Does sleep = consciousness, unconsciousness or something else?

The dictionary definition  of "unconscious" is to not be capable of conscious thought, ie, be asleep and unaware. Technically, you are unconscious when you are asleep.

When you get knocked out ie. a concussion, it is thought that the forces from the injury disrupt the normal cellular activities in the reticular activating system located in the areas impacted and that this disruption produces the loss of consciousness.

Terminology wise, I believe this would be considered a temporary coma. (The definition of a coma is: a state of unconsciousness in which a person: cannot be awakened; fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound; lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle; and does not initiate voluntary actions.)


Does female attractiveness correlate with age progression?

In my opinion, things that I find attractive change with circumstances.  My age plays a role, how well you know someone or the more things you enjoy about them as you get to know them and then how those same things can bother you down the road or on certain days or when in certain groups.

Other factors like past experience, upbringing, things you find attractive might be qualities, or physical characteristics that a carer or influence of yours had: family members, teachers, movie stars, musicians, etc.

Ex girlfriends can change what you find attractive in future relationships.  If you have a strong distaste for an ex then you might find qualities that she had unattractive if similar qualities are found in a new interest.  Where as if you miss that person and hold them in high esteem, you may go looking for a kind of replica or replacement to satisfy the feeling you got when those qualities are present.  But you may also resent those qualities because they remind you of that other person and this might contribute to lessening the attractiveness in them.

There is no answer to attractiveness.  Some of us find it attractive to need someone to boost them up.  Physical appearance doesn't necessarily matter, e.g. if someone who had an okay home life but had a mother, aunt, or other care giver that they really cared about who never seemed to obtain any satisfaction in life and was always unhappy but still got up and did it all in hopes that the child would have a better life, and maybe did it with a fake smile just for them, now this child may find other under-appreciated women attractive and try to give them that extra spice in life that the other people they care about never seemed to see, not necessarily sexual either, though it seems to be man's MO to believe he is a gift from god to bestow upon women.  It's not as though a person has an attraction to "mother figures" or their own mother, I've never really read Freud, but it seems people who hate or fear Freud fear themselves and their own perverse minds thanks to the rash, cruel judgments of others, or their, or their parents' religion makes them feel shameful about it.  Nobody wants to be run out of town, or labeled something they are not due to something the brain automatically does due to conditioned responses. (mind you, I don't believe in free will; I'm more of an "interacting processing" guy; ref. Robert Anton Wilson 'Maybe Logic'.)

I realize this is not exactly what you were asking for, but I think any study you can conduct will have no true control, especially without an extensive psychological study done on each individual subject and possibly even pictures of the women from their lives.  Even if it is solely on physical appearance, the reasons I might like a certain kind of eyes more than the majority is perhaps I spent many crucial points of my life with someone who had eyes like that, or a "double chin and a plastic smile."


What you are looking for is usually considered within synesthesia, specifically auditory-visual synesthesia.

Usually these topics are developed in "commercial or industrial psychology" in a general way and more specifically by psychologists incorporated in marketing, these last studies are often not published, are made for the best initial orientation of the product with a line of consumers.

Here is a general book:
https://books.google.es/books?id=ESH7AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA812&lpg=PA812&dq=psychology+synesthesia&source=bl&ots=zC3KmJPT2h&sig=pGlZ9qPf1d14T7i96AL8OmMvVSo&hl=es&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjmnYvRyanVAhUNfFAKHbX-CV84ChDoAQhWMAY#v=onepage&q&f=false

It seems that what ultimately interests most is why (cerebrally) and what repercussions (especially in clinical) has this phenomenon.

You will not find it difficult to find end-of-grade papers, there are also theses.


For starters, I think it's a good idea to provide rewards for both students and mentors. As an example: Mentors could receive rewards for answering questions by students, while students receive rewards for solving exercises. Furthermore, the mentor should be able to give rewards for good questions etc.

Actually, it's quite a bit like Stack Exchange, if you think about it. Only, without exercises and without the ability to directly ask one particular teacher who can be rewarded for answering and also reward you for a good question.

Another idea that pops up immediately, is to have team or group exercises with predefined roles. For example, if the exercises includes writing a calendar program (like Google calendar). One person could be responsible for graphical design, one for coordination etc.
This is maybe not an ideal scenario since a task like that would be quite extensive but I think you get the picture.

In general, I think it's not that difficult to represent the traditional relation between student and mentor. This system is, in a sense, already includes rewards. However, the difference between the traditional system and an app like yours is really the possibility to engage in learning because you feel interest or curiosity about the subject. Having someone who can help and reward you only fuels the intrinsic motivation you already have. In that sense, I believe what really counts is that a system like the one you outline offers a sense of security for the student. The gamification is mostly based on extrinsic motivation and as such only an added bonus. The ability to connect based on interest and the desire to learn is what really makes the difference, I think.

I recommend the documentary 'Alphabet' which recently premiered. In this film, there is also a high emphasis on learning as a game, even though it may not exactly be what you're looking for, it might nevertheless provide some inspiration.


Can a person "self-induce" the placebo effect?

Not an answer, because I couldn't find any studies, but too long for a comment:

Placebos aren't arbitrary. You are not given chocolate chips as a placebo treatment for a cold. The placebeo has the form of a "real" treatment for the illness or disorder, e.g. a pill without an agent.

This means that in your experiment your subjects must treat themselves with what looks like a real treatment but isn't. It must look like it could work.
Placebos are not administered without the knowledge of the sick person, e.g. while that person sleeps. Placebos are administered in what is effectively a ritual: you go visit an expert, the expert speaks some magic words (the latin names of your organs and illness), the expert gives you a magic potion (the sugar pill), and touches you and transfers some of his or her power to you. Well, of course he doesn't, but the similarity between religious and magic rituals and what a doctor does are striking and have been studied by ethnologists.

This means that in your experiment your subjects must explicitly treat themselves and not just eat breakfast and decide after the fact that one of those chocolate chips was the placebo. They need to plan how, with what, and when they want to treat themselves, and then administer the treatment in the way it was designed.

If, in this way, you consider what a placebo actually is – a ritualised administration of a faux treatment – it becomes immediatly apparent that this treament contains several psychologically powerful elements that must certainly have some kind of effect.


Does the Milgram experiment produce different results for people who believe the final voltage is deadly?

The Milgram experiment is makes people think the voltage is dangerous, due to the labelling and acting by the confederate 'learner', who eventually goes silent signifying unconsciousness in the least, and possibly deadliness. Despite these cues over 50% of participants ('teachers') progress to the highest 'shock' level with simple promoting from an authority figure. We are, of course, see drop-offs as the perceived danger to the 'learner' (confederate) increases, and the benefit of obedience are outweighed by the signalled danger. Of course you would have to measure beliefs about how harmful each level of shock is to see how it ties with drop-off exactly. Unfortunately, it seems beliefs about harm are assumed, and have not been actively researched. As you can see from the drop-offs its clear in some participants believe the shocks increase harm, whether those who continued to press think so.

In general warning labels are enough to create a negative emotional response for people i.e. cigarette packaging, food and drink.
What the obedience experiment indicates to some researchers is that majority of people who will continue to cause, what researchers interpret as, great pain with simple prompting from authority, due to the deferred responsibility and accountability. Of course this is assumed, and not actively measured, it could well be that the participants did not believe it to be so harmful, or could even see through the ruse. Interestingly, some studies in the past showed that putting other 'teachers' (confederates) in the room with the participant, could impact the participants 'shock' progression, if the confederates dissented against the authority by leaving part way through or refusing to continue. However, recent studies show that this dissident social effect has not been replicated. Which leaves question marks over why.

While individuals often believe that in a similar situation to the they would perform better than average in their country, knowledge of the experiment does play a role in how far participants believe they would go.
In summary, we assume the participants believe increasing shocks cause more harm. We do not know if those who went all the way believe the shocks were as harmful as participants who dropped out.


PTSD is an internalising disorder or mixed?

My understanding is that the internalizing/externalizing dichotomy refers to the way symptoms are expressed, not the source/cause of the disorder. Internalizing disorders are those that mostly have an internal impact and tend to lead sufferers to withdraw or hide their affliction. Externalizing disorders tend to impact others more directly with outward-focused behaviors. Therefore, I don't think hypervigilance would be considered an "externalizing" feature even though it is directed at the outside world, because all that is directed outward is attention; the primary impact on the individual is the internal mental stress that maintaining a hypervigilant state creates. Outbursts of violence clearly would be "externalizing", however.
The DSM-5 doesn't categorize by internalizing/externalizing, and puts PTSD in the category of "Trauma- and Stressor-Related Disorders". The DSM-5 mentions specifically the combination of internalizing and externalizing symptoms in these disorders:

In some cases, symptoms can be well understood within an anxiety- or fear-based context. It is clear, however, that many individuals who have been exposed to a traumatic or stressful event exhibit a phenotype in which, rather than anxiety- or fear-based symptoms, the most prominent clinical characteristics are anhedonic and dysphoric symptoms, externalizing angry and aggressive symptoms, or dissociative symptoms.

In the paper you refer to, the authors did group PTSD with the internalizing disorders. They've done this in reference to a previous paper which identified three factors, labeled Internalizing, Externalizing, and Thought Disorder, that together explained well the spectrum of conditions. However, PTSD is not really involved in this paper.
It's unclear why they chose to include it as "internalizing" in the Caspi 2020 paper, except that their approach meant that if they included it at all it had to be placed in one of those three categories. Given the other items on the list, I think it's quite reasonable to group PTSD along with anxiety, phobias, and depression, rather than among substance dependence or schizophrenia, but I don't think this should be taken as anything but a choice of designation within the scope of this particular paper.


