How to collaborate with a university on a consumer psychology study?

There are two factors at work in what is being researched: interest and money.

Researchers research what they find interesting. So if you can interest someone in your idea, then chances are that they will want to research it. But wether they will actually do that research will depend on wether it seems more interesting to them than what they are currently doing, have been investing a lot of time and effort into, and have already employed a team to research. So, your topic has to be really, really interesting to an advanced researcher to pick it up, which is unlikely. If it were so interesting to them, they would have thought of it themselves.

Researchers usually depend on third party funds. Those third parties only finance what they find relevant. There is research on how topics that are currently considered important by the media and populace are more researched. A good example is research on video game violence which was intensely researched after the Columbine shooting. Much relevant research is not done, because it is not currently politically opportune. Many researchers report how they were unable to continue research, because there was no funding. So if your topic is of current popular interest, and politicians can get voted if they care for it, chances are someone is going to research it. If not, not.

If, on the other hand, you pay for the labs and the people, you will have no problem finding researchers, and you can approach any expert in the relevant field. With money being notoriously scarce at many universities, and many young researchers working in underpaid, short-term positions, it is highly likely that someone will be happy to hear from you and make your research happen.

Practical real world example:

A company produces a biofeedback device for a certain condition. To better sell their product, they want scientific research proving its therapeutic effectiveness. They approached my professor (who is a clinical psychologist, but does not do research in that field). Another psychologist, who had earned his doctorate with my professor and is now working in a relevant clinic, was found and conducted a study, the pracical side carried out by student interns. My professor appointed me, one of his student assistants, to do the statistical analysis of the data. The resulting article, which was written by the aforementioned psychologist, his students, and myself (I wrote the results section), has been peer reviewed for publication and the feedback is currently being worked into the paper. If all goes well (which I expect), a year from now the company will quote this paper on their website to emphasize the effectiveness of their device. All my professor did is write some emails and find some people, and now he has another publication under his belt. No money was involved.


Is forward associated with right and backwards with left?

It may have to do with language.

The idea that language influences thought is called Linguistic Relativity:

  The more accepted weak version claims that linguistic categories and
  usage only influence thoughts and decisions.

Lera Boroditsky summarizes research on the influence language has on direction and time:

  English speakers tend to talk about time using horizontal spatial
  metaphors (e.g., "The best is ahead of us," "The worst is behind us"),
  whereas Mandarin speakers have a vertical metaphor for time (e.g., the
  next month is the "down month" and the last month is the "up month").
  ... Imagine this simple experiment. I stand next to you, point to a
  spot in space directly in front of you, and tell you, "This spot,
  here, is today. Where would you put yesterday? And where would you put
  tomorrow?" When English speakers are asked to do this, they nearly
  always point horizontally. But Mandarin speakers often point
  vertically, about seven or eight times more often than do English
  speakers.

And in more detail in a Scientific American article:

  ... my colleague Alice Gaby of the University of California, Berkeley,
  and I gave Kuuk Thaayorre speakers sets of pictures that showed
  temporal progressions—a man aging, a crocodile growing, a banana being
  eaten. We then asked them to arrange the shuffled photographs on the
  ground to indicate the correct temporal order. We tested each person
  twice, each time facing in a different cardinal direction. English
  speakers given this task will arrange the cards so that time proceeds
  from left to right. Hebrew speakers will tend to lay out the cards
  from right to left. This shows that writing direction in a language
  influences how we organize time. The Kuuk Thaayorre, however, did not
  routinely arrange the cards from left to right or right to left. They
  arranged them from east to west. ... in Aymara, a language spoken in
  the Andes, the past is said to be in front and the future behind. And
  the Aymara speakers’ body language matches their way of talking: in
  2006 Raphael Núñez of U.C.S.D. and Eve Sweetser of U.C. Berkeley found
  that Aymara gesture in front of them when talking about the past and
  behind them when discussing the future.

This suggests that if you reversed the exercise, binding the left/right keys to movement forward or back, then you might get different results from Hebrew speakers than English ones.  And if you presented this exercise to speakers of Kuuk Thaayorre, then the results might depend on which way the keyboard is oriented - ie, you would get different results depending on whether the keyboard faces East or West!


Can a human select truly random numbers if he/she chose to?

One strategy for ranges that are powers of 2 is to split the range in half and flip a coin. If it's heads, the upper half is your new range. If it's tails, the lower half is your new range. Repeat until you have a single number. This gives you a truly random number.

Another strategy comes from George Marsaglia, on this Google Groups page: https://groups.google.com/forum/m/?hl=en#!msg/sci.math/6BIYd0cafQo/Ucipn_5T_TMJ

Choose a 2-digit number, say 23, your "seed".
Form a new 2-digit number:
the 10's digit plus 6 times the units digit.
The example sequence is
23 --> 20 --> 02 --> 12 --> 13 --> 19 --> 55 --> 35 --> ...
and its period is the order of the multiplier, 6, in the group of residues relatively prime to the modulus, 10. (59 in this case).
The "random digits" are the units digits of the 2-digit numbers, ie, 3,0,2,2,3,9,5,...  the sequence mod 10.
The arithmetic is simple enough to carry out in your head.

I don't know what the distribution is, but the numbers look random, at least to me. You could also concatenate digits to create larger numbers. You could then get a pseudo-random number for any specified length of number (i.e. 2 digits, 3 digits, etc).

A similar question with many potential answers in the comments can be found at https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1961/are-people-capable-of-generating-a-random-number.


What topics are included in theoretical cognitive science?

I would imagine that artificial intelligence and any other kind of cognitive modelling of behaviour or the brain would fall under that category. Essentially, anything that isn't about directly describing human behaviour, but is about modelling it computationally.

Look up the research on Theoretical Neuroscience, it's really quite fascinating. There is also an going project about literally building a brain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Brain_Project

It's really neat stuff.


Ground a student survey in academic literature

Both Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth have fairly brief tests meant to measure student success and by some extension grades.

Dweck's work focuses on how having a "fixed mindset" limits a students ability to grow in a subject and is used to explain why students are so apt to give up when met with challenge. Her quiz would have to be formatted for pen and paper and her research is rather sparse on the subject.

Duckworth focuses on both grit and self-control. She has researched heavily the effects of grit over the last 10 years while Walter Mischel works on self-control and has been for the past 40 years. Duckworth was Mischels student. Unfortunately, his test for self-control would likely be too abstract for your needs.

Needless to say her work has been shown to measure student success over the last ten years. Her website offers several quizzes on grit or self control for adults and students. The same links provides access to her publications.


Does the brain use the minimax algorithm?

I work in data science, I reach many of the conclusions that a psychologist might, by means of aggregating a lot of data and backtracking on it. I have no formal training and all my opinions are based on conclusions we tested & drew from our work that translated into nearly no bad business decisions and constant growth.

Machine learning is not general intelligence. As such, although I believe that the comparison is not ill-willed, it's as far from the truth as it can be. ML is really a bunch of optimization problems that, when put together, form a coherent system that draws conclusions such as "is this a picture of an elephant?". Just as the brain does, there's a multitude of inputs and a central system that decides, mostly based on past experience what to do with said inputs.

  I expect the brain also takes probabilities into account. So that it might choose an action if the worst possible option is also extremely unlikely.

In popular culture, it's called "least resistance path", it's also a trait that I see nearly all intelligent life forms exhibit.

What I find through my work is that, although bias is frowned upon, it's also a beautiful thing. Personally, I'm a contrarian and I like to believe the good ol' "people are stupid", but in reality, they really aren't. All the experiences you go throguh train your brain in exactly the same manner you speak of. The problem occurs when the multitude of paths isn't known at the start, that is to say, you're unexperienced.

Bias is not necessarily helpful min-maxing that happens in the background.

By the way, don't confuse this with what learning is. Min-maxing as you call it is a higher-level process that is what we can observe from the brain forming connections.


Why is the distribution of mean firing rates assumed to be Gaussian?

The distribution is not Gaussian, it's Poisson, as noted in your question. However, outside of certain edge cases (e.g. when there are very few spikes, or very few trials), a Poisson Distribution with rate parameter $\lambda$ looks very like a Gaussian with both mean and variance equal to $\lambda$ (standard deviation $= \sqrt{\lambda}$). This is useful, because if you treat the distribution as a Gaussian, you can apply methods such as the t-test or linear regression, without being too far wrong.

Here's some R code that shows the correspondance between the Poisson and the Gaussian.

library(tidyverse)
x = seq(0, 30, 1) # Possible spike counts
poisson.density = dopois(x, 10)
gaussian.density = dnorm(x, 10, sqrt(10))
d = data.frame(x = x, Poisson=poisson.density, Gaussian=gaussian.density) %>%
  gather(Distribution, Density, -x)
ggplot(d, aes(x, Density, color=Distribution, linetype=Distribution)) +
  geom_path() +
  theme(legend.position=c(1,1), legend.justification=c(1,1)) +
  labs(x='Spike count')


Can the Hodgkin-Huxley neuron incorporate desensitization?

The Hodgkin-Huxley model does have the ability to accurately reflect adaptation processes in a neuron (e.g., Awiszus, (1989));
A perfect integrator model is also suitable (Goldman et al., 2007);
A leaky integrator model is often used to model spiking behavior as well (Mihalas & Niebur, 2009).

References
- Awiszus, Biol Cybern (1988); 59(4-5): 295-302
- Goldman et al., New Encycopedia of Neuroscience (2007)
- Mihalas & Niebur, Neural Comput (2009); 21(3): 704–18


It sounds like two measurements are needed:

1) Perception of competence. This could be measured using self-report for large studies, or semi-structured interviews for individuals or small samples. For example, individuals could use semantic differential scales to rate global or specific aspects of quality at characteristics or tasks that are key to that activity.

