What are some explanations for the relationship between social and spatial mapping?

I understand you are asking why there would be a relationship between social space and physical, spatial environment, via a cognitive map.

That would be owing to humans naturally mapping environments as well as experience (Tolman made his name on a natural phenomenon). Lakoff claimed that mapping for temporal orientation was a biologically determined process.

Radden (2013) agrees that humans operate a spatio-physical “image content” in order to “objectify” experience.

As I cannot agree that suffering or danger bring heightened awareness and high information processing, whereas routine activities would be “situations of low information processing” (Radden), dimensionality stirs my further opposition. :)

Time encourages Radden to terms as "zero-dimension". Your quote emphasizes two-dimensional Euclidean spaces.

"Zero dimension" would not be perceivable, therefore unfit for human natural mapping. Two-dimensional correlates would have resulted from the framework of a computer game talking bubbles (as the authors admit), rather than natural hippocampal function, evolved in three-dimensional space.

Obviously, brainstem and neocortical performance should not be omitted from a picture for real social interaction.


Is there any way to calculate the cumulative width of synaptic clefts?

Mathematically, you're correct to think that linearly the total distance would be sizable, however don't forget the third axis, depth.

Given the following:

  The adult human brain is estimated to contain from 100–500 trillion synapses. (Drachman D (2005). "Do we have brain to spare?".)

Let's go with 150 from your example

... and ...

  Every cubic millimeter of cerebral cortex contains roughly a billion of them. (Alonso-Nanclares L, Gonzalez-Soriano J, Rodriguez JR, DeFelipe J (September 2008). "Gender differences in human cortical synaptic density")

Let's calculate the total volume these synapses occupy:

150,000,000,000,000 / 1,000,000,000 = 150,000 cubic mm => 150 cubic cm (
You can picture this as a cuboid 15cm wide by 10cm tall which is roughly the size of a butter bar )

So if all synapses can fit in a 15cm x 10cm cuboid then the clefts could all fit in a significantly less space.

If you want to calculate linear distance for, let's say an average of 30nm clefts then:

150,000,000,000,000,000 * 30nm = 4,500,000,000,000,000nm => 4500km


What stands behind the desire to want things now?

The evolutionary significance of self-regulation is that humans are more capable of this feat than apes. We can solve problems without visual feedback, by visualization. Apes are good problem solvers, but have difficulties when the task does not offer visual cues, but requires prospective and causal reasoning. This is one of the reasons monkeys fail on delay discounting tasks.


The classical, chemical synapse offers only one-way traffic. Under physiological conditions, the presynaptic neuron releases vesicles at its axon terminal and the postsynaptic neuron expresses the corresponding receptor proteins in the dendritic region. Conversely, the presynaptic neuron lacks the receptor molecules and the postsynaptic neuron lacks the secretory machinery to release neurotransmitter into the synaptic cleft (Purves et al., 2001).

Note, however, that the presynaptic neuron may express regulatory neurotransmitter receptors that bind its own released neurotransmitter, but these do not generate action potentials. And note that the postsynaptic neuron may release neuromodulators in the synaptic cleft. However, these compounds do not initiate action potentials, but have only a regulatory role.

There is, however, also the electrical synapse, mediated by gap junctions. These gap junctions are protein pores that electrically and chemically connect adjacent neurons directly. In this case, potential changes generated in one cell may freely spread like a wave to other neighboring cells. Note that this mode of electric coupling does not induce action potentials, but it represents the passive spread of voltage differences, called electrotonic coupling (Mylvaganam et al., 2014). Which cell initiates the wave is irrelevant, as the wave can spread to each cell as long as it is connection via gap junctions. Although these gap junctions are referred to as electrical synapses, the terminology presynaptic and postsynaptic applies in a much looser sense, as any neuron in the tissue can act as either one (Sheriar, 2004).

References
- Mylvaganam et al., Front Physiol (2014); 5: 172
- Purves et al. (eds.), Neuroscience. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001)
- Sherair BBA (2004); 1662(1–2): 113–37


Is there a diagnostic term for a person who impulsively keeps secrets?

Wikipedia has a list of impulse control disorders described in the DSM.

As can be seen from the list, many "official" names of impulsive disorders do not end in mania - eg, pathological gambling, sexual compulsion, compulsive buying, and the one most closely related to what is described in the question: Pathological lying.  And if it doesn't fit in the latter category, then:

  Disorders characterized by impulsivity that were not categorized
  elsewhere in the DSM-IV-TR were also included in the category
  "Impulse-control disorders not elsewhere classified".


How does the brain structure 3D visual data?

This question cannot be answered in the form in which you asked it both because of the limits of current neuroscientific theories and methodologies when it comes to determining the structures of complex neural representations (although we have made headway in a few cases such as place cells and grid cells), and because neural representations are not really analogous to our colloquial concepts of simple mappings from numbers to images (ex. pixel, vector, wavelet, etc. bases for digital image representation).

I would encourage you to think, not only in terms of these representational formats privileged by Von Neumann style computer architectures (i.e. normal computers) with separate processing and digital memory systems, but in terms of a neural computer with distributed computation and memory. Neuroscientists typically think of neural representation in visual perception as occurring at a number of stages of increased abstraction. At the retina, the image is represented roughly in terms of what you might think of as pixels, but it is really just a set of photosensors and attached neurons that are activated due to light hitting the retina in different places at different frequencies and amplitudes. In V1 or primary visual cortex, the representation is in terms of what can be thought of as "edge detectors." In V2, the cells are tuned for a variety of slightly more complex properties such as  such as orientation, spatial frequency, color, and binocular disparity (an important piece of information for 3D perception.) As you go up through V3, V4, V5, and V6, the representations becomes more and more complex until they contain information about the structure of the underlying concept itself.

The 3-dimensionality does not come in until the visual information from both eyes is combined with top-down information about how things tend to be in the world (which comes from other senses and experiences as well) in order to infer the likely shape of the object. It is unclear whether there is any place in the brain where an image is represented explicitly as a 3D model of a visual object. More likely the raw perceptual data such as colors and patterns is represented in one area and is associated with the more object-centric structural representation in another area and this association causes the co-activation of all the neurons relevant to the perception of the object in it's three dimensional form. The information is neither represented in one area of the brain nor in one scheme but is distributed across a large number of neurons with different degrees of activation.

We can also think of this in terms of the contemporary theory of enactive perception, which states that the brain represents information in terms of state-action-observation contingencies. In this theory, there is no "image" present at all, but only a set of neural activations which correlate with prior experience (where the correlations are stored in terms of associative links between neurons creating a causal activation path along which "information" travels) and relationships between potential actions (either low level motor actions of the retina or other muscles, or higher level actions such as taking a step forward) and their likely consequences (both low level perceptual consequences such as the expected changes in the sensory data when an action such as moving the head is taken and higher level perceptual and conceptual consequences such as a cup falling when you choose to open your hand and the associated experiences.) In this more comprehensive picture, visual information cannot be strictly separated from from conceptual and multi-sensory information and so three-dimensional visual information is represented both in terms of neural activations causally associated with the structure of the perceived object as well as the activations associated with all the other conceptual beliefs and perceptual expectations that relate.

If you want to read more, these sources should be a good start: distributed neural memory, distributed neural representation of a higher order process, perception as associations between actions and observations

There are also a few sources that offer direct experimental evidence towards your question, but do not provide as much of a conceptual introduction to neural computation and representation. See "Neural computations underlying depth perception", Binocular depth perception and the cerebral cortex as a start.

Your question also makes reference to rotating an object "in the mind's eye." There is also a very large body of research on this phenomenon, which is called "mental rotation." The wikipedia article is a good place to start but there is a lot more to say about this interesting phenomenon, so feel free to ask a related question if you are curious!


How do cooperative vs. competitive activities impact the learning patterns of an individual?

In this question are mixed different topics that are not very well categorized, to find documents or specific tests is better to adapt certain topics, is not usually talk of cooperative versus competitive activities, but individual versus group activities.

In research on the judgment or solution of group problems, the hypothesis is implicit that the interaction brings to the product of the group something other than the mere combination of the individual products (Shaw in the book of 1981, Group dynamics, about individual learning and group learning). Look for high performance groups. In social psychology an enormous amount of variables have been studied, many of it in relation to learning and personality.

In relation to the field of AI:
Different programs could establish contact, store, learn and put into practice different ways of solving the problem.

Interesting books:

Ferber, J. Multi-Agent System: An Introduction to Distributed Artificial Intelligence.
Grace, D. and Zhang, H. Cognitive Communications, Distributed Artificial Inteligence.


Intrapersonal drawbacks of landscaped open spaces

A partial answer to the question.

Literature about before/after comparisons may be found searching for the phrase "office redesign".

For example:

McElroy, J. C., & Morrow, P. C. (2010). Employee reactions to office redesign: A naturally occurring quasi-field experiment in a multi-generational setting. Human Relations, 63(5), 609–636.


The American Psychological Association appears to view this emotion as a continuum of intensity, whith annoyance at the mild and rage at the extreme end.

http://www.apa.org/topics/anger/control.aspx

Excessive anger and rage might be caused by suppressing milder forms of anger until this repression becomes unbearable and "the pot cooks over". Psychology Today calls anger a "corrosive emotion": it eats away at you, if you don't express it.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/anger

The continuum and boiling-over idea of anger are nicely summed up in this paragraph of another Psychology Today article:

  Irritation, frustration, anger, rage: these are all forms of anger. And they are feelings first. But when a person’s rage becomes behavior even before thought has a chance to plug in, it is usually because of one of two reasons:  1) it’s been repressed for a long time, and when someone drops the proverbial straw, it explodes; 2) it works for manipulative purposes.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/traversing-the-inner-terrain/201205/is-rage-choice


psychologically , which color for which lesson?