Does the transcription method used (e.g., printing, handwriting, typing, voice recording, etc.) affect memory retention?

A recent senior thesis by Schoen (2012) addressed this exact question. Students watched a filmed lecture and were randomly assigned to take notes with either by typing or handwriting. After the lecture, students were given a few distractor tasks, and then given a retention test. Other students were assigned to take notes from a textbook, instead of a lecture.
In contrast to your theory, there was a main effect of transcription method, such that typing notes led to better retention. However, there was an interaction with context, and it appears that there is no simple main effect for textbook notes. (see figure below)
One could posit that this interaction occurs because of the demands of the task. Taking notes by typing is easier and faster, i.e. more fluent. Hand-writing notes leads to higher cognitive load, which may lead to the student paying more attention to note-taking and less attention to the lecture itself. This would explain why textbook notes showed no effect. I only skimmed through the paper, but it seems very interesting and right to the point of your question, so I would suggest reading it for more info.

Additional information:
Before looking this up, I expected the opposite pattern. Bjork & Bjork (2009) have found
that creating desirable difficulties in learning can promote retention. For instance, it is well known that generating information, such as fill-in-the-blanks, promote better retention compared to, e.g., multiple choice tests. Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, &  Vaughan (2010) have found that presenting study material in hard-to-read fonts leads to better encoding and retention of the material.
Similarly, a study by Yang, Gallo, & Beilock (2009) looked at the effect of motor fluency on retention. Subjects typed a two-letter dyad (such as ae or aq). Fluent dyads were letter pairs which were typed with two fingers; these pairs are typed faster and more easily than dyads that used the same finger because there is no motor bottleneck. Subjects were later given a recognition test to determine which dyads were presented to them. They found that subjects produced more false alarms for fluent dyads than disfluent dyads. This is particularly strange because false alarms, by their nature, were not actually typed by subject. This effect only held for expert typists, corroborating previous literature which suggests that fluency leads to false recognition. (Presumably for novice typists, none of the dyads were fluent enough to produce a higher level of false alarms).
So it seems there is a confluence of effects here. Disfluency--that is, making things more difficult--can promote deep processing and lead to better encoding and retention. However when this process causes one to neglect other information, such as paying attention to the lecture itself, retention suffers.
For additional reading on the effects of fluency on problem solving, I suggest Alter, Oppenheimer, Epley, & Eyre (2007) and Oppenheimer (2008).
From Schoen (2012):

Alter, A. L., Oppenheimer, D. M., Epley, N., & Eyre, R. N. (2007). Overcoming intuition: metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136(4), 569. PDF
Bjork, E. L., & Bjork, R. (2009). Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance learning. New York: Worth Publishers. PDF
Diemand-Yauman, C., Oppenheimer, D. M., & Vaughan, E. B. (2011). Fortune favors the Bold (and the Italicized): Effects of disfluency on educational outcomes. Cognition, 118(1), 111-115. PDF
Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008). The secret life of fluency. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(6), 237-241. PDF
Schoen, I. (2012). Effects of Method and Context of Note-taking on Memory: Handwriting versus Typing in Lecture and Textbook-Reading Contexts. Pitzer Senior Theses. Paper 20. PDF
Yang, S. J., Gallo, D. A., & Beilock, S. L. (2009). Embodied memory judgments: a case of motor fluency. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition; Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35(5), 1359. PDF


What kind of psychologists study 'genius'?

Which sub-field of psychology deals with differences in human intelligence? As in, what makes someone an intellectual genius?

Broadly speaking, the study of individual differences in psychology is called differential psychology. Psychometrics is the study of psychological measurements, an extremely important part of intelligence research.

  Or, maybe a bit more humbly, why are some people more intelligent than others?

The subfield that has been most important in establishing why some people are more intelligent than others is probably behavioural genetics. This field has been at the forefront of creating experimental designs that can give evidence for the causes of individual differences.

However, these fields overlap. It can sometimes be difficult to difficult to say when something is research in field X or Y (And often not important exactly which field you would categorize it as).

  It would help if you could also mention some leading thinkers in this field (or any good resources to read more about these topics)

There are many important researchers who study intelligence and why people differ intellectually. Here are a few examples of books that talk, in part, about why people differ in intelligence.

(1) "Intelligence" by Stuart Ritchie. This is a short introduction to intelligence research and is easy to read.

(2) "The Neuroscience of Intelligence" by Richard Haier. This book is slightly longer, but is still fairly easy to read. This book focuses on the actual brain itself.

(3) "The g Factor" by Arthur Jensen. This is a more detailed and complex book. It's not as new as the others but is considered a classic.

However, if you're talking specifically about high intelligence then there are only a few leading researchers.

There have been several leading figures if you go far enough back. All the way from Francis Galton to Lewis Terman to Julian Stanley. Two of the most important current researchers are David Lubinski and Camilla Benbow. They are leading the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth (SMPY), which is a longitudinal study of highly intelligent individuals. See the link for several publications from the study.

If I could give only a single article (on the subject of very high intelligence) for you to read, it would be the following:

Lubinski, D. (2016). From Terman to today: A century of findings on intellectual precocity.

This is a review of the findings of the study of highly intelligent individuals.

There are other researchers that are important, of course. One other I know who researches high intelligence and high achievement is Jonathan Wai, see his blog if you interested. I'm sure other people could refer to several other important researchers.


Does intelligence cause greater alcohol consumption?

This is just the beginning of an answer, based on what I've read so far. I'm very keen to read other answers.

Resnick et al (1997)

@Yannis Rizos has pointed me to the article by Resnick et al (1997) based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.
The article reports data on 12118 adolescents drawn from grades 7 through 12.

The results suggested that "individual characteristics explained 7% of the variability in frequency of alcohol use". The only variable mentioned related to intelligence was lower grade point average. Specifically, lower grade point average was related to more frequent alcohol use. If anything, this suggests that the relationship between intelligence and alcohol use is negative. This result is obtained as part of a regression model controlling for some demographic factors. The bivariate relationship without covariates is not reported.

Of course, there are many limitations. First, this study concerns adolescent drinking, which may be a quite different phenomena to adult drinking. Second, while GPA correlates highly with intelligence, it is not intelligence.

References

Resnick, M.D., Bearman, P.S., Blum, R.W., Bauman, K.E., Harris, K.M., Jones, J., Tabor, J., Beuhring, T., Sieving, R.E., Shew, M. & others (1997). Protecting adolescents from harm. JAMA: the journal of the American Medical Association, 278, 823-832. PDF


Which are the most accredited tests for measuring personality traits?

How many personality factors are there?
The history of personality testing can be summarised in terms of an initial period where there was a vast number of personality traits. In response to this, there have been various attempts to synthesise these traits into a smaller number of underlying factors. There is a huge literature on this process (e.g., Digman, 1990; McCrae & John, 1992).

There are a lot of researchers who have proposed variations on the five factor model (commonly labeled OCEAN: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion agreeableness, and neuroticism). That said, you will find a range of other factorial models (e.g., Eysenk's three factor model; the HEXACO six factor model).

There has also been subsequent challenges to the resulting dominance of factorial models.
For example, see the research of Sampo Paunonen (e.g., Paunonen & Ashton, 2001) which suggests that we may have gone too far in embracing the factorial models of personality.

Related to this debate, there are a range of hiearchical theories of personality where facets are nested within factors. So you can either get a very general representation of personality with say 5 factors, and a more detailed representation with say 30 facets.

What are valid measures of these factors?
There are a large number of well validated personality tests.
Tests are typically built around particular representations of personality.
There are a range of free measures of the Big 5 listed here with some discussion around validity.

The NEO is one of the most well-known and used commercial measures of the Big 5. That said, there are a wide range of well validated commercial personality tests available.

References

Digman, J. M. (1990). Personality structure: Emergence of the five-factor model. Annual review of psychology, 41(1), 417-440.
McCrae, R. R., & John, O. P. (1992). An introduction to the five‐factor model and its applications. Journal of personality, 60(2), 175-215.
Paunonen, S. V., & Ashton, M. C. (2001). Big five factors and facets and the prediction of behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology, 81(3), 524.


Is there a formal name for the "love" of arguing?

I can't think of any clinical term for it, but a contentious individual is one who is eager to fight. Another term, pugnacious, is a little less derogatory than contentious.


Does limiting mental activity during the day increase mental performance later in the day?

Very interesting question, however, cognitive exhaustion may be a learned phenomena ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5413468/ ) as referenced by this 2017 article finding it to be conditioned to the individual. Though I cannot provide a concrete answer, I would estimate that cognitive stamina, so to speak, can be trained into the individual much like aerobic or muscular stamina.


Scientific findings of strobe lights and the brain

The presentation of flickering lights usually leads to so-called steady-state visual evoked potentials, that is, oscillatory responses in the visual cortex with the frequency of the stimulus as well as its harmonics. See for example:

Herrmann CS. (2001)
Human EEG responses to 1-100 Hz flicker: resonance phenomena in visual cortex and their potential correlation to cognitive phenomena.Exp Brain Res 137(3-4):346-53.  Pubmed

There is a lot of research concerning this phenomenon. For a list of papers, please see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=steady%20state%20visual%20evoked%20potential


Working Memory Timing Information Storage

In "Similarity Breeds Proximity: Pattern Similarity within and across Contexts Is Related to Later Mnemonic Judgments of Temporal Proximity" by Youssef Ezzyat and Lila Davachi, timing between stimuli was kept constant, but the context of the stimuli was manipulated.