2) Objective measurement of competence. This will be specific to the domain. I work in science, and there are increasing (although flawed) metrics to measure quality such as the H-index for publishing impact. One could also use a basket of other measures, and they could include subjective input like peer ratings. Similar studies have been run in personality psychology.

In an individual, it would be difficult to know whether an observed difference between 1) and 2) is meaningful (e.g., not due to chance). This would be easier in populations, where two distributions could be compared using a method like correlation.

On a less methodological note, many beliefs about the self are not strictly accurate. A general summary is that most beliefs about the self are MORE positive than they should be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority However, people seem to underrate their abilities for rare tasks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse-than-average_effect

The original post mentioned scamming others into a belief. Keep in mind that some qualities don't have precise scientific content, or are defined in a huge amount of conflicting ways (e.g., "leadership"), and so it would be difficult to objectively verify. That is, the imposter syndrome will be easier to verify for specific, concrete tasks and well-studied abilities (including intelligence).


Is it fair to categorize the neurons in the output layer of artificial neural networks as grandmother cells?

I would say it depends on what your goals are and what parts of the grandmother cell "story" you want to highlight.

Sure, the output layer is grandmother-like because it can represent single concepts

If you are writing a classifier to identify objects, then in some ways, yes, the outputs of an ANN reflect "grandmother" cells in that they represent a single output concept/object. The way that a hypothetical grandmother cell in a real nervous system would be activated (as sort of a final step after perceiving all the sensory information seeing/hearing another person presents) would be analogous to how the output of an ANN is chosen.

However, the outputs of a real nervous system are probably better identified as the motor plans: the goal in object recognition is to decide whether to fight or flee or do nothing at all. Similarly, if your ANN is trying to classify radiological images as "cancer" or "no cancer" these outputs don't really fit with the idea of a grandmother cell.

But no, the grandmother cell is about more than that and the output layer of an ANN doesn't really fit

A key element in the grandmother cell concept is that this cell is somehow connected to all the other subconcepts that make up the grandmother concept: the sound of her voice, the color of her hair, where she lives, etc. In real nervous systems these elements probably involve large ensembles of neurons organized into attractor networks, but even so, because the output layer of an ANN is just that, an output layer, it's really missing the major feature that makes a grandmother cell so key in the first place.

The studies you refer to that showed some evidence of grandmother-like cells are really just demonstrating a certain level of sparseness such that within a limited subset of experimental stimuli, those units were only activated by one or two of the inputs. In an ANN, these types of nodes would be better represented as units in some hidden layer. If I were to look for "grandmother cell-like behavior" to make comparisons between a real brain and an ANN, I would look for sparseness in the hidden layers rather than pointing to the output.

Summary

In summary, I would say that you could refer to grandmother cells in discussing ANN behavior, but I would be careful about taking the analogy too far or to assume that something true for a grandmother cell must therefore be true for a certain element of an ANN. However, I don't see a lot of value in doing so, and if I were teaching a course on the topic, I think I would avoid the comparison to avoid misinterpretation or confusion among the students.

Connor, C. E. (2005). Neuroscience: Friends and grandmothers. Nature, 435(7045), 1036.

Gross, C. G. (2002). Genealogy of the “grandmother cell”. The Neuroscientist, 8(5), 512-518.

Kreiman, G., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2000). Category-specific visual responses of single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe. Nature neuroscience, 3(9), 946.

Quiroga, R. Q., Reddy, L., Kreiman, G., Koch, C., & Fried, I. (2005). Invariant visual representation by single neurons in the human brain. Nature, 435(7045), 1102.

Quian Quiroga, R., & Kreiman, G. (2010). Postscript: About grandmother cells and Jennifer Aniston neurons.


Is there a term for people who hate (or don't prefer ) things that are mainstream?

This is more an anthropology question than psychology. Counter cultures and cults definitely are against mainstream society.

In America during the 60s there was a counter culture revolution. People found ideas from other cultures or invented cultural ideas and tried to bring them into mainstream. We called them all hippies at that time but now they are just ordinary people because their cultural revolution was largely popularized. People primarily associate hippies with a leftist movement but the Jesus freaks or Jesus movement was the equivalent in the religious conservative realm. Jesus freaks moved outside the realms of ordinary church. They were fundamentalist but spawned a diverse set of beliefs. The Jesus movement was also absorbed into mainstream culture and these two polar groups are a large reason why American belief systems are polarized between left and right in certain demographics at the moment.

Cults aggrandize a certain person, group of people or idea above family, government and the typical place of religion. I lived in Texas for a while so the first example that comes to my mind is Waco's Koresh who formed the group that was destroyed at their compound by the Clinton administration. He had a messiah complex mixed with some kind of hypersexualism. He was very charismatic and drew many people into his group with his pazazz. The of course the oft rumoured but very oft not found fundamental mormons which allow their people to be polygamist but god forbid any of those women ask to do polyandry. Putting a leader of a mormon church breakaway in jail became a national priority because in addition to the the polygamy there was incest in his groups.

Subcultures tend to be inside the realms of mainstream but hold to specific values that set the distinct. This might include the cowboy subculture, city dweller, yankee and southerner, various sexuality types, religious in various degrees and types. Freud had an interesting view that I've chosen to cherish his idea was like don't let yourself be defined by your sexuality (or other characteristic) instead embrace being human and all that it means.

Indeed people are drawn into counter-cultures outside of mainstream sometimes for positive and negative reasons. In general disenfranchisement by mainstream policies or values tends to lead people into depressive states which allows them to make atypical decisions to escape the pain of sadness. Oft people are drawn into cults by the charisma and happiness offered by the cult head or central idea. People tend to be born into subcultures and then choose to remain or seek out another group.


What is the best time-effective study technique?

According to the distributed learning strategy which is based on a phenomenon called spacing effect, it is better to study classes in parallel.

  Distributed practice (also known as spaced repetition or spaced
  practice) is a learning strategy, where practice is broken up into a
  number of short sessions – over a longer period of time. Humans and
  animals learn items in a list more effectively when they are studied
  in several sessions spread out over a long period of time, rather than
  studied repeatedly in a short period of time, a phenomenon called the
  spacing effect.

  The opposite, massed practice, consists of fewer, longer training sessions. It is generally a less effective method of learning.

Reference :

Greene, Robert L.. Spacing effects in memory: Evidence for a two process account. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition15. 3 (May 1989): 371-377

Challis, Bradford H.. (Mar 1993). Spacing effects on cued-memory tests depend on level of processing. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 19. 2, 389-396.


What are the main differences between the FreeSurfer volumetric approach and the statistical parametric mapping from SPM?

Freesurfer is great for mapping cortical thickness using anatomical MRI data, while SPM can be used to compare two populations, voxel-by-voxel. This is useful for PET imaging. For example you can see where in the brain amyloid uptake occurs in alzheimer's patients, vs healthy controls.

Our lab uses Freesurfer to process functional MRI data, so I don't have any experience using SPM for this. I will say though that probably the main difference is that many of the Freesurfer processes are simple via command line in UNIX, while SPM has a easy-to-use graphical interface.

SPM however also has command line functionality, so if you are comfortable with that, you might want to explore that. The bottom line is that you will just have to experiment with both programs to find what works for you. Methodologically, both tools should give you the same results, so it's really just a matter of preference, and depends on what you are studying.


Simulate colorblindness in non-colorblind individuals

One possibility would be to apply those image filters to a live video stream.

Aside from that, you could consider infrared goggles. Not an exact simulation of colorblindness, but it does apparently make red and green into the same color. And if anything, it would let people see the world in differently.


What is the data structure used by the brain to store data?

Memory in the brain isn't super-well understood, so going to the level of "data-structures" isn't really possible with purely biological models. Not that a purely biolgocial description would be very useful anyways. When people ask how the brain works, they typically don't want to be told "molecule A interacts with molecule B, which triggers molecule C".

Since you're coming from computer science, I am going to assume that you're probably more interested in models or the "data-structures" (how to structure data, like a list or a tree) we assign to a brain. One way to build biologically plausible brain models is with the Neurological Engineering Framework (NEF) and there's been a couple data structures based on this that have been used. You can see more detail on this in my other answer "How is memory accounted for in the NEF?"

However, it's important to note that the NEF is a framework, thus much work is being done on implementing more complex data structures than the ones mentioned in that question. In particular, Aaron Voekler has implemented a dynamic hetero-associative memory using the framework, which functions somewhat in the same manner as a hash table.

I hope this answer gives you a good starting point for further investigation.


Is serotonin conclusively linked to depression?

It's all about the receptors, really.  There are 7 families of serotonin receptors that perform different functions within the brain, and according to Wikipedia 14 different subtypes have been discovered.

The article assumes that a blanket level of serotonin would be sufficient to "perk" up the brain, wherein it is much more complicated.  Serotonin serves to modulate the level of excitation or inhibition depending on the circumstances.  Most of the "effect" from today's antidepressants is related to modulating projections from the dorsal raphe in the brainstem to dopaminergic neurons in the frontal cortex, but some of the serotonergic neurons in the basal ganglia can be hyperactive in situations where there is mild psychosis.  So, depending on the etiology of the depression, suppressing those neurons local to that portion of the anatomy can actually be helpful.

