How can psychometry measure the very high IQ's in adults?

General points about IQ measurement

IQ scores are standardised scores typically with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15. As Ben Cole notes, IQ scores are typically normed relative to age groups in children, and then normed relative to the adult population for adults.

Can the IQ scores of exceptionally and profoundly gifted children be extrapolated into adulthood?

IQ scores correlate very highly over time. That said, correlations decrease as (a) the period of time between testing sessions increases, and (b) the earlier the age of initial testing (e.g., testing at 2,3, 4, 5 years of age, etc.). Presumably greater periods of cognitive change have the potential for greater individual differences in that change, and such greater potential for reductions in the correlation over time.

Here's an extract from a major review of IQ testing and intelligence relevant to stability that reiterates these points with sources (Neisser et al, 1996):

  Stability. Intelligence test scores are fairly stable during
  development. When Jones and Bayley (1941) tested a sample of children
  annually throughout childhood and adolescence, for example, scores
  obtained at age 18 were correlated Y = .77 with scores that had been
  obtained at age 6 and r = .89 with scores from age 12. When scores
  were averaged across several successive tests to remove short-term
  fluctuations, the correlations were even higher. The mean for ages 17
  and 18 was correlated r = .86 with the mean for ages 5, 6, and 7, and
  r = .96 with the mean for ages 11, 12, and 13. (For comparable
  findings in a more recent study, see Moffitt, Caspi, Harkness, &
  Silva, 1993.) Nevertheless, IQ scores do change over time. In the same
  study (Jones & Bayley, 1941), the average change between age 12 and
  age 17 was 7.1 IQ points; some individuals changed as much as 18
  points.

So, in summary exceptionally gifted children will tend generally to be highly intelligent adults. However, there are a few notes of caution:

Any IQ measurement has error. Thus, the IQ measurement is only an estimate of the individual's true IQ. For standard IQ tests, the size of this measurement error is greater as you move towards the tails of the distribution of IQ scores, such as is the case with the very gifted.
There is an effect known as regression toward the mean. This says, among other things, that when two measures are imperfectly correlated, extreme scores on one variable will tend to be relatively less extreme on the other. This can be explained both in terms of measurement error (i.e., those identified as having a 160 IQ might just have got luck on the test) and in imperfect correlation of latent IQ over time. Thus, in general if you identify a sample of very high IQ children and select them, you may find that there average IQ drops at a second time point. They'll still of course be measured as very intelligent on average.

Is it true that that a profoundly gifted child with an IQ of 170 would score better than 99.9998% of the general population?

A child's IQ is defined relative to a population of children of the same age as that child, and not the general population.

Based on a definition of IQ as a normative score, you get the following percentiles using R:

> iq <- c(100, 115, 130, 145, 160, 170)
> percentile <- 100 * pnorm(iq, 100, 15)
> cbind(iq, percentile=round(percentile, 6))
      iq percentile
[1,] 100   50.00000
[2,] 115   84.13447
[3,] 130   97.72499
[4,] 145   99.86501
[5,] 160   99.99683
[6,] 170   99.99985

Thus, yes, you are correct in a theoretical sense that a true IQ of 170 by definition implies that that individual has an IQ greater than 99.99985% of the relevant normative population.

However, the reality is that you never measure true IQ. You only get responses to an individual on a test. And this measurement is made with error, and this error in measurement is typically greater at the high end. Thus, you get a measure with confidence intervals or some form of bayesian estimate of IQ. Furthermore, there is also error in measuring population norms as well. Thus, if you want to be more precise in your description of what a test says about an individual's IQ, then you need to specify a range on that individual's IQ, and this range would be larger at the high end, because intelligence tests are not typically optimised to the high end and normative estimates of IQ at the high end would be less precise.

References

Neisser, U., Boodoo, G., Bouchard Jr, T. J., Boykin, A. W., Brody, N., Ceci, S. J., ... & Urbina, S. (1996). Intelligence: Knowns and unknowns. American psychologist, 51(2), 77. PDF


At least three things play a  role here:

Camouflage: the panda looks like the snowman in shape and coloring. Further, the ears of the panda are the buttons of the snowmen behind, i.e. the panda partly merges with the 'background' snowmen;
Clutter: there are simply many, many snowmen;
Distracters: The colored hats and other attributes are more salient and draw the attention away from the colorless panda.

Saccades are indeed often made to salient features in the visual scene, so that may indeed be one of the factors (cf. point 3).

I am unsure what you mean with more convincing examples and illusions, but this is not really an illusion. Below examples of camouflage (Fig. 1) and cluttered images (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1. Find the leaf-tailed gecko. source: Bored Panda (apt!)

Fig. 2. Find the coffee maker. source: EtchingFitness


Are the findings of the Rat Park experiments applicable to porn addiction?

As a therapist working with patients suffering from all kinds of addictions – drugs, porn, computer games, social media, gambling, sex, etc. – the simple answer is that addictive behavior is influenced by:

currenct life circumstances (Rat Park versus cages, if you want)
personality (some people are more prone to addiction than others)
life experiences (childhood abuse and other trauma)

So yes, a person in a happy romantic relationship with a supportive network of friends and family working a satisfying job will most likely not become addicted to porn from masturbating to it every now and then, just as they won't become addicted to THC from smoking a joint on Saturday evenings, but the influence of these life circumstances do not protect someone from becoming addicted when they make traumatic experiences such as the death of a child or when their personality is "addiction prone" (e.g. high neuroticism, low conscientiousness, high impulsivity, high reward and threat sensitivities, and so on).


Can rationalization be objectively recognized?

Research:
Rationalization is a defence mechanism - a Freudian (read: outdated) construct that is still in common use in clinical psychology, but no longer used much in research, so current studies about such mechanisms are hard to come by.
To some degree, rationalization has been superseded by cognitive dissonance, and related self-perception theory.  This is a more general theory about rationalizing that includes normal, healthy ways of dealing with internal conflict, as well as pathological forms.  However, this line of research has focused mostly on theorized unconscious rationalizing, rather than verbal explanations provided by subjects.  There are many other lines of research into verbalized non-pathological rationalizing, which is very common.
Therapy:
In modern cognitive therapies, the concept of cognitive distortions generally supersedes rationalization.  Clinicians are specially trained to detect many varieties of cognitive distortion in patients, including minimisation, intellectualization, and sour grapes.  In general, the idea is to look for inconsistencies or contradictions in the patient's descriptions of their thinking.  For example, a patient might say: "Cheating on my spouse was a desperate call for attention."  That might sound logical at first blush, but then why hide it?  Or why not choose a healthier way to get attention?
Confronting patients with inconsistencies in their thinking is a common part of several traditions of therapy.  One of the hallmarks of many personality disorders is patients' inability to recognize or failure to admit to the inconsistencies in their thinking.  For most patients without symptoms of a personality disorder however, it is expected that they should confront, recognize, accept, and ultimately find healthier alternatives to their maladaptive distortions.


Common components of other cognitive architectures and the Semantic Pointer Architecture

In "How to Build a Brain", Chris Eliasmith draws parrallels between Spaun and various architectures. All of my quotes in my answer are from that book.

The Dynamic Field Theory of Cognition is similarly pre-occupied with outside stimulation as being essential to understanding cognitive function, consequently "there is little in the SPA that could not be reformulated using terms more familiar to dynamic systems theorists"

Leabra shares an emphasis on implementation on a realistic biological substrate. In particular, the cortex->basal ganglia->thalamus loop for action control/decision, as well as the effects of dopamine on Spaun, were heavily influenced by Leabra.

ACT-R also shares the cortex->basal ganglia->thalamus loop, but more importantly puts a similar emphasis on timing. That is, there is a specific time for switching between tasks and reacting to stimuli that must be followed.

ICS shares the similar mathematical binding operation as SPA, thus many of the results of the ICS are informative for SPA and "how such representations can be related to a wide variety of linguistic processing".

While these similarities give a good reference frame of where Spaun stands in the realm of neural architectures, it is much more interesting (and important!) to note where it deviates. A topic which is obviously covered in great detail in "How to Build a Brain".


Is it possible to develop immunity to mental health drugs?

It seems that it is possible.

Norman Sussman, MD (2017) discusses pharmacological and non-pharmacological causes of treatment resistance.

  Treatment resistance is addressed in the latest edition of the [Kaplan and Sadock's] Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry as follows: “Some patients fail to respond to repeated trials of medication. No single factor can explain the ineffectiveness of the various interventions in these cases. Strategies in these cases include the use of drug combinations, high-dose therapy, and use of unconventional drugs. Limited evidence is available on the comparative success rates associated with any given strategy (Sadock et al., 2017).” This Special Report on treatment resistance provides expert guidance on how to treat patients who are still unresponsive after multiple unsuccessful attempts at intervention for some common mental disorders. ADHD, PTSD, panic disorder, and bipolar disorder are especially difficult to treat successfully, for a number of reasons...

References

Sadock, B. J., Sadock, V. A., & Ruiz, P. (2017). Kaplan and Sadock's Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry 10th ed. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Sussman, N. (2017). Treatment Resistance in Psychiatry. Psychiatric Times 34(11) Special Report Retrieved from: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/special-reports/introduction-treatment-resistance-psychiatry


What did Freud intend as the referent of 'Das Es' (Latin: 'id')? Why didn't he name with the referent?

Short answer
Freud din't come up with that terminology, he borrowed it from his contemporaries.

Background
According to wikipedia Freud borrowed the term "das Es" from Georg Groddeck, a German physician to whose unconventional ideas Freud was much attracted (Groddeck's translators render the term in English also as "the It").