They found that changing contexts increased the perceived temporal distance between stimuli.

Alternatively, in "Learning and Generalization of Auditory Temporal–Interval Discrimination in Humans" by Wright et al., differentiating temporal distance between tones were learned. Additionally, in "Anticipation of future events improves the ability to estimate elapsed time" by Yoshiaki Tsunoda and Shinji Kakei, the probability distribution of distance between a warning signal and a trigger for a "GO"-like task was learned.

These experiments operate on very different time scales (milliseconds vs seconds) with very differently semantically-loaded stimuli (images vs tones). Although neither of them describe in the exact experiment in the original question, together they show the various ways perception and memory is affected temporal cues.


What is the term of having a high perceived confidence while having limited knowledge?

I think you are referring to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. It describes the relationship between experience one has in a particular topic and his/her confidence about being an expert.

Dunning and Kruger argue that when people know nothing, they also know that they know nothing. However, after learning only a little bit, people seem to be very confident that they understand everything of the subject.

With more studying, one realizes that there is more to it and might feel insecure even. However, after studying more and more and more and people become an expert, people begin to realize that they do know a lot, but that it is impossible to understand everything.

Both the x- and y-axis have no scales because the Dunning-Kruger effect is only conceptual. The following image, does nicely present the train of thoughts through the graph:

References

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of personality and social psychology, 77(6), 1121.

Pictures taken from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/dunning-kruger-effect-confidence-vs-over-confidence-harshil-rastogi


Is there a correlation between EQ (EI) and IQ?

My understanding is that self-report measures of emotional intelligence tend to have very weak correlations with traditional measures of cognitive ability, and ability-based measures of emotional intelligence have low to moderate correlations with traditional measures of cognitive ability. The following provides relevant extracts from Conte (2005) that directly relates to these points. For a more complete picture you may wish to read the article.

Self-report measures of emotional intelligence

  The EQ-i is a 133-item self-report measure that takes approximately 30 minutes to complete (Bar-On, 2000) ...
  With respect to discriminant validity, the EQ-i correlated 0.12 with
  the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (Bar-On, 2000), and the average
  correlation between the EQ-i and the Big Five personality measures was
  approximately 0.50 (Dawda & Hart, 2000)

Ability based measures of emotional intelligence

The MEIS and MSCEIT are both ability based measures of emotional intelligence.

  Data from several studies indicate that the MEIS correlates between 0.30 and 0.40 with traditional measures
  of cognitive ability (Roberts et al., 2001; Van Rooy & Viswesvaran, 2004)

Relation between ability and personality based measures

It also appears that self-report and ability based measures of emotional intelligence are measuring relatively distinct variables.

  Mayer et al. (2000) found that the MSCEIT and Bar-On scales correlated
  0.36, indicating that they share approximately 13 percent of their variance.
  In a more recent study, Brackett and Mayer (2003) found that
  the MSCEIT and Bar-On scales correlated 0.21, indicating that they
  share approximately 4 percent of their variance.

References

Bar-On, R. (2000).
Emotional and Social Intelligence: Insights from the Emotional Quotient Inventory.
In Bar-On, R.; Parker, J. (eds.).
The handbook of emotional intelligence: Theory, development, assessment, and application at home, school, and in the workplace (pp. 363–388). Jossey-Bass.
ISBN 978-0-470-90743-6
Brackett, M. A., & Mayer, J. D. (2003).
Convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity of competing measures of emotional intelligence.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(9), 1147–1158.
doi:10.1177/0146167203254596
Conte, J.M. (2005).
A review and critique of emotional intelligence measures.
Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26(4), 433–440.
doi:10.1002/job.319.
[PDF]
Dawda, D., & Hart, S. D. (2000).
Assessing emotional intelligence: reliability and validity of the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) in university students.
Personality and Individual Differences, 28(4), 797–812.
doi:10.1016/S0191-8869(99)00139-7
Mayer, J. D., Caruso, D., & Salovey, P. (2000).
Selecting a measure of emotional intelligence: the case for ability scales.
In Bar-On, R.; Parker, J. (eds.).
The handbook of emotional intelligence: Theory, development, assessment, and application at home, school, and in the workplace (pp. 320–342). Jossey-Bass.
ISBN 978-0-470-90743-6
Roberts, R. D., Zeidner, M., & Matthews, G. (2001).
Does emotional intelligence meet traditional standards for an intelligence? Some new data and conclusions.
Emotion, 1(3), 196–231.
doi:10.1037/1528-3542.1.3.196
Van Rooy, D. L., & Viswesvaran, C. (2004).
Emotional intelligence: a meta-analytic investigation of predictive validity and nomological net.
Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65(1), 71–95.
doi:10.1016/S0001-8791(03)00076-9


Which commodity technologies offer useful neuroimaging data?

The question is a little vague, but here is a partial answer.

There are a number of EEG systems available that are low-cost. Examples include Emotiv's EPOC System and the OpenBCI project. The former has been available in various models for some years now and it has been established that it records real EEG signals, as opposed to just recording signals generated in the muscles and other artifacts.

The first major validation document is by Ekanayake as a white paper, that has been updated (here). As I understand it, these are not peer reviewed, nor were they presented at a conference. But the work is quite good.

For the collection of ERP (Evoked Potentials) data, there are two substantial peer-reviewed papers by a research group: Validation of the Emotiv EPOC EEG system for research quality auditory event-related potentials in children by Badcock et al. (2015) and Validation of the Emotiv EPOC EEG gaming system for measuring research quality auditory ERPs, also by Badcock et al. (2013). While these papers are on ERP experiments, their results suggest that other collection styles, such as continuous collection, are likely to be ok as well.

Additionally, Liu et al. (2102), Implementation of SSVEP Based BCI with Emotiv EPOC, is suggestive but appears to be an unreviewed conference paper. As a counterpoint to this, there is Performance of the Emotiv Epoc headset for P300-based applications, by Duvinage et al. (2013). Searching Google Scholar for these topics, shows a trend that more recent papers are generally more positive, but I don't have time to work the statistics to show that is more than my quick opinion.

As an aside, our laboratory has been using the Emotiv system for approximately a year and a half, collecting data for approximately 6 months or so, and for continuous EEG collection (non-ERP) we are replicating the expected EEG phenomena. Hopefully we'll be added to the peer-reviewed literature above soon.


What if people understand or interpret words differently in their mind?

Quite certainly this is the case (even if you learn all words from a dictionary), but this is more of a philosophical debate. It is unclear what you are after when referring to 'pessimistic', 'optimistic', or 'abstract' outcomes, but I can point you in the right direction in case you want to read up more on this subject.

One concept that comes to mind from linguistics and philosophy of language is  indexicality.

  ... an indexical behavior or utterance points to (or indicates) some state
  of affairs. For example, I refers to whoever is speaking; now refers to the time at which that word is uttered; and here refers to the place of utterance.

However, some argue the same holds true for almost any utterance. (Suchman, 1986)

  Among philosophers and linguists, the term indexicality typically is
  used to distinguish those classes of expressions whose meaning is
  conditional on the situation of their use in this way from those such
  as, for example, definite noun phrases whose meaning is claimed to be
  specifiable in objective, or context-independent terms. But the
  communicative significance of a linguistic expression is always dependent on the circumstances of its use. A formal statement not of
  what the language means in relation to any context, but of what the
  language-user means in relation to some particular context, requires a
  description of the context or situation of the utterance itself. And
  every utterance's situation comprises an indefinite range of possibly
  relevant features. Our practical solution to this theoretical problem
  is not to enumerate some subset of the relevant circumstances—we
  generally never mention our circumstances as such at all—but to "wave
  our hand" at the situation, as if we always included in our utterance
  an implicit ceteris paribus clause and closed with an implicit et
  cetera clause.

Suchman, L. (1986). Plans and situated actions. New York, Cambridge University.


(Why) Do US studies of violence and mental illness tend to report no link but European studies seem to find one?

I have been away from here for a while as I have been concentrating on my University studies, however, I have just come back and boy have I come back at an opportune moment.  Your question showed a lot of research whilst being put together and this is an interesting topic of discussion as I have been discussing the subject of mental illness and violence myself with a couple of friends.

As you pointed out, Heather Stuart stated that

  Definitive statements are difficult to make and it is equally possible to find recent literature supporting the conclusions that the mentally ill are no more violent, they are as violent, or they are more violent than their nonmentally ill counterparts.

From what I have seen, I would agree with you that this still stands today as a response to your question.  The thing is, I have not seen an article which gives a definitive answer.

It is interesting to read the 2017 study on the FBC, RADAR and ALSPAC datasets you provided.  The thing to note with this study is that although

  In the additional sensitivity analyses, we also adjusted for other factors including parental criminality, conduct disorder, and maltreatment where data were available.

what about information regarding maltreatment etc. which was not available?  Those children who were subjected to undocumented external factors, which could affect their behaviours, would have been excluded from the adjustments and therefore, the statistics presented may be inaccurate.

Another point to make is that as the datasets seem to be based on self disclosures of violence, this, along with other issues raises all sorts of questions.

I would ask how the relevant studies defined violence when asking for the disclosures.  How were the questions put forward?  What was included in their definition of violence?  Was verbal and/or mental abuse considered to be violence or was the scope restricted to just physical violence?

This could be one reason why there is a discrepancy between US studies and European studies.  Another possibility is, were there cultural differences in play?