So, it's less to do with the transmitter that is being discussed, and everything to do with which subtypes of receptors are being agonized or antagonized.  While we have learned a tremendous amount about the relationships between neurotransmitters at different nuclei, we still have a lifetime or more of research to go.


Performance of children at school in the morning

A caveat: "productivity" is not a term used much by cognitive science, so I'll talk about cognition instead.  It's not necessarily the same thing, but it's more of an answered question.

And as a general issue: any time a question has "more" in it, the real question is "more than what?"  More productive early in the morning than later in the morning?  More productive in the morning than the afternoon?  More productive in the morning than adults?

There is little work comparing children's cognition across the daily cycle; a good review of mostly adult work can be found here (Chronobiology International (2000), 17(6), 719–732, doi/abs/10.1081/CBI-100102108).  Non-experimentally, there is some research supporting the idea that starting school later in the morning--particularly for adolescents--improves performance.

This blog post details an analysis of test scores from Wake County North Carolina (where start times vary), and shows "delaying school start times by one hour, from roughly 7:30 to 8:30, increases standardized test scores by at least 2 percentile points in math and 1 percentile point in reading. The effect is largest for students with below-average test scores, suggesting that later start times would narrow gaps in student achievement."  Obviously, there could be major confounds here: we don't know if start times correlate with performance-relevant but unmeasured characteristics--although the author seems to have done a reasonable job of controlling for measured characteristics, and compares students that are similar at similar schools with different start times.

This New York Times article cites several cases where attendance and performance rose after pushing back start times from 7.30 to 8.40, but again, the lack of a controlled comparison means that there's no particular reason to think that generalizations from this case are valid.

There are problems with this approach, of course--for starters, there's no way to control for the effect sleep duration or quality, which might be expected to covary with start time, on performance.


How do people develop abstract thought processes?

A 2013 book tackles this subject : Surfaces and Essences, written by Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander. They mostly cite anecdotal evidence (not only, Emmanuel Sander worked on this subject for years), but the theory is very convincing, and quite beautiful. The book received praise from some big names (including Steven Pinker and Elizabeth Loftus).

So, their theory in a nutshell : we naturally reason by analogy. Analogy is defined here as "recognizing something perceived as identical to something stored in memory" - a very large definition, that encompasses categorization. We are bad at purely abstract thinking (as the famous Wason (1966) task shows, or most tasks used in reasoning psychology), but we are very good at making abstract links between concrete things, without noticing it.

The book is filled by loads of examples, a striking one is comptuer science vocabulary. Even though computers brought loads of new "things", few new names have been invented. For example : desktop, file, directory, keyboard, window, program, application... all those words existed before computers, they have been used by analogy. When one makes such an analogy between a real, concrete desktop and a computer one, one extends the meaning of the word "desktop" - before, desktop refered to the piece of furniture ; after the analogy, desktop acquires a new, more abstract sense that encompasses the 2 concrete (furniture and computer) : a desktop is a working space... where you can store files, etc.

So, for your question : it seems that we extract abstract structures as we encode concrete examples - we can't (or at least it's much harder) directly understand the abstract knowledge. Providing good analogies is probably a very good way to teach something - if there are no such analogies, the domain remains very hard to grasp (statistics, probabilites and quantum physics are probably good examples of that).


Plutchik's emotions from negative to positive

Negative to positive suggests a linear scale between negative and positive.  The literature does not seem to support such a one dimensional scale.

There is a two-dimensional taxonomy that has the personality descriptor 'negative' in cell (-2,-2) and positive in (2,2), which suggests a diagonal line on the two-dimensional plane that best represents negative to positive (Mobbs, 2020).

The words are scored and sorted in accordance with the atlas as follows.

Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLoS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877


Law and its formula that says: more time organism working the slower (or less precise) the movements

Your question is a bit vague, but it sounds like you might be looking for Hick's Law.  Hick's law states the relationship between the number of possible responses that an organism can provide for a given task and the minimum time necessary to engage a response.

You may have also been thinking of one of the computational models for two-alternative forced-choice tasks (2AFC).

Let me know if any of this rings a bell!


Where does action based on thought originate within the human brain?

There are many areas of the brain that are associated with planning complex behavior. This is because planning and executing are mediated by the brain's capacity for executive functioning, and EF is further associated with many areas of the brain -- in this case, the the frontal lobes, the prefrontal cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the putamen all seem to play a role.

What typically happens is that a thought is formed ('I'm hungry, I want a cookie', etc.), and then potential actions are envisioned and evaluated for their predicted effect, in line with the common coding theory of the relationship between perception and action. From a functional standpoint, the caudate nucleus selects the appropriate action based on an evaluation of the outcome of the action. [1] [2]

The more complex the task, the more cognitive strategies you may need to use, and these are mediated by your executive functioning ability. Cognitive shifting or task switching, information updating and monitoring ("updating"), and inhibition (or the 'tuning out' of irrelevant stimuli) all play a role in planning and executing complex tasks, or sequences of behavior. [3] For example, the ability to act in momentarily unpleasant yet beneficial ways (i.e. going to the gym) requires cognitive inhibition of more immediately gratifying, yet irrelevant stimuli (i.e. sitting on the couch, eating pleasurable food). For tasks of this nature, the frontal lobe plays a greater role.

Certain neurotransmitters also play a role in your ability to stay focused and dedicated to a task. Dopamine in particular is responsible for motivation (including the motivation to act), and norepinephrine is responsible for vigilance of attention, thus increasing the likelihood that an action will be performed and completed successfully. With a reduction in these neurotransmitters, you may demonstrate attentional shifts. Long-term, uncontrollable shifts in attention are often representative of an underlying disorder, such as attention-deficit disorder.

Sources used:

[1] Grahn, Jessica; John A. Parkinson; Adrian M. Owen (12 April 2009). "The role of the basal ganglia in learning and memory: Neuropsychological studies". Behavioral Brain Research 199 (1): 53–60.

[2] Oury Monchi, Michael Petrides, Antonio P. Strafella, Keith J. Worsley, Julien Doyon (Feb. 2006). Functional role of the basal ganglia in the planning and execution of actions. Ann Neurol. 59(2): 257–264.

[3]  Miyake A1, Friedman NP, Emerson MJ, Witzki AH, Howerter A, Wager TD. (Aug. 2000) The unity and diversity of executive functions and their contributions to complex "Frontal Lobe" tasks: a latent variable analysis. Cogn Psychol. 41(1):49-100.


Are hot-streaks in athletics real, and if so, is there a known psychological basis?

Andrew Gelman has blogged and published about the "hot hand" phenomenon from a statistical perspective. His statistical perspective is probably fairly authoritative, and his psychological perspective, at least in being very inclusive, not implausible. His basic idea is the following:

Previous wins are very unlikely to have no effect on future performance.
Previous wins (or losses) are likely to have some, albeit probably small, effect.

For example, a player's performance could decrease, maybe due to overconfidence
A player's performance could increase, for example, due to increase confidence

Rather than asking if there is any "hot hand" effect at all, the better question is: of what kind is this effect?

In the sense of the latter, the existing studies are actually fairly homogenous: they all argue for a small to marginal effect, on the order of a few percentage points or less. So the idea that the "hot hand" effect is a small and highly variable phenomenon is supported both by a priori reasoning, and by the bulk of the data.

Beyond that, Gilovich, Vallone, and Tversky (1985) have demonstrated that people reliably over detect "hot hands"; we see patterns in near-random variance that aren't really there. Moreover, combining what we know about our perception of the "hot hand", and our statistical knowledge about it, we can establish one more fact: very often, when you think you're observing a "hot hand", you're wrong. This is because the effect size for the "hot hand" appears very small, so small that it is statistically questionable, and if even repeated statistical analyses have trouble establishing its size, we can be sure that the naked eye will not be able to reliably identify it in an individual case.

All this is an example of the debate between null hypothesis testing versus parameter estimation statistics. From the perspective of null hypothesis testing, we consider plausible that the effect might be truly zero, or something else, and zero is our null hypotheses. From the perspective of parameter estimation, we are interested in what the effect actually is, and it being precisely zero is rather unlikely to begin with.

Thus, I believe it justified to say this about the "hot hand" effect:

It exists, in some form or other.
It is likely small, and highly variable (sometimes positive, sometimes close to zero, sometimes even negative).
Whenever you think you see it, you probably don't.


What, if any, objective tests were designed for the assessment of altruism?

The following scale; The altruistic personality and
the self-report altruism scale, a commonly used measure of altruistic tendency in psychological research. It has 745 citations at this time November 2017. The scale is also freely available online.

Rushton, J.P., Chrisjohn, R.D., Fekken, G.C., 1981. The altruistic personality and
the self-report altruism scale. Personality and Individual Differences 7,
293–302.

This has been discussed as psychometrically adequate for measuring altruism, and has good the SRAS has good inter-rater reliability. However the SRAS has two main weaknesses: its expansive, in terms of its definition of altruism, it also it frames of reference are unspecified, and unclear.

There are other measures that investigate aspects of altruism such as the Internalised subscale of the Self-importance of Moral Identity Scale (ISMIS). In the following article they discuss moral behaviour to outgroups, which the scale measures. This is also a highly cited source for measuring altruism or moral behaviour.

There are a few other scales or methods of measuring altruism, I do not have time to go into detail...

Empathic Concern questionaire (EC)

Compassionate love for others

Sprecher, S. & Fehr, B. (2005). Compassionate love for close others and humanity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 22, 629-651.

State Based Empathy. Empathy is more of a measure of motivation to act kindly which is a precursor to altruism but not actually altruism itself.

I highly recommend you read the following blog on measuring altruism, which discusses it in far greater detail than the answer here.