I haven't ever seen material which describes links between colors and some knowledge fields. To my mind, it depends on your own experience. But there are a lot of material about common feelings of different colors, that could be helpful for design, for organization of any kind of information. Look here and here.


What's the functional difference between the NEF and normal ANNs?

First, let's take a look at the basic principles of NEF.

The first two principles (Representation and Computation) do seem analogous to trained ANN models. Additionally, with the hPES learning rule that I've described here, they seem to have the same learning (gradient-descent) capabilities.

Where the NEF differentiates itself the most from ANNs is when it starts to describe dynamics (oscillators, attractors). For a description on how it does this and what it accomplishes, check out Terry Stewart's course notes found here.

Describing dynamics is important in the brain, since simple oscillators and integrators seem to be the foundation of many different cognitive abilities such as working memory and motor control.


Is there an effect of visual expertise on eye movements when examining an image?

There is a substantial literature on eye tracking.

Skill acquisition example

One study that I am familiar with and is of some relevance is Study 2 in Lee and Anderson (2000, PDF).
Specifically the study used eye tracking tools to examine how visual attention was allocated over time on an air traffic control simulator.
The broad finding, consistent with skill acquisition theory was that:

  Overall, as people become more skilled, they appear to be reducing the
  time they ﬁxate on all the task-irrelevant regions while maintaining
  the amount of time spent on the task-relevant regions in the move
  unit-task. (p.305)

Thus, this study shows that at least on a task, as you would expect visual attention changes as a function of the development of expertise.

A specific study of eye movements comparing experts and novices

It seems obvious that when visually examining art, people differ in how they view it. It also seems plausible that experts viewing art may focus on different things to novices.  After a little searching I found a study by Vogt and Magnussen (2007) that appears to directly address your interest:

  In two sessions with free scanning and memory instructions,
  eye-movement patterns from nine artists were compared with those of
  nine artistically untrained participants viewing 16 pictures
  representing a selection of categories from ordinary scenes to
  abstraction: 12 pictures were made to accommodate an object-oriented
  viewing mode (selection of recognisable objects), and a pictorial
  viewing mode (selection of more structural features), and 4 were
  abstract. The artistically untrained participants showed preference
  for viewing human features and objects, while the artists spent more
  scanning time on structural/abstract features. A group by session
  interaction showed a change of viewing strategy in the artists, who
  viewed more objects and human features in the memory task session. A
  verbal test of recall memory showed no overall difference in the
  number of pictures remembered, but the number of correctly remembered
  pictorial features was significantly higher for artists than for the
  artistically untrained viewers, irrespective of picture type. No
  differences in fixation frequencies/durations were found between
  groups across sessions, but a significant task-dependent-group by
  session interaction of fixation frequency/duration showed that the
  artistically untrained participants demonstrated repetition effects in
  fewer, longer fixations with repeated viewing, while the opposite
  pattern obtained for the artists.

They also summarise existing research (see the article for more information):

  Picture perception in artists and laymen has been compared in several
  studies on the assumption that artists view the world differently from
  others. ... In one 12-s recording session, Nodine et al (1993)
  found that artistically untrained viewers tended to spend more time
  viewing individual objects than relationships among elements in
  paintings... Other authors have reported different eye-fixation patterns in artists and
  non-artists viewing pictures. Antes and Kristjanson (1991) found that
  eye-movement parameters alone could differentiate artists from
  non-artists by fixation densities on less important aspects of
  paintings, with 'important' being defined a priori by one professional
  artist (rather than by the experimenters according to hypotheses).
  Zangemeister et al (1995) found that artists and sophisticated viewers
  used a more global scanning strategy than artistically untrained
  participants when viewing abstract pictures.

References

Antes J R, Kristjanson A F, 1991. Discriminating artists from nonartists by their eye movement patterns. Perceptual and Motor Skills 73 893 ^ 894
Lee, F.J. & Anderson, J.R. (2001). Does learning a complex task have to be complex?: A study in learning decomposition. Cognitive psychology, 42, 267-316. PDF
Nodine F, Locher P J, Krupinski E A, 1993. The role of formal art training on perception and aesthetic judgement of art compositions. Leonardo 26 219 ^ 227
Vogt, S. & Magnussen, S. (2007). Expertise in pictorial perception: eye-movement patterns and visual memory in artists and laymen. PERCEPTION-LONDON-, 36, 91. PDF
Zangemeister W H, Sherman K, Stark L, 1995 Evidence for a global scanpath strategy in viewing abstract compared to realistic images. Neuropsychologia 33 1009 ^ 1025


Can't use the urinal when next to someone. Is this psychological?

Is this a psychological issue for me?

Depends: is there any other common factor that makes you unable to urinate? If not, then it's probably psychogenic.

It's very common.

  Paruresis (Psychogenic Inhibition of Micturition): cognitive behavioral formulation and treatment

  Paruresis is a condition characterized by difficulty or inability to urinate in situations where others are present, or may soon be present. Despite knowledge that paruresis can significantly impact on occupational functioning, social functioning, and quality of life, there exists a paucity of research into effective treatments. Although cognitive conceptualizations have been advanced for other anxiety disorders, there has not been a comprehensive cognitive behavioral model of paruresis. This article presents a revised cognitive and behavioral conceptualization of paruresis, drawing on empirical evidence from other anxiety disorders. Using this conceptualization, a cognitive-behavioral intervention strategy is outlined, with clear targets for cognitive and behavioral strategies.

Reference: Boschen, M. J. (2008). Paruresis (psychogenic inhibition of micturition): cognitive behavioral formulation and treatment. Depression and Anxiety, 25, 903-912. https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/da.20367/full


The question title reads:

Does the split brain disprove a materialistic mind?

The simple answer being no, nothing disproves that - the brain harbors the mind e.g., (Lilienfeld & Arkowitz, 2008).
Now you mention that two hypotheses on split-brain patients are false, namely...

Both [hemispheres] gain their own conscious mind.

Only one [hemisphere] has a conscious mind.

...and I agree with them being incorrect hypotheses as suggested in the linked pages.
Now you proceed with...

[Does a] single conscious mind operates across both [hemispheres ?]

Importantly, you state yourself that...

[...] there are [...] other pathways between the hemispheres besides the corpus callosum - such as thalamocortical circuits [...] and those via the midbrain and brainstem [...].

So from my perspective, up until now you have answered your own question whether one single mind operates across two hemispheres in split-brain patients. Anyway, to illustrate some additional interhemispheric commissures besides the callosal pathway, see Fig. 1. This shows that 'split-brains are in fact not entirely split; only the main causeway is severed.
Now there are wild stories about split-brain patients having a dual consciousness, including the paper by Joseph (1998) where the author speculates that one of his patients "...was possessed of two minds" based on the frustrations experienced by this person because his motor skills were erratic. Andrew & Akelaitis (1945) explain that split-brain patients can display diagnostic dyspraxia by an unbalanced inhibitory influence of the dominant hemisphere over the non-dominant side, explaining the uncoordinated behavior on the non-dominant side. These symptoms generally diminish over time, as the brain deploys alternative inter-hemispheric routing of communications.

Fig. 1. Interhemispheric pathways are indicated by numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4. source: Urbanski et al. (2014)
References
- Andrew & Akelaitis (1945) Am J Psychiatr; 101(5): 594-9
- Joseph, J Clin Psychol (1988); 44(5): 770-9
- Lilienfeld & Arkowitz, Sci Am Mind (February 2008)
- Urbanski et al., *Front Integr Neurosci (2014)


A true philosophical zombie would form the same memories of being conscious that a conscious human would. By definition, a p-zombie is atom-for-atom identical to a real person, and would be impossible to distinguish by any means, even through the memories stored in the zombie's brain! If consciousness was one day imbued into a 30-year-old philosophical zombie, they would not realize that they had previously not been conscious.

As a corollary, science could never know if it had successfully produced a p-zombie, because if you gave someone the zombie pill, nothing measurable would change and after it wore off they would not know anything happened. It would be indistinguishable from a placebo.


How can the success of Bayesian models be reconciled with demonstrations of heuristic and biased reasoning?

Your question is predicated on the assumption that Bayesian modeling has been successful in all domains. I think this is a stance that many (except hardened Bayesians) would disagree with. For instance, consider the classic Tversky & Shafir experiments on the violation of the sure thing principle:

What are popular rationalist responses to Tversky & Shafir?

The above approach can be reconciled with standard rationalism, but you are in fact building theories of heuristics-and-biases to do so; that is how Kahneman & Tversky arrived at their models. Similarly, you can build very awkward Bayesian models for these sort of tasks (other difficult tasks are ones that show an order effect) but it is hard to say how these models are different from heuristics. For a more general treatement:

What tasks does Bayesian decision-making model poorly?

However, in the domain where Bayesian modeling is a good fit, the reason it works well to reconcile with heuristics-and-biases is because it has the perfect mechanism for modeling bias: the initial prior distribution. In fact you can use the prior distribution in the bayesian approach to quantify bias.

To summarize, you can model heuristics-and-biases with the bayesian approach. For bayesians heuristics are how the task is modeled/represented and biases are the intial prior distributions


Why are most psychological studies not controlling for IQ and personality scores of their respondents?

A quick look at your reference focussed on a meta-analysis of an intervention. Evaluating interventions is mostly about estimating the mean effect of an intervention. So, even if personality or intelligence influences the outcome, this is not directly relevant to evaluating whether on average the intervention has an effect.
In other contexts, controlling for personality and intelligence maybe quite relevant. In general, controlling for personality or intelligence is more relevant (a) where the predictors are conceptually or empirically related to personality or intelligence, and (b) where personality or intelligence is a strong predictor of the outcome of interest.
There are a whole range of psychological constructs that overlap substantially with either personality or intelligence. And in those cases, you do have a body of literature that examines the degree of overlap with personality or intelligence. And there's also literature that examines the incremental prediction of the variable of interest relative to personality.
For example:

Grit: Is it different from conscientiousness?
Assessment centers: Do they incrementally predict over and above intelligence?
Type D personality: Is it more than a composite of neurotcism and extraversion
Trait emotional intelligence: Is it just a weighted composite of the Big 5
Ability emotional intelligence: does it predict workplace outcomes over and above intelligence?