The differences in all the studies you pointed out using the Elbogen & Johnson data highlights the complexity of such a study.  What mental illnesses were covered in the studies?  Were any of the mental illnesses a result of (or made worse by) substance abuse, and if so, what is the prevalence of this factor?

There could also be all sorts of problems with interpretation of the data.  @ArnonWeinberg shows an example of possible misinterpretation of data when referencing Sweden as the rape capital of the world.  (See here for what I am — and possibly also what Arnon is — referring to).

There are so many questions which seem hard to answer with what I have seen and these sort of questions may not be able to be answered in a full meta analysis involving all studies on the mentally ill as this may end in a great deal of speculation.  However, a full meta analysis of all studies in all age groups could point these flaws out and lead to a more thorough study which would iron out those wrinkles.  I personally would look forward to seeing one.


Color and shape arriving together in visual system

It is something of an oversimplification to say that

  there are separate visual pathways for both color and shape.

There are many cells, even in V1, which are selective for both colour and shape (or at least orientation). While there are regions more sensitive to some features than others, there are plenty of neurons which combine features. It is also not clear what you mean by becoming conscious of these features separately. Clearly, we can know both that there is something red in front of us and that it is a square. You may have also experienced a flash of a colour without knowing the form, so in that sense, they are separable in consciousness.

The combination of these things is indeed a difficult problem akin to the binding problem. Bruce's answer gives some good background and here is a paper about binding in vision. More generally, binding in feature integration theory requires features to be linked to locations (plausible given topographical organisation in cortex).


Is procrastination associated with overweight?

No. An association between overweight and procrastination appears to have no direct empirical support to speak of.

The most direct evidence I can find on the matter was a study into industrial workplace productivity's association with overweight, which found a very small (approximately 1%) loss in productivity over other workers associated with moderate or extreme obesity, but this was explained in terms of decreased ability and increased time to perform physical tasks (Gates et al., 2009) rather than self-regulation, motivation or time management. In particular,

  Moderately or extremely obese workers (BMI 35) experienced the greatest health-related work limitations, specifically regarding time needed to complete tasks and ability to perform physical job demands.

It does appear there have been some conceptually similar economics investigations into whether overweight is associated with engaging in hyperbolic discounting more generally (Scharff, 2009), but overall, there does not seem to be any empirical reason for believing that overweight is associated with procrastination in any practically meaningful sense.

References

Gates, D. M., Succop, P., Brehm, B. J., Gillespie, G. L., & Sommers, B. D. (2008). Obesity and presenteeism: the impact of body mass index on workplace productivity. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 50(1), 39-45.
Scharff, R. L. (2009). Obesity and hyperbolic discounting: Evidence and implications. Journal of Consumer Policy, 32(1), 3-21.


Validity of regression therapy and degree of acceptance of the subject within the psychology community

There is an article on Wikipedia discussing past life regression.

A general scientific explanation of beliefs about past lives is that:

  the memories are the result of
  cryptomnesia, narratives created by the subconscious mind using
  imagination, forgotten information and suggestions from the
  therapist.[1][2][3][15][16][17][18] Memories created under hypnosis
  are indistinguishable from actual memories and can be more vivid than
  factual memories.[2][19] The greatest predictor of individuals
  reporting memories of past lives appears to be their beliefs about the
  existence in reincarnation - individuals who believe in reincarnation
  are more likely to report such memories, while sceptics or
  disbelievers are less so.[1][5]

The study discussed in Spanos (1996) sounds particularly relevant to understanding the nature of such past life beliefs. To continue quoting the Wikpedia article:

  Spanos' research leads him to the conclusion that past lives are not
  memories, but actually social constructions based on patients acting
  "as if" they were someone else, but with significant flaws that would
  not be expected of actual memories. To create these memories, Spanos'
  subjects drew upon the expectations established by authority figures
  and information outside of the experiment such as television, novels,
  life experiences and their own desires.

Thus, past life regression therapy is invalid in the sense that patients are not actually recalling past lives.  Nonetheless, there still remains a question of whether it offers therapeutic benefits. Meaning,  purpose, and self-esteem are all important human needs. For therapists and patients who believe in past lives,  fleshing out past lives could potentially help to fulfil such needs. That said, I don't know of any scientific studies that have evaluated such therapy. Such therapy also raises a number of ethical issues in terms of fostering illusions in the client.

References

Spanos NP (1996). Multiple Identities & False Memories: A Sociocognitive Perspective. American Psychological Association (APA). pp. 135–40. ISBN 1-55798-340-2.


Are there any cognitive models for visual navigation?

I wonder if any of the work using Act-R would be relevant.
See these Act-R publications with accompanying PDFs on

visual search
spatial reasoning and navigation

(apologies if they're not relevant, this is outside my comfort zone)


What is the relationship between sociology and cognitive sciences?

The primary difference is two-fold:

1) Methods : Social sciences use mostly qualitative methods and content analysis, psychology and cognitive sciences use quantitative methods and statistical analysis. The one basic standard tool in psychology and cognitive sciences is the laboratory experiment, while social sciences usually collect data in the field.

2) Object of study : Social sciences deal mostly with social entities. The smallest social entity is two people. Psychology and cognitive sciences deal with individuals or, if they deal with populations, the general characteristics of the individuals of that population. Psychology and cognitive sciences deal with social processes only from the perspective of the individual: how individual internal mental processes are affected by them.

As usual, this is a tendency, and the borders between the disciplines are blurred. There is no clear distinction and there is a huge overlap where research could fall in either discipline and is associated with one only because the researcher comes from it. Also, in academic institutions, certain parts of one discipline might have found their home in a neighboring discipline for historical reasons, e.g. pedagogical psychology is often placed in the faculty for pedagogy (a social science), but there it is just as often taught by psychologists.

I wrote "psychology and cognitive sciences", because cognitive sciences is strongly associated with psychology, but also with information sciences / computer science and neurosciences. At our university, the degree program "cognitive science" is part of both the psychological and the computer sciences department. But other universities place it elsewhere. Like neurosciences, cognitive sciences is an interdisciplinary field or, if you want, a new and evolving discipline whose realm is even less clearly defined than that of older and more traditional disciplines. Nevertheless, I understand cognitive sciences to be concerned with cognition, which is an aspect of the individual, and a traditional field of study that lies mostly within psychology and other natural sciences like medicine and biology.

In short: cognitive sciences is a natural science, while social sciences are part of the humanities, with all the methodological and theoretical implications that follow from that.


d-prime values are usually fairly well normally-distributed. So you can use any parametric test relying on the normality assumption (in facts you should always z-transform fractions before to use a parametric test on them). If you have only 2 conditions you can use a classical t-test. From your question it seems you have only 1 value per participants so that would probably be an independent t-test. If you have more than 1 comparison an ANOVA would be the typical test to use.

For reporting results it is a bit tricky. d-primes are not that intuitive for people. So you might want to report fraction correct in the text, but run your tests on d-primes. For the same reason you might want to plot your results as fractions. Below is an example of wording (but refer to a statistical textbook for conducting and reporting statistical tests). Note that it is fine to report means and standard deviations of fractions. However parametric tests should always be conducted on z-scores. I know people use fractions in tests all the time but it is wrong.

  The mean recognition rate increased from NN% to NN% between the conditions ... and ..., for a mean improvement of NN ± NN% (SE). This difference was significant in an independent t-test on z-transformed recognition rates: t(N)=N, p


Are there "place cells" for temporal encoding?

It seems the topic of time perception is quite complicated. In contrast to the place and grid cells in the hippocampus (Moser et al., 2015), the perception of time seems to be distributed across many places in the brain. A review by Fontes et al., 2016) cites 158 papers written between 1980 to 2015 that describe a variety of brain structures relating to the perception of time, including areas in the frontal cortex, parietal cortex, basal ganglia, cerebellum and hippocampus. It indeed seems to be a highly distributed system in the brain. The proximity of time cells and place and grid cells in the hippocampus is interesting and is an active area of research.
References
- Fontes et al., Neurol Int (2016); 8(1): 59392016
- Moser et al., Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol (2015); 7: a021808


How does timing of pleasure / dopamine / reward influence the formation of positive association?

i will offer an answer to this, because i don't believe this is homework. see next comment below:

  Perhaps something like a perfect dopamine antagonist with no
  side-effects. Call it P

no, let's call it an antipsychotic. perhaps P stands for prochlorperazine. i think you mean dopamine agonist. dopamine antagonists invoke what could best be described as a chemical lobotomy, and are antithetical to any notions of motivation, salience, achievement, or reward.

  a. Is there an optimal time to introduce P to facilitate the
  development of the desire/interest/motivation to do task T?

yes -- immediately once the desired behaviour has been undertaken successfully. with some interesting exceptions e.g. food poisoning, the shorter the latency between any behaviour and its consequences, the stronger the association between the two will become apparent to the individual. think of it as a "theory of causality" -- the shorter the latency, the more confident we become that the behaviour caused the outcome.

this is why the route of administration of a drug has a strong influence upon an individual's susceptibility to addiction, or to put it another way, motivation to consume the drug again. smoked or IV versus oral administration. conversely, it's much harder to engage in behaviours that might be beneficial to us years down the track because we have less confidence that engaging in that behaviour will result in the desired outcome.

  b. Is this even possible if the subject knows that P induces the pleasure?