T. Farsides. (2014, October 18). Conception and measurement of altruism. Retrieved from http://tomfarsides.blogspot.com/2014/10/conceptualisation-and-measurement-of.html


What's the memory capacity of the human brain?

I don't know the answer to your question but I'm not aware of anyone who does.

The paper referred to in the first article above is Bartol et al. (2015) in eLife (https://cdn.elifesciences.org/articles/10778/elife-10778-v2.pdf). This paper is a proposal of how one might estimate the storage capacity of a synapse. Their current estimate is 4.7 bits per synapse. The article states that more work is needed to get an accurate estimate. The paper does not provide a definitive answer to your question. There is not much research on this subject at the moment, probably because there are still many things we don't yet know about the nature of memory. In time we may find that a completely different method to Bartol's gives a better estimate.

The figure of 1 petabyte is not given in Bartol's paper. This value may have been given in the press release or it could have been calculated by the journalist (by multiplying the estimated synapse capacity by an estimated number of synapses). The estimate of the number of synapses in the brain is the subject of research itself. Bartol's paper says that there are 'many trillions of synapses', which doesn't give us enough information to calculate. The figure needed to get 1 petabyte is around 200 trillion synapses, if my maths is to be trusted. The figure of 1 petabyte is the product of two estimates that may or may not be right, so it's probably not reliable.

The second article is a Professor's response to this question. He says, in essence, that we don't yet know the answer and it would be difficult to calculate.

We still have so much to learn about memory. I suspect it will be some time before we know the answer to your question.


How do emotions influence the language structures we use?

This is by no means exhaustive, but is a beginning, as these links also provide links.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
A Neural Dissociation within Language: Evidence that the Mental Dictionary Is Part of Declarative Memory, and that Grammatical Rules Are Processed by the Procedural System

The following study links the effects of emotional arousal on these two memory systems, thus linking the effects of emotional arousal on speech.

Effects of emotional arousal on multiple memory systems: Evidence from declarative and procedural learning
Stephan Steidl, Salwa Mohi-uddin, and Adam K. Anderson

How Emotion Shapes Behavior: Feedback, Anticipation, and Reflection, Rather Than Direct Causation
Roy F. Baumeister  Kathleen D. Vohs  C. Nathan DeWall  Liqing Zhang

A review of paradoxical performance effects: Choking under pressure in sports and mental tests
Roy F Baumeister  Carolin J. Showers

Choking under pressure refers to the failure of a person to perform tasks that they are highly skilled in, when placed under pressure to perform. This could well apply to people speaking on a talk show.

This study shows the effects of various emotions on the actual voice quality, which is also useful.

THE EFFECTS OF EMOTIONS ON VOICE QUALITY
Tom Johnstone and Klaus R. Scherer
University of Geneva


How widespread is learned-helplessness in society?

The problem with measuring learned helplessness is that while we know it exists and is related to  dorsal raphe nucleus 5-HT neurons in the brain, we have no official designation of it as a mental disorder and official study to measure it. However, there is a correlation between depression and learned helplessness, so we might be able to use depression statistics in order to measure the amount of learned helplessness in society. 7.6% of people 12 years and older experience depression in the United States in any two week period and 9.4% of American patients visiting the hospital in 2017 experienced depression. Globally, over 264 million people suffer from depression and thus, they are more likely to suffer from learned helplessness.


Is there any significance to the way Trump spreads his hand from each other?

Short answer
The open palms are usually seen as a gesture of openness.

Background
I have answered a related question, and I will use the same source as I used there, namely an interesting interview from Euro News with two communication experts, Stevens and prof. Beattie.

They claim that the open-palms gesture (Fig. 1) is one of all-inclusiveness and openness. It is a sign saying ‘look I’m an honest Joe’, and it might be a gesture of ‘look, you the audience and I, we are in exactly the same boat.’ In other words, while acknowledging that Trump talks of himself a lot, Stevens and Beattie claim that he compensates these egocentric words with gestures that show that his emotions and the emotions of the public are aligned and so builds connections between him and his audience.

Fig. 1. Trump's open palms. source: YouTube

Source
- Euo News article What does Donald Trump’s body language say about him by Charlotte Cullen (2016)


Do direct cortical pathways exist in the visual system, or do they all go via the thalamus?

Short answer
Intracortical projections can be routed directly to other cortical areas (cortico-cortical projections), or via the thalamus (cortico-thalamo-cortical projections).

Background
Intracortical projections do not have to cross the thalamus or other subcortical structures. Take for example the visual system - it features many cortical projections and these connections do not always enter the thalamus or other subcortical structures (Fig. 1). These connections are called cortico-cortical projections (e.g., Guandalani, 1998). Connections going via the thalamus, however, also exist in the visual cortex (e.g., Kato, 1990) and are referred generally to as cortico-thalamo-cortical projections.

Fig. 1. Visual system. source: McGill

The projections from the LGN to primary cortex (V1 in Fig. 1) and via V2, V3, V4 up to V5 all may occur without visual information entering the thalamus or other subcortical structures.

Also note that on the cellular scale direct cortico-cortical connections in the cortex are abundant (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Local cellular connections in the visual cortex. source: Kang et al. (2014)

Reference
- Guandalani, Brain Res Bull; 47(4): 377–85
- Kang et al., Front Syst Neurosci (2014); 8: 172
- Kato, Brain Res; 509(1): 150–2


Does mindfulness meditation work for highly inattentive individuals?

The most up-to-date research I can find at the moment specifically looking at children with ADHD is a systematic review and meta-analysis by Chimiklis et al (2018), and they point out that yoga, mindfulness and meditation should not be considered first-line interventions for ADHD but may help and more research is needed.

Considerable risk for bias was found across studies. Given significant methodological limitations of the literature, positive effect sizes found in studies should be interpreted with caution; these interventions should not be considered first-line interventions for ADHD. However, preliminary findings suggest yoga, mindfulness, and meditation may be beneficial for youth with ADHD, but extensive research is required to validate the efficacy of these interventions.

References
Chimiklis, A. L., Dahl, V., Spears, A. P., Goss, K., Fogarty, K., & Chacko, A. (2018). Yoga, mindfulness, and meditation interventions for youth with ADHD: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 1-14. 10.1007/s10826-018-1148-7


Has an upper-limit on the physical spacing represented by grid cells in Entorhinal cortex been probed?

There are a few factors which confound an effort to find such an upper bound for grid size.  Since these experiments normally require the rat to be attached to the recording apparatus to ensure the quality of the recorded data, the first obstacle would be perfecting the ability to record from the entorhinal cortex while the rat is untethered, through telemetry or bluetooth-enabled systems.  Systems with enough throughput for the task are just becoming available (see here and here).
While the recording technology may be getting there slowly, in order to establish the periodicity of the grid cells, the rats must be trained to run around their environment using cues.  In [1] the "polarity" of the bounded area was changed by rotating a white card in one corner.  The grid cell activity is thus dependent on "allothetic" cues from the environment.  Giving the rats carte blanche (forgive my pun) to roam around in a larger, less well defined area to test the scaling limits on grid cells might not provide enough constant visual cues to get a consistent grid map.
That's what we are not able know just yet, but what do we know?
In the rat it is known that the field spacing varies from 50 cm to 3 m depending on how far dorsal or ventral you are in the medial entorhinal cortex (within layer II).  The average of the distance varied from 39-73 cm across different cells, though the standard deviation remains small (3.2 cm) [1].  Spacing and field size got larger as you moved from the postrhinal border (from dorsal to ventral) [1],[2].  Stabilization of the measurements required at least some exposure to the experimental enclosure before measurements were taken.
In a rectangular area, the grid cells form a tiling of equilateral triangles, with the grid points at each mutual vertex.  In [2], the spatial periodicity of the grids was tested by placing the rats on a track, rather than in an enclosure, controlling for one of the dimensions.  This supports the above notion that to strengthen the knowledge about the grid cells, the focus has been on restricting the area of the experiment, rather than opening it up.  From this study, it has been learned that the smallest scales are represented at the dorsal level, with the largest number of cells.  Phase precession, a phenomenon in which spikes for a particular grid cell occurred later in the cycle of the theta wave at the center of the cell, and earlier upon entering the grid, was seen to decrease with the increasing field width.  All of this together adds up to the idea that multiple spatial scales can all be held within this one layer of the entorhinal cortex, and scaled up and down as necessary using the precession to code for the specified representation.
In terms of other species, there have been studies in humans [3] (but limited to transit through virtual worlds, for the sake of fMRI recordings), mice, and piglets (though electrophysiology was not done).  None of these studies have progressed beyond the initial stages.
So, much is known about the spacing characteristics of the grids themselves, but the upper limit of their spacing will have to wait for better experimental technology, and a clever design of a large experimental field that has consistent enough landmarks for the rats to incorporate into their grid representations.

[1] Hafting, T., Fyhn, M., et al (2005).  Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex.  Nature, 436:801-806.
[2] Brun, V.H., Solstad, T., et al (2008) Progressive increase in grid scale from dorsal to ventral medial entorhinal cortex.  Hippocampus, 18:1200-1212.
[3] Doeller, C.F., Barry, C., Burgess, N. (2010).  Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network.  Nature, 463:657-661.


How is averaging used in calculating the Bereitschaftspotential?

Generally, EEG potentials are primarily averaged over trials, not electrodes. Averaging over electrodes is often done in addition to trial averaging, but this by itself does not make the potentials visible on a single-trial basis since the "noise" overshadowing the potentials is largely shared by all adjacent electrodes.

