
Recovery from traumatic brain injury
And it seems to improve recovery from TBI as well:

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and
disability for which there is currently no effective drug therapy
available. Because drugs targeting a single TBI pathological pathway
have failed to show clinical efficacy to date, pleiotropic agents with
effects on multiple mechanisms of secondary brain damage could
represent an effective option to improve brain recovery and clinical
outcome in TBI patients... Compared to standard medical care alone
(control group), both doses of Cerebrolysin were associated with
improved clinical outcome scores at 10 days post-TBI in mild patients
and at 10 and 30 days in moderate and severe cases. A dose-dependent
effect of Cerebrolysin on TBI recovery was supported by the
dose-related differences and the significant correlations with
treatment duration observed for outcome measures... In
conclusion, the results of this large retrospective study revealed
that early Cerebrolysin treatment is safe and is associated to
improved TBI outcome.

Muresanu, D., Ciurea, A., Gorgan, R., Gheorghita, E., Florian, S., Stan, H., … Alvarez, A. (2015). A Retrospective, Multi-Center Cohort Study Evaluating the Severity- Related Effects of Cerebrolysin Treatment on Clinical Outcomes in Traumatic Brain Injury. CNS & Neurological Disorders - Drug Targets, 14, 587–599. https://doi.org/10.2174/1871527314666150430162531


Is fear of parasites an explanation for trypophobia?

Intuitively, I would also see disgust or fear of contamination as a plausible pathway. However, the explanation that has been discussed in the literature is that trypophobia-eliciting stimuli have basic visual characteristics that are also found in highly poisonous animals (Cole & Wilkins, 2013). Quoting their abstract:

  Phobias are usually described as irrational and persistent fears of certain objects or situations, and causes of such fears are difficult to identify. We describe an unusual but common phobia (trypophobia), hitherto unreported in the scientific literature, in which sufferers are averse to images of holes. We performed a spectral analysis on a variety of images that induce trypophobia and found that the stimuli had a spectral composition typically associated with uncomfortable visual images, namely, high-contrast energy at midrange spatial frequencies. Critically, we found that a range of potentially dangerous animals also possess this spectral characteristic. We argue that although sufferers are not conscious of the association, the phobia arises in part because the inducing stimuli share basic visual characteristics with dangerous organisms, characteristics that are low level and easily computed, and therefore facilitate a rapid nonconscious response.

(emphasis added)

There is not much research on this phobia though, so it may still be that contamination fears are also a contributing factor.

Source

Cole, G. G., & Wilkins, A. J. (2013). Fear of holes. Psychological Science, 24, 1980–1985. doi:10.1177/0956797613484937


Update list of the most used and reliable quantitative tests in Psychology

The International Personality Item Pool would be a great place to start.


How is sample size determined in animal research?

Determining sample size for an animal experiment is no different than in research with human subjects. What you need to know is the effect size, the significance level and the power (which is the probability that the test detects a significant effect assuming that there is one). The tricky part is getting the effect size (for an interesting discussion have a look at this thread). The other two things are chosen by you as the experimenter. An overview paper on power analysis was written by Cohen (1992).

References

Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 155. PDF


Can Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) present symptoms from very particular stimuli?

To answer your first question, I am fairly certain that those afflicted with this disorder, or more directly, a person who cannot tolerate a particular sound at a particular volume but react differently (find tolerable) to another sound even at the same volume, is definitely possible. For example, to provide a concrete example, let's assume an individual with SPD throws a tantrum when he hears a note out-of-tune, but can tolerate in-tune notes, regardless of volume. Some associate SPD with Autism Spectrum Disorders [1] (even one of the symptoms in the DSM-IV-TR for Asperger Disorder [2] make note of sensory hypersensitivity and hyposensitivity). In the example I mentioned, I don't think one would use the term "phobia" to characterize the reactive behavior to the stimuli. And someone with auditory SPD might not be able to simplify tolerable versus intolerable noises based solely on volume. SPD is a matter of difficulty in processing information received through the senses [3] - though difficulties may arouse anxiety, "phobia" is a pretty specific irrational fear, not to be attributed to a difficulty in processing.
Specific phobia(s) and SPD aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but one way in which they can be differentiated is by one of the symptoms for Specific Phobia.