Nietzsche, who is thought to have influenced Freud also often used the German pronoun das Es. Freud’s English translator indeed used the Latin word 'id'.


What is the minimum spatial IQ needed to solve the rubik's cube?

I don't think it's a matter of IQ, really. Here's why: The Rubik's cube can be solved easily following a simple algorithm. Anyone can follow this step-by-step process mindlessly and solve a Rubik's cube. Remembering the algorithm is a different thing altogether, maybe that depends on a person's IQ (does memory depend on IQ?) There are many bots that can solve the Rubik's cube in a matter of seconds, just following this algorithm. So, it actually doesn't need much IQ I guess, but considering that the algorithm generally starts from the step after one side (usually black/white/yellow) is completed, a person should have enough IQ to be able to solve one face of the cube and remember the steps, so I am guessing that the IQ measure would be around the room temperature in Celsius scale!


Q: Does our consciousness die when we go to sleep or fall into a coma?

A: No, neuroscientifically speaking, the consciousness does not die when we are sleeping or are in a coma; it is just in a sleep mode or in a severely depressed mode. This is because the group of neural circuits that function to create consciousness (ref 1, 2, 3) does not die when we are in those conditions; it is just functioning in the mentioned modes, which are different from the mode when we are fully conscious. This is unlike the case when one actually dies or when one has a brain death. In such cases, this group of neural circuits actually dies. So, neuroscientifically speaking, the consciousness that comes from the function of this group of neural circuits dies too.

(Philosophically speaking, this question may be answered differently, depending on what one means by the word “die”, which can be different among different philosophers. But this is a neuroscience forum, so I won’t get into that discussion and use the word “die” in the neuroscientific sense.)

It should also be noted that consciousness is not an all-or-none phenomenon but is a graded phenomenon. There can be graded different levels of consciousness, such as (from high to low) heightened alertness, normal alertness, drowsiness, sleeping (from light to deep), stupor, and coma, depending on the stimulation/facilitation of the consciousness neural circuits from the ARAS (ascending reticular activating system, which arises from the rostral brainstem)(ref 4,5), and the ARAS stimulation can be affected by stimulants, physiological diurnal sleep-wake cycle, depressants, and various pathological conditions (such as trauma, brainstem hemorrhage, and tumor). Also, even if a person is/appears alert,  there can be graded different consciousness states in that person. These different consciousness states have different consciousness content, such as normal conscious awareness, confusion, akinetic mutism, minimally conscious state (MCS), and vegetative state (VS), depending on the severity of damages to the consciousness neural circuits, which can be affected by similar pharmacological and pathological causes just mentioned. In these conditions, patients may appear alert (i.e, opening eyes, blinking, and chewing spontaneously) but have abnormal content of consciousness (deranged in confusion, retarded in akinetic mutism, minimal in MCS, and none or almost none in VS).(ref 6,7)

So, consciousness during sleep or coma is just consciousness in one of these various physiological/pathological states. And, as long as the consciousness neural circuits are still functioning, albeit in an abnormal mode, and living, it can be considered that, neuroscientifically, consciousness is still living too (albeit in an abnormal mode).

Q: When we wake, or are woken, a new consciousness is booted up with the memories of the previous consciousness, so that it gives the illusion of one continuous consciousness. …

I could be wrong, but I believe its possible for victims of brain damage to show minimal neural activity. Rarely, but occasionally some of these victims recover, but perhaps their brain has rebooted their mental ram (if you will). And they may not technically be the same consciousness who fell into the coma, but merely a copy of that consciousness reconstituted from data held in the brain.

A: You are right. And actually, technically speaking, our present-moment consciousness is just a slightly different copy of the previous-moment one. Our brain cells are in continuous metabolic activities, which continually change both their structural components and functional components. So, technically speaking, we this moment are a biologically different entity from we a moment ago. It’s been always like this since we’re born. Yet, we feel that we are the same person with same consciousness and the same “self” all along.

It can be argued that this feeling of same consciousness and same “self” is an evolved function to enhance the survival of an organism that has this feeling. Theoretically,  comparing two types of animals, one with this sense, and the other without this sense, with all other things identical, the one with this sense obviously has more drive to avoid danger, to seek happiness, to stay alive, and to procreate (all for the sake of its "self") than the one without this sense. So, it is logical to conclude that the sense of same consciousness and same “self” is just the evolved function to help increase the survival chance of the being and the species that possess it. (more detailed discussion in ref 8, 9)

References:

Koch C, Massimini M, Boly M, Tononi G. Neural correlates of consciousness: progress and problems. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2016;17: 307-321. The full pdf file can be downloaded from here.
Song X, Tang X. An extended theory of global workspace of consciousness.
Progress in Natural Science. 2008 Jul;18(7):789–793.
Ukachoke C. Chapter 6 – Consciousness.  In: The Basic Theory of the Mind. 1st ed, 2018. p 8-18. Charansanitwong Printing Co. Bangkok, Thailand.
Yeo SS, Chang PH, Jang SH. The ascending reticular activating system from pontine reticular formation to the thalamus in the human brain. Front Hum Neurosci. 2013;7: 416.
Wikipedia. Function of the ARAS
Bernat JL. Chronic disorders of consciousness. Lancet 2006;367:1181–1192.
Cavanna AE, Cavanna SL, Servo S, Monaco F. The neural correlates of impaired consciousness in coma and unresponsive states. Discov Med. 2010 May;9(48):431-438.
Fabbro F, Aglioti SM,Bergamasco M,Clarici A,Panksepp J. Evolutionary aspects of self- and world consciousness in vertebrates. Front Hum Neurosci 2015; 9: 157.  doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00157
Ukachoke C. Chapter 11 Self. The Basic Theory of the Mind. 2018.


Where can I find good references about the neuronal connections in various areas in the cortex?

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI for short) may be the technique you are after. It is able to record nerve fibers in MRI images. I couldn't find the specifics you were after,  and the subdivision into layers may outrun the resolution of MRI, but it may  be a good start. Two references that may get you going on tensor imaging are cited below. Additional, targeted electrophysiological papers on  your area of interest may provide layer-specific connections.

References
- Aggarwal et  al., Neuroimage (2015); 105: 198–207
- Christoph  et  al., Cereb Cortex (2014); 24(2): 328–39


Calculation of d'prime in forced choice experiment

It sounds like you are struggling with the terminology. The terminology is not particularly clear.

As it sounds like you are forcing them to respond with either the left or right arrow key, I would describe the task as forced choice. If you ask subjects to rate how likely the longest path is safe with the 0-9 keys, I would describe it as a rating, despite them being forced to give an answer on every trial. If you allowed them to skip trials with the space bar, some people would not call this a forced choice task. Things are messy though since you could think of the left arrow as 0, the space as 5, and the right as 9. In terms of $d'$, what matters is that there are two choices.

The two most common paradigms with exactly two response choices are typically called the yes/no paradigm and the 2AFC paradigm. Despite it's name, the yes/no paradigm can have any response labels, including left arrow and right arrow. In the typical setup, in addition to both paradigm having 2 responses, both paradigms have exactly two stimulus classes (e.g., signal and noise, or in your case long and short). The defining characteristic that differentiates a yes/no paradigm from a 2AFC paradigm is that in a yes/no paradigm each trial (and hence response) is based on a single presentation of one of the stimulus classes while in the 2AFc paradigm there is a single presentation of both stimuli classes (either concurrently or sequentially). This difference is critical for calculating $d'$ and a $\sqrt{2}/2$ scale factor is needed to correct for the fact that in the 2AFC paradigm there is more information.

So to answer your question, it is not clear from your description if you need to scale $d'$ by $\sqrt{2}/2$.


How to engage in the conceptualization process to measure a psychological construct such as femininity?

Conceptualization in a research methods context basically means generating a precise definition. You and I might have different ideas of what it means to be feminine, which would make it difficult to measure. In order to conduct research that measures femininity, a precise definition is needed so that everyone has a common understanding of what exactly it is that is being measured. You might start this process by identifying different aspects of femininity and generating a list. Then you could try to summarize your list with a few sentences that describes your conceptualization or definition of femininity.


Are there cases of drug addict that "forget" their addiction after some brain damages?

I'm not aware of truly "forgetting" as in amnesia, but there have been reports that brain damage can disrupt the behavioral pattern of addiction which I think qualifies as what you describe as what "causes the addict to need more and more to be satisfied".
Naqvi et al 2007 reported that:

smokers
with brain damage involving the insula, a region implicated in conscious urges, were more likely
than smokers with brain damage not involving the insula to undergo a disruption of smoking
addiction, characterized by the ability to quit smoking easily, immediately, without relapse, and
without persistence of the urge to smoke

Patients in this study had damage from either stroke or from surgical resections for cancer or epilepsy.
Naqvi, N. H., Rudrauf, D., Damasio, H., & Bechara, A. (2007). Damage to the insula disrupts addiction to cigarette smoking. Science, 315(5811), 531-534.
See also this review:
Droutman, V., Read, S. J., & Bechara, A. (2015). Revisiting the role of the insula in addiction. Trends in cognitive sciences, 19(7), 414-420.
However, I'd note that brain damage studies like these are quite complicated because damage to one area is often accompanied by other damage, and few subjects have similar lesions, so I'd be more hesitant than some of these authors are to implicate the insula specifically. Notably, the insula is near subcortical structures and fibers of passage that could also be involved.