The Bereitschaftspotential is also averaged over trials, especially since it is usually specified to be observed over specific electrodes.

As you note in a comment, single-trial identification of EEG phenomena, such as the Bereitschaftspotential (or the P300), is being attempted using machine learning techniques. However, these work far from reliably, and the original work on the Bereitschaftspotential was done far before these powerful machine learning techniques became available. So in the original BP work, averaging was done over trials (and often, over subjects, too). This is apparent in for example the Methods section of Libet's famous paper from 1983 (p. 624):

  For present purposes, analysis of RPs is made for those recorded at the vertex, where they were all maximal. ... 40 trials were performed and averaged by a computer of average transients

The vertex = electrode Cz.


What introductory textbook is available about the corticostriatal brain circuitry?

Although my formal training involved an element of neuroscience, it was not heavy on neuroscience so I am not aware of any specific neuroscience textbooks.  However, another article you may be interested in is:

Mathai, A., & Smith, Y. (2011). The Corticostriatal and Corticosubthalamic Pathways: Two Entries, One Target. So What? Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, 5, 64. doi: 10.3389/fnsys.2011.00064 pcmcid: PMC3149683

Just like the two articles you linked to, this article is also open access, therefore, free to view or download as PDF without a paywall.

  Abstract

  The basal ganglia receive cortical inputs through two main stations – the striatum and the subthalamic nucleus (STN). The information flowing along the corticostriatal system is transmitted to the basal ganglia circuitry via the “direct and indirect” striatofugal pathways, while information that flows through the STN is transmitted along the so-called “hyperdirect” pathway. The functional significance of this dual entry system is not clear. Although the corticostriatal system has been thoroughly characterized anatomically and electrophysiologically, such is not the case for the corticosubthalamic system. In order to provide further insights into the intricacy of this complex anatomical organization, this review examines and compares the anatomical and functional organization of the corticostriatal and corticosubthalamic systems, and highlights some key issues that must be addressed to better understand the mechanisms by which these two neural systems may interact to regulate basal ganglia functions and dysfunctions.


How does the brain know whether or not it comprehends a novel concept?

Interesting question!  A related phenomenon called the illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) suggests that the human cognitive system has a systematic weakness in this kind of evaluation--I believe the classic example is asking people if they know how a helicopter works (most people say yes), and then asking them to explain how a helicopter works (very few people even get as far as mentioning airfoils or lift).

Although the mechanism behind the illusion of explanatory depth (and thus the mechanism behind evaluation of incomprehension in general) is understudied, a 2010 review examined six studies and drew a few conclusions:

IOEDs have been found in natural, mechanical, and social-psychological domains.
People who adopt a concrete construal style (as opposed to an abstract style), either naturally or from prompting, diminish the scope of their IOED.

Missing the trees for the forest: A construal level account of the illusion of explanatory depth. Alter, Adam L.; Oppenheimer, Daniel M.; Zemla, Jeffrey C. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 99(3), Sep 2010, 436-451. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0020218


But what about a human empathizing with less humanoid animals?

Empathic responding towards humans is generalized to other species. The greater the similarity of the species towards humans, the larger is the empathic response. The findings support the notion that there is a relationship between human empathy directed towards other humans and human empathy directed towards non-human animals. via

  Can one understand the joy of a cat eating its favorite food?

It depend on person. Problem is that we actually do not know how animals feel. And our empathy based on assumption that they feel like us. So it is one more proof of involving of mirror neurons in empathy.

  Empathy toward non conspecifics has different neural representation
  among individuals with different feeding habits, perhaps reflecting
  different motivational factors and beliefs. via

Also look at  Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals


The effect you ask about could very well be seen as an example of the Ben Franklin effect, also known as the foot-in-the-door phenomenon.
In your example, replying to the question "Do you have a charger?" would be interpreted as a small favor which is then followed by the bigger favor of lending the item.

Reference:

Beaman, A. L., Cole, C. M., Preston, M., Klentz, B., & Steblay, N. M. (1983). Fifteen Years of Foot-in-the Door Research. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 9(2), 181-196.DOI: 10.1177/0146167283092002


What is the difference between flow and cannabis induced high?

Following your links I understand you are relating to:

  Flow: also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does and loses sense of space and time.

While the effects of cannabis intoxication include, but are not limited to:

general alteration of conscious perception;
euphoria;
feelings of well-being;
relaxation or stress reduction;
increased appreciation of the arts, including humor and music;
joviality;
metacognition and introspection;
enhanced recollection (episodic memory);
increased sensuality;
increased awareness of sensatio;
increased libido and creativity;
abstract or philosophical thinking;
disruption of linear memory;
paranoia or anxiety;
greater enjoyment of food taste and aroma;
enhanced enjoyment of music and comedy;
marked distortions in the perception of time and space (where experiencing a "rush" of ideas from the bank of long-term memory can create the subjective impression of long elapsed time, while in reality only a short time has passed).

At higher doses:

altered body image;
auditory and/or visual illusions;
pseudohallucinations;
ataxia;
rarely dissociative state (depersonalization and derealization);
acute psychosis;

So in all, based on a cursory wikipedia search, I would say there are more differences than similarities between the two states of mind.


What sources of randomness does the brain use for sampling?

Not sure if I am getting your question right. You are asking for noise that has an inherently information processing function? I would add an other aspect of noises

Noise as an emerging property

On a large scale, when massive amounts of neurons are
synchronising, then you can detect Noise with Electrodes, like in
the case of EEG. EEG follows an 1/f² or 1/f³ law (brownian
noise, red noise, pink noise, depending on the literature). This
principle can be found anywhere in the world. It states that higher
frequencies / faster oscillating signals have increasingly smaller
amplitudes, similar to smaller and larger waves on the sea and so
on.
In this case is noise a byproduct of other (stochastic) processes.
On a small scale, which would probably be something you would
    measure by using 'clamping'-technique on single neurons.  The
    firing rate of a neuron (a neuron chemically charging, until it
    reaches a threshold, which turns into a all-or-nothing case) also
    follows some 'systematic randomness' on which probabilistic,
    stochastic and noisy properties might be useful to describe these
    processes.
    In this case is noise a property that emerges from natural stochastic single-neuron firing processes.

Noise emerging from signals related to certain anatomic sources

In how far I remember (I do not have a good resource on that) the
    hippocampus, which is highly relevant for memories, has a strong randomization aspect inherently in its functioning.
    This might be my closest guess to your question?!
Another very distinct 'stochastic' process created by the
Thalamus, a largely dominant, pace-giving rhythm within the brain.

Ressource: Buszaki Rhythms of the Brain is a nice read on various of these topics

On noise as an error process

Maybe I got your question a little wrong, but thinking of the brain that in the run of evolution turned out to be highly efficient and energy saving, does not want to have any noise that does not fulfill any purpose. (But as I understand, your question was related to the functional aspect of noise.)


What cognitive bias (loosely) makes us all the more susceptible to the golden age fallacy

The cognitive bias behind nostalgia is called rosy retrospection:

  ... the psychological phenomenon of people sometimes judging the past
  disproportionately more positively than they judge the present.

A common explanation for this phenomenon is Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST):

  The theory maintains that as time horizons shrink, as they typically
  do with age, people become increasingly selective, investing greater
  resources in emotionally meaningful goals and activities. According to
  the theory, motivational shifts also influence cognitive processing.
  Aging is associated with a relative preference for positive over
  negative information in attention and memory (called the "positivity
  effect").

Related to this, but somewhat different is the Pollyanna principle:

  ... (also called Pollyannaism or positivity bias) is the tendency for
  people to remember pleasant items more accurately than unpleasant
  ones.


Is critical thinking associated with IQ?

Critical thinking is an ill-defined concept in the cognitive sciences, so this question most likely has as many answers as there are measures of IQ and critical thinking. An accessible introduction to the literature is available here, with the general cognitive conception of critical thinking given as follows:

  ... the mental activities that are typically called critical thinking are actually a subset of three types of thinking: reasoning, making judgments and decisions, and problem solving. I say that critical thinking is a subset of these because we think in these ways all the time, but only sometimes in a critical way. Deciding to read this article, for example, is not critical thinking. But carefully weighing the evidence it presents in order to decide whether or not to believe what it says is.

With that said, there appears to be some empirical support for a relation between cognitive ability/IQ and critical thinking ability, at least within a dual-process theoretic framework. Sá, West and Stanovich (1999) reported:

  Participants high in cognitive ability were able to flexibly use prior knowledge, depending upon its efficacy in a particular environment. They were more likely to project a relationship when it reflected a useful cue, but they were also less likely to project a prior belief when the belief was inefficacious.

I've provided a link to the PDF my references, since they refer directly to cognitive ability rather than IQ, and the equivalence is only made clear in their Method section.

References

Sá, W. C., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (1999). The domain specificity and generality of belief bias: Searching for a generalizable critical thinking skill. Journal of educational psychology, 91(3), 497.


Are introverts more talkative in written form than extroverts?

1. Are extraverts more talkative than introverts in oral communication?

Yes they are. The (probably) best evidence can be found in research by Mehl et al. (2006) who "tracked 96 participants over 2 days using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), which samples snippets of ambient sounds in
participants’ immediate environments". The correlation of extraversion with word count was .29, indicating that extraversion was related to more talkativeness.

2. Are introverts more talkative in written communication?

It does not seem so. A study that addresses your question has been done by Gill and Oberlander  (2002). They asked participants to compose two emails to a good friend. The more extraverted they were, the longer were the emails (beta = .20). Thus, this study was not in line with your intuition that introverts are more talkative in written form. Of course, you may argue that under some circumstances (maybe when writing a diary or a book) your hypothesis may still hold. However, judging from this study, if it exists at all, this does not seem to be a general effect.