yes. however, if there is no intrinsic motivation to do the task, it will be much harder to facilitate the desired behaviour in the absence of the reinforcer. if you only did something because of the outcome, and not because you found some inherent enjoyment from it, after a while you might start thinking about other behaviours you could engage in to attain the same outcome.

in the case of our fictional substance P: sure, i could keep doing what you want me to in order to obtain it. but in engaging in your task as simply a means to an end, i might start to consider more direct routes to that same end. for example, i could steal the keys to your medicine cabinet. or place a blood-filled syringe to your neck and tell you to hand it over.

  c. Even if pleasure and T are then linked, is it only under the assumption that T leads to pleasure, and thus if P is no longer present, the interest in T will wane?

yes. here, new learning takes place: the individual has now constructed a new theory of causality. whereas once upon the individual learned that engaging in T offered access to P, it now no longer does.

i would go so far as to argue that if one was not aware of the presence of P, one's interest in the task would persistent for far longer a period, and perhaps indefinitely. "perhaps i'm not doing the task correctly... i know, it's because i've had a lousy week... " etc, etc. one might even start engaging in superstitious behaviours in the belief that it is this superstitious ritual that influences the likelihood of the reward.

in order to "slow down" this new learning (extinction), it would be important to ensure that the reinforcement of T with P is not 1:1. the more tightly a behaviour is linked to an outcome, good or bad, the more one expects the outcome to occur when they engage in that behaviour. when the outcome is now absent, the more apparent it is that something about the behaviour -> outcome relationship has changed.

to understand how this works, read into the relationship between different reinforcement schedules and rate of extinction. also read into the phenomenon of spontaneous recovery.

now, you will need to excuse: my motivation to continue typing has now waned, and in it's place, a desire to go get high.


Does motivation and interest correlate highly with IQ and can someone be smart but perform poorly in a particular field?

I have to disagree with Arnon a bit and want to expand on some of his points. The following is not meant as an answer to the question but just an extended comment to Arnon's answer.

General intelligence vs multiple intelligences

There are theories of intelligence that posit a general intelligence which determins performance in all areas. According to these theories performance in different areas must be correlated. And there are theories which assume different "intelligences" (verbal, spatial etc.) and a possibly different performance in different areas.

Intelligence vs talent

There are psychologists that use the term "intelligence" for an equally high performance in all areas, and the term "talent" for high performance in only one area and relatively lower performance in all other areas. Example:

IQ profile of a highly intelligent individual
---------------------------------------------

 IQ   verbal   mathematical   spatial      etc.

130     x           x            x          x      <- high intelligence

120

110

100

 90

versus:

IQ profile of a talented individual
-----------------------------------

 IQ   verbal   mathematical   spatial      etc.

130                 x                              <- mathematical talent

120

110

100     x                        x          x      <- average intelligence

 90

Fluid vs crystallized intelligence

Many theories assume two different aspects of intelligence: fluid intelligence, that is the potential or capacity for cognitive performance, and crystallized intelligence, that is the knowledge and learning an individual has acquired.

Depending on which theory you follow – general versus multiple intelligences, intelligence versus talent, fluid and/or crystallized intelligence –, your concept of what intelligence is will differ. Since the scholars creating IQ tests also have different opinions on this matter, their tests are (often extremely) differently constructed and test results from different tests often correlate only to a certain degree. That is, an individual scoring a high IQ in one test can have an average IQ according to another. Which is why, when reporting an IQ, you must also report the test with which it was measured, because otherwise the result is meaningless.

Measurement error and confidence interval

IQ tests don't measure very exactly. There is always a certain measurement error involved. Beacause of this, psychologists always calculate a range of values (a confidence interval) in which the true value of the individual probably lies. The exact true intelligence is always unknown and can in fact differ widely from a given test result. Therefore serious psychologists do not put much faith in the IQ score (that is considered unprofessional and ignorant) but rather report wether the individual's intelligence is average, above average or below average. No current IQ test allows for a more accurate assessment. Repeating measurements (with different tests to avoid learning and on different days) can increase exactness.


How does evolution help in Minsky's theory of a resourceful mind?

Evolution does not help Minsky's theory of a resourceful mind. Although he tries to frame his discussion in loose evolutionary terms in the Emotion Machine and the book it is based on: Society of Mind (here is a good review/summary). As you noted during your reading:

  Minsky backs himself up by saying "evolution did so", but hasn't provided tests or studies that verify such claims

There are several reasons why he can't back himself up, and these are not unique to him but common throughout evolutionary psychology. The fundamental reason why Minsky (and other evolutionary psychologists) can't provide biologically convincing defenses for their evolutionary statements is because they are buildings theories of the mind, not the brain.

Biological evolution (at least in the modern synthesis) acts on genes. It is already hard enough to provide evolutionary descriptions on this level (see for instance issues surrounding the green-beard effect). However, biologists are sometimes able to go one step past this and start talking about basic physiology and the phenotypes and how selection acts on them. These are discussions about phenotypic traits. The traits that are most easily linked to the genes that express them are the ones that we can study effectively.

The brain is not easily linked to the genes that express it. Thus questions about the brain are already difficult enough to talk about from an evolutionary perspective (although some try). The mind is one more level of description higher up. Thus, in order to have a precise evolutionary statements about the mind we would need to solve the whole chain: genes --> protein expression --> physiology of the brain --> function of the brain --> function of the mind. We haven't solved any of these arrows, so it is not surprising that Minsky does not have hard evidence to support himself.

Lastly, when you read Minsky (and other evolutionary psychologists) be wary of teleological arguments. For us to have some trait doesn't mean that the trait needs to have been selected for at some point (in fact, some make a whole ruckus over what it even means to 'select for a trait'). Especially when you are considering such epiphenomena as the basic agents (or resources in the new book) of the mind. Take a look at genetic drift and genetic hitchhiking as starting point.


How does our brain consider something to be funny?

Psychological theories of humor are a growing area of research. I attended a seminar on it for a day as an undergraduate myself, but dropped it before giving the instructor a chance to demonstrate that there was much detailed knowledge out here. Also, this was several years ago, so I'm sure the field has progressed since then.

I doubt there is a single, common, canonical attribute that triggers the humor sense, but there are probably many, partially independent factors that each contribute to humorousness. I'm familiar with four in particular$^{[1]}$:

The "funny because it's true" factor may explain why cleverness and originality are important. Myself and many others find stimuli funnier when we haven't encountered them before, and especially when they violate expectations. Novelty is an important factor in the experience of pleasure in general (Lyubomirsky, 2013), and this clearly applies in humor to some extent, in that jokes often "get old" eventually. At first hearing, a joke may offer more opportunity for new insights (depending on whether one "gets it" right away; this also explains why one generally won't laugh until one does get the joke), though it may continue to remain funny as one continues to process new insights gained from reconsideration of the joke's implications. I often find jokes less funny when they express misconceptions or depend on an ignorant perspective that I don't share (e.g., the suggestion that some apparent contradiction is absurd doesn't amuse me as much if I know the reason for the apparent contradiction already).

This isn't to say that something needs to be true or representative of reality in general to be funny though. Absurdist humor in particular relies on the violation of expectations in ways that seem coherent at least (i.e., it probably won't be funny if it's just too confusing or bizarre to make any kind of sense), but in ways that may seem particularly absurd (and probably novel too) due to violations of the laws or probabilities of physical or social reality. This principle suggests one reason tastes may vary in the sense of humor: individuals vary in their tolerance for expectation violations, and in their abilities to make sense out of them. Openness to experience relates to cultural preferences (e.g., traditional vs. avant-garde), level of educational attainment, and (negatively to) need for closure, which suggests a particular hypothesis of individual differences that may be worth testing: openness may relate positively to appreciation of absurdist humor, and negatively to appreciation of "blue-collar" comedy (at least when the latter appeals more to simple, traditional, or uneducated sensibilities, which it doesn't always).
The nervous laughter factor may increase laughter as a sort of coping mechanism for social discomfort. This may partially explain the popularity of humor on taboo topics such as political incorrectness (e.g., Politically Incorrect), demographic (e.g., gender, age, and ethnic) stereotypes, general immorality (e.g., "dark humor"), sex, and "toilet humor". By nature of being taboos, experience with these topics and exposure to a variety of opinions on them are commonly limited, so this factor may depend partly on the novelty factor.

However, nervous laughter does not involve novelty necessarily. Self-perceptive processes may produce the impression that something is funny because one is laughing, even when one is laughing for other reasons. Various social reasons may disincline people to express anxiety or discomfort directly (e.g., if a friend or comedian is obviously trying to amuse you with something distasteful), and forced laughter is a common and sometimes habituated way of hiding negative emotions through an opposite expression (a reaction formation) of levity and enjoyment. This reasoning appeals to a somewhat circular theory of humor (i.e., our laughter defines humor as that which makes us laugh), but people use circular logic in many ways (e.g., early behaviorism has been criticized as circular). Therefore, to whatever extent humor is a social construct by definition, theories of humor need not be less valid to the extent that they are circular and simply descriptive of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that relate to laughter. Over time and repeated exposure, people may come to commonly regard a topic as humorous simply because it provokes laughter, even if that laughter is only a nervous reaction initially.