Stelten, et al 2008 is a review of neurosurgical attempts to target addiction. These are mostly case studies/series and involved complex cases typically with multiple co-occurring psychiatric conditions. The authors raise ethical concerns with some of the studies, as well, including issues of consent and the permanence of interventions and the lack of control comparisons.
Stelten, B. M., Noblesse, L. H., Ackermans, L., Temel, Y., & Visser-Vandewalle, V. (2008). The neurosurgical treatment of addiction. Neurosurgical focus, 25(1), E5.
You can also find more recent papers and reviews that cite this one on Google Scholar which might be a good place to continue your literature search.


How is epigenetic memory expressed in neurons?

There are (at least) two ways epigenetic traits are inherited.  The important background in both cases is gene expression: there is a misconception that genes are for this or that, where the reality is that most traits come from an overlap of several genes expressing themselves in different ratios.  As a simple example, consider two varieties of bird of the same species, but one has a longer beak.  One might conclude that the genes involved in the morphology of the beak were expressed longer or in greater quantity in the bird with the bigger beak.  Epigenetics describes inherited expression schemes.

The well known method of epigenetic transfer is DNA methylation.  The DNA itself is not actually changed, but the methylation sites act like tags, altering the expression rate of those particular genes.  Another way is through histones, which are part of packing and unpacking DNA between storage and use.  Alterations in histones can also alter gene expression.


'Always Give a Reason Why' - How to describe this subject area?

This particular study, sometimes called the "Xerox Experiment", was done by Ellen Langer, who studies "mindfullness", but that may not be what you are looking for.  It is also cited on Wikipedia under Attitude Change - Heuristic Processing:

  For example, people are more likely to grant favors if reasons are
  provided. A study shows that when people said, "Excuse me, I have five
  pages to xerox. May I use the copier?” they received a positive
  response of 60%. The statement, “Excuse me, I have five pages to
  xerox. I am in a rush. May I use the copier?” produced a 95% success
  rate.

It is worth noting however, that a study published in the same year by Stanley Milgram (famous for his obedience experiments in the 60's), cited on Wikipedia under "Breaching Experiments", about people giving up their seats in the subway found a similar success rate when no reason was given, but a significantly lower compliance rate if a trivial reason was provided:

  the second condition, the trivial justification ... a much lower number gave
  up their seats.

A related field that a layman might find more accessible, is called "behavioural economics", and there is also a lot of overlap with "cognitive bias".  Search YouTube for Dan Ariely, you'll learn lots of neat tips and tricks just like this one, backed by peer-reviewed studies, about how easily people can be manipulated.


In fMRI analyses, what is the t-test actually comparing?

The coefficient is the measure of how strongly the given factor predicts the dependent variable, or in other words how much of the variance in the dependent variable can be explained by that factor. So the coefficient itself, and not the t-statistic of the coefficient, is a measure of what you're calling how well the model (or, more correctly, the regressor) fits the data.

The t-statistic of the coefficient in a multiple regression is the statistical test of that coefficient, calculated as the coefficient divided by its standard error. So it would be most correct to say that this is a measure of how reliable the sample coefficient is, or how likely it is, given the coefficient we got, that the true coefficient is 0. But this is theoretically independent of the goodness of the fit, and you could have a very stable but small coefficient, which would get a high t-stat, or a large-on-average, but highly variable coefficient, which would receive a low t-stat. The results of the test will also, obviously, depend on your sample size and the degrees of freedom in your model.

Where the confusion might be is that the coefficient is more or less the same as a comparison to baseline, becuase the baseline is not (or shouldn't be) an explicit regressor in the model. A higher coefficient will mean, all else being equal, that the fit is better and/or that the effect is larger. But unless you're explicitly running a comparison of activation vs. baseline, this not what the coefficient actually means.

You can read more about this last issue here:
https://github.com/jdkent/tests_and_musings/blob/master/magnitude_and_delay_in_bold.ipynb?fbclid=IwAR3H-pvYmVQtMaDBzDAfexyNeuCUHHe6vuYLsV83l957rvHawv1bWJlaB9U


How to efficiently locate existing psychology and social science measures?

The APA has a general tutorial on finding psychological tests with a range of tips.

Finding measures

PsychTESTS is a new product by the APA that aims to make it easier to find psychological tests. It is a subscription service. Thus, you would probably have to pay for it yourself or get it through a university or other body that subscribes to it
Read the method sections of the articles that you are incorporating in your introduction and literature review. If you are going to do research you'll need to familiarise yourself with existing research. See what measures have been used in the past.
Ask a question on cogsci.se: Well formulated questions asking for recommendations for measuring particular psychological constructs are welcome on this site.

Measures on a budget

Some tests are free to use. Academics and others often make such tests available on their website (e.g., the IPIP).
For tests developed by academics, you can often just contact the academic by email and ask for permission to use the test. Be clear, be polite, be professional. In some cases they might ask that you share any data from the test with them.
For commercial tests, you may wish to contact the publishers to find out whether they permit free or discounted use for research purposes.

Whether to create your own test

Also as a general point, there is often a decision between whether to buy a test or build your own. Sometimes, the construct being measured is sufficiently novel, that there is no existing measure. However, if the construct does have an established and validated measure, there are strong arguments to use it. Building a well validated psychological test takes substantial time and resources.


Giving a dollar to homeless people on the street serves no aid to the donor, since the only difference is who has that dollar, and clearly to have the dollar is better than not.
This action is therefore entirely altruistic.


Is survival instinct trained from pain or born with?

Survival instinct in neuroscience has also been called a "fight or flight" response (Cannon 1929). It refers to the natural instinct of animals (humans included) in response to fear. This response has a neuroscientific basis and involved several brain regions. When a threat is perceived it activates the amygdala (known to be responsible for emotions), autonomic nervous system (that control involuntary function such as heart rate and breath), and facilitates the release of cortisol (stress hormone) and adrenaline.
This brain circuit is already present at birth and constitutes the first and impulsive response to threat. It is an evolutionary instinct developed by humans when predators threatened survival chances.
However, growing up, there are several other components to consider in "survival instinct response". There is surely a learning component given by pain. Pain act as preservation, pushing us away from what is dangerous for us. An example can be fire. We were not born with the idea that fire is a threaten, however when we first touch it we feel pain. The feeling of pain at fire contact makes us learn that fire is bad for our survival, it is painful to touch. Therefore, in the future, we will have cortisol and adrenaline discharge when we are pushed towards fire sources.
To conclude and answer the question:

We are born with fight or flight instinct (mind that there is always an exception to the norm). This instinct is our primary response to possible threats to our life.
There is a learning component involving pain that refines our instinct. Pain teaches us important lessons on what else it is important to add to our threat list. Furthermore, this instinct can be inhibited (with training or drugs).

References:

Milosevic, I., & McCabe, R. E. (Eds.). (2015). Phobias: The Psychology of Irrational Fear: The Psychology of Irrational Fear. ABC-CLIO.
Jansen, A. S., Van Nguyen, X., Karpitskiy, V., Mettenleiter, T. C., & Loewy, A. D. (1995). Central command neurons of the sympathetic nervous system: basis of the fight-or-flight response. Science, 270(5236), 644-646.
McCarty, R. (2016). The fight-or-flight response: A cornerstone of stress research. In Stress: Concepts, cognition, emotion, and behavior (pp. 33-37). Academic Press.
Derakhshan, A., Mikaeili, M., Nasrabadi, A. M., & Gedeon, T. (2019). Network physiology of ‘fight or flight response in facial superficial blood vessels. Physiological measurement, 40(1), 014002.


What causes words repeated in your head to start fading away from consciousness?

If you use a slightly different (and to my own experience more common) phrasing of this phenomenon to look for information you find immediate relevant results on Google. Rather than referring to words fading from consciousness I've usually heard it being stated as repeating a word often makes it lose its meaning.

The first hit is a Wikipedia article on semantic satiation.

  Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a psychological
  phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily
  lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as
  repeated meaningless sounds.


Is praying the Catholic rosary a meditation and does it enhance brain plasticity?

The accepted method of praying the Rosary is to actually complete five (5) decades, each containing the Hail Mary (Ave Maria) repeated 10 times (hence the term "decade"). Each decade is followed by an Our Father (Pater Noster), Gloria, and a Hail Holy Queen, and the announcement of the "mystery" to be meditated upon during the next decade. Each day has its own theme for meditations to be contemplated (there are three traditional sets of mysteries: The Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries, with Saint Pope John Paul II adding a fourth set, the Luminus Mysteries). The Rosary has a set of introductory prayers, and a closing prayer. A "Full" rosary, though not often completed by the lay, is a full set including all of the Mysteries, and one can purchase a "complete" Rosary consisting of 15 groups of 10 beads, versus the standard 5 found on most Rosaries.

According to a study published in the British Medical Journal (2001;323:1446-1449), researcher Dr. Luciano Bernardi, associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Pavia in Italy and his team tested whether rhythmic chanting, in this case reciting the rosary or using Yoga mantras, could have a favorable effect on the heart’s rhythms. What the team knew at the beginning of the study was that slow regular breathing was beneficial in preventing heart disease by synchronizing inherent cardiovascular rhythms.