There are some differences in writing style and content, however. For example, introverts seem to use a more concrete and focused language (Gill & Oberlander, 2002). Furthermore, introverts tend to use longer words (Mehl et al., 2006) which may be in line with Alex Stone's comment.

References

Gill, A., & Oberlander, J. (2002, August). Taking care of the linguistic features of extraversion. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference
of the Cognitive Science Society. Fairfax, VA.

Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(5), 862–877. http://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.862


Is there a name for highly aggressive non-violent people?

Passive-aggressive, hostile, officious?

Their response is also biased, we may say we'll never do something.. it's still possible we will though given the right circumstances.


What does the literature say about why women aren't attracted to nice guys?

This isn’t a literature answer but a qualitative clarification. “Nice guy” is a conflation between two distinctly-separate behavioral patterns:

1) Passively begging for approval points via virtue-signalling in order to become her most favored suitor. This signals weakness, insecurity and/or cowardice because the male lacks thr courage to take action, risk rejection or be vulnerable by making his intentions clear.

2) Being kind, generous or gallant without expectation or necessity, as a king banking social capital and goodwill with his subjects as a demonstration of his abundant power and good character to lead and provide.

Clearly, these are two vastly-different approaches that should be considered entirely different strategies. One is genuine, while the other is wishful and deceptive.

Furthermore, considerations of how much sexual (genetic) vs. social/status (partner) value is demonstrated in order to elicit various respect and/or attraction responses. For example, males with mostly sexual value but little partner value will quickly gain mating opportunities, whereas low sexual value but high partner value males will be expected to invest much more time, money and energy before mating opportunities and be held to higher behavioral standards than the former group. Social value only demonstrated males without enough sexual or status value will be friend-zoned. Too high of status men also risk friend-zoning to protect her ego, ie auto-rejection. High sexual value men may also be initially pseudo-rejected, but it’s unlikely that a female would pass on an opportunity to gain superior biological father genes considering the time and energy commitment risks involved in child-rearing.


Bias distrusting area of expertise while implicitly trusting other domains?

I found what I was looking for.  It's called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect:

... You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know
well. ... you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors
in a story, and then turn the page to national or international
affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more
accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the
page, and forget what you know.

That quote is attributed to Michael Crichton, who named the effect after his physicist friend Murray Gell-Mann, who discovered it.
This effect is not studied in psychology as far as I can tell, so it may not be real, but having a name for it helps learn at least that much.


The effects of bilingualism on colour perception

This paper was written in 2010:

Perceptual shift in bilingualism: brain potentials reveal plasticity in pre-attentive colour perception.

  In this paper, we test whether in Greek speakers exposure to a new
  cultural environment (UK) with contrasting colour terminology from
  their native language affects early perceptual processing as indexed
  by an electrophysiological correlate of visual detection of colour
  luminance. We also report semantic mapping of native colour terms and
  colour similarity judgements. Results reveal convergence of linguistic
  descriptions, cognitive processing, and early perception of colour in
  bilinguals.

There are some important (but speculative) considerations here, in my opinion:

1) Aspects of color are defined culturally.  Each culture arbitrarily places borders to divide the regions of a continuous spectrum and we pass these divisions on to our children.

2) Different cultures may have non-overlapping hues distributed across a coarse division.  For instance, if we took the coarse color "green" and divided it up into 15 shades so that my greens are 3, 8, and 12 and my foreign friend's is 8, 10, and 15 are hues that we each strongly associate with green (because they're typical in our culture).  However, my 3 is too close to yellow for my foreign friend and his 15 is too close to blue for me (and I want to call it "aqua").

3) There's also the difficult that the colors we experience in the world aren't pure colors on a ROYGBIV spectrum.  An apparently uniform garment can often be small-grain ensembles of many different colored threads.


Are there third party providers of Mechanical Turk psychology experiment services?

I would like to acknowledge the contributors to this post on stackoverflow.
Using Amazon MechanicalTurk if location != US?.

This question was posted a few years ago, but this answer is current.

Houdini is a third party platform for MTurk, designed for non US users.

This question also leads to Houdini enabling non-US based businesses accessing mTurk.

At this stage, I have not found other providers, let me know if you'd like me to investigate further.

I have provided a link of crowdsourcing services similar to mTurk.


Biological Plausibility of FORCE training

From the paper:

  Although FORCE trained networks have dynamics that are starting to
  resemble those of populations of neurons, at present all top-down
  procedures used to construct any functional spiking neural network
  need further work to become biologically plausible learning rules
  [Sussillo and Abbott, 2009, Boerlin et al., 2013, Eliasmith et al.,
  2012]. For example, FORCE trained networks require non-local
  information in the form of the correlation matrix $P(t)$. However, we
  should not dismiss the final weight matrices generated by these
  techniques as biologically implausible simply because the techniques
  are themselves biologically implausible. More work should be done in
  implementing either FORCE, NEF, or spike-based coding networks using a
  biologically plausible learning mechanism based on synaptic plasticity
  or homeostasis [Bi and Poo, 1998, Pfister and Gerstner, 2006, Clopath
  et al., 2010, Graupner and Brunel, 2012, Babadi and Abbott, 2016,
  Vogels et al., 2011]. This has been resolved for spike-based coding
  networks and linear dynamical systems for example [Bourdoukan and
  Deneve, 2015]

Basically, calculating the correlation matrix $P(t)$ requires every neuron to know what every other neuron is doing, so the FORCE algorithm isn't biologically plausible. I'm not sure what alternative there would be calculating the correlation matrix. Maybe there's some mathematical way to approximate it gradually over time?


Bacon and Bean (2006) discuss the issue of the reliability and validity of GPA.
They report the results of two studies that looked at the reliability of GPA in samples of business students at the same university.

Average intercourse grade correlations were typically between $\bar{r} =.18$ and $\bar{r} =.38$.
Estimates of reliability for GPA ranged from .67 to .94.
There is a simplex structure to GPA whereby correlations between GPA for a given year correlate more highly with GPAs of other years that are closer in time (e.g., correlations between consecutive year GPAS from years 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and 3 to 4 where .74, .79, and .74 respectively. In contrast the correlation between GPA year 1 with year 4 was .60.
Average intercourse correlations within disciplines tend to be higher than across course correlations.
In general, reliability increased as more courses/subjects were included.

The above estimates are based on correlations that use "+/-" system of grading. Universities that use straight letter grades should have lower reliability and those that use a 100 point numeric grading system should be more reliable.

References

Bacon, D.R. & Bean, B. (2006). GPA in research studies: An invaluable but neglected opportunity. Journal of Marketing Education, 28, 35-42.


Can a person control their brain's electrical activity?

Yes, and no.  Biofeedback has been an active field of research since the 70s, but has been a bit "fringified" as a cure for ADHD, etc.

It is possible to fine tune the brain activity for specific tasks.  To borrow an example from BCI, the Rolandic Mu Rhythm can be used to "train" a user to refine the movement of a cursor or other pointing device.

Jonathan Wolpaw has been doing BCI work long before it was "cool", so his work on BCIs for ALS patients is definitely worth checking out.

As to whether you could train the P300, this signal is seen most prevalently in the "oddball" paradigm, which by nature relies on the stimulus that evokes it being of low probability. Letting the user know that a low probability stimulus is about to occur would eliminate most of the response.


What is the proportion of excitatory vs. inhibitory neurons in the feline thalamus?

I found two articles:

Madarasz et.al. (1985)
GABA cells

27 % LGN
33 % Ventrobasal complex
25 % Antero-ventral nucleus

Penny et.al. (1983)
GAD-immuninoreactive neurons

30 % VentroPosterior

Madarász, M., Somogyi, G., Somogyi, J., & Hamori, J. (1985). Numerical estimation of γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA)-containing neurons in three thalamic nuclei of the cat: direct GABA immunocytochemistry. Neuroscience letters, 61(1), 73-78.
Penny, G. R., Fitzpatrick, D., Schmechel, D. E., & Diamond, I. T. (1983). Glutamic acid decarboxylase-immunoreactive neurons and horseradish peroxidase-labeled projection neurons in the ventral posterior nucleus of the cat and Galago senegalensis. The Journal of Neuroscience, 3(9), 1868-1887.


Neuroanatomical mapping of production compilation

Given that all production rules reside in the Basal Ganglia and Thamalus, although it is not explicitly stated, the only place the rule compilation could feasibly take place is in the Basal Ganglia and Thalamus.


DID is one of the most controversial psychiatric disorders, with no clear consensus on diagnostic criteria or treatment.  To answer your question on why MPD was renamed DID, for completeness, there is a bit of history to bear in mind and we will look at the versions of the DSM over the years and how things changed.

The DSM-II used the term Hysterical Neurosis, Dissociative Type. It described the possible occurrence of alterations in the patient's state of consciousness or identity, and included the symptoms of "amnesia, somnambulism, fugue, and multiple personality."

The DSM-III grouped the diagnosis with the other four major dissociative disorders using the term "multiple personality disorder".

The DSM-IV made more changes to DID than any other dissociative disorder, and renamed it DID.

The name was changed for two reasons.

The change emphasises the main problem is not a multitude of personalities, but rather a lack of a single, unified identity and an emphasis on "the identities as centers of information processing".
The term "personality" is used to refer to "characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, moods and behaviors of the whole individual", while for a patient with DID, the switches between identities and behavior patterns is the personality.