Researchers are always confronted with issues of which variables to measures. It is often not practical to measure everything. In particular, intelligence takes quite a bit of time to measure well. So you often get research that doesn't control for these factors. And then later on, other studies come along and fill the gap. There is also a bit of a process "construct proliferation" in psychology. A researcher comes up with a new pet construct. And other researchers point out later on how it's not that different to personality or how it doesn't incrementally predict. A lot of heated debates arise over these things.
Researchers also differ in theoretical orientation and practical concerns. For instance, in industrial/organisational psychology, intelligence and Big 5 personality assessment are very well embedded. So, incremental prediction over and above these factors  is a common question for a researchers to ask. In other fields, they may be less grounded in personality or intelligence frameworks.


Personality Models: The Big Five, the Seven Deadly Sins, and?

Depending on your definition of 'personality model' there are plenty to choose from.

I don't have any good overview of similarities and differences, which are tests more than models, or which are really two names on the same model.

Big 5/5 factor model. 5x6 axes. Tests include NEO-PI, MMPI-2, IPIP ++.
Global 5. 5 axes
BELBIN
Emneagram/RHETI
Hexaco
Holland COdes/RIASEC
Jung/MBTI/Kiersey/DISC, 16 PF, MENTI. 4 axes
MOTIV
R-Drive
Temperaments. 4 axes
Hartman. 4 axes
Kolb/Mumford
Learning styles, GrashaRiechmann styles, Dunn and Dunn styles, Canfield styles

Which ones you should focus on depends on what you are looking for.

Big 5\NEO-PI-R is the most scientifically supported model, so I mostly keep to that one. The hard part about Big 5 is the number of traits total (30), which takes a while to really learn, understand and remember.
MBTI is useful in learning theory about personality types, differences and traits, but it lacks scientific support.
The others I haven't studied much yet.

In general I think it's a good idea to use Big 5 as the base, and search for correlations with traits from Big 5.

Sources:

http://similarminds.com/personality_types.html
http://tcc.kcc.hawaii.edu/previous/TCC%202005/santo.pdf
http://www.personalityresearch.org/bigfive.html
http://hexaco.org/scaledescriptions


EEG Alpha waves during eyes open mindfulness training - any research on this subject

There are many studies suggesting an increased alpha activity during mindfulness/meditation (Delmonte, 1984). Below is a table from Cahn & Polich (2006) summarizing the recent studies of meditation using EEG methods, not all of them mentioned it's eyes open or not, but the effect of increased alpha power can be long lasting(Davidson & Lutz, 2008), thus higher alpha activity should be observed during eyes open as well. The article also points out that the increased alpha power is related to increased relaxation induced by mindfulness/meditation practice.

May not relevant to your question, but it might be interesting to look at theta power as well, since it's mentioned together with alpha in quite a few studies(Dunn et al., 1999;Lagopoulos et al., 2009; Ivanovski & Malhi, 2007) .

Delmonte, M. M. (1984). Electrocortical activity and related phenomena associated with meditation practice: A literature review. International Journal of Neuroscience, 24(3-4), 217-231.
Cahn BR, Polich J (2006) Meditation states and traits: EEG, ERP, and neuroimaging studies. Psychological Bulletin 132: 180–211. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.2.180
Davidson RJ, Lutz A (2008) Buddha's Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation. IEEE Signal Process Mag 25: 176–174. doi: 10.1109/msp.2008.4431873
Dunn, B. R., Hartigan, J. A., & Mikulas, W. L. (1999). Concentration and mindfulness meditations: unique forms of consciousness?. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 24(3), 147-165.
Lagopoulos, J., Xu, J., Rasmussen, I., Vik, A., Malhi, G. S., Eliassen, C. F., ... & Ellingsen, Ø. (2009). Increased theta and alpha EEG activity during nondirective meditation. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 15(11), 1187-1192.
Ivanovski, B., & Malhi, G. S. (2007). The psychological and neurophysiological concomitants of mindfulness forms of meditation. Acta neuropsychiatrica, 19(2), 76-91.


Effectiveness of aversion therapy for procrastination

From a 2014 review article on procrastination that doesn't mention aversive therapy at all, but has this to say about treatment(s) of procrastination in general:

  Even though procrastination can contribute to many adversities among those afflicted, research concerning treatment interventions is currently scarce. (Pychyl & Flett, 2012) In terms of clinical trials investigating different
  treatment interventions, there is insufficient knowledge regarding their usefulness (Rozental & Carlbring,
  2013). The research also lacks validated outcome measures, randomization, and long-term follow-ups, complicating
  the results. Treatment interventions stemming from cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) are often considered
  suitable for addressing problems of procrastination—interventions such as stimulus cues, time management,
  goal-setting techniques, learned industriousness, automaticity, stimulus control, modeling, performance
  accomplishments, implementation intentions, success spirals, and fusing (Steel, 2007)—but the evidence for
  their efficacy is still unclear (Pychyl & Flett, 2012).


How was fMRI performed before EPI became available?

Short answer
Older image collection techniques like GRASS and FLASH are slower than EPI, but still fast enough to operate within the time span of the neurovascular delay.

Background
The speed of fMRI processing is an important limitation to what processes can be investigated with this technique. Figure 1 shows a number of physiological processes along with a time line of a number of key fMRI strategy developments  (source: Cohen). Figure 1 shows a steady decrease in MR imaging times in the first decade of its conception. The cerebral blood flow response used in fMRI BOLD imaging typically begins within ~500 ms and peaks 3–5 s after stimulus presentation (Hilman 2014). fMRI BOLD is based on the neurovascular coupling, referring to the relationship between local neural activity and subsequent changes in cerebral blood flow (CBF). Any imaging technique that utilizes the neurovascular coupling, notably fMRI BOLD, should be fast enough to operate withing= the time window of the neurovascular delay.

Echo-planar imaging (EPI), was already known by 1977, but was implemented not until 1990 for fMRI. EPI collects image data in 40 to 150 milliseconds and hence is more than sufficient to obtain a BOLD response. Earlier image collection techniques (gradient echo methods) such as Fast Low Angle Shot (FLASH) and Gradient Recalled Acquisition in Steady State (GRASS) are much slower and need several hundreds of ms (FLASH) or several seconds (GRAS) to obtain an image. Nonetheless, these processing times are still sufficient to obtain a cerebral blood flow response.

Fig. 1. Duration of various physiological processes (top) and development of imaging techniques and their image collection times (bottom). The neurovascular peak delay (around 8 sec as depicted here) has a time window sufficiently long to be recorded by GRAS, TurboFLASH and EPI have processing times within that time window and can theoretically be used for fMRI. source: Cohen

Reference
- Hilman, Annu Rev Neurosci (2014); 37: 161–81


Why are we the smartest species on the whole known universe?

The evolution of higher intelligence in hominids is an empirically difficult enough evolutionary question that (a) it might be better for biology.se and (b) any answer needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, but I'll give you a feel for it. By that I mean, "watch the way multiple accidents of evolutionary history made evolution more favourable among our ancestors than most animals".

The 2003 documentary Walking with Cavemen discussed one model of what happened to early hominids: a decline in African rainforest coverage c. 8 Mya led to arboreal primates evolving bipedalism for more efficient locomotion, and this meant hands no longer compromised between movement and tool usage. Hand-brain co-evolution would have involved a positive feedback, which may (or may not - always bear that in mind) be part of the reason for rapid brain growth among Australopithecines. The same documentary also discussed how subsequent climate change in Africa changed the ecosystem enough to provide new nutrition opportunities for early Homo species, and how the move from North Africa to West Asia led to bamboo tools.

There are many models for what encouraged the evolution of higher intelligence in our ancestors, at various points in the past 5 Mya or so. The reason a trait is more favoured in one species than another comes down to unique cost-benefit analyses. Large brains are expensive, but the shift from a mostly herbivorous diet to one more reliant on meat, especially bone marrow (which only hominid tools could access), is part of why they were "worth it" in our genus.


What does it mean statistically for there to be significant differences in average IQ scores between racial groups?

Statistical significance in this context is determined by:

the underlying size of the group differences,
the group sample sizes, and
your threshold for statistical significance (traditionally .05).

Even if there were very small group differences, if you had a large sample size (say 1000s of people from each race doing an intelligence test), then you would be highly likely (i.e., high statistical power) to find a significant group difference.

However, Murray's point is not  about statistical significance. I.e., it's not about ruling out the null hypothesis. Observed  differences in intelligence test scores are often fairly large, and this is a heavily studied area with very large sample sizes. So ruling our the null-hypothesis is not a problem. The differences in a given study are statistically signifiant.

Murray's point is about translating the quantitative differences in group means into something that is linguistically meaningful. There are various ways of doing this. For variables that are intrinsically meaningful, we often talk about the raw scales (e.g., you could talk about the gender pay gap in dollars earned per year or you could compare races in height using centimetres or inches).
However, in psychology, we often have scales that lack intrinsic meaning, which leads to the use of standardized measures of effect.

The most common standardized measure of group differences is often labeled Cohen's d. I.e., it is the difference between group means in terms of the standard deviation. So for example, IQ scores have a standard deviation of 15. So if one group has a mean of 110 and another has a mean of 95, then that's a cohen's d of 1.0 (i.e., (110 - 95) / 15 = 1.0). Rules of thumb have been proposed based on an examination of the psychological literature which suggests that .2 is small, .5 is medium, and .8 is large in terms of an effect.

From memory, some observed differences in intelligence test scores between races are in that 0.8 to 1.2 range (see for example IQ knowns and unknowns). So by conventional rules of thumb for effect size, this would be labelled a large effect or a large group difference.