Using 23 healthy adults whose heart rate and blood pressure were measured prior to the start of the study, the researchers measured their breathing rates while some participants prayed the rosary in the original Latin (Ave Maria), and others recited a given Yoga mantra. For comparison, the study participants’ breathing rates were measured during free talking and during slow breathing exercises also. What they noted is that the participants rate of breathing slowed down from fourteen breaths a minute (spontaneously) to 8 breaths per minute when they engaged in regular conversation, but breathing slowed down even more to six breaths per minute while reciting the rosary or the yoga mantra. Breathing at a slow six breaths per minute “has generally favorable effects on cardiovascular and respiratory function,’’ the researchers note. What’s more, the researchers found reciting the rosary or the yoga mantra both similarly synchronized all the hearts rhythms.

It ends up that despite the cultural differences between the two spiritual practices, rosary chants and yoga mantras, Dr. Bernardi suggests that the two may have similar origins and both evolved as a simple way to slow respiration, improve concentration, and induce calm. The rosary while known to be related to the Catholic religion, was initially introduced by the Crusaders “who learnt a similar technique from the Arabs who in turn learned it from the Indian and Tibetan masters of yoga”, Dr. Bernardi states.


What can be the causes of the difference in performance?

Are those reliable differences? Without knowing what confidence intervals you plotted it's difficult to estimate visually (95%? ±1 SD?), but I wouldn't be surprised that there are no statistically significant performance differences between those levels. Keep in mind that if this test emerged only after seeing the data, rather than a priori based on theory, then that changes how to interpret the significance of such tests and makes them less trustworthy:

  HARKing: Hypothesizing After the Results are Known http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327957pspr0203_4

The main finding seems to be an increase with age, possibly non-linear. Thresholding could be due to the task complexity.


Is the 'addiction' to receiving sympathy similar to substance addiction or just a deficit of resilience?

This is a part answer, which only refers to the concept of resilience.

One of the first studies that invesigated resilience was the Kauai-Study, which was a longitudinal study of a cohort in Hawai to investigate the cognitive, social and physical development of children. (Werner and Smith, 1982) Of the children who had to deal with a couple of risk factors from birth on, about a third managed to overcome the obstacles later in life. This led to the formulation of a theoretical concept of resilience, which included vulnerability of the child as a main risk factor and external stress on one side, and social support and ressources within the child on the other side as elements. These elements interact with one another and influence the development of a child. In this sense, resilience was defined as a potential, or maybe kind of like a trait. If there is enough resilience, a "good" development will be possible in spite of a difficult environment. The second thing to notice is that resilience originally was geared towards children.

The concept of resilience has been expanded to adulthood later. Apparently, though, this has led to some problems concerning the definition, since the original conception was explicitly concerned with development in childhood (Luthar and Cicchetti, 2000). The article of Leipold and Greve (2009) integrates different proposals to solve this problem. In their model, resilience, development and coping are linked. Development is seen as coping with all kinds of demands and stressors, and resilience is seen as succesfully doing so. Note that in this definition, resilience is very different from the one that I have given above.

To get to your question: an "addiction to sympathy" might be seen as a lack of resilience, but not in the sense of a trait. It can be seen as the lack of a process as conceptualized by Leipold and Greve (2009). This also leaves open the possibility that the process might "kick in" at a later stage in development, which not only makes sense but is also what you have experienced yourself.

References:

Leipold, B. & Greve, W. (2009). Resilience. A conceptual bridge between coping and development. European Psychologist, 14, 40-50.
Luthar, S. S., & Cicchetti, D. (2000). The construct of resilience: Implications for interventions and social policies. Development and psychopathology, 12(4), 857-885.
Werner, E. E. & Smith, R. S. (1982). Vulnerable but invincible: A study of resilient children New York: McGraw-Hill.


Neurological explanation for differences in what motivates runners?

Your question is really broad and can encompass libraries. However, to add my 2-cents worth regarding

  specifically what is the [...] psychological root cause for individuals being motivated by different sorts of things...

I would say that a lot of this has to do with external factors, and specifically external sources promoting exercise to be 'healthy', including peer pressure and multimedia.

To pin this global effect on our way of thinking down to

  [the] specific[...] neurological root

is not really feasible in a single answer in theSE framework, as it is just way too complex to grasp on a single web page in a Q&A forum I'm afraid. But the between-subject differences can, at least partly, be explained by intersubject environmental differences.

Reference
- Brody & Inoue, Issues Innov Nursing Practice, 218-27


Is there any research showing we only like to see/read information on themes/topics/ideas we like?

What you describe is known as Selective Exposure to Information.

  Selective exposure is a theory within the practice of psychology,
  often used in media and communication research, that historically
  refers to individuals’ tendency to favor information which reinforces
  their pre-existing views while avoiding contradictory information.

Below find extracts from this article about selective exposure:

  The researchers found that people are about twice as likely to select
  information that supports their own point of view (67 percent) as to
  consider an opposing idea (33 percent). Certain individuals, those
  with close-minded personalities, are even more reluctant to expose
  themselves to differing perspectives
  ...
  Perhaps more surprisingly, people who have little confidence in their
  own beliefs are less likely to expose themselves to contrary views
  than people who are very confident in their own ideas   ...
  The researchers also found, not surprisingly, that people are more
  resistant to new points of view when their own ideas are associated
  with political, religious or ethical values.

The above article is based on this research article.

A very related theory is the confirmation bias.

  Confirmation bias, also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is
  the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information
  in a way that confirms one's beliefs or hypotheses, while giving
  disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

In my opinion the reasons why we employ selective exposure are:

Preserve and form identity
Belongingness
The need for certainty. We need to have firm theories that do not change whenever we encounter dis-confirming evidence.
Competence. The need to have good skills  i.e. fishers forum


What is the name of the effect or concept behind getting along better with people after time apart?

In general, I would have said the opposite: there's a robust literature on familiarity driving liking, even with non-social stimuli like shapes:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

This is also true with people. There may be some kind of an effect whereby people who are familiar and then separated bicker less after the break than before, but I haven't seen this studied. I'd suggest you look at terms like conflict in close relationships for psychological research, e.g.:

  Simpson, J. A., Rholes, W. S., & Phillips, D. (1996). Conflict in close relationships: An attachment perspective. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(5), 899-914.
  http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.5.899


Is there a mental health disorder related to a harmful lack of anxiety and stress?

Sociopaths (people with Antisocial Personality Disorder) report lower levels of anxiety and stress than the general population. Psychopathic traits tend to foster resiliency and are protective against anxiety.

I'm a board-certified psychiatrist. There is ample evidence in the literature (and basic psych textbooks) that sociopathy have low levels of harm avoidance, decreased physiological responses to stress, and lower overall reported anxiety and fear. There is evidence supporting this.

In fairness, this association has come into question and there are some newer studies that are reevaluating the association between anxiety and sociopathy. Anecdotally, I have never encountered an ASPD patient with comorbid anxiety. I’m sure they exist: I’ve just never seen it, and suspect that it’s rare.

Hofmann, S. G., Korte, K. J., & Suvak, M. K. (2009). The upside of being socially anxious: Psychopathic attributes and social anxiety are negatively associated. Journal of social and clinical psychology, 28(6), 714-727.
Dinn, W. M., & Harris, C. L. (2000). Neurocognitive function in antisocial personality disorder. Psychiatry research, 97(2-3), 173-190.
Dolan, M. C., & Rennie, C. E. (2007). Is juvenile psychopathy associated with low anxiety and fear in conduct-disordered male offenders? Journal of anxiety disorders, 21(8), 1028-1038.


Should you completely get rid of your temptations or do them in moderate amount?

The problem you are experiencing is called procrastination. You get suddenly very interested in TV shows as a way to avoid the task which is currently generating anxiety.

The relation between a goal (here succeeding in this important exam) and procrastination is well documented (e.g. Bandalos et al. , 2003, in the context of statistics courses). There are two types of goal one can have: Achievement goal (desiring to succeed on an exam, for example) and mastery goal (wishing to understand the content of the course). Sadly, only the first one generates anxiety. Many research found that a desire to understand, not necessarily to succeed, diminishes the procrastination behavior. When procrastination is absent, it also makes us immune to anxiety. Finally, anxiety, when present, tends to produce weaker grades.

(in technical terms: performance goals is positively correlated with procrastination; procrastination is positively correlated with anxiety; anxiety is negatively correlated with the grade obtained; however, mastery goal is negatively correlated with procrastination).

One solution is to set study times, have a schedule for study and a schedule for TV watching, and stick to it. When it is time to study, do nothing else. At first, it will be hard, but in the long run, you will adopt the right automatisms, and study will become easy. Be realistic when setting study times. For example, avoid long study period that are unrealistic. Better have many short periods of two hours and stick to it, rather than a few periods of many hours that are not humanly realistic.

So to answer your question: Your second option is the correct one: determine time slots for study; outside of those times, watch TV if you wish. Your explanation was not correct: it is not craving which makes you watch TV, it is anxiety.

Bandalos, D. L., Finney, S. J., & Geske, J. A. (2003). A model of statistics performance based on achievement goal theory. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(3), 604-616. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.95.3.604


Effect of compactness of notation on cognition?

If I recall correctly, in his book "The number sense", Stanislas Dehaene says that one reason Chinese have better than average math skills is because all digits have only 1 syllable and the number of syllables increases linearly with the number of digits (vs. for example the horrible seventy-seven in English). If I still remember correctly, he cites some studies about that. It's not exactly what you asked but that's definitively a reference relevant to your question.

Dehaene, S. (2011). The number sense: How the mind creates mathematics. OUP USA.


Can Someone Explain How Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence was Discovered?