A particularly loose line of reasoning that could tie nervousness to laughter would apply this explanation to the laughter reaction to tickling, which is a particularly odd unconditioned response (that seems to occur in animals too). Again, just a bit of personal speculation based on evolutionary theory, FWIW: in mammals, ticklish areas are often vulnerable to physical injury, and therefore sensitive. These areas seem to generate an odd sort of nervous discomfort reaction and motivate defensive movements reflexively, maybe to naturally prioritize protection of these areas from injury. Natural selection may have engendered such a reflex to extended this reaction even to sleep or intimate contact with trusted others (which could cause injury during aggressive play, sex, or by betrayal). Experience of this defensive reflex in action during seemingly inappropriate circumstances may generate laughter through surprise (thus involving the novelty factor again) or through reaction formation to nervous discomfort, among other possible explanations. For support of this explanation, note that the laughter response to tickling can be suppressed intentionally when the experience of tactile discomfort remains.
Conformity may cause laughter and tickle the sense of humor in similar ways. Following the above reasoning somewhat, self-perceptive processes may kick in after one laughs to mimic others nearby. People conform to others' behavior for a wide variety of reasons, and in a wide variety of ways. This may explain why people sometimes enjoy stand-up comedy more when attending live performances than when watching them recorded from home, and why many television comedy shows use laugh tracks.

One explanation of laugh tracks would again involve novelty somewhat. Subtlety in humor is often an expression and consequence of cleverness and originality in the delivery of a message, as by implication rather than explicit expression (comedians often try to avoid "beating" their audiences "over the head" with their punchlines). Yet again, one must notice and (often, but not always) comprehend a stimulus to find it funny. Thus a laugh track serves to cue the audience to parse stimuli for humorous content, and may help compensate for individuals' varying abilities to detect subtle stimuli or their implications. Cuing appropriate responses to ambiguous stimuli and situations is a common function of conformity in general.

Conformity occurs even in the relative absence of ambiguity though (cf. the Asch conformity experiments). This suggests another explanation of laugh tracks: a pure conformity manipulation aimed at manipulating humor judgments through self-perception. This explanation may apply more broadly to the commonly experienced social phenomenon of "contagious" laughing fits in groups, which some special groups capitalize upon (e.g., Laughology, Laughercise). Yet again, laughter may result in response to the novelty and seeming absurdity of such events as well.
Furthermore, the social contagion of laughter and some instances of animal laughter suggest as an additional principle that laughter may arise as a simple behavioral manifestation of positive affect in general. Joy and exuberance may naturally result in laughter as an exaggerated form of grinning. In this sense, intensity of the stimulus becomes an important factor unto itself; consider how much harder one laughs at something especially hilarious. Next, consider the common emphasis on surprise as a comedic element, and the opposite effect of having to explain a joke. A sudden surprise may load all of the stimulus' information content into a briefer, more intense moment, thereby intensifying the emotional reaction. Conversely, spreading out that information over a long-winded explanation may spread out the emotional reaction so much that one no longer finds the joke funny for lack of emotional intensity, even though the same amount of information (and sometimes more) is ultimately conveyed.

Because positive affect is generally desirable, and laughter is generally enjoyable, people may force laughter somewhat simply to enjoy themselves more, and this need not occur consciously. This implicit motive may lower people's thresholds for laughter (and thus the perception of humorousness) in situations where positive affect is generated by other factors, and maybe also in situations where positive affect is lacking (e.g., in the midst of sadness, frustration, or anxiety). Consider as (somewhat circumstantial) evidence how popular media such as movies often mix comedy and tragedy to accentuate each.

Yet again, this effect may be partially mediated by the novelty factor if one is surprised at the depth of one's joy. The other social factors I've mentioned here might conceivably play mediating roles too. For instance, extreme joy might heighten emotional arousal past comfortable levels, leading to anxiety and nervous laughter; or one might force laughter to communicate a desire for levity or to manipulate one's social atmosphere through conformity-based mechanisms. This last point may apply especially to laughter as a direct coping mechanism for negative emotions: laughter may not only hide negative emotions, but may overwrite them somewhat with positive emotions.

$^{[1]}$ These theories don't necessarily apply to everyone (in light of the pervasiveness of individual differences in the ever-growing human population, one might argue they probably don't), but I'm unaware of exceptions. I'm not including any empirical research directly here, and would be happy to edit some in (or let others do so) if anyone else knows of some, but I'm short on time for reviewing literature right now. I'm answering mostly from personal experience and from memory of theories I've read here and there over the years, some of which may (or may not) have been based on empirical research.

Reference

Lyubomirsky, S. (2013). The myths of happiness: What should make you happy, but doesn't; What shouldn't make you happy, but does. The Penguin Press HC. Official website: http://themythsofhappiness.org/.


Does Big 5 measure preferences for physical activity?

One study found a slight correlation between physical activity and extraversion (r = 0.23), neuroticism (r = −0.11) and conscientiousness (r = 0.20), though the results were relatively inconclusive. Another study found that physically active individuals ranked slightly higher on all scales except for neuroticism. A third study found correlations between all traits except agreeableness, with neuroticism being the only negatively correlated trait. [1]

Though not every study showed replicable and statistically significant result, they do seem to agree that neuroticism is negatively correlated with physical activity. Among the Big 5, the trait with the highest positive correlation tended to be extroversion, though by a marginal amount at best.

To be fair, I'm not sure if there is a trait that explains 'those who prefer experience and physical activities above philosophy and creativity'. A facility for philosophy and creativity is highly correlated with openness to experience on the Big 5 model. The contrast to this (according to the model) is not an inclination towards the sensate; rather, people with low scores on openness tend to have more conventional, traditional interests, and thus tend to prefer the plain, straightforward, and obvious over the complex, ambiguous, and subtle. [2]

What I think that you are describing is a trait that can be used to describe those who prefer to engage in external activities (sports, physical recreation, external experiences) over internal ones (philosophy, creative abstraction). Based on the evidence above, it would be reasonable to assume that there is no one 'trait' to describe this phenomenon, but rather the contrast is made more evident the higher in extroversion and the lower in openness that a person may be, compared to someone of the opposite temperament.

Sources:

[1] Kathryn E. Wilson, Rodney K. Dishman. (2014) Personality and physical activity: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

[2] McCrae, R.R.; Costa, P.T.; Jr (1987). "Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52 (1): 81–90.


Do hints improve memorization when using spaced repetition?

Short answer: Based on my assessment of the literature, I would say that a vague hint leaves room for retrieval practice, and will therefore likely elicit a testing effect. An obvious hint does not, and will therefore likely help recognition, but not recall.

Background

Spaced repetition refers to the practice of combining two well-known memory effects, namely the spacing effect and the testing effect, typically implemented in some form of flash cards.

Testing effect

The testing effect aspect of spaced repetition is highly relevant. It refers to the finding that retrieval practice leads to improved long-term recall (cf. recognition) ability for a practiced item compared to non-practiced items.

Modern theories on the testing effect tend to take the view that the testing effect represents a complex, active process in the brain rather than simple association formation or Hebbian learning. A critical meta-analysis of the recent testing effect literature unsurprisingly found support for the testing effect's existence, as well as some support for effortful processing as a contributing factor (Eisenkraemer, Jaeger and Stein, 2013). They did not find support for semantic elaboration theories (i.e., new/re-weighted brain associations).

Additional support for the testing effect as an active process comes from the fact that associated non-practiced items may be actively inhibited by retrieval practice, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork and Bjork, 1994). We currently do not know much more than that the testing effect happens when we engage in retrieval practice. I know researchers who are studying exactly this, but at this point, I'm unfortunately not comfortable with discussing their thoughts or unpublished work.

Spacing effect

I'm mostly including this for completeness' sake. The spacing effect was discovered by Herman Ebbinghaus in the 1880's and is one of the oldest phenomena studied in psychology. It refers to the tendency for animals to retain items presented over a longer period relatively better than when presentation of the same items is massed over a single brief period. It doesn't have any relation to the use of hints in spaced repetition learning, at least not one that I can think of.

References

Anderson, M. C., Bjork, R. A., & Bjork, E. L. (1994). Remembering can cause forgetting: retrieval dynamics in long-term memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20(5), 1063.
Eisenkraemer, R. E., Jaeger, A., & Stein, L. M. (2013). A Systematic Review of the Testing Effect in Learning. Paidéia (Ribeirão Preto), 23(56), 397-406.


Does writing something down help memorize it?

Yes, writing increases the modality and attention given to a piece of information. Increasing the effort and the ways that you have experienced a bit of information helps you encode that information better; this is Elaborative Encoding.

More generally the more deeply you process a thing the more likely you are to properly encode the memory for future retrieval. Simply looking at characters is very shallow processing; writing and constructing them is relatively deep. This is the Modality Effect.

Explaining how things work and showing others or doing a task is also a much better way to remember things than just reading about them; in the case of remembering Chinese Characters there's less you can do other than write them, but practice methods like writing a brief paper can help you learn to use them. This is why essays are a common task in language classes.

Note however that Transfer-Appropriate Processing is also relevant: retrieval is more likely when we attempt to retrieve information in a similar or appropriate context to when encoding occurred. Therefore writing symbols could arguably be a bit less appropriate way to learn to read symbols; however it is an extremely relevant way of learning how to write and construct those symbols.

I've found some general reference sites eluding to this effect such as this post on Lifehack: Writing and Remembering: Why We Remember What We Write, but could not find experimental results supporting this specific idea. I know my advanced course on Memory covered this specifically but I don't recall exact studies.


Does the number of alternatives in a multiple choice question affect the learning output?