However, this is not a finding of mere academic interest. This finding can have profound negative consequences for people's lives. Specifically, the fear is that this finding will reinforce negative stereotypes and that people in the group that tends to scores lower on IQ tests will be given fewer opportunities in life (e.g., education, work, immigration, political policy, etc.). And that the finding would support bigotry.

In particular, there is a real danger that people will rely on a group stereotype rather than judging a person on their merits. For example, it is reasonable to hire a person for a job because they show the most aptitude for the job based on measures of the competence and experience. It is unreasonable to hire a person because they come from a racial group that happens to on average perform better on the job.

Murray uses an alternative index of effect size to say that between group variance is less than within-group variance. Thus, if you do a regression with group as the predictor variable, then only when you explain more than 50% of variance will group explain more variance than there is variance within groups. I think you need a cohen's d of 2.0 to get 50% of variance explained.

Here's a simulation in R:

x <- data.frame(group = "a", dv = rnorm(100000,0,1))
y <- data.frame(group = "b", dv = rnorm(100000,2,1))
df <- rbind(x, y)
fit <- lm(dv ~ group, df)
summary(fit)

Basically, I'm simulating data for two groups and their group means differ by two standard deviations and the result is 50% of variance explained (and 50% variance unexplained; i.e., within group variance):

Coefficients:
              Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
(Intercept) -0.0007719  0.0031664  -0.244    0.807
groupb       1.9974176  0.0044780 446.050   <2e-16 ***
Multiple R-squared:  0.4987,    Adjusted R-squared:  0.4987

In general, a group difference of 2.0 is very large.
Here's another article that talks about different indexes for group differences (Table 1 is particularly interesting).

So, in general, Murray is presumably making the point that even though group differences are fairly large by conventional standards, there are many people in the lower scoring group that score higher than the higher scoring group. So please don't use this finding to stereotype or marginalize people.

Follow-up

You asked in the comments:

  Given the group differences, is it technically accurate to say that a randomly selected individual of a lower scoring group is more likely to have a lower score than a randomly selected individual of a higher scoring group?

Yes, that is accurate.

To answer that question see Table 1 here.

"Probability that person from experimental group will be higher than person from control, if both chosen at random (=CLES)"

no group differences: 50% chance
0.5 SD difference: 64% chance
1 SD difference (i.e., what has sometimes been found historically for some race IQ differences): 76% chance
2 SD difference: 92% chance


Is there a reasonable scientific backing for Carl Jung's type theories?

It appears that there is little scientific backing for Jung's theories. As these theories were first suggested at the start of the 20th century they have had a considerable amount of time to receive scientific support. If they were accepted by scientists it therefore seems like they would have been widely used and cited by scholars in the interim period.

However, if I do a search (in titles, abstracts and keywords) for related content on SCOPUS I get only 12 references (the details of which I have pasted below for you to consider). The low level of search results (and the fact that few of these appear relevant) provides strong evidence that there is little scientific support for Jung's work.

In terms of alternative theories to consider, if I were you I would have a look at the "big five" also known as OCEAN as there is a lot more support for this personality theory. For examples of some influential and interesting articles, please see the OCEAN references section below.

References from the SCOPUS literature search:

Search term:
TITLE-ABS-KEY ( jung  "cognitive functions" )

Novak M.    Ideal types of law from the perspective of psychological typology [Idealni tipi prava v lu?i psihološke tipologije] 2013    Revus

Lo J.-J., Chan Y.-C.    Design of adaptive web interfaces with respect to student cognitive styles  2011    Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing

Semetsky I. Jung and Tarot: A Theory-practice Nexus in Education and Counselling    2012    Jung and Educational Theory

Connolly A.M.   Cognitive aesthetics of alchemical imagery  2013    Journal of Analytical Psychology

Naghavi H.R., Nyberg L. Integrative action in the fronto-parietal network: A cure for a scattered mind  2007    Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Sebastian A., Jung P., Krause-Utz A., Lieb K., Schmahl C., Tüscher O.   Frontal dysfunctions of impulse control - A systematic review in borderline personality disorder and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder   2014    Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Segall J.M., Allen E.A., Jung R.E., Erhardt E.B., Arja S.K., Kiehl K., Calhoun V.D. Correspondence between structure and function in the human brain at rest    2012    Frontiers in Neuroinformatics

Vieira A.G., Sperb T.M. Symbolic play and the narrative organization of the child's life experience [O brincar simbólico e a organização narrativa da experiência de vida na criança]   2007    Psicologia: Reflexao e Critica

Park H.-J., Lee S.Y., Shim H.S., Kim J.S., Kim K.S., Shim I.    Chronic treatment with squid phosphatidylserine activates glucose uptake and ameliorates TMT-induced cognitive deficit in rats via activation of cholinergic systems    2012    Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Seo Y., Burns K., Fennell C., Kim J.-H., Gunstad J., Glickman E., McDaniel J.   The Influence of Exercise on Cognitive Performance in Normobaric Hypoxia    2015    High Altitude Medicine and Biology

Kwon H.G., Choi B.Y., Kim S.H., Chang C.H., Jung Y.J., Lee H.D., Jang S.H.  Injury of the cingulum in patients with putaminal hemorrhage: A diffusion tensor tractography study 2014    Frontiers in Human Neuroscience

Lee J.H., Kim S.E., Park C.-H., Yoo J.H., Lee H.W.  Gray and White Matter Volumes and Cognitive Dysfunction in Drug-Naïve Newly Diagnosed Pediatric Epilepsy    2015    BioMed Research International

OCEAN sample references

Roberts, Brent W., Kate E. Walton, and Wolfgang Viechtbauer. "Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: a meta-analysis of longitudinal studies." Psychological bulletin 132.1 (2006): 1.

Hayes, Natalie, and Stephen Joseph. "Big 5 correlates of three measures of subjective well-being." Personality and Individual differences 34.4 (2003): 723-727.

Kotov, Roman, et al. "Linking “big” personality traits to anxiety, depressive, and substance use disorders: a meta-analysis." Psychological bulletin 136.5 (2010): 768.


How are neurotransmitter receptors discovered?

Each receptor has its own story of discovery. I'll share here the methods used by Lefkowitz that led to the discovery of one of the first neurotransmitter receptors, namely the β2 adrenergic receptor (β2AR) from frog erythrocytes in 1981. With this I mean β2AR was among the first receptors that was identified, purified, and characterized both at the protein and DNA level.

Lefkowitz's team was the first to uncover the charactistics of a neurotransmitter  at the protein and DNA level. βARs are involved in regulating cardiovascular function. Lefkowitz was awarded the Noble prize for his early pioneering work on the discovery of these receptors.

His method was based on several steps, namely:

The development of a novel and specific radioligand binding assay to enable the measurement βAR-binding sites;
The identification of detergents to successfully solubilize a functional βAR from membrane preparations;
The synthesis of an affinity resin and photoaffinity ligands to facilitate receptor purification;
Reconstitution of the purified β2AR into phospholipid vesicles;
The demonstration that β2AR couples to, and activates the heterotrimeric G protein Gs and subsequent activation of adenylyl cyclase to produce cAMP;
Purified hamster β2AR was used for peptide sequencing that were subsequently used to synthesize oligonucleotides for cloning studies to isolate β2AR cDNA;

After β1AR, Lefkowitz's lab soon purified β1AR, α1AR, and α2AR.

References
- Benovic, Cell (2012); 151(6): 1148-50
- Lopez-Munoz & Alamo, Neural Transm (2009) 116: 515–33


What causes students not to be interested in problem solving?

Nature supplies each of us with a Homo Sapien type brain with 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. However the brain is plastic and can change its structure based on the way it is programmed psychologically.

Not all people are capable of solving all problems. Our abilities mental and physical are based on what we spend our time doing. Even the banal task that one could imagine is quite exhilarating to another person with a brain which was trained and programmed differently.

First the brains structure is made up of the connections the neurons make. My favorite study which shows this is the Cab Drivers Brain Experiment. It showed that after years of labor (and compared to a control group) London taxi drivers had enlarged in structure posterior hippocampus giving the cabbies the ability to store large amount of navigational data in their brain. (That is not to say that the cabbies all enjoyed driving though.) Another example of this includes changes to accommodate musical ability. Exploiting neural plasticity has led to treatments for dyslexia. Likewise also everyone who uses the internet has seen ads for Luminosity but not everyone knows that it doesn't work well.

People who are mentally ill have connections in their brain that lead them to illness. These connections can be caused by physical or by self-psychological training. That is to say chemical imbalances are often the result of a structural or physical malformations. A brain may for whatever reason produces too much or little neurotransmitter or have many connections to an incorrect part of the brain. If the brain was a terrane the paths traveled more often would eventually become "paved" (somewhat permanent). It take medication and counseling to break up those bad pathways and form new and healthy pathways.

Nature or nurture has resulted in the group of people which I think you describe as somewhat dependent or ADHD. Only proper counselling and perhaps even some medication will be able to free them from their lack of motivation. Even with proper treatment some people will for whatever reason never want to act in the way you see fit. Homework will always be at times left undone. This is a truth no matter how advanced the teacher is in academia or how driven and motivated the pupil.


Popular science books introducing therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs

Yes, the psychedelic Renaissance/ third wave (as I've heard it being called) is steadily gaining momentum. I almost feel like mentioning How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan here is too obvious, but just to be safe, here's a few links and a cultural review. There is also an exhaustive summary on Trippingly.net!


Can autism spectrum disorders be acquired or are they inherited traits only?

Anybody with enough will and persistence can find support for almost any viewpoint they desire concerning autism, depending especially on (lower) quality of source material. However, if you read enough, consistent patterns will emerge in the literature.