This is actually a fairly obscure topic in the history of psychology. According to a recent paper (starting with its conclusion), in the early 1940s Cattell mostly reforumulated an idea of Hebb, which the latter obtained by observing the differential effect (on verbal vs non-verbal abilities) of some brain injuries (lobotomies of various kinds actually). After a 20-year hiatus, Cattell published on this again (together with his student Horn) but this time with focus on the fluid intelligence as being "culture-fair".

“Cattell's” theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence is Hebb's theory of Intelligence A and Intelligence B, given another name and popularized by Cattell. Cattell's theory was Hebb's idea. [...]
In his 1943 paper, Cattell (1943, p. 179) stated that:

Hebb (1941c, 1942) has independently stated very clearly what constitutes two thirds of the present theory, for he says that “intellectual power may be needed for the first appearance of the qualitatively superior response, but not necessarily for its persistence” (Hebb, 1942), and “in any test performance there are two factors involved, whose relative importance varies with test: one factor being the lasting changes of perceptual organization and behavior induced by the first factor during the period of growth.”

[...]
Hebb's presentation (Hebb, 1941c) discussed the differences in effects of brain injury on adults and children and the finding that “certain kinds of abilities are less affected by late than by early injury.” While I do not have a copy of Cattell's (1941) APA presentation, I do have the typed version of Hebb's (1941c) in which he presented his ideas on Intelligence A and Intelligence B as follows:

It may be proposed that intellectual development includes two distinct things: (A) direct intellectual power, by neural maturation, and (B) the development of qualitative modifications of perception and behavior. The first factor is what reaches a peak somewhere around the beginning of adolescence, declining slowly thereafter; the second is the product of the first factor. [Hebb, 1941c, p. 5]

[...]
Hebb (1942, p. 287) [...] concluded by saying “The contrast is not between intelligence and knowledge, but between capacity to develop new patterns of response and the functioning of those already developed.”
[...]
The two pages that Cattell sent to Hebb for his comments include the definition of fluid and crystallized intelligence as follows:

Adult mental ability is of two kinds, which may contingently be called ‘fluid’ and ‘crystallized.’ ‘Fluid’ ability is a truly general ability to discriminate and perceive relations between any fundaments, new or old. Crystallized ability consists of discriminatory response habits built up in a particular field, through the original operation of ‘fluid’ ability, but no longer requiring a true insightful perception for their successful functioning. Intelligence tests test, at all ages, the combined action of fluid and crystallized ability, recording the level of whichever is higher.

He continued to say that: “the level of the ‘crystallized’ abilities has been largely determined by the original level of the all-round, ‘fluid’ ability. ‘Crystallized’ ability is thus a dead coral formation revealing by its outlines the limits of the original living process. Loss of any system of discriminatory habits, e.g., through brain injury, is now likely to remain more localized, i.e., to affect general ability less, and to be less remediable. For as the tide of ‘fluid’ ability recedes after adolescence the ‘crystallized’ discriminatory powers persist at a level above that at which the fluid ability is capable of rebuilding them.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, R.B. Cattell to Hebb, September 22, 1941)
[...]
Hebb showed Cattell's letter to his Head of Department, George Humphrey, and Humphrey then wrote to Cattell that “I do not think however that you should present this as your own hypothesis. It is in essence the theory on which Hebb has been experimenting all the year.” He continued to say that “Some hundreds of A.P.A. members heard Hebb put out the theory at the Evanston meeting, and I hope you will forgive me if I say that I am sure you would do your scientific reputation harm by publishing the paper in the form in which I have seen it, i.e., without giving him credit.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, G. Humphrey to R. B. Cattell, September 24, 1941)
[...] Cattell also replied to Humphrey to explain how he developed his theory. He said that “I made what seemed to me a tenable, though possible premature, generalization on his data differentiating the adult abilities which do and do not deteriorate and asked in my last letter if he approved of the passage in which I described this as implicit in his writings.” Cattell went on to say that “The further theories are however quite independent, and to the best of my knowledge were neither in Hebb's paper nor in our after dinner conversation. My views were based on two pieces of evidence not in Hebb's field of research, and I had already discussed them with Thurstone and with Miles. Hebb's third source of evidence fitted in beautifully with these and completed the picture, but two thirds of the picture was already there. Naturally Hebb and I in discussion gained clarifications, but this would have happened if I had discussed the same matter with any other man of Hebb's intelligence and liking for the subject.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, R.B. Cattell to G. Humphrey, September 26, 1941)
[...]
Finally, Cattell agreed to credit Hebb, but suggested that he was being generous in doing so: “However, I trust that the revised statement which I have sent to Hebb will be agreeable to both of us, though I confess that on re-reading it I think it goes further in acknowledging priority of parts of the theory to Hebb than my reason alone indicates that it should.” (Hebb, 1941-1942, R.B. Cattell to G. Humphrey, September 26, 1941).
[...]
As noted by Horn (1966, p. 554), Cattell did not do any follow-up research on the theory of fluid and crystallized intelligence, but “left it on the shelf” until 1963, when he showed that two general ability factors could be derived from factoring culturally embedded and culture fair intelligence test results from a sample of 277 children in the 7th and 8th grades (Cattell, 1963). In this paper he concluded that one of these factors “fits the crystallized ability factor measured in traditional intelligence tests and the other a fluid general ability measured in culture-fair intelligence tests” (p. 20). Cattell's student John Horn continued to develop the theory of crystallized and fluid intelligence (Horn and Cattell, 1966, 1967).


Is our sense of smell heightened when we are asleep?

Short answer
The sense of smell may still be operational during sleep, but it is not enhanced. Olfactory stimuli typically will not wake you up during sleep, however.

Background
Olfaction and sleep are an interesting lot. Most sensory stimuli presented during sleep typically cause awakening, especially when when they are intense  and sudden (e.g. a loud noise). This is not the case with odors, and even holds for unpleasant ones (Carskadon & Herz, 2004).

In addition, while most sensory systems stop processing their input altogether, odors remain processed by the sleeping brain. This may, at least in part, be due to the direct olfactory projections from the periphery to the cortex, without a thalamic relay being used as with the other senses (Perl et al., 2017). However, they will typically not wake a person up.

The neural adaptation (reduction of sensitivity over time) of the olfactory system is related to repeated or sustained exposure to scents (Dalton, 2000), and it is not affected by sleep per se as far as I know. Hence, taken together these findings support the claim that odor alarms will not work.

Note, however, that fire comes with heat and irritant smoke that will work on the heat and pain receptors in the skin, respectively. These may wake you up, barred the dulled sensory systems pick the stimuli up. And even then it may already be too late to be of any help.

References
- Dalton, Chem Senses (2000); 25(4): 487-92
- Carskadon & Herz, Sleep (2004); 27(3): 402-5
- Perl et al, Springer Handbook of Odor: 111-2


Would the initial priming be an obstacle in this direction?

Yes. But not an exceedingly difficult one to overcome since you manage to prime yourself into being focused in the first place.

Personality plays a vital role of course. If you're a natural hyperactive person it would obviously be an easier task to prime yourself into being alert than to enter a state of complete focus and calmness.


Is it possible for a person to have anterograde amnesia and be aware of it?

Yes it is possible. It is very common for normal individuals to feel like they should remember something, but are then unable to actually recall the contents of that particular memory. This feeling of knowing is called metamemory.

This study by Art Shimamura and Larry Squire found that

  patients with severe anterograde amnesia can produce accurate
  feeling-of-knowing judgments. Thus, impaired feeling-of-knowing
  accuracy is not an obligatory feature of amnesia

So, some of those patients may wake up each morning and soon realize that something is amiss, as they are unable to recall facts or events that they feel they should be able to recall.


Equalize/balance brightness and saturation of different colors using RGB (across various monitors)

First I should tell you that controlling for color in an online experiment is hopeless. Monitors display quite different colors, people run experiments in environments that have very different illuminations etc. There is no chance you could display equiluminant colors, which is already hard to do in the best of conditions, in an online experiment. However you can still try to minimize as much as possible variations in luminance.

You seem to assume that the RGB value of a pixel is equivalent to luminance. It is not, it is the 8-bits encoding relative to the maximum physical capabilities of the display. The RGB color channels do not have the same luminance. The ratio is roughly respectively 0.3, 0.6 and 0.1. In other words a green value that roughly matches the most luminant red a monitor can display is only half of that value ([255,0,0] has roughly the same luminance as [0,128,0]). As I said without carefully calibrating your monitor with a photometer there is no way you can display perfectly equiluminant colors online. What you can do is take a RGB space, like the sRGB space, pick 2 colors  that have equiluminance in that space, and assume that it is not too far off on people displays.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRGB

Saturation is even trickier because it is not a physical quantity you can measure (technically luminance is also based on a standard observer but at least you can relate it to radiant energy). Saturation will depend on which color space you pick. CIELuv, or its polar equivalent CIELch is indeed a reasonable choice. Note that CIELuv requires defining a "white point" (in the values you give it seems to be D65), yet another reason why online color experiments are hopeless. Here I think you are making the opposite mistake as for RGB colorspaces, the L coordinate of the Luv/Lch colorspaces is luminance. So 2 colors that have the same L value do have the same luminance (and the uv/ch coordinates indicate chrominance on an equiliminant plane). However you cannot easily transform CIELuv coordinates to RGB values. You'll need to transform colors back to the CIEXYZ colorspace first, and then to RGB.

Finally as the specific hue does not seem to be an issue for you, you can always measure equiluminance experimentally. For example using a alternating red and green drifting bars. Pick a red value, start with a very dark or bright green and increase/decrease that value. When colors are equiluminant you should perceive a clear drop in the speed of the drifting bars (the motion pathway is luminance-based).