C. The person recognizes that the fear is excessive or unreasonable. Note: In children, this feature may be absent. [2]

In SPD, what seems to be critical in response to stimuli is the idea of the "just-right" perception. In SPD, the reactive response to stimuli may not necessarily be indicative of a phobic response. For example, someone with SPD may absolutely hate being poked by others. But this person would not go out of his way to avoid being poked - dislike for tactile response purposes is different from a fear of pokes.
References

Frith, U. How Cognitive Theories Can Help Us Explain Autism. Speech. UC Davis Mind Institute.
DSM-IV-TR® Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
SPD Foundation - Ten Fundamental Facts About SPD


Dependency EEG signals from regions of the brain

The EEG signals between these regions will not be independent. The electrical activity that is being measured at the scalp, is the result of electrical flow inside the brain. This flow does not go in just one direction. It 'smears out' a little bit to surrounding areas, since the entire scalp/body is conductive.

Another reason that the activity measured at different sites is not completely independent is because brain areas interact with each other. The old Brodman Area topography is kind of outdated, and made place for networks of activity. To say that each channel is independent is thus inherently false.

ICA does assume independent sources, but with this they do not mean the channels. For example, the ICA finds a pattern, e.g. jumps of blinks, in, say, 15 channels. ICA then assumes that they are caused by only one thing, and this pattern will thus be extracted to only one component, not two. The different components, which are the result of an ICA, are thus in fact the independent sources.


Priming people with self-image/social-image concerns

Your hypothesis is true, priming can affect human behavior in many different ways. Specifically pro-social behavior can be encouraged by simply displaying an image of a pair of eyes.

  We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions
  to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university
  coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks
  when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding
  provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the
  importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns,
  on human cooperative behaviour.

Also in a similar study the following results are found.

  We also found that
  images of watching eyes reduced littering, although contrary to
  previous findings this was only when there were larger numbers of
  people around. With regard to our central aim, we found no evidence
  that litter on the ground interacted non-additively with images of
  eyes to induce increased littering behaviour. Our data therefore
  support the hypothesis that images of eyes induce more pro-social
  behaviour, independent of local norms. This finding has positive
  implications for the application of eye images in combating
  anti-social behaviour.


Does fluency on a psychomotor task result from practice and a focus on accuracy?

I have never heard of this formula, but from a cognitive psychology point of view you might look the theory of expert performance (Ericsson et al., 1993). In this theory it is argued that an important factor in the aquisition of expert performance is what the authors call deliberate practice. What is meant by this is an activity, wherein someone actively tries to improve his skills in some domain. Deliberate practice is not neccessarily an enjoyable activity, as it requires effort, concentration and persistence. It is definitely conscious.

There is quite a bit of evidence from different domains. Ericcson and Charness (1994) report findings from chess, mental multiplicaiton and music. There even is a handbook of expertise and expert performance that sums up the field, if you are interested to go deeper (Ericcson et al., 2006).

The formula that you mentioned very much reminds me of the concept of deliberate practice. I would argue that the two things basically refer to the same processes.

References:

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363 PDF
Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1994). Expert performance: Its structure and acquisition. American psychologist, 49(8), 725. PDF
Ericsson, K. A., Charness, N., Hoffman, R. R., & Feltovich, P. J. (Eds.).(2006). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. New York: Cambridge University Press.


Is there scientific evidence on the benefits of binaural beats?

Since I was asked in chat about binaural beats, and have been posed this question a number of times before besides, I looked into the most recent literature using Google Scholar for the single term "binaural beats" and restricted my search to papers published between 2010-2015. For convenience, this is the definition of a binaural beat I will use.

When two coherent sounds with nearly similar frequencies are presented to each ear respectively with stereo headphones, the brain integrates the two signals and produces a sensation of a third sound called binaural beat (BB). — Gao et al., 2014.

State of the evidence
Broadly speaking, some research on binaural beats does exist, but the evidence presented in the studies I examined is by and large negative, inconclusive or statistically underpowered with respect to the efficacy of binaural beats' ability to improve cognition, and to whether it is even processed differently from acoustic beats at all.
Much of the research that does exist seems to be published in journals whose credibility I cannot vouch for, and this answer should therefore be taken for what it is: a cursory review of the best literature I could find, not as scientific fact.

Are binaural beats processed differently?

"The perceptions of binaural beats involve cortical activity that is not different than acoustic beats in distribution and in the effects of beat- and base frequency, indicating similar cortical processing."  — Pratt et al., 2010.

Do binaural beats entrain brain waves?