This issue of Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience is all about autism. Although all of it is valuable, I strongly encourage you to work through the wealth of information in Autism risk factors: genes, environment, and gene-environment interactions by
Pauline Chaste, MD, PhD. and Marion Leboyer, MD, PhD.

In it you will discover that autism is more and more thought to be a disorder caused by a combination of genetics and environment: genetic factors, epigenesis, maternal environment, drug exposure during pregnancy and a host of other factors, all occurring before of during birth.

There seem to be two types: the slow progressive and the loss of developmental skills type. For this reason the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends screening for autism at 18 and 24 months, though some Pediatricians start screening at 9 or 12 months.

The short answers to your questions:

  Can autism spectrum disorders be acquired or are they inherited traits only, especially in the case of Asperger syndrome or pervasive developmental disorders where they lie on the lower end of the spectrum?

Autism Spectrum Disorder appears to be genetic and environmental, but that environment is strongly in utero or at birth. So, no, it does not appear that one can acquire ASD as one might acquire, say, chicken pox if unvaccinated.

  If so, does there seem the be a cut-off age, like the onset of adolescence or adulthood?

Although people with autism may take a long time to be diagnosed, it is not 'acquired' later in childhood or adolescence.

Other degenerative neurological disorders can occur later in life, for example lead poisoning or other diseases, but they are not autism.


How to find the upper and lower quartiles of the Ryff scale?

Obtaining the quartiles:
Typically you obtain quartiles from the data. Thus, you would have sample data (either your dataset or another dataset), and you can use software to give you .25 and .75 percentiles (or alternatively, you can get such values fairly straightforwardly by rank ordering the data).

Of course, you might be referring to a slightly different notion to quartiles. You might be thinking about low and high scores relative to the scale range. So for example, the mid point of 1 to 5 scale is 3. Therefore, you could say that a mean below 3 suggests that people are below the midpoint on a  scale.
This idea can readily be extended to other percentiles of the scale range.

The basic equation could be expressed as follows:

min + percentile * (max - min)

where min is the scale minimum and max is the scale maximum and percentile is the percentile of interest (e.g., .25 and .75 in your case or say .5 for the midpoint).

Applying this you get

54 + .25 * (324 - 54) = 121.5
54 + .75 * (324-54) = 256.5

for your low and high cutoffs.

Of course, there's all sorts of discussion you could have about whether this whole process is reasonable, and in general you should try to use the continuous scale for your analyses.


The comfort and appeal of vintage objects?

A long time ago nostalgia was a medical diagnosis. Longing for that which was comforting is perhaps a natural response to no longer being comforted (e.g the current economic crisis). Furthermore, behavioural economics and psychology both do work on people's tendency to remember the past better than today. You could look at the ego-centric memory bias. (you might note the false consensus effect which is related and the cause of many a belief in an erroneous "common sense").

If you combine these you might just see why the vintage is appealing. In fact, even beyond one's own experience there is the lore of the past being better passed down from generation through generation by way of the ego-centric bias, perhaps making older vintage even more appealing. I remember Twain and others writing on this but cannot recall a quote.

Finally, I'm sure that some vintage things are often just lovely on their own and have an appeal of artistry different from modern for a variety of reasons.


Can we explain the tendency of investors dollar cost averaging in terms of loss aversion?

It seems that despite the idea's intuitive appeal, the evidence is currently mixed with respect to whether loss aversion can explain dollar cost averaging strategies. Most research I can find seems to be financial and normative, pertaining to whether the strategy performs well more than behavioral and descriptive concerns for why people engage in the strategy.

An uncommonly direct study of this exact question reported, in no uncertain terms, that we cannot explain the tendency of investors dollar cost averaging in terms of loss aversion (Leggio and Lien, 1995).

  Using prospect theory to create an alternative utility function that does not require investors to be strictly risk averse, we empirically test Statman’s conjecture for four investment strategies and for alternative stock investments. We find loss aversion still does not explain the existence of the dollar-cost averaging investment strategy.

Unfortunately, at least for our sense of certainty, this claim was challenged in a later study by Dicht and Drobetz (2011), which suggested the exact opposite: according to them, prospect theoretic can explain dollar cost averaging strategies with loss aversion within short time scales.

  Overall, our results indicate that the popularity of dollar cost averaging can be explained within the framework of the Tversky and Kahneman’s cumulative prospect theory, at least for short time horizons.

There seems to be a complex, time-dependent relationship between dollar cost averaging and loss aversion. It's plausible that loss aversion drives the tendency to engage in dollar cost averaging over particular time scales or for particular classes of investors, but ultimately, we don't have the evidence to say.

References

Leggio, K. B., & Lien, D. (2001). Does loss aversion explain dollar-cost averaging?. Financial Services Review, 10(1), 117-127.
Dichtl, H., & Drobetz, W. (2011). Dollar-cost averaging and prospect theory investors: An explanation for a popular investment strategy. Journal of Behavioral Finance, 12(1), 41-52.


What role do circular network structures play in neural networks?

In contrast to artificial neural networks, which are almost all feed-forward architectures, networks in biological brains are highly recurrent. In the networks of cortex, the majority of synaptic inputs a neuron receives come from nearby neurons in the same area of cortex (Binzegger et al. 2004). These are the "circular" connections that you are referring to.

So recurrent connectivity is the rule, and simple feed-forward (or feed-back) projections between cohorts are the exception. The networks that result are therefore highly dynamic, and respond in complex ways to inputs changing over time. In general there is no one "reason" why recurrent connections exist. But there are guidelines about how connections between excitatory and inhibitory neurons are made.

The patterns of connections which define a network determine the computational properties of that network. At a first level, the strength and connectivity between excitatory and inhibitory neurons control the overall stability of the network (e.g. Wilson & Cowan 1973; Tsodyks et al. 1997). It's certainly possible to have self-connections and high recurrence, and still keep the network stable.

Secondly, changing the rules by which neurons connect to each other (Ko et al. 2011; Cossell et al. 2015; Lee et al. 2016; Wilson et al. 2017) changes the computational properties of the resulting network (Muir & Mrsic-Flogel 2015).

In general, biological neural networks are highly recurrent dynamical systems which bear only passing relationship to the acyclic networks that we use to think about feed-forward and feed-back connections in the brain.


How does task difficulty schedule affect the rate and efficiency of perceptual learning?

General pedagogical ideas around optimal difficulty

Many theories of instruction suggest that learning is optimal when an appropriate level of challenge is maintained. If a task is too easy, there's little to learn. If a task is too difficult, the learner can be overwhelmed. The implication for practice is that task difficulty should increase in conjunction with the increased skill of the learner. Of course, we can think of exceptions to these ideas, such as the value of over-learning, and the general idea of exposing people to challenging problems to motivate further learning. This also still leaves open the question of precisely how fast difficulty should increase for a given learner.

Academically, I've seen these ideas expressed in several places:

Deliberate practice: This is a concept drawn from the expertise literature. It is posited that amount of deliberate practice (rather than amount of simple experience) is one of the key factors that discriminates experts from non-experts (see Ericsson et al 2006).
A key aspect of task difficulty relates to the sequencing of task difficulty with practice.
Ericsson et al (2006) writes that

  The core assumption of deliberate practice ... is that expert
  performance is acquired gradually and that effective improvement of
  performance requires the opportunity to find suitable training tasks
  that the performer can master sequentially... Deliberate practice
  presents performers with tasks that are initially outside their
  current realm of reliable performance, yet can be mastered within
  hours of practice by concentrating on critical aspects and by
  gradually refining performance through repetitions after feedback.

Challenge point in motor learning:
Guadagnoli and Lee present a framework for thinking about optimal difficulty in motor learning. Their framework suggests that optimal learning is achieved by maintaining task difficulty at the point where it provides optimal information (where learning is possible, but it is not too difficult as to be overwhelming).

Research on task difficulty and perceptual learning

In a review article Ahissar and Hochstein (2004) also suggest easy to difficult is the most effective regime for perceptual learning:

  As found in our studies, training is more effective if subjects start
  with easy conditions and gradually move to more difficult con-
  ditions. The importance of beginning training with easy conditions was
  first found by Pavlov. When Pavlov reinforced a dog’s salivation
  following its seeing an ellipse but not following its seeing a circle
  (Figure I, rightmost pair of stimuli), the dog could not avoid
  generalization and salivated at sight of the circle, as well. Only by
  using very elongated ellipses, and training along the continuum, from
  left to right, was it able to achieve good performance for small
  circle/ellipse differences. This phenomenon was subsequently termed
  ‘transfer along a continuum’ (of different degrees of difficulty).

References

Ahissar, M. and Hochstein, S. (2004). The reverse hierarchy theory of
visual perceptual learning. Trends in cognitive sciences, 8(10):457-464. FREE PDF
Ericsson, K. et al. (2006). The influence of experience and deliberate
practice on the development of superior expert performance. The
Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance, 10(3):683-703.
FREE PDF
Guadagnoli, M. and Lee, T. (2004). Challenge point: a framework for
conceptualizing the effects of various practice conditions in motor
learning. Journal of Motor Behavior, 36(2):212-224. FREE PDF


Is there a link between intelligence and mental disturbances?

I like Mr Smitherson's consideration, which is indeed in the realm of possibilities. I haven't read a definitive study yet, I will search and return soon.

However, for further consideration to the question from a psychological/cognitive perception I posit the following:

Persons with abnormal, on the high scale of intelligence, would perhaps have more varied considerations when presented with a situation or when presented with a problem.

People with a higher IQ would normally think deeper into a problem. This would activate more brain cells, and drain the brain of the chemicals it uses to function. This would lead to imbalance.

The second consideration is that people who are more intelligent, would think about things further. To expand on that idea, since I am not the best at explaining stuff, I'll give an example: a person, of high IQ, is presented with information on global warming, a normal (for the sake of argument) person would take in the information and perhaps think "this isn't good" and leave it there. The person of higher IQ would thinking further about the implications, perhaps research and may find the situation hopeless.