All that to say, it is good to try to control for possible confounds, but be aware that you will never be able to perfectly control for it. I would personally not worry about it too much. If it is a critical aspect of your experiment try designing a good control condition instead (switch colors for half the observers, or run a subset of observers with colors that are clearly not equiluminant or something like that).

A very good reference on the topic:
http://www.visionlab.harvard.edu/Members/Patrick/PDF.files/2002%20pdfs/equi.pdf

I used this website to convert CIELuv to RGB values. Results are in the figure below. To get equiluminant colors the L value should remain constant (here I used 34 as the paper you cited). To have equisaturation (assuming the colorspace is correct), the uv coordinate should have the same euclidian distance (sqrt(u^2+v^2)=Cst, here I used 100). I absolutely do not guarantee this is correct. I just googled "CIE-Luv converter" and found this website. Checking if it is correct would be quite time consuming.

http://colormine.org/convert/rgb-to-luv


How does knowledge about a subject aid in its recall?

The first method (repeat the terms over and over) is called rote rehearsal. It's not actually a very good way to learn, though it has the benefit that it always "works" because you can always repeat a list. You may be unable to perform certain other encoding tricks such as elaborative rehearsal due to the context of the items, like a list of random words. Consider it more of a fallback than a learning strategy.

The second method (talking about the item at length) is elaborative rehearsal, which, as Cheatboy2 points out, benefits from the levels of processing effect. The deeper you know something the more "connections" you can make, which has the advantage of making things easier to remember in general and easier to remember in the context of specific, related items.

Elaborative rehearsal has the benefit of creating understanding rather than simple knowledge of a term. Buccal Cavity is just a word until you realize what it means. Once you know what it means you can additionally draw connections between related words, which, in this case, is very helpful as all the words on the list to remember are in fact connected in various ways. If you don't elaborate on the connections between them in your own memory, you won't benefit from that effect.

I suggest giving both articles (in bold) a read to understand the deeper intricacies of both, but those are the general ideas behind why elaborative rehearsal is preferred. Note that a Mnemonic device may be a more effective method of teaching lists where the list is what's important, not a deeper understanding, or where there is little to elaborate on, such as ROYGBIV to remember the colors of the rainbow.


What are the most used statistical methods in WM research besides (generalized) linear modeling?

It is difficult to overstate the extent to which analysis of variance-based linear modeling based for different groups dominates the cognitive sciences. A recent methodological review of the psychology literature suggesting that these analyses are used to test hypotheses in as much as 95% of studies (citation pending me recovering it). There are alternatives in working memory, but they often have more limited empirical support due to the dominance of the aforementioned analyses.

Hierarchical models

One alternative that doesn't veer too far from established practices is to use a hierarchical modeling approach, as you suggest. For example, Lee and Webb (2005) proposed a Bayesian hierarchical modeling of working memory which accounted for both individual differences and aggregated group data. The main benefit here is to take advantage of both individual- and group-level variability, but we ultimately end up with a linear model.

  Many evaluations of cognitive models rely on data that have been averaged or aggregated across all experimental subjects, and so fail to consider the possibility of important individual differences between subjects. Other evaluations are done at the single-subject level, and so fail to benefit from the reduction of noise that data averaging or aggregation potentially provides. To overcome these weaknesses, we have developed a general approach to modeling individual differences using families of cognitive models in which different groups of subjects are identified as having different psychological behavior. Separate models with separate parameterizations are applied to each group of subjects, and Bayesian model selection is used to determine the appropriate number of groups.

Topology

An emerging, but currently more niche approach is to use topology. Topology is making some exciting inroads in the psychological methodology literature (e.g., Butner et al., 2014), but so far has not managed to see substantial use in the empirical WM literature. However, there are a few early birds who've made some attempts to capture WM within a topological context, namely Glassman's work on a "theory of relativity" for working memory (Glassman, 1999; Glassman, 2003).

In the succeeding excerpt, he explains why human verbal memory capacity is 3-4 items from a topological perspective:

  Thus,
  a moment’s WM is hypothesized here to reside in myriad activated cortical planar “patches,” each subdivided into up to four amoeboid “subpatches.” Two different lines of topological reasoning suggest orderly associations of such representations. (1) The four-color principle of map topology, and the related K4 is planar theorem of graph theory, imply that if a small cortical area is dynamically subdivided into no more than four, discretely bounded planar subareas, then each such segment has ample free access to each of the others. (2) A hypothetical alternative to such associative adjacency of simultaneously active cortical representations of chunk-attributes is associative overlap, whereby, in dense cortical neuropil, activated subpatches behave like Venn diagrams of intersecting sets. As the number of Venn-like coactive subpatches
  within a patch increases, maintaining ad hoc associativity among all combinations requires exponentially proliferating intersections. Beyond four, serpentine subpatch shapes are required, which could easily lead to pathologies of omission or commission.

Others

I am tangentially aware of related attempts to develop a theory of (working) memory as a form of foraging behavior, but not sufficiently to give a summary of it. Hopefully, the link is instructive.

References

Butner, J. E., Gagnon, K. T., Geuss, M. N., Lessard, D. A., & Story, T. N. (2014). Utilizing Topology to Generate and Test Theories of Change. Psychological methods.
Lee, M. D., & Webb, M. R. (2005). Modeling individual differences in cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 12(4), 605–621. doi:10.3758/BF03196751
Glassman, R. B. (1999). A working memory “theory of relativity”: elasticity in temporal, spatial, and modality dimensions conserves item capacity in radial maze, verbal tasks, and other cognition. Brain Research Bulletin, 48(5), 475–489. doi:10.1016/S0361-9230(99)00026-X
Glassman, R. B. (2003). Topology and graph theory applied to cortical anatomy may help explain working memory capacity for three or four simultaneous items. Brain Research Bulletin, 60(1-2), 25–42. doi:10.1016/S0361-9230(03)00030-3


Is using tensorflow for Spiking neural networks a "good" idea?

One of the key issues with spiking neural networks is that while SNN are computationally more powerful than the so called 2nd generation neural networks (artificial neural networks), they are also computationally 'much' more expensive. This means you need a lot of computational power to effectively use them, and limits their use by the wider data science community and therefore the development of the method, which is mostly stuck in research groups. Many of whom are working on the issue of efficiency, while IBM amongst others is working on the hardware issue.
Another issue for the poor adoption and development of SNNs is that, at the time of writing, they are not able to effectively conducting supervised learning. So while SNNs are good at dealing with specific  tasks for which they have been hard coded, they are not generally applicable to a wider range of problems without considerable coding. By comparison ANNs are highly versatile and easily applicable to a wide range of data science problems. It has been suggested elsewhere that for SNNs to be general purpose, we would need to more accurately mimic learning in the mammalian brain in order to conduct supervised learning tasks. There are recent steps in the right direction that take a simplified approach by adding a reward process in to the NN, which in my opinion (with a background in 'reward systems') is a good start. But this is all very recent compared to ANNs, and really the 'further research is required' slogan strongly applies before SNNs are more widely adopted within both data science and computational psychology/neuroscience. Although as you can see here the TensorFlow community is starting to work on utilising SNNs. Google (TensorFlow) itself is well onboard with studying SNNs, and is one of the strongest leaders in the field of machine learning, so you should expect to see a lot more work from google here, which will spread the the wider data science community. With that said I cannot see a reason not to use TensorFlow, it is, however, worth looking into IBMs ML offerings too given there interest in developing hardware for SNNs, and how Snap ML out performs TensorFlow.
In summary, SNNs are computationally powerful in theory, but are computationally expensive compared to ANNs with current technology. SNNs also have a supervised learning problem which means that this need to be developed to allow SNNs to be used more generally, and wider adoption. This would lead to more use of SNNs and therefore more development. SNNs are likely a future of machine learning as research and technology develops, but its currently mostly limited to academic investigation and understanding.


How has psychology categorised different types of love?

Sternberg's Triangular theory is certainly well-known. The field you want to dig into more is called 'close relationships'. Here's an accessible treatment of other common theories:

  Summary of psychological theories of love https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-love-and-war/201208/love-decoded

This gives a good theoretical overview using many different approaches:

  More abstract positioning of theories of relationships and attachment with relation to other fields http://www.wwnorton.com/college/psych/intimate-relationships/ch/03/summary.aspx

Here's another I learned about in grad school:

  Bem - Exotic Becomes Erotic: Interpreting the Biological Correlates of Sexual Orientation
  http://doi.org/10.1023/A:1002050303320


Longitudinal consistency of StrengthsFinder

Seems like StrengthFinder and CliftonStrengths are owned by Gallup organisation and there is commercial registration of the tests? The same way as psychometric testing can be commercialised and protected by intellectual property law, it seems that Gallup has done the same with those tests.

As the result, research and testing into those instruments are very limited and stifled by the risk of litigation by the Gallup organisation. Makes it hard to independently verify and test the assumptions and studies done by Gallup unfortunately.


If orgasm triggers bonding and feelings of love, why don't people continue to stay in love?

Surely, orgasms do release drain out dopamine but you're forgetting another important factor in dopamine release, which is novelty.

Ever heard that couples get bored of sex after an year or two? It's because they find it routine and boring. Cheating (an e.g) gives you the thrill of novelty.

The same activities which we find thrilling / rewarding will not remain that way. It has something to do with the sensitivity of dopamine receptors. Take novelty seekers (e.g) they tend to find novel activities thrilling.

The worst scenario occurs, when a person no longer finds any activity interesting. That is nothing but Anhedonia.