I doubt this has been studies as you ask, i.e. effect on learning. Most of the literature seems to hammer/contrast the effects on learning of multiple-choice vs constructed-response exams, e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433302/

There have been more limited investigations of 3 vs 4/5 choice in tests. One
meta-analysis from 2005 titled "Three Options Are Optimal for Multiple-Choice Items: A Meta-Analysis of 80 Years of Research"

  Multiple‐choice items are a mainstay of achievement testing. The need to adequately cover the content domain to certify achievement proficiency by producing meaningful precise scores requires many high‐quality items. More 3‐option items can be administered than 4‐ or 5‐option items per testing time while improving content coverage, without detrimental effects on psychometric quality of test scores. Researchers have endorsed 3‐option items for over 80 years with empirical evidence—the results of which have been synthesized in an effort to unify this endorsement and encourage its adoption.

This meta-analysis has about 300 citations in Google Scholar, so at least people took notice. I don't know how well received its conclusions were. Wikipedia's page Multiple choice doesn't even mention this paper, but the page is rather sparse in citations anyway.

I did find one newer study 2010 (citing the meta-analysis), which confirmed its conclusions:

  Overall, three-option items perform equally as well as four-option items. Since three-option items require less time to develop and administer and additional options provide no psychometric advantage, teachers are encouraged to adopt three-option items as the standard on multiple-choice tests.

And another one from 2009, roughly confirming it:

  The low frequency of items with three functioning distractors in the four-option items in this study suggests that teachers have difficulty developing plausible distractors for most MCQs. Test items should consist of as many options as is feasible given the item content and the number of plausible distractors; in most cases this would be three. Item analysis results can be used to identify and remove non-functioning distractors from MCQs that have been used in previous tests.

In these papers, the reason why 3-item MC tests are often just as good has mostly to do with who makes the exam (and the time spend developing it) rather than than who takes it.

On the other hand, there's a 2012 paper on listening tests (evaluated with MCs), which somewhat disagrees:

  Mean test scores of the three-option tests were significantly higher than those of four- and five-option tests. While no difference was found in mean item discriminations across the three different test formats, reliability coefficients showed inconsistent patterns depending on the number of options and test versions. One possible interpretation of the low correlations among the scores of three test formats is that items with different numbers of options tap into skills other than listening. The findings suggest that statistically, three options may or may not be optimal depending on the point of view taken – from that of the test score users, or from that of the test stakeholders. Test developers must consider multiple statistical, affective, and contextual factors in determining the optimal number of options.

This was supposedly a high-stakes exam, according to the paper title, namely the CSAT. Of the post-2005 papers, this last one has the most substantial literature and arguments review, so it's worth reading its first 4-5 pages.


Why is it so difficult to use a "true mirror" as a mirror

This answer supports the comment by Krysta that we are simply used to the mirrors we have and could just as easily learn to use a "true mirror".

In 1950, Theodor Erismann and Ivo Kohler performed a famous self-experiment in Innsbruck, Austria. Kohler wore a pair of glasses that turned his view of the world upside down continually for 124 days (sic). After about 8 days his perception had adapted and he was able to ride a bike or paint just like before.

The image below shows Kohler wearing the glasses:

Here is the original documentary movie created by the two researchers (in German) on the website of the Center for the History of Psychology at the University of Würzburg, Germany: http://www.awz.uni-wuerzburg.de/archiv/film_foto_tonarchiv/filmdokumente/th_erismann_ikohler/die_umkehrbrille_und_das_aufrechte_sehen/

Here is an article from the German Wikipedia describing the glasses and showing an image of a current (self-built) model: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkehrbrille I don't know what this "Umkehrbrille" ("turn around glasses") are called in English.


Is there a term in psychology for when a tool is perceived as an extension of your body?

Short answer
Possible interesting terms are:

distal attribution (externalization)
body transfer illusion (rubber hand illusion)
embodiment

Background
This is a very interesting, yet difficult question. I have come up with a few items that may (or may not) be of interest.
Firstly, there is distal attribution, also referred to as externalization. It is defined by Loomis as:

...[the phenomenon] that most of our perceptual experience, though originating with stimulation of our sense organs, is referred to external space beyond the limits of the sensory organs

and by Auvrey at al. (2006) as:

[the] ability to attribute the cause of our proximal sensory stimulation to an exterior and distinct object

Distal attribution occurs for instance in sensory substitution. Sensory substitution refers to the process of substituting one (dysfunctional) sense with another. A classic example being the guide cane. After training and prolonged use, blind people are reported to experience the information not by haptic feedback perceived in the hands via the cane, but to experience the tactile feedback at the tip of the cane instead. Thus they externalize, or distally attribute the tactile feedback in the hand as originating from the tip of the cane.
Another interesting phenomenon that may relate to your question is the body transfer illusion, or the rubber hand illusion (Ehrsson et al., 2005), from Wikipedia:

The [study participants] saw a lifelike rubber left hand in front of them. The experimenters stroked both the subjects hidden left hand and the visible rubber hand with a paintbrush. The experiment showed that if the two hands were stroked synchronously and in the same direction, the subjects began to experience the rubber hand as their own. When
asked to use their right hand to point to their left hand, most of the time they pointed toward the rubber hand.

In other words, after some accommodation, the study participants attributed sensory input to their real hand to the fake arm in their visual field.
Thirdly, and lastly there is (prosthesis) embodiment (Engdahl et al., 2020), i.e.,

the perception of a prosthesis as part of one’s body

This refers to the phenomenon, akin to sensory substitution but in a physically more invasive context and not exclusively related to sensory perception, that  implanted prosthetics become experienced as a part of the body. It is a more complicated issue than externalization as discussed above, and is especially important during rehab where acceptance is an important part of the process. Embodiment comprises at least two processes, namely:

An object may be implicitly embodied if some of its properties are processed in the same way as the properties of one’s own body [...]. Embodiment may also be experienced more explicitly, as evidenced by affective reactions towards the object, perceptions of ownership, and other subjective feelings.

To conclude with a fourth term used in a more popular sense, it's often said from experienced car drivers that (Urry, 2004):

The car becomes an extension of the driver's body

So extension may also be terminology that might be useful, yet it doesn't really harbor any mechanistical explanation as to the why or how this happens.
References
- Auvrey et al., J Integr Neurosci (2005); 4(4): 505–21
- Ehrsson et al., J Neurosci (2005); 25(45): 10564 –73
- Engdahl et al., Sci Rep (2020); 10: 15471
- Urry, Theory Culture Soc (2004); 21(4-5): 25-39


Origin of the SEEV Model of visual attention distribution

Wickens et al. (2003) is the earliest I'm aware of:

Wickens, C. D., Goh, J., Helleberg, J., Horrey, W. J., & Talleur, D.
A. (2003). Attentional models of multitask pilot performance using
advanced display technology. Human Factors: The Journal of the Human
Factors and Ergonomics Society, 45(3), 360-380.

Actually, in that paper he cites Wickens et al. (2001), but I can't seem to find
a copy of this manuscript anywhere, and it has fewer citations:

Wickens, C. D., Helleberg, J., Goh, J., Xu, X., & Horrey, W. J.
(2001). Pilot task management: Testing an attentional expected value
model of visual scanning. Savoy, University of Illinois Institute of
Aviation.

If you're using N-SEEV, cite one of these instead:

Steelman-Allen, K. S., McCarley, J. S., Wickens, C., Sebok, A., &
Bzostek, J. (2009, October). N-SEEV: A computational model of
attention and noticing. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and
Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 53, No. 12, pp. 774-778). SAGE
Publications.
Wickens, C., McCarley, J., & Steelman-Allen, K. (2009, October).
NT-SEEV: A model of attention capture and noticing on the flight deck.
In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual
Meeting (Vol. 53, No. 12, pp. 769-773). SAGE Publications.


Do introverted people have more emotional stress?

Neuroticism is more strongly associated with emotional stressors in the form of depression and anxiety than is extraversion. That being said, extraversion is negatively correlated with symptoms of depression, anxiety, and self-reported lifetime mental disorder, even after adjusting for gender, age, and education. It appears that depression is moderately linked to introversion in those who suffer from depression, whereas anxiety is not linked to introversion nor extroversion.

The results of this study indicate that:

  It is argued that (a) one set of traits influences
  positive affect or satisfaction, whereas a different set of traits influences
  negative affect or dissatisfaction; (b) the former set of traits can be viewed as
  components of extraversion, and the latter as components of neuroticism; and
  (c) personality differences antedate and predict differences in happiness over
  a period of 10 years, thus ruling out the rival hypothesis that temporary moods
  or states account for the observed relations.

The paper further argues that one's happiness is relative to one's ability to adapt to new situations in healthy ways, which may be augmented in unhealthy ways by one's level of neuroticism.

So, to answer your question, it does appear that extraversion is linked to positive mental affect. However, it is worth noting that this does not necessarily imply that introversion is correlated to negative affect. It appears that neuroticism is a greater predictor of negative affect, which (hypothetically) could have a harsher impact on someone whose social support system is weaker or consists of fewer people, regardless of internal / external orientation.


Is there another example of a strongly emergent phenomenon besides the mind?

If you look at the paper Strong and Weak Emergence by David J. Chalmers he states his belief that consciousness is the only example we have of strong emergence. However, he also states that it is quite possible that there is no such thing as strong emergence, and therefore, our perception of the mind as an example of strong emergence stems from our current lack of understanding of consciousness.

My guess is that the emergent nature of the mind is actually weak; that is, its behavior stems from the massive interaction of all the components of its circuitry. If this is correct, then we may still never be able to understand precisely how this emergence works. However, we will likely be able to simulate it. One test for strong versus weak emergence that has been suggested is whether the emergence can be simulated. Consider the emergent properties of Artificial Neural Networks (especially recent work with Deep Belief Nets).