Constant barrage of these situations may lead to lower moods and the elevated hopeless thinking lead to depression fueled by anxiety for the future.

This is what I would consider to be the cause behind any correlation between intelligence and mental illness in the form or depression/anxiety (these two conditions feed each other into a spiral)


What brain areas are involved in memorizing sections of a song?

I would read this paper, its mighty interesting.

Books

Snyder, B.(2000) Music and memory: An introduction. The MIT Press. Cambridge 291.

Hemispheric Coordination and Conflict

  "...while listening to the melody of the popular carol "Silent Night", the
  right hemisphere thinks, "Ah, yes, Silent Night", while the left
  hemisphere thinks, "two sequences: the first a literal repetition, the
  second a repetition at different pitch levels—ah, yes, Silent Night by
  Franz Gruber, typical pastorate folk style." The brain for the most
  part works well when each hemisphere performs its own function while
  solving a task or problem; the two hemispheres are quite
  complementary. However, situations arise when the two modes are in
  conflict, resulting in one hemisphere interfering with the operation
  of the other hemisphere." (Regalski 1977)

Melodic Memory

  "Performance was greatest for the musicians, particularly for the
  nontonal melody pairs. These differences were not primarily
  attributable to pitch discrimination or pitch working memory
  impairments. The findings point to differential contributions of the
  left and right mesial temporal lobes to melodic memory, with
  specificity of the right mesial temporal lobe emerging for melodic
  learning within a tonal musical context." (Wilson, Saling 2008)

Tonal Memory

  In general, tonal memory is supported by a wide network including
  primary and secondary auditory areas more right lateralized, the
  supramarginal gyrus particularly on the left, and dorsolateral
  inferior frontal areas, more clearly seen under heavy memory load
  conditions (Zatorre et al., 1994; Griffith et al., 1999; Gaab et al.,
  2003). Premotor areas, the cerebellum, basal ganglia and the thalamus
  are activated when subvocal tonal rehearsal is explicitly required
  (Hickok et al., 2003; Koelsch et al., 2009). Importantly a direct
  comparison of memory for verbal syllables and sung pitches under
  rehearsal and under suppression elicited largely overlapping brain
  areas consistent with this network (Schulze et al., 2011).

Quoted from this source.

Sources

Who Knows Where Music Lurks in the Mind of Man? New Brain Research Has The Answer.
Journal of Music Educators (May 1977, Vol.63, pages 31-38)

Contribution of the left and right Mesial Temporal Lobes to Musical Memory: Evidence from melodic learning difficulties
Sarah J. Wilson, Michael M. Saling
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 25 No. 4, April 2008; (pp. 303-314)

￼Towards A Neural Basis Of Music Perception.
Stefan Koelsch and Walter A. Siebel
Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.9 No.12 December 2005

Functional anatomy of pitch memory—an fMRI study with sparse temporal sampling.
Gaab, N., Gaser, C., Zaehle, T., Jancke, L., and Schlaug, G. (2003).
Neuroimage 19, 1417–1426.

Neural mechanisms underlying melodic perception and memory for pitch.
Zatorre, R. J., Evans, A. C., and Meyer, E. (1994).
J. Neurosci. 14, 1908–1919.

Auditory-motorinteraction revealed by fMRI: speech, music, and working memory in area
Hickok, G., Buchsbaum, B., Humphries, C., and Muftuler, T. (2003).
Spt. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 15, 673–682.

Functional architecture of verbal and tonal working memory: an FMRI study.
Koelsch, S., Schulze, K., Sammler, D., Fritz, T., Müller, K., and Gruber, O. (2009).
Hum. Brain Mapp. 30, 859–873.

Neuroarchitecture of verbal and tonal working memory in nonmusicians and musicians.
Schulze, K., Zysset, S., Mueller, K., Friederici, A. D., and Koelsch, S. (2011). Hum. Brain Mapp. 32, 771–783.


As far as I know, there is no specific definition for this phobia. No search reveals anything similar. It is important to recognise that simply defining phobias is not medically useful and does not provide further insight into human cognition. It would not be efficient to provide a label for all the phobias which exist. Generally labels are created when the population of people with the disorder reaches some threshold that specific treatments are developed. Your friend simply has a "specific phobia" of the situational type (also see Wikipedia entry).

I imagine treatment would be the same as for most specific phobias. Generally this involves a form of CBT known as exposure therapy or graded exposure.

If you desperately require a definition, I like hydrostructuraphobia - taken from latin word for structure.


Why do people press elevator call buttons repeatedly?

It's an interesting phenomenon, and I think it can be seen in many other domains beyond lifts. At least where I live, pedestrian crossings have buttons, which I've seen people repeatedly press. You can see it often on computers and other digital devices when the system does not immediately respond to user input.

Basic Bayesian Rational Actor

My starting point for analysing the behaviour would be that of a bayesian rational actor. While you state that the individual "knows that such action will have no effect." This is not actually true. Many states of the world are possible about the consequence of second and subsequent button presses:

Beneficial:

The first button press may not have been recorded (perhaps you didn't press the button correctly, perhaps the system malfunctioned)
Repeatedly pressing the button might increase the system's awareness of the importance of the request
The first button press may have timed-out and a second button press may resend the request

Makes no difference:

The first button press has been recorded and the second button press makes no difference.

Detrimental:

The first button press was recorded. Any subsequent button press resets the time required.

So from the perspective of a Bayesian rational actor, the individual does not know the state of the world. Instead, each state has a certain probability of being true. And each state of the world has a certain cost/benefit. Thus, if the individual assigns very low probability to the detrimental option and minimal cost to the physical movement involved in pressing the button, and some small probability of any of the beneficial scenarios being true, then the beneficial scenarios have the greatest expected utility. This is despite the fact that the "makes no difference scenario" having very high probability of being true.

The important point is that it is the subjective beliefs and subjective utility which drives action and not the objective state of the world. Most models of human action would also incorporate a random component. So even if people generally preferred not to do the repeated press, they might occasionally. Such randomness can be seen as rational behaviour in the broader sense, in that it allows the actor to sample the utilities associated with actions even if they aren't currently deemed to maximise utility.

Presumably many factors would influence the beliefs about truth and utility in this situation:

The clearer the indicator that the button has been pressed, the more likely the individual will believe that the button has been pressed. So for example, on some pedestrian crossings there is no indicator light, or sometimes the indicator light on a lift button stops working. In such cases, people would presumably be much more likely to repeatedly press.
The more experience someone has with the specific lift or even lifts in general, the less likely they are to draw on general experience with other lifts or with other button-based systems.
The longer the time passes between pressing the button and the lift not arriving, the more likely the individual is to believe that something has failed. Now in some cases this is a lift malfunction, but presumably often another button press would also seem like a more reasonable strategy than if little time has passed.
The cost is assigned to the physical press might vary between people and situations. Some might experience  minor social embarrassment of repeatedly pressing a lift button when others are present. Other people who are less energetic or active, may not wish to expend energy repeatedly pressing the lift button.

Further reading

If you're interested more about these ideas, you could check out some of the ACT-R research on strategy selection.


What is the psychological advantage of having a happiness set point?

I think you've misunderstood the set point. It's a point of balance (or imbalance) of positive and negative affect toward which a person naturally gravitates. As such, there's not much need to do anything about leaving the set point except to wait / go on living and let time, neurochemistry, and daily life do the work.

Deliberate effort is more likely to attempt to increase positive affect beyond the set point. Thus the common struggle is generally against the effect of the "hedonic treadmill" pulling oneself back down to a more neutral or discontent set point after moments of hard-won happiness. Perpetual happiness is an elusive target for almost anyone, including positive psychologists. Most positive interventions have somewhat temporary effects (again, due largely to the true nature of the set point), though the small catalog of events that induce lasting changes to happiness is growing slowly through ongoing research.

From an evolutionary perspective, advantages to this aspect of human nature might include resilience, impulse control, and stabilization of one's identity.

The hedonic set point pulls either way depending on the direction of deviation, and downward deviations are generally more threatening. The natural tendency to "bounce back" from depression, calm down from high alert, and otherwise recover from traumatic stress is the upside to the set point for most people (though some have set points that we classify as depressed, unfortunately).
Excessive exuberance can be dangerous as well. It may relate to mania and disinhibition of impulses (I'd prefer to say excessive happiness sometimes results from these, but I'm not sure enough of it). If unusual circumstances increase happiness excessively (e.g., winning the lottery), dysregulated behavior with negative consequences may result. This may also be a mechanism of regression to the set point. Anxiety and discontent can also have motivating effects, whereas survival needs aren't always well-served by a state of bliss, especially when they entail hard work and worry for the future.
Both individuals and groups may benefit from the affective stability of personality. This point is somewhat more speculative than the others on my part, but to motivate it, consider self-verification theory and the social undesirability of moodiness and anger. People prefer to be able to predict emotions in themselves and others, as the motivational impact of unexpected depression, unreliable energy, or uncontrollable anger is disruptive and sometimes dangerous. Of course, we live with this challenge anyway, but without a natural process for restoring emotional equilibrium, our vacillations could be more chaotic and troublesome than they already are.

Plenty of theoretical literature and research exists on this topic, and it's not hard to find. E.g., see the Wikipedia page you linked in your question. I listed one of those in my answer to this question:
· What exactly is meant when it is said that only you can make yourself happy?

Reference
· Lyubomirsky, S. (2008). The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. Penguin.


Although I find the concept of flow quite interesting, I'm not so sure about needing to invoke the flow state to explain motor enhancement from unrelated continuous movements. For example, one possible explanation for why continuous motion would improve learned movements like typing is that the motor cortex is typically used to model periodic movements as a dynamical system, and that short-duration movements are actually abnormal in a motor sense.