EDIT: I'm sorry, but I just realized that staying in love is a bit different from enjoying orgasms after reading this. A relationship is far more complicated than just producing enough dopamine.

Release of enough endorphins, helps you stay happy, if you're happy you're likely to not hate other people around you, if you do not hate them, you're likely to like them by releasing enough oxytocin (physical touch etc.). Apart from that, a sense of responsibility and well being comes into picture when you're serotonin levels are moderate.

Definitely low dopamine levels is a cause, but not the only cause of cheating etc. Any imbalance of neurochemicals causes not only relationships fall, but also other unhealthy / anti social behavior.


Is it possible to become addicted to sleep deprivation?

Assuming there's not a neurological dysfunction underlying sleep deprivation (which is even more possible with Aspergers as sleep dysfunction is a typical comorbidity) it can simply be a learned behavior.  The more you do something (whether you particularly "enjoy" it or not) the more likely you are to build it up as a habit.  Procedural memory is always at work.

So in this regard, it can be addictive behavior in the same way a "bad habit" can.

I wouldn't call it a drug.  Pharmaceutical drugs are defined as the intentional delivery of a substance from externally to inside the body: most commonly acting as an allosteric modulator on neural receptors.

About 73% of children with Asperger's experience problems with sleep according to the Asperger's Association of New England.


Do animals have some kind of rudimentary personality types or preferences?

"are there other personality traits that have been identified in animals?"

There are quite a bit of hits on Google about this.

Here's a foundation dedicated to research on animal personalities:

  The Animal Personality Institute (API), founded in 2004, is an interdisciplinary group of researcher dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of personality and temperament in non-human animals.
  http://animalpersonalityinstitute.net/

Here's a summary of a study on some personality traits among ducks:

  Weissing and his colleagues ran various model simulations of scenarios that included a resource as well as responsive and unresponsive animals. He said the new model shows, for example, when it's optimal for animals to react to a change in food and when it's not. It turns out that competing personalities help to keep a healthy balance in a group.

Research on personality among fish:

  Working with Dr Bart Adriaenssens at the University of New South Wales, Dr Biro observed the behavior of adult male mosquitofish over 132 days. They found that the behavior of some individuals was consistently more predictable in a given context than others. Mosquitofish were used for the study because they are widespread and easily sampled from ponds in and around cities.
  "We observed that individuals differed in their average levels of activity, but also differed in variability about their average activity," Dr Biro explained. "Some individuals chose to be active, others chose to be sedentary, some were consistent in their chosen level of activity, others not. But, we found no association between activity levels and predictability.
  "What this tells us is that the fish differed in how unpredictable they were, and that this unpredictability is a consistent attribute over time.
  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131031092311.htm

Here's a research document on animal personalities:

  The past decade has seen a very rapid growth in research on animal
  personality. The growth is taking place across a wide variety of fields
  ranging from applied ethology, beha
  vioral ecology, and zoo management
  to biology, primatology, and comparative psychology. Having established
  that personality exists in animals and can be measured, researchers have
  begun to exploit numerous benefits of animal research, such as the
  high degree of experimental control, the ability to measure a range of
  physiological parameters, the opportunities for naturalistic observation,
  and animals’ accelerated life span.
  http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/HomePage/Group/AnimPersInst/Animal%20Personality%20PDFs/G/Gosling%202008.pdf

Wikipedia also has an article on the topic:

  Personality is the consistent patterns in cognitive and behavioral traits, such as affect, cognition, and behavior.[1] These traits are measurable, are found in a broad array of species, and are commonly transferable among species (Gosling, 2008).
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_in_animals


What is a "delayed match-to-sample task"?

This kind of task is generally used when studying short-term memory. Typically, a subject is presented with some stimuli, followed by a probe item after a varying delay; subjects is then asked to recall (information retrieval) if the probe item was presented before (information encoding). A famous example is Sternberg experiment.

Such tasks can rely on non-verbal material, which makes them good candidates for behavioral studies with animals, but see

  Paule MG, Bushnell PJ, Maurissen JP, Wenger GR, Buccafusco JJ,
  Chelonis JJ, Elliott R. Symposium overview: the use of delayed
  matching-to-sample procedures in studies of short-term memory in
  animals and humans. Neurotoxicol Teratol. 1998
  Sep-Oct;20(5):493-502.

Some on-line demonstration can be found on the CANTAB testing battery: Delayed Matching to Sample (DMS).


Is staying with an abusive partner actually indicative of Stockholm syndrome?

Stockholm syndrome has been discussed in relation to domestic abuse, but not all that much. In the Encyclopedia of Domestic Violence (Routledge, 2007, NA Jackson ed.) I found criteria given that mirror those for kidnapping victims:

  The victim perceives a person threatening her
  survival. The threats may be physical or psychological.
  It is not important whether others
  view her survival as threatened, but rather
  whether she does.
  The victim perceives the abuser showing her
  some kindness, however small. For example,
  the kindness may be that for one day out of
  the month he does not abuse her.
  The victim is isolated from outsiders. This isolation
  may be physical—she is not permitted to
  have contact with family or friends—and/or
  ideological—she is permitted exposure to
  only the abuser’s perspective.
  The victim does not perceive a way to escape
  the abuser. Batterers use violence to help ensure
  that their partners do not leave them.

These are pretty strong criteria to fulfill, particularly number 3 and 4. The  Encyclopedia doesn't have any systematic evidence how often all these are fulfilled, in other words we don't know what the prevalence in the population would be. There has been one scale proposed by Graham et al. (1995) for measuring a more gradual version of the syndrome, but I haven't found other papers using it.

As for the usual reasons why the victims remains in an abusive relationship, they usually see (or hope for) some redeeming quality in their abuser:

  a considerable number of women felt their abusive male partners still possessed some good qualities: More than half (54 percent) saw their partners as highly dependable, while one in five (21 percent) felt the men in their lives possessed significant positive traits (i.e., being affectionate).

What you are proposing is a bit different than Stockholm syndrome. When you say that

  a small portion of the population that struggles to open up to and connect with potential partners tends to form bonds with abusers

you're basically proposing is that some victims have a propensity (perhaps a personality trait) for abusive partners. I'm not sure if that's the case; surely some women have submissive or masochistic BDSM fantasies, even rape fantasies, but to argue that they could only bond with abusive partners seems extreme to me, even a form of blaming the victim. I haven't seen this trait-lie preference for abusive partners discussed in literature. As cited in the Encyclopedia Graham in a 1994 book (Loving to Survive: Sexual Terror, Men’s Violence, and Women’s Psychology) did propose that victims may develop "borderline-like" personality characteristics and behaviors... but again he says develop, not have them beforehand.

There is however one recent (2008) paper that does discuss the personality of the victims:

  Women victims of IPV [Intimate Partner Violence] had higher scores than controls in schizoid, avoidant, self-defeating personality scales, as well as in the three pathological personality scales (schizotypal, borderline and paranoid). Both physical and psychological IPV were strongly associated with personality disorder symptomatology, regardless of the effects of childhood abuse.

This is after the fact though. A longitudinal study would be able to establish correlates before the IPV, but I'm not aware of such a study.


In what ways do our brains use compression?

Say for example, you know what a particular type of flower looks like. You know it has purple petals and a white center. Now, unbeknownst to you, this flower has been slowly changing (evolving) to have a different shape, size, and even shade over the years since you first had seen one of these flowers. All the while, you have been around this flower your whole life. I mean, it grows in your current backyard, and it also grew in the backyard of the house you grew up in. In this scenario, you may have dreams about when you were a kid playing in the backyard. Instead of seeing what the flowers used to look like (when you actually were a kid), you will most likely see them as they appear to you today. Although your brain has memories of the presence of these flowers in the yard when you were a kid, their actual defining details have been rewritten over time with their current appearance. The hypothesis here is that your brain is trying to conserve capacity by linking all recorded encounters with this type of flower so that they all share the same "image file" in your brain. Witness testimonies have a similar problem -- where data received after the fact can change a person's memory of what happened and how things and people actually looked. I recommend you research the problems known about witness testimony.


When does the brain stem appear in humans?

I'm not sure this question is answerable at that specificity. There isn't a discrete point in time where the cells are definitively a brain stem rather than a precursor structure such the bulge mentioned above. One could identify a set of a cells in earlier structures that eventually are located in the adult area we call the brain stem, but that doesn't mean at the point those cells are identifiable that they are IN the brain stem during development.


The current recommended text for statistics in behavioural sciences

Here's my basic overview of the psychology - statistics textbook market.
In general, I think the choice of textbook (where you have a choice) depends on a few factors:

Applied versus statistical theory (e.g., do you have immediate needs to analyse data)
Whether and which software package you want to use (e.g., SPSS, R, etc.)
Which techniques you want learn (e.g., basic bivariate statistics; multivariate stats; etc.)
How much mathematical rigour you want; if you can handle it, you'll probably get more out of a book pitched at statistics students.

There are also a number of reasonable online options:
E.g., hyperstat for similar material as Gravetter and Wallneau.