It is for this reason the DSM-IV-TR referred to "distinct identities or personality states" instead of personalities. The diagnostic criteria also changed to indicate that while the patient may name and personalise alters, they lack an independent, objective existence.

The DSM-IV-TR criteria for DID have been criticised for failing to capture the clinical complexity of DID, lacking usefulness in diagnosing individuals with DID (for instance, by focusing on the two least frequent and most subtle symptoms of DID) producing a high rate of false negatives and an excessive number of Dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) diagnoses, for excluding possession (seen as a cross-cultural form of DID), and for including only two "core" symptoms of DID (amnesia and self-alteration) while failing to discuss hallucinations, trance-like states, somatoform, depersonalisation, and derealisation symptoms. Arguments have been made for allowing diagnosis through the presence of some, but not all of the characteristics of DID rather than the current exclusive focus on the two least common and noticeable features.

The DSM-5 updated the definition of DID in 2013, and the summary of changes listed the changes as:

  Several changes to the criteria for dissociative identity disorder
  have been made in DSM-5. First, Criterion A has been expanded to
  include certain possession-form phenomena and functional neurological
  symptoms to account for more diverse presentations of the disorder.
  Second, Criterion A now specifically states that transitions in
  identity may be observable by others or self-reported. Third,
  according to Criterion B, individuals with dissociative identity
  disorder may have recurrent gaps in recall for everyday events, not
  just for traumatic experiences. Other text modifications clarify the
  nature and course of identity disruptions.


Personality trait in which the person's style is evident regardless of the situation?

You may be referring to people who are low in self-monitoring.
Wikipedia has a good summary:

Self-monitoring is defined as a personality trait that refers to an ability to regulate behavior to accommodate social situations. People who closely monitor themselves are categorized as high self-monitors and often behave in a manner that is highly responsive to social cues and their situational context. High self-monitors can be thought of as social pragmatists who project images in an attempt to impress others and receive positive feedback. Conversely, low self-monitors do not participate, to the same degree, in expressive control and do not share similar concern for situational appropriateness. Low self-monitors tend to exhibit expressive controls congruent with their own internal states; i.e. beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions regardless of social circumstance. Low self-monitors are often less observant of social context and consider expressing a self-presentation dissimilar from their internal states as a falsehood and undesirable. People who are unwilling to self-monitor and adjust their behavior accordingly are often aggressive, uncompromising, and insistent with others. This may make them more prone to condemnation, rejection, and the possible consequent feelings of anger, anxiety, guilt, low self-concept, isolation, and depression. Even the occasional indiscretion can make social situations very awkward, and could result in the loss of a friend, co-worker, client, or even job. Those who are willing to adjust their behavior will often find that others are more receptive, pleasant, and benevolent towards them.

Self-monitoring is usually measured with Snyder's (1974) Self-Monitoring Scale or variants thereof.
The scale measures agreement to items such as:

I find it hard to imitate the behavior of other people.
My behavior is usually an expression of my true inner feelings, attitudes, and beliefs.
At parties and social gatherings, I do not attempt to do or say things that others will like.
I can only argue for ideas which I already believe.

References
Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of personality and social psychology, 30(4), 526.


Attention Theory: is it impossible to avoid distraction?

I think you probably need to more clearly define what you mean by distraction - what sorts of events or objects in the world distract, and what does it mean to be distracted? - but between subjects differences in susceptibility to distraction have been noted in the literature on field dependency at least http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1965.20.3.805


Rat between two walls viewed as a product in a category

According to the author, in this maze-category the objects are memories (or mental objects).

The author references to chapter 3, when discussing the maze-category. Chapter 3 of the book, gives an application to Memory Evolutive Neuronal Systems (MENS). There, a morphism represents a way of relating mental objects. This is a general description.

The author gives as examples for the maze-category:

travel time
number of steps needed to go from one mental object to another.

The product $P$ of two memories is two memories at once. The concept of a middle point requires that the agent has the memories of both memories. One wall only requires one memory.

$X$ can potentially represent any of the points between the two walls.


Removing ocular artifacts from EEG signals

In short: we know that eye-blinks are reflected frontally in the EEG data and we use that knowledge to identify which components reflect for example eye-blinks. It would not make sense to identify a component related to eye-blinks on the back of the head - there would be something wrong with your data.

What ICA does is (data driven) estimate a number of statistically independent components (if you have 64 channels you get 64 components) based on your data. The input data is usually in the form of channels X timepoints X trials.

Eventually the output of ICA gives you, for each component, a weight for each channel which you can use to create the component scalp map. Together, the component scalp maps, the time course of the components, and frequency information of the component provide supplementary information that you can use to identify artifacts such as (but not limited to) eye-blinks, horizontal eye movements and heart beat.

In the above figure component 14 and 15 do not seem to be eye artifacts. (1) they are very focal, which is probably related to noise specific to that channel. (2) They look to be completely uncorrelated with the eye blinks in the original signal.


What personality traits does sexy and revealing clothing correlate with?

This question is primarily about Feminine psychology. Men identify less with their clothing than women and are stereotyped as promoting self-objectification many times.

In American society clothing norms are for women are very complex and are difficult to navigate. Because sexuality is indeed related to which parts of your body you do or do not reveal there is direct clinical quality relationships between certain clothes and states of mind. However generalizations made about a persons state of mind based on their clothing can often be faulty. People experience stimuli in their lives which prompt individual responses that do not match their overall personality.

Active research along these lines has been published. In Enclothed cognition it is reported that a lab coat is able to change the perception and increase attention when associated with a doctor. Likewise in More Than a Body: Mind Perception and the Nature of Objectification studies were done comparing the agency viewed by people on clothed, naked and sexualized pictures. In conclusion they said:

  Whatever the positive or negative effects of focusing on someone’s body, its effect on mind perception seems clear. Those perceived in terms of their physical characteristics are not completely stripped of mind but are, instead, seen to possess a different kind of mind, one lacking in self-control and moral responsibility but relatively more capable of pain, pleasure, and emotion.

In "You Are What You Wear: What Your Clothes Reveal About You" shopping for clothes is treated as a therapy to correct negative schemas. Though its validity has not been proven it seems rational.

To directly answer your questions about "Are they more extroverted, do they rate higher in (sexual) sensation seeking, do they have high or low confidence etc.?" according to You Are What You Wear it largely depends on age and the norms for that age. A college age girl in a revealing dress would have a different state of mind than an older woman in a similarly revealing dress.


Is the concept of "employee engagement" flawed?

A few points:

Cut-offs are somewhat arbitrary. Engagement is typically measured using a mulit-item scale. It will generate a scaled response. E.g., there might be 10 items each measured on a 1 to 5 scale. Presumably, Gallup adopts an approach of carving up that scale into categories of engagement. I think they use 12 items from the Gallup Q12; they might be the items listed in Harter et al (2002). Anyway, the main point is that employees will get a score from 1 to 5. If an employee gets a mean of 3.9 on a 1 to 5 scale do we say that they are engaged or neither engaged nor disengaged. If you define 3 as the cutoff for being engaged, then more workers will appear engaged than if you make 4 the cutoff.
I'm not saying that the cutoff is completely arbitrary. Presumably you could ask managers about what set of responses imply engagement. I had a read of some Gallup material (see here) and I could not find a specification of how these categories are operationalised other than they were based on the 12 items. My main point is that a consulting company could readily choose cutoffs to present a more positive or pessimistic picture of engagement in the workplace if they were so motivated. Furthermore, the choice of items will also influence the means you obtain. If you choose more extreme items, then you'll get lower means (e.g., mean agreement will be lower on items like "I absolutely love my work" than on "I like my job").
Self-report measures of engagement correlate extremely highly with job satisfaction. Thus, the entire literature about job satisfaction is relevant. I agree that the construct of engagement has greater linkages with motivation and commitment. However, the survey responses you get pick up on largely the same variance as obtained when measuring job satisfaction.
Job satisfaction is influenced by personality (Judge et al 2002). So there is a degree of stability that is driven by underlying individual differences. That said, just because group-level means may have remained stable over the years, individuals will change over time in their job satisfaction.
Job satisfaction is related to expectations, and expectations can change over time (e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expectancy_theory). So for example, if workplaces implement flexible work practices or other initiatives to increase motivation and engagement, then this will be begin to form an expectation. And the absence of these expectations will lead to lower satisfaction. A parallel line of research examining life satisfaction often shows that mean life satisfaction is often around 7.5 out of 10 and that it does not change much over the years as economic conditions have improved. The idea is that there is a homeostatic process related to expectation management and so on that leads to fairly stable scores (Cummins et al 2003).

Despite all of the above, organisations should still invest in increasing the motivation, satisfaction, and commitment of their staff. Employee opinion surveys also serve a range of useful purposes for organisations. In particular, the provide a more data-driven approach to tracking and understanding the satisfaction-levels of their workplace. Furthermore, there are a range of interventions and strategies that are important for managing engagement, which in turn should influence productivity and retention.

References

Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Hayes, T. L. (2002). Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a meta-analysis. Journal of applied psychology, 87(2), 268.
Cummins, R. A., Eckersley, R., Pallant, J., Van Vugt, J., & Misajon, R. (2003). Developing a national index of subjective wellbeing: The Australian Unity Wellbeing Index. Social indicators research, 64(2), 159-190.
Judge, T. A., Heller, D., & Mount, M. K. (2002). Five-factor model of personality and job satisfaction: a meta-analysis. Journal of applied psychology, 87(3), 530.