"We observed RP increase in theta and alpha bands and decrease in beta band during delta and alpha BB stimulations. RP decreased in beta band during theta BB, while RP decreased in theta band during beta BB. However, no clear brainwave entrainment effect was identified. Connectivity changes were detected following the variation of RP during BB stimulations. Our observation supports the hypothesis that BBs could affect functional brain connectivity, suggesting that the mechanism of BB–brain interaction is worth further study." — Gao et al., 2014.

Do binaural beats induce a frequency following effect?

"Analysis of changes in broad-band and narrow-band amplitudes, and frequency showed no effect of binaural beat frequency eliciting a frequency following effect in the EEG." — Vernon et al., 2011.

Concluding remarks
What evidence exists is mixed and, at best, inconclusive. Based on this, I will tentatively say that it appears the claims put forward by many commercial binaural beats companies, while theoretically plausible in some sense, are not empirically supported in the literature.
Therefore, the most prudent position for a consumer to adopt seems to be that binaural beat music is as preferable, but no more preferable than acoustic beat music. For researchers, of course, binaural beats remains theoretically interesting.
References

Gao, X., Cao, H., Ming, D., Qi, H., Wang, X., Wang, X., ... & Zhou, P. (2014). Analysis of EEG activity in response to binaural beats with different frequencies. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 94(3), 399-406.
Pratt, H., Starr, A., Michalewski, H. J., Dimitrijevic, A., Bleich, N., & Mittelman, N. (2010). A comparison of auditory evoked potentials to acoustic beats and to binaural beats. Hearing research, 262(1), 34-44.
Vernon, D., Peryer, G., Louch, J., & Shaw, M. (2014). Tracking EEG changes in response to alpha and beta binaural beats. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 93(1), 134-139.


I think the key distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is not the awareness of the motive, but the locus of origin of the motive.

We are very much aware of intrinsic motives. For example: Hunger- Going without food for a long time makes us hungry, a state we are aware of, and we consume food. The act of consuming food when hungry is intrinsically motivated, and emerges from within us, without the effect of any external agent. However, Ryan and Deci's self-determination theory (SDT) did not mention (as far as I know) intrinsic motives as being connected to a physiological need. SDT's intrinsic motives were connected to psychological needs, in doing activities which were enjoyable in themselves, unconnected to an external reward.

As you have mentioned, we are also aware of our extrinsic motives, for example, motivation to work a 9-to-5 job to earn money to buy food which satiates hunger, a primary need.

My interpretation is that since extrinsically motivated activities are oriented towards an external goal and since "goals are cognitive
representations of what individuals are trying to accomplish and their purposes
or reasons for doing the task" (3), hence the authors are stating that extrinsic motives have cognitive representations.

My conflict is that granted, extrinsic motivation is goal-oriented but isn't intrinsic motivation also goal-oriented? For example, mastery in a task if often considered to be intrinsically motivated. Does that not mean the mastery=goal? As you will see from the table of motivational terms in (4) (see Garcia and Pintrich, 1996 in the table), intrinsic motives are also goals, according to many behavioural scientists. That would make intrinsic motives to also be cognitively represented.

Quoting (3),

  In their discussion of the accessibility of motivational constructs, Murphy and Alexander really raise two issues; one concerns the consciousness or cognitive accessibility of motivational constructs and the other concerns the accuracy of individuals’ reports of their motivation. From an achievement goal theory perspective, the issue of cognitive consciousness or accessibility is not as major a problem as it may be for models that assume there are some ‘‘deeply-held, pervasive motives, needs, or drives’’ to use Murphy and Alexander terms (this issue). Goal theory assumes that goals are cognitive representations of what individuals are trying to accomplish and their purposes or reasons for doing the task. As such, they are inherently cognitive and assumed to be accessible by the individual; they are not unconscious motives as in psychodynamic theory, nor are they deeply held needs or motives as in some models of motivation (cf. Deci & Ryan, 1985; McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, & Lowell, 1953; Murray, 1938). In fact, the metaphor of ‘‘excavating’’ deeply held motives or needs and bringing them to the ‘‘surface’’ or into the ‘‘light’’ of day through various methods such as projective tests or intensive psychotherapy is not really applicable to achievement goal theory. In contrast, the discussion of goal constructs ﬂows from the general cognitive revolution in psychology and goals are assumed to be internal, cognitive representations or knowledge structures.

In conclusion, I don't understand why only extrinsic motives have been given a cognitive representation and not intrinsic motives, in the text.

I highly recommend you to go through (3) and (4), since this seems to be a matter of confusion regarding how motivational constructs are defined. There has been considerable debate regarding the definitions of motivational constructs and what concepts they encompass. The quoted line in the question seems to be a result of this very dilemma.