Introductory undegraduate textbook

Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences Gravetter and Wallneau : This remains popular with many students in psychology as an introduction to statistics. It assumes only that you can do very basic algebra. It has lots of pedagogically helpful components. That said, once you move beyond analysing toy datasets for lab reports and so on, you'll want a more advanced and applied book.
When it comes to data analysis it focusses on SPSS.
Discovering Statistics Using SPSS (and now Discovering Statistics Using R): Andy Field does a great job of making statistics fun and accessible. It's also fairly practical in the way that it is grounded in using and interpreting analyses in SPSS (and now R).
SPSS Survival Manual: This one is more of a cookbook for doing data analysis in SPSS that is suitable for someone analysing their own data in psychology who has only basic training in psychology statistics. It is very applied.
David C. Howell Statistical Methods for Psychology: This book is substantially more sophisticated than Gravetter and Wallneau however it does provide an overview of many of the basic techniques. However, it goes into a lot more detail about various factorial designs. It also leaves the student with a much more sophisticated understanding.

Multivariate textbook

Tabacknick and Fidell Using Multivariate Statistics: This is a well established book in psychology for teaching multivariate statistics (e.g., multiple regression, factor analysis, ANCOVA, MANOVA, and a little bit of SEM). I think it provides a good introduction for typical psychology students. It focusses on interpretation more than mathematics, but there are still some formulas.
Hair et al Multivariate Data Analysis: This is another popular multivariate book in the social sciences. It is very light when it comes to mathematics and focuses a lot more on interpretation and processes for conducting data analysis. This may either be a good or a bad thing depending on your mathematical background.


Abstract idealized mental visualization improves motor task performance

I would hazard a guess that some type of motor system interference is taking place when you visualize the movement versus visualizing an abstract shape.

For example, Kilner et al. (2003) found that actions that are observed can interfere with incongruous executed actions.  They had subjects make arm movements that were either similar or dissimilar to those of another human or a robot.  Movements that were not similar caused a greater amount of error in the arm movement of the subject. Since motor visualization can recruit many of the same areas of cortex as actual observation and execution (Kosslyn et al., 2001), this could cause similar interference.

Other papers, such as Rémy et al. (2010), have shown that there is reduced motor learning when two movements were acquired at the same time.  Their hypothesis was that the two movements both recruited similar areas of cortex, which caused a form of competitive interference. Visualizing a movement before execution could generate competition between similar, but not identical, movement representations.

Finally, there is evidence that varied practice, or learning a motor movement in several different ways, can cause a short-term degradation of motor learning, but can cause long term increases in retention and generalization of a motor movement.  Magill and Hall (1990) had a nice review of this effect, called contextual interference.  Visualizing the movement could be causing reduced performance now, but it could be argued that it may be beneficial in the long-term.

Wikipedia has some surprisingly good articles on motor learning and task interference if you are interested in learning more:
Motor learning: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_learning
Interference theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_theory

 Kilner JM, Paulignan Y, Blakemore SJ. (2003) An interference effect of observed biological movement on action. Current biology, 13(6), 522–525.
Kosslyn SM, Ganis G, and Thomson WL. (2001) Neural foundations of imagery. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2, 635-642.
Magill RA and Hall KG (1990) A review of the contextual interference effect in motor skill acquisition. Human Movement Science, 9, 241-289.


Is it really impossible for a hypnotist to make a participant do something against their will?

This question cannot be answered empirically.

  Thus, a refusal to carry out antisocial actions can be ascribed to insufficient depth of hypnosis (or inadequate hypnotic technique), while the behavior of S[ubject]s who comply can be explained by asserting that the action merely represents what they would have done anyway. (Orne, 1972)

Sources:

Orne, M. T. (1972). Can a hypnotized subject be compelled to carry out otherwise unacceptable behavior? A discussion. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 20(2), 101-117.


Do only humans spend a lot of time daydreaming (or having "stimulus-independent thoughts")?

It seems that it is still a matter of debate whether animals are capable of mind wandering. For instance, there are a lot of publications about foresight, a future directed instance of mind wandering. Much of it comes from one group, e.g.,

  Suddendorf T, Corballis MC. (2007) The evolution of foresight: What is
  mental time travel, and is it unique to humans? Behav Brain Sci.
  30(3):299-313; discussion 313-51.

  Suddendorf T, Corballis MC. (2010) Behavioural evidence for mental
  time travel in nonhuman animals. Behav Brain Res. 215(2):292-8.

But, for a review see:

  Cheke Lucy G., Clayton Nicola S.. Mental time travel in animals. WIREs
  Cogn Sci 2010, 1: 915-930.

Or for a quite current example, see:

  Osvath M, Karvonen E. (2012;7) Spontaneous innovation for future
  deception in a male chimpanzee. PLoS One (5):e36782.


How does the brain learn abstract maths?

The parietal area and prefrontal cortex from the neocortex are the source of ones ability to perform algebra and most other logic and analytic intensive tasks.

  In a brain imaging study of children learning algebra, it is shown that the same regions are active in children solving equations as are active in experienced adults solving equations. As with adults, practice in symbol manipulation produces a reduced activation in prefrontal cortex area. However, unlike adults, practice seems also to produce a decrease in a parietal area that is holding an image of the equation. This finding suggests that adolescents' brain responses are more plastic and change more with practice. These results are integrated in a cognitive model that predicts both the behavioral and brain imaging results.

-The change of the brain activation patterns as children learn algebra equation solving


Why do people want what they don't have now?

This is more along the lines of novelty.

As you mentioned, once you have it, you want something else you don't have and on and on and on it goes.

Reason being, once a subject acquires the object longed and desired for, the novelty level within the subject is diminished and must be refilled.

To be more specific, what needs to be refilled is dopamine. Novelty produces dopamine and dopamine is well know as the brain's fuel driving satisfaction. So remove that and guess what your going to try to reproduce?

Check out:

Satisfaction: Sensation Seeking, Novelty, and the Science of Finding True Fulfillment
What Does “Novelty” Mean?
Is Happiness Having What You Want, Wanting What You Have, or
Both?


Your question was a loooooong time ago, but I just ran across a couple of good references explaining what backward masking does and how to choose one.  This(1) is a great paper examining the neural mechanisms and timing of visual backward masking; according to this (2) 2000 review of masking theory, there are four subtypes of backward masking.

Backward masking can be achieved by

light, when the target is masked by a larger and spatially overlapping uniform flash of light.
metacontrast, when the mask does not overlap the mask spatially.
structure, when the mask overlaps the target as well as shares many structural features of the target.
noise, when the mask consists of random-dot noise over the target.

(There are some papers from the 1960s & 1970s talking about the transient vs sustained activation theory of backward masking function, but they are hard to find online because of their age so I have not included them.)

It's probably a good idea to go and read the 2000 review paper--the full paper is publicly available at that URL--because what kind of backward mask you choose depends on the hypothesis of the experiment.

References
(1) Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, May 1999, Vol. 11, No. 3, Pages 300-311. doi: 10.1162/089892999563409
(2) Perception & Psychophysics, December 2000, Volume 62, Issue 8, pp 1572-1595.


Are presence questionnaires valid in a between-subjects design?

The underlying question here is: Does the context of a questionnaire affect the answer?

I think you already answered the question yourself. Yes it does.

Let's make the comparison even more extreme:

Please rate on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 7 (very) how happy you would be if you won 1 million dollars because you were the 1 millionth customer of a super market.
Please rate on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 7 (very) how happy you would be to win 100 dollars because you were the 1 millionth customer of a super market.

Now imagine you would have been asked only the second question. Will the answer on the second question be affected by the fact that there was question 1? Very likely.

For an excellent introduction to research about such context effects and other survey-related phenomena check out "Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers." by Norbert Schwarz (1999).

Schwarz summarizes several ways in which pragmatic aspects of questions affect answers in questionnaires. There is an important distinction with regard to how people construct the meaning of such questions. On the one hand, there is the literal meaning of the question, its semantic content. On the other hand, there is also the pragmatic meaning of a question, which involves an assessment about the intention of the person (the researcher) who has asked the question. (What is implied? Also called the implicature). To infer this pragmatic meaning, people rely on several communication norms or "maxims" (Grice, 1975).

The maxim that is most relevant here is the maxim of relation:

  a maxim of relation enjoins speakers to make their contribution
  relevant to the aims of the ongoing conversation. In research
  situations, this maxim licenses the use of contextual information in
  question interpretation and invites respondents to relate the question
  to the context of the ongoing exchange. (Schwarz, 1999, p. 94)

So in the context of question 1 (1 million dollars/presence in environment 1/2 liters of free beer), the pragmatic meaning of question 2 (100 dollars/presence in environment 2/1 liters of free beer) may be interpreted as comparative (compared to the first option, who much do you like it?) and the answer may be different that than when it is asked in isolation.

Another way in which the context may affect the answer is that the implied meaning of the scale anchors change (What means "very happy" vs. "not at all happy"?). An example of research that has investigated such issues is the research on shifting standards in stereotyping (e.g. Biernat & Manis, 1994). For example, if you judge woman X with regard to aggressiveness, she may be rated as "highly aggressive" in the context of other women (because the stereotype is that women are low in aggressiveness). However, if the question is asked in the context of men, she might be rated lower in terms of aggressiveness (also because of the stereotype that women are less aggressive). The point is that the inferred meaning of the scale anchor "very aggressive" changes based on the context the question is asked in.

References

Biernat, M., & Manis, M. (1994). Shifting standards and stereotype-based judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 5–20. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.66.1.5

Grice, H. P. ( 1975). Logic and conversation. In P.Cole & J. L.Morgan ( Eds.), Syntax and semantics: Vol. 3. Speech acts (pp. 41– 58). New York: Academic Press.

Schwarz, N. (1999). Self-reports: How the questions shape the answers. American Psychologist, 54, 93–105. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.54.2.93


If it takes multiple action-potentials to cause one action-potential in another neuron, why don't brain signals dissipate almost immediately

This