Consider how many of the movements we make are naturally periodic. Walking in particular is highly cyclical, but many other types of movements that we typically make (e.g., swinging the arms to counterbalance the trunk during walking, counter-rotating the eyes, head, and spine during a turn-to-look movement, opening and closing the jaw while chewing, inflating and collapsing the ribcage during breathing) show significantly periodic activity. This periodicity suggests that one could model these movements as a rotation in an abstract "phase space" defined by the differential equations that capture the dynamics of the movement. Seen from this perspective, cyclical movements are the norm for almost any animal, whereas short-duration, "single-use" movements like typing or playing the piano are rather unusual. It could be the case that if the motor cortex (or even the basic movements encoded in the spinal cord) is inherently tuned to modeling cyclic movements, then adding some continuous motion could help the motor cortex capture the intended typing or playing movements as part of the larger, continuous movement.

These references don't address the specific topic at hand, but they do address the periodicity of the motor system at a relatively low level. I would argue that this periodicity should be considered "normal" for movement modeling. Whether or not this periodicity is useful for enhancing other movements is, as far as I know, not known.

M. Churchland et al., "Neural population dynamics during reaching," 2012 Nature http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3393826/

A. Ijspeert, "Central pattern generators for locomotion control in animals and robots: a review" 2008 Neural Networks.

Neural correlates of flow

It's quite difficult to map between levels of abstraction as widely separated as neural activity and a "meta-cognitive" state like flow. However, a quick search online did reveal a couple of papers that have attempted to relate flow to physiological measurements like EEG :

D. Kramer, "Predictions of Performance by EEG and Skin Conductance," 2007 Indiana Undergraduate Journal of Cognitive Science -- not sure where this journal is published, but it seemed like an interesting article

M. Klasen et al., "Neural contributions to flow experience during video game playing" 2011 Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/05/19/scan.nsr021.full


Although popular culture and public opinion may lead people to believe that self injury is either a phase or people seeking attention. The truth is that this behavior becomes an unhealthy coping mechanism for any number of unpleasant scenarios.

The idea of distractionary coping mechanisms by themselves are not harmful, but self injury is specifically more dangerous because causing injury in the first place opens ones self up to infection, permanent physical damage, even accidental suicide.

Self injury often co-occurs with another mental illness, both disorders need to be diagnosed and treated by a decent psychiatric team which may include medications, but most definitely therapy. This is much more than a school therapist can provide. There is more information here: Mayo Clinic on Self Injury

If your friend is not receiving the level of help that he needs or he cannot commit to safety, it would be best to take some type of action.

Possibly:

Call a help line
Inform the school therapist
If your friend has any supportive family members, maybe informing them would help
In any immediate emergency call 911


How would self awareness be limited without languages

If we think of self-awareness as an evolved brain circuit phenomenon, its existence probably has little dependence on language in particular.  This is evidenced by the fact that Alzheimer patients loss of self-awareness, as well as changes in self-awareness due to injury are associated with the frontal lobe.  That's not to say that the self and self-awareness aren't heavily modulated by language (as are most mental constructs!)  There are several non-human animals that pass the self-awareness test but most of them are creatures that many consider to be closer to the intelligence of humans than other animals (namely, great apes, elephants, and dolphins).  Consequentially, many of these animals have also developed methods of communication, though language might be too strong of a word.

Finally, such a dependence would imply that the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has some legitimacy (especially when it comes to the self) but there's been no evidence found in support of the strong version, and most cognitive scientists favor the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.


Why can't hemineglect patients be trained to actively pay attention to their neglected side?

Short answer
Symptoms of hemi-neglect are often accompanied by additional layers of cognitive deficits that make rehabilitation challenging. Logic reason is often dissociated from these patients' perceptions, or they simply dismiss there is a problem altogether.

Background
Hemineglect is the impaired or lost ability to react to, or process sensory stimuli presented in the hemispace contralateral to a lesion of the human right or left cerebral hemisphere. Besides this sensory neglect, motor neglect may occur, manifesting itself as a reduced use or even non-use of a contralateral extremity. Finally, there is representational neglect, referring to impaired spatial imagination (Kerkhoff, 2001).

In terms of rehabilitation treatment of neglect, it seems indeed logical to suggest the patient to actively start paying attention to the neglected side in tasks of everyday life. In fact, this is an accepted rehab strategy used, which can be regarded as a coping strategy. Though this approach is intuitively the most straightforward way to rehab these patients, it often proves to be difficult for therapists, because often additional, more global cognitive deficits exist besides the hemi-inattention (Marshall, 2009). As you indicate, anosognosia (deficit of self-awareness, i.e., a disability to acknowledge the existence of his or her disability) is seen in hemineglect patients in up to 20% to 58% of cases. When the patient dismisses the problem, treatment is next to impossible. Personality changes such as apathy, emotional instability, disinhibition and agitation further complicate rehab. Finally, although perception may be abnormal, and it can be pointed out to them (e.g., 'this arm that you claim is not yours can be traced back to your body), they are often unable to reconcile logic of the situation with abnormal perceptions. An example is given by Marsshall (2009), where a patient is described who reported that his hospital room was the “only one to have telephones with 2 columns of numbers.” On a line bisection task, a hemineglect patient may be trained to move the gaze leftward to identify a cue at the left extent of a line, confirming that the whole line is in view, and yet, that patient may still bisect the line to the right of midpoint as the gaze tracks rightward.

Hence, there is a dissociation between perception and logic. This was examplified by Ramachandran et al. (1999). They investigated twelve patients with left hemineglect caused by right hemisphere stroke by showing them a mirror. A mirror was placed on their right side (their 'good'side), while
an object was held out for them on their left (their neglected side). The patients were made explicitly aware that the object was on their left and that the mirror was just a reflection of the object. And still, a substantial
subset of patients (no numbers are provided in the article, unfortunately; it is a pilot-report) repeatedly reached for the object’s reflection on the right, even going so far as to say, “it’s behind the mirror.”

Thus, brain injury may result in more that just a hemi-inattention. Other cognitive deficits add to the complexity to the syndrome and pose challenges to devise effective rehab treatments (Marsshall, 2009).

References
- Kerkhoff, Prog Neurobiol (2001); 63(1): 1–27
- Marshall, The Neurologist (2009); 15(4): 185-92
- Ramachandran, Med Hypotheses (1999); 52(4): 303-5


Fear of things that look like or resemble humans

Might be Uncanny Valley

  The uncanny valley is a hypothesis in the field of human aesthetics which holds that when human features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some human observers. Examples can be found in the fields of robotics,1 3D computer animation,[2][3] and in medical fields such as burn reconstruction, infectious diseases, neurological conditions, and plastic surgery.[4] The "valley" refers to the dip in a graph of the comfort level of humans as subjects move toward a healthy, natural human likeness described in a function of a subject's aesthetic acceptability.


What are the possible causes of pettiness?

There can always be many variables for what causes human behavior, within this answer I will focus on three more obvious or, perhap, likely causes for pettiness within individuals.
This could be one of a variety of causes stemming from the following:

Schadenfreude
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (or related disorders)
Disorders on the Autistic spectrum

Schadenfreude:

In the majority of situations this would be the most likely cause of such pettiness, as it is applicable to a more mainstream type of behavior. The chance to show up a deficit or shortcoming in another, motivated by jealousy of, or a feeling of unease stemming from threat  by, that person..

  We are primed for pettiness, programmed to notice seemingly inconsequential gradations, but for good reason: Being chronically dissatisfied is an effective stimulus to best your more complacent peers. (1)

This could well be the result of schadenfreude (translated to harm-joy), which refers to the pleasure people gain from the misfortunes of someone they perceive to be a high achiever or be envious of. This is based on envy derived from poor self esteem and/or lack of validation of that person's self esteem and a reaction to a perceived threat, from a fellow high-achiever.

The greater the  focus on seemingly petty things, the greater the individual's  psychic conflict or neediness and by this I refer to, the need for validation of self-worth and reaffirming their rank as a human being within a given community.  For such anxiety to cloud judgement to give a, seemingly, inconsequential issue, precedence over what seem to be more important issues. For this individual the need to validate themselves as a person is greater than national, global or even cosmic issues for which this individual has no control over, and which may have no immediate effect on that person's life.

  The present research shows that people with low self-esteem experience more schadenfreude toward the misfortune of a high- achiever than those with high self-esteem and that this relationship is mediated by the self-threat evoked by the high-achiever. Moreover, the indirect relationship between self-esteem and schadenfreude is contingent on an opportunity of self-affirmation. When no self-affirmation opportunity is available, low-self-esteem participants experience a stronger self-threat when confronted with a high-achiever, and this self-threat increases their schadenfreude. (2)

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Although OCD is usually referring to the compulsive ritualised activities of an individual, as a result of an underlying obsession. If an observer with OCD, witness what may be regarded to most people as petty, but the observed behavior happens to cross into the area of obsession for that person, it could well be that person's attempt to alleviate their own anxiety that is triggered by the perceived aberrant behavior. An example being, observing someone leave the toilet cubicle and restroom without washing their hands.

  Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as hand-washing, counting or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these so-called "rituals," however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety

Disorders on the Autistic spectrum

People with disorders that lie on the autistic spectrum, can frequently have preoccupation or obsession with details, that may seem inconsequential to others, or even petty. As with OCD, this perceived pettiness could be an attempt to alleviate the individual's anxiety and to assist in making sense of the world, as this type of individual is frequently inflexible and views the world through a set of structured ideas, that do not easily facilitate or blend with the fluid nature of life and human behavior.

  “Obsessions”, “circumscribed interests”, “special interests”, “routines”, “rituals” ,
  “preoccupations” are some of the terms used when describing the behaviour of young
  children with autism. These behaviours belong to one of the three core areas of
  impairment in children with autism. (4)

References:

Why You Think You'll Never Stack Up by Carlin Flora, Psychology Today (1)
Self-Esteem, Self-Affirmation, and Schadenfreude
Wilco W. van Dijk, Guido M. van Koningsbruggen, Jaap W. Ouwerkerk and Yoka M. Wesseling DOI:  10.1037/a0026331 PDF (2)
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Brain and Behavior Research Foundation
Restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behaviour, interest and activities
Dr Avril V Brereton, Monash University  PDF (4)


Postgraduate level books on personality psychology

The best place to start is probably THE personality psychologist, Gordon Allport. He wrote several texts that give a good overview of the issues facing the investigation of personality. He gives a fairly critical look at defining and measuring personality. Highly recommended reading if you plan on delving into personality theory.

His books on the topic:

Personality: A psychological interpretation. (1937) New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.

Becoming: Basic Considerations for a Psychology of Personality. (1955). New Haven : Yale University Press.

The Nature of Personality: Selected Papers. (1950; 1975). Westport, CN : Greenwood Press.

The Person in Psychology (1968). Boston: Beacon Press

The Psychologist's Frame of Reference (1940).

Pattern and Growth in Personality. (1961). Harcourt College Pub.

Personality & social encounter. (1960). Boston: Beacon Press.


What causes short-term dysphoria following intense pleasure?

Dysphoria following drug use

Though their acting mechanisms can be vastly different, the general basis of drug addiction is its influence on the reward system, particularly through dopamine pathways[1].  It's thought that the stimulation of the dopamine system leads to dopamine depletion[2] and without dopamine, there's no rewarding behavior and thus no motivation to behave in any particular way (i.e. depression/dysphoria).

Desensitization occurs as a flooded dopamine body tries to reduce its receptor count, thus lowering its sensitivity to dopamine.  But since the dopamine stimulus was artificial (drug-induced) and not environmental, it will require more drugs to achieve a normal level again (i.e. "chase and drag").  And this is the basis for addiction.

Dysphoria following orgasm

I can not find any peer-reviewed information about the neurobiology of post-coital blues.  There are lots of MDs and professional psychologists that weigh in speculatively, but the literature is skimpy.  A speculation I've seen is, given that the coitus was genuinely with romantic partners (and thus not a social response), that its a biological dysfunction in the Amygdala as the amygdala sharply reduces activity after sex, but this response may be exaggerated in some individuals[3].

My own speculation is that it might also be a way to promote promiscuity in the human race, evolutionarily speaking.  In modern day, it may not be as prevalent as infant mortality rates are much lower and monogamous relationships don't threaten human survival rates.

References

[1]Wise RA, Rompre PP, (1989). Brain dopamine and reward.  Annu Rev Psychol. 40:191-225.

[2]Charles A. Dackis, Mark S. Gold (1985).  New concepts in cocaine addiction: The dopamine depletion hypothesis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 9:3, 469–477

[3]Sex and depression: In the brain, if not the mind


Classical test theory: Covariance of two variables

I do not myself use classical test theory, but from a statistical point of view the answer to this should be straightforward. The answer is that you are right, and that the first solution is wrong.

An early indication that the first formula is incorrect is that a :
$$
Cov(\tau_{x},\tau_{y}) = 0
$$
because $\tau_{x}$ and $\tau_{y}$ are constants (I assume $\tau_{x}$ and $\tau_{y}$ are constant in your question because your equations state that they are expected values, which are always constant). The formula above holds because constants can't covary with one another.

To show you are the one who is correct, we need to dig a little bit deeper. One basic property of covariance is, for $X$, $Y$ random variables and $a$, $b$ constants:
$$
Cov(X+a, Y+b) = Cov(X,Y)
$$
Intuitively, adding a constant to a random variable doesn't affect its linear relationship with another random variable.

In your particular example, if I understand correctly, $\epsilon_{x}$, $\epsilon_{y}$ are random variables, and $\tau_{x}$, $\tau_{y}$ are fixed constants. Plugging these into the above formula,
$$
Cov(\epsilon_{x} + \tau_{x}, \epsilon_{y} + \tau_{y}) = Cov(\epsilon_{x}, \epsilon_{y})
$$
And of course, using the notation in your question, $X$ = $\tau_{x}$ + $\epsilon_{x}$= $\epsilon_{x}$ + $\tau_{x}$ and $Y$ = $\tau_{y}$ + $\epsilon_{y}$= $\epsilon_{y}$ + $\tau_{y}$. Therefore, using the variables from your question,
$$
Cov(X,Y) = Cov(\epsilon_{x}, \epsilon_{y})
$$


You are quite astute to have noticed the difference between your stated preferences and actual preferences - most people don't.  Yes, there has been a fair bit of research on prediction techniques and their effectiveness.

In 2008, in a study by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel, participants were asked to predict their romantic preferences - what they found attractive in potential mates.  The subjects were then followed up on speed dating and other dating behaviour over the following month to see how their actual choices compared with their predictions.  The results showed that both men and women have no useful insight into their own romantic preferences that could be used to predict their actual dating choices.

A number of other studies examining a variety of methods for matching dating partners using questionnaires, physical traits, personality characteristics, dating techniques, and other theories of compatibility all failed to find a correlation between people's expressed preferences and actual dating behaviour.  Many online dating sites promote their compatibility calculation tools that are based on self-reported preferences, but research so far suggests that none of them do much better than random.


What is meant by this theory that there are only 3 possible kinds of cognitive loads?

The source you mention is a web blog about computer and office work. The blog doesn't describe a 'theory', not even a hypothesis for that matter, it just outlines a starting point for a popular scientific blog on cognitive load in everyday life. It all depends on the task what adds mental load. Every input, let it be acoustic (e.g. speech), visual (e.g. computer tasks), touch or internal mental processes can all increase cognitive load.

I can recommend reading the wiki page on cognitive load as a starting point to better understand different aspects of cognitive load theory.


Predicting the landing site of a saccade while the saccade is still in progress

Interesting question! Trying to interpret your question, I think what you are after is a model that can predict the saccade endpoint based on eye tracking data?

The following answer is more of a basic neuroscientific approach:

The neuronal responses (spike rates) in the superior colliculus (SC) can be accurately used to predict the total saccade as a vector. Basically, when you model the response properties of all the SC neurons involved in a saccade, one can calculate the vector sum of all these different neurons. With this vector sum the saccade can be totally described in terms of its direction and amplitude. With the vector sum, hence, the end point can be predicted.

If this subject is of interest to you, the early work of Van Gisbergen and John van Opstal (based in Nijmegen, the Netherlands) are a good source.

Reference:
Van Gisbergen et al., 1987


If by cognitive function you mean IQ, then that's most of the focus of the intelligence research, as in the main motivation to study IQ. In one large UK study of children the correlation was 0.81.
But there are personality factors influencing academic performance as well. Even with respect to IQ [as measured in pracice], it is suspected that it is influenced in part by motivation, which itself may be an interaction between personality and the context/environment. And to the extent that self-discipline is different than [short-term] motivation, some research suggest it may matter even more for academic performance.


The "social brain" concept likely originated with Robin Dunbar's Social Brain Hypothesis, proposed in 1998.  However, Dunbar was not suggesting that the brain has dedicated "social modules".  Rather, the hypothesis was that the evolutionary driving force behind intelligence (increased brain size and capacity) was social - most prominently the need to track relationships in communities of up to 150 people (henceforth known as Dunbar's number).  However, I'll focus my answer on the question as asked.

Plasticity:

If the criteria for "inherently" social requires some "module" of the brain that has no value outside of a social context, then it is difficult to argue that the brain is "inherently" anything because the brain is so plastic (contrast this view with nativism).

For example, say we argue that the brain is "inherently" visual as there is a fairly distinct visual cortex dedicated to this function.  However, in blind people and others, this area can be co-opted for auditory, tactile, and spatial processing, so there is nothing "inherently" visual about it.  Perhaps we should focus on a "lower level" part of the visual processing system, such as the LGN, that really is only ever used for visual processing.

Language:

It is difficult (though not impossible) to imagine evolutionary value for language and speech production outside a social context, and this function does appear to have domain-specific modularity in the brain.

For example, Broca's area is considered the "motor speech cortex", and appears to be dedicated to speech production.  But like most areas of the brain, the boundaries of this region are not well defined, and on closer inspection, neither is its function - although just about all functions attributed to Broca's area are social.  While language processing has for a long time been associated with Broca's and Wernicke's areas on the left side of the brain, language processing can spread out as far as the right hemisphere, and some individuals with lesions in these regions can retain largely unaffected language capabilities.

Relating:

The FFA, in the fusiform gyrus, is another potentially social part of the brain, critical for face recognition - a lesion in this region leads to prosopagnosia (face blindness).  This function is distinct from the system for recognizing inanimate objects, such that other visual agnosias may not affect facial recognition ability.  This function is already developed in infancy, and is a strong candidate for domain-specificity.  However, once again, this region of the brain may have other functions, and facial recognition can be subsumed (although less efficiently) by other regions.

                                                                      Fusiform face area

Both autism and Asperger's provide another hint at the social nature of the human brain.  Though their etiology is not well understood, it is considered biological, suggesting a disruption of some inherent social mechanism of the brain.  However, since ASD affects other cognitive functions as well, it is again not clear that a distinctly social element of the brain is involved.

Learning:

Both social reward and social pain have been shown to largely recycle the non-social reward and punishment systems, suggesting that there may be nothing inherent in the brain to support learning by social motivation.  However, as pointed out in the question, Theory-of-Mind capabilities may have some modular support in the brain, though no domain-specific mechanisms have been implicated.

Noam Chomsky famously argued that language acquisition in humans happens far too quickly to be accounted for by simple learning - that is, our brain must be somehow predisposed for language acquisition.  How this happens is still not well understood, but the same logic is applicable to many other aspects of our social capabilities: We are simply too well honed at social functions such as language, relationships, modelling, and other social behaviours to be accounted for by learning / culture alone.