References:

1) Psychology, Ciccarelli, fourth edition.

2) http://ccdf.ca/ccdf/NewCoach/english/ccoachb/issue_b1c_basics.htm

3) Pintrich, P. R. (2000). An achievement goal theory perspective on issues in motivation terminology, theory, and research. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 92-104.

4) Murphy, P. K., & Alexander, P. A. (2000). A motivated exploration of motivation terminology. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 3-53.


Predisposition toward organizing information in a hierarchical manner?

This is not out of desire, it is out of necessity of abiding a feature of information and knowledge itself. Quite frankly, this goes into a bit of data science and information theory (I personally learned of this through data visualization. Nonetheless, I still think it is a relevant question).

According to Richard Wurman in his book, Information Anxiety, “information may be infinite, however… the organization [or structuring] of information is finite.” Furthermore, “Each vantage point, each mode of organization will create a new structure. And each new structure will enable you to see a different meaning, acting as a new method of classification from which the whole can be grasped and understood.”

The three main ways of organizing information are as follows (please note that those within parenthesis are my personal examples, the rest are more main/established ones):

Location
Categorical
a. (similarity/relatedness)
b. (problem/solution)
c. (cause/effect)
Hierarchical
a. Alphabetical
b. Time
c. (deductive/inductive order)
d. (importance)
e. (simplicity/complexity)

In relevance to hierarchical information and psychology though, it is worthwhile to note that both foundations of language and logic are found through the alphabetical category. These, in turn, are fundamental features of the human mind and are, in large part, also means through which the mind makes connections. Also, tendencies towards hierarchical information could also be explained through using time as an anchor to which to describe things in relation to such as the past, present, and future.


What causes some women to have repeated abortions?

It is certain that a desire to have sex without contraception and a lack of desire to be a parent cause women to have multiple abortions. (precluding rape)

A certain amount of a desire to have sex is natural. Causes for increased sexuality are so numerous that is not tenable to search.
Risk taking behaviour is associated with sex without contraceptions. A stable long term relationship might be one reason to have sex without protection where the risk is perceived to be less based on the lack of infidelity. A lack of responsibility could also motivate someone to consistently not use protection. Peer pressure by the male or even religion is also possible.
Finally there are many reasons people decide not to be a parent. Primarily they are unable to be a mentor and they are incapable of nurturing. There are many additional reasons at this link about why certain reasons to have children are irrational. However it should be stated that just because one is incapable of being a good parent doesn't leave abortion as the only option. The child can be given up for adoption however that is not popular.


Are University Graduated WEIRD people psychologically different to Generally Educated WEIRD people?

A lot of psychological research takes place in societies that are Western, Democratic, and Industrialized, and that from a global/historical perspective are relatively Educated and Rich.
Of course, within those societies, people vary in their level of education and their socioeconomic status (e.g., wealth, income, financial security, earning potential, etc.).
And education and socioeconomic status have numerous correlates with psychological variables and life outcomes.
E.g., educational attainment is positively correlated with life time income, intelligence, and political views.
There are two obvious explanations for these processes:

Education changes a person. They acquire general and discipline specific skills. They get exposed to different experiences, career opportunities and so on.
Psychological characteristics predict interest, access, and success in higher education. For instance, more intelligent people are more likely to be granted access and succeed in higher education.
Third variables. Factors like family socioeconomic status predict psychological characteristics as well as the probability of pursuing higher education.


When does anchoring improve our judgement?

The underlying cognitive process that produces the "anchoring bias" in decision-making is the same one that produces the "primacy and recency effect" in learning and memory. Your attention is drawn to novel, salient and recent stimuli, and are more likely to learn about and remember more about the first example of something and the last (most recent) example of something. This means that you are able to learn and adapt faster than you would be able to under an unbiased learning method; in some situations, you can effectively generalize from only one example (you only have to touch a hot stove once). For real-world situations, this speed of learning gives you an enormous advantage. For an additional set of real- and abstract- cases, you will have the opportunity to revise and improve your anchored estimate with small or zero penalty. In all of these cases, having a fast-learning, pattern-seeking heuristic-based cognitive system beats a slow-learning but unbiased cognitive system (which you still have, running on top of the faster system).

It is less powerful in cases where you are doing abstract numeric reasoning (for which there is no plausible estimate) or are negotiating competitively with another person who is faster/better/more informed/able to deceive you through anchoring or other techniques. In these cases, the drawbacks of the system predominate.