That said, I would suggest that if the mind is strongly emergent, then it is not only natural, but is an example of nature at one of its most fundamental and mysterious points.


Is there a term for trying to remember a word, but only remembering its first letter?

This is called the Tip of the Tongue phenomenon.

  People in a tip-of-the-tongue state can often recall one or more features of the target word, such as the first letter, its syllabic stress, and words similar in sound and/or meaning. Individuals report a feeling of being seized by the state, feeling something like mild anguish while searching for the word, and a sense of relief when the word is found.

It's a very common phenomenon, and it presents itself in several similar forms, as the Wikipedia description notes. Remembering just the first letter is a common form but not the only cue.

There are a couple of suggested causes, but generally the problem is failure to completely retrieve information you "know" is in fact there. The Wikipedia article has some information on the general theories.


IQ scores - fixed raw scores vs infinite tails of the underlying normal distribution of standard scores

The answer is provided by the Test theory, which distinguishes between the true value of a latent (=unobservable) psychological construct, in this case the IQ of a person, and the IQ score measured with an IQ test. A good test is objective, reliable and valid which ultimately means that each measured score reflects the underlying construct (measured IQ= true IQ). High validity means that the test measures what it claims to measure. If a person has an IQ 170 but the IQ test assigns that person IQ 160, because this is the highest possible score in that test, then this result is invalid and the test is not a good tool for measuring high IQ.

In practice, the test manual should clarify what is the IQ range, in which the test provides reliable and valid estimates of person's IQ. Furthermore, the authors may provide multiple test versions which differ in difficulty. For instance, Raven's Progressive Matrices come in three test versions: test for normal adults, test for children and mentally impaired individuals, and a test for people with above-average IQ. As you can imagine, the last-mentioned test features higher number of tasks than the normal version.


What is the neurobiological basis of the "inner voice" used for thought or reading?

Preliminary answer I intend to improve later. Stumbled upon this in the context of description of how people read:

According to this paper on readin (Sousa, 2005), novice readers internally verbalize written words of English and German using "an area of the brain just above and behind Wernicke's area". This area then communicates with the Broca's area and the frontal lobe.

Found this additional article which mentions that people use the same area of the brain when reading silently as when listening actively.


Does a person's brain still contain a record of daily events?

(1) There are different kinds of memory:

a "sensory" (e.g. visual) memory of events as they happened
a verbal memory, i.e. the knowledge that something has happened (verbalization being the result of higher cognitive processing or "reflection")
a behavioral memory, i.e. a specific reaction to certain stimuli that does not appear in individuals that did not experience the relevant trauma

The purposes of memory are correct and efficient future behavior. A detailed sensoric memory is not helpful in achieving these purposes, so it is usually not retained.

Verbal encoding becomes more likely in older children (older than 28 to 36 months) and is better in girls. Children of all ages preserve a behavioral memory. (Terr, 1988)

(2) Traumatic and negative life events are less well remembered than positive life events (Byrne, Hyman & Scott, 2001), and it seems that memory is correlated to the type of trauma. In one study (Williams, 1994), 38% of abused women had no memory of that (documented) abuse. Forgetting the abuse was more likely, if the perpretrator was part of the girls family. I would interpret this as the trauma being more severe, if the child's trust was broken. Forgetting this may be a coping strategy (see 3, below).

(3) Forgetting of traumatic events seems, in part, to be due to these traumatic events to "fall out of" and "not fit into" the individuals world view (Janoff-Bulman, 1989). Whenever we experience something new, we have to either adapt our idea of the world to include this new experience, or we can, among other strategies, deny, ignore, or simply forget, that it happened. In the case of childhood abuse by close relatives, accepting the event as a fact, would result in the child loosing its family and all trust in the world. It would be unable to survive. Forgetting the trauma maintains a world that can be lived in. Deliberate forgetting can be found in victims of genocide (Buckley-Zistel, 2006). Forgetting can be willfully induced (Joslyn & Oakes, 2005).

There's a wealth of research into forgetting of traumatic life events.


Is there a name for the tendency to use proper nouns often in conversation?

The behavior to lend credibility or importance to one's statements is called "name dropping".

Name dropping is a typical ingratiation tactic. Other ingratiation tactics are: other-enhancement, opinion conformity, self-enhancement, self-depreciation, instrumental dependency, and a variety of situation specific behaviors. While ingratiating behavior is strongest towards superiors across all people, there are people who show more or less ingratiating behavior across all situations and relationships (Bohra & Pandey, 1984).

Besides this function of name dropping "to position oneself in a status hierarchy", where people "may claim connections to celebrities or other high-status people to raise their own status" and impress their listeners, "[n]ame display is also used to discover whether there is a common bond between new acquaintances. People who lived in the same city or attended the same school may go through long lists of names seeking common ground." (Donath & Boyd, 2004)

This function of "seeking common ground" can not only be achieved by dropping personal names of possible common acquaintances, but also by naming authors, movies or products that you enjoy: if your partner knows and likes Mozzarella or Michael Corleone, too, these common interests form a basis for a new friendship that would have otherwise been difficult to build.

In short: you have to be careful and porperly analyze the person and situation to understand the causes and aims of name dropping.

References:

Bohra, K. A., & Pandey, J. (1984). Ingratiation toward strangers, friends, and bosses. Journal of Social Psychology, 122(2), 217-222. doi:10.1080/00224545.1984.9713483
Donath, J., & Boyd, D. (2004). Public Displays of Connection. BT Technology Journal, 22(4), 71-82. doi:10.1023/B:BTTJ.0000047585.06264.cc


Can the V * I * E theory of motivation explain the motivation of Nelson Mandela?

The VIE theory you mentioned can explain why some people don't give up their goals even if they to live under adverse conditions for a very long period of time, and the theory is very similar to a theory followed in Sociology and Psychology.  That is Social Exchange Theory.

Although the theory is generally referred to when talking about social interactions in relationships, it can also be related to the situations you are referring to.

Social Exchange Theory

The basic idea is that the social exchange process brings satisfaction when people receive fair returns for their expenditures. The major difference between social and economic exchange is the nature of the exchange between parties.  The social exchange perspective argues that people calculate the overall worth of a particular relationship by subtracting its costs from the rewards it provides.

$Rewards$ $–$ $Costs = Worth$

If the $Costs$ in the situation you are talking about is bigger than the benefits ($Rewards$), the $Worth$ has a negative value leading to the choice of not carrying out the task in mind.

To use your Nelson Mandella example,

  Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in jail because he was an anti-apartheid revolutionary. Apparently, he never gave up his mission.

Mandella perceived that the possible positive $Rewards$ (end to apartheid) outweighed the $Costs$ (imprisonment), therefore the $Worth$ of his social activism was positive (greater than zero).

If Mandella saw the $Costs$ being greater than the $Rewards$, the $Worth$ would have been negative and he may have chosen a different path, but then that is speculation.  The other point of note is that motivation towards social activism is generally towards improving the status quo within society, leading to positive $Rewards$.

What I have put forward is on Social Exchange Theory, however a possible alternative would be that he felt that change was vital and therefore the value of the fight and its goal outweighed the $Costs$ (VIE Theory).  Maybe both theories were in play.  This again is open to speculation.

Social Exchange Theory was introduced in 1958 by the sociologist George Homans with the publication of his work "Social Behavior as Exchange" (Cook & Rice, 2001).  Homans summarised the theory in 5 propositions (University of Amsterdam, n.d.):

The 1st Proposition - Success proposition:When an individual is rewarded for their actions, they tend to repeat the action;
The 2nd Proposition - Stimulus proposition:The more often a particular behaviour has resulted in a reward in the past, the more likely it is that a person will respond to it (possibly with reward); and
The 3rd Proposition - Value proposition:If the expected result of a behavioural action is considered valuable to the individual, it is more likely for that behaviour to occur
The 4th Proposition - Deprivation–satiation proposition:The more often in the recent past a person has received the same reward, the less valuable any further unit of that reward becomes.
The 5th Proposition – Aggression-approval proposition:When the rewards of a social exchange are not as expected, a person will react emotionally, usually in an angry or aggravated manner. Those who receive more than they expect or do not receive anticipated punishment will be happy and will behave approvingly.

References

Cook, K. S. & Rice, E. R. W., 2001. Chapter 31: Exchange and Power - Issues of Structure and Agency. In: J. H. Turner, ed. Handbook of Sociological Theory. New York City: Springer Science & Business Media, LLC, pp. 699-719.

University of Amsterdam, n.d. SocioSite: George C. Homans - General Propositions. [Online]
Available at: http://www.sociosite.net/topics/texts/homans.php
[Accessed 4 August 2016].


Is it true that old people loose the ability think creatively/ formulate new ideas

The question of whether it is true (or not) that

  old[er] people [in general] loose the ability think creatively or formulate new ideas

would lead to a very opinion based answer and therefore it is not a fit for this site.  Not everyone behaves or thinks in the same way.  However, where this is true of those who are in this situation, there are several possible names for it and they tend to be cognitive biases.  There is

Declinism

  The belief that a society or institution is tending towards decline. Particularly, it is the predisposition to view the past favourably (rosy retrospection) and future negatively.

Rosy Retrospection

  The remembering of the past as having been better than it really was.

System justification

  The tendency to defend and bolster the status quo. Existing social, economic, and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives disparaged, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest.

Status Quo Bias

  An emotional bias; a preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss.

Choice-supportive bias

  In a self-justifying manner retroactively ascribing one's choices to be more informed than they were when they were made.