"Sudden conversion" probably covers at least a subset of what you seem to have in mind. Sudden conversion has been studied in the psychology of religion, as early as psychology has been around basically; I found an article (which is reviewing a book of Morton Prince on the topic) published in Psychological Bulletin in 1907.


Do people with birth defects feel phantom limbs?

Here is a link to an article that discusses the very thing. Specifically, it discusses a case study conducted by Paul McGeoch and V.S. Ramachandran on a woman whose hand was amputated at 18, but who has been missing a thumb and index finger since birth. This woman "sprouted a phantom hand that contained five digits, including a phantom thumb and index finger that had been absent since her birth." The end of the article discusses similarities between this phenomenon and supernumerary phantom limb.

Ultimately (from the article): "The authors say that most people born with congenitally missing limbs do not experience phantom ones, but a small subset do."

In case you are curious, below is the citation for the case study conducted.

As a side note, depending on whose definition you use, "phantom limbs" are defined solely for individuals who have had the limb amputated (though this may be due to unintentionally specific wording).

References

McGeoch, P. D., & Ramachandran, V. S. (2012). The appearance of new phantom fingers post-amputation in a phocomelus. Neurocase, 18(2), 95-97. doi:10.1080/13554794.2011.556128


It is partly as you already guessed, because the phenomena that are studied don't vary as much between individuals. This doesn't necessarily mean that individual differences in perception are smaller, it means that individual differences in those aspects of perception that are studied in psychophysics are smaller.

Another reason is that it is customary in psychophysics to instead use large numbers of stimuli - sometimes thousands - thus making sure that the estimate per individual is very precise. In that sense the more cognitive topics are much more underpowered, often employing groups of several tens of stimuli to generalize about entire classes of objects.


What is the effect of ADD/ADHD on performance variability on cognitive tests over time?

General thoughts on factors influencing test-retest correlations

From a theoretical perspective, it makes sense that groups that experience temporary states that lower state intelligence or lead to a poorer test taking orientation would have lower test-retest cognitive test correlations. By lower state intelligence, I'm referring to states of being such as are observed with extreme sleep deprivation, alcohol intoxication, or while on psychedelic drugs that would temporarily lower actual cognitive functioning. By test taking orientation I'm referring to motivation and concentration issues related to taking a test. Because such factors are transient, they may be present in one test session and not another, and as such would be a source of error in measurement and would reduce test-retest correlations. In groups where such factors are greater or more prevalent, then test-retest correlations should be reduced more than other groups.

A clinician that administers a high-quality intelligence test should be aware of these transient factors when administering the test. If a test-taker is not taking a test seriously, is distracted, and so on, then the scores may have to be disregarded. Some studies might use group testing protocols that don't pick up these issues. And perhaps sometimes teasing out what is transient and what is permanent may be difficult.

In general, latent ability on a task is conceptualised in terms of an individual applying reasonable and normal levels of effort, under normal and healthy conditions, in a normal and reasonable environment. Under such conditions, a person is not able to improve their performance (discounting practice and cheating effects), but there are many ways that performance can decline. Sackett et al (1988) talks about the difference between typical and maximal performance. Test performance is meant to be conducted under conditions of maximal performance, where the test taker is meant to be applying maximal effort to the task.

Thoughts about ADHD

Research does show that in general individuals diagnosed with ADHD tend to score lower on intelligence tests. Frazier et al (2004) peformed a large-scale meta analysis and found that healthy participants scored on average 0.61 standard deviations (i.e., weighted d) higher on full scale IQ than ADHD participants.

Many of the symptoms of ADHD, such as being easily distracted, experiencing boredom on a task, and other problems related to sustained attention would make the administration of some cognitive tests difficult.
It is possible for any measure of an individual's IQ to fall below what the person is capable, where such an effect can be due, in addition to random variation between testing sessions, to systematic variability in transient factors. Thus, it seems plausible that individuals with ADHD could more frequently experience such factors, and as such, experience lower test-retest correlations.

Caveat: ADHD research is not my area. I imagine there are some  empirical studies that have compared test-retest correlations of tests between ADHD and other groups. I just haven't found them.

References

Frazier, T., Demaree, H., and Youngstrom, E. (2004). Meta-analysis of
intellectual and neuropsychological test performance in
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Neuropsychology, 18(3):543.
Sackett, P. R., Zedeck, S., and Fogli, L. (1988). Relations between
measures of typical and maximum job performance. Journal of Applied
Psychology, 73:482-486.


The psychology of humility. Why do we not value our efforts?

According to this article, jealousy may cause a person to view themselves more as the person he is jealous of. So if you work hard, write great papers, etc. you may be jealous of another person who has similar attributes. Thus you would view yourself more like him.

Also in social comparison theory there is the idea of upward and downward social comparisons. If you compare yourself to someone who similar to yourself or more "fortunate" than yourself, you will feel bad. On the other hand, if you compare yourself to someone who is less fortunate than yourself you will feel good. This is why facebook often makes people feel bad about themselves. They see people with trip photos and smiling photos and compare that to their "boring" lives.

Source

Changing Me to Keep You
State Jealousy Promotes Perceiving Similarity Between the Self and a Romantic Rival


How does the Forgetting curve change after repeated exposure to the same item we would like to memorise?

Currently, I am working on various demonstration graphs of various spacing effect algorithms.  From the research it seems like two of the parameters exist to constrain the outputted values...

  The parameters a and b are also assumed bounded between zero and one,
  and hence R(t) is similarly bounded, which must necessarily be the
  case as R(t) is a probability. Enforcing this bound is important as
  otherwise data fits can be inflated (see Navarro, Pitt, & Myung, 2004,
  for further discussion).

I think Ebbinghaus' original function R(t) = e ^ -(t/s) (see this thread) can more easily explain things.  t is time and s is the strength of the memory.  After every review, s increases.
If you plot this out, you see that if you increase s, the forgetting curve function flattens out.


Why didn't I wake up after dying in a dream?

We still don't know much about dreams, and researching them is, at the most, a volatile kind of attempt to do science. It would be interesting what the statistics in the papers you read were based on, but the subject itself of those researches would be very unscientific because:

you cannot compare the "being dead in a dream" condition to any other condition that opposes it (not being dead in a dream doesn't count, if you look at it, as it means every other dream, and that is a lot of alternate conditions that might or might not wake you up equally)
you rely on "subjective" and hazy accounts of the event, hardly on a MRI scan or anything plausible (how would you choose specifically the subjects and situations where that specific type of dream occurs)?

...and so on.

To put it bluntly, the answer to your question is: because the science in those papers you read was, most probably, questionable if not downright bad.


Accuracy of social judgements of observers watching business meetings

You may be interested in the research on "thin slices" of behavior, defined as a very short video clip of behavior, often without audio.

Abstract from Ambady & Rosenthal (1992):

  A meta-analysis was conducted on the accuracy of predictions of
  various objective outcomes in the areas of clinical and social
  psychology from short observations of expressive behavior (under 5
  min). The overall effect size for the accuracy of predictions for 38
  different results was .39. Studies using longer periods of behavioral
  observation did not yield greater predictive accuracy; predictions
  based on observations under 0.5 min in length did not differ
  significantly from predictions based on 4- and 5-min observations. The
  type of behavioral channel (such as the face, speech, the body, tone
  of voice) on which the ratings were based was not related to the
  accuracy of predictions. Accuracy did not vary significantly between
  behaviors manipulated in a laboratory and more naturally occurring
  behavior. Last, effect sizes did not differ significantly for
  predictions in the areas of clinical psychology, social psychology,
  and the accuracy of detecting deception.

This methodology has been used frequently since this publication. I do not know the literature well enough to cite specifics, but perhaps this will point you in the right direction.

  Ambady, N., & Rosenthal, R. (1992). Thin slices of expressive behavior
  as predictors of interpersonal consequences: A meta-analysis.
  Psychological Bulletin; Psychological Bulletin, 111(2), 256. PDF


How do you analyse visual analogue scales with an ambiguous response?

I am not an expert on these scales, but my 2-cents worth would be the following, which are simple work-arounds to include all the data:

Fine as is;
Take the middle of the thick line (the 'average');
Take the center of the circle (draw a cross in it, the intersection is the middle);
Apparently "0" - no pain;
Take the tip as the marker;
Apparently "100".
As in 4. ("0" - no pain);

Points #4 and #6 are obviously the most risky, especially in a small population. In a large population (say N=100) a few outliers don't matter too much. So in case the study sample is small, you may want to consider excluding uncertain cases (#4 and #6 as examples), or try to contact the subjects and re-assess.


It should be pointed out that subvocalisation while reading is not necessarily of the same cause or purpose as subvocalisation while doing other activities. Many people are able (or accustomed) to comprehending written language only by converting it to spoken language mentally. This allows the interpretation process to share the same brain regions, as opposed to using one modality for reading and another for listening. Naturally some people are more prone to logical (read: serialised) thinking while others are more prone to visual (read: parallel) thinking. Those individuals prone to logical thinking are more likely to subvocalise while reading since this allows the reading process to correspond well with one's usual way of thinking. The reverse should be true for those accustomed to visual thinking.

The act of subvocalising while doing non-reading activities is probably similar in that it may allow the thinking to be of one's usual modality (logical). Taking it further, however, subvocalisation is a way of putting thoughts into words. It is common knowledge that when you put an understanding into your own words you are more likely to develop a lasting memory. This is presumably because explaining something in words requires that the ideas be organised in a coherent fashion, as opposed to possessing merely a superficial glimpse of awareness. To think about it another way, putting thoughts into words creates durable mental objects that can then be stored away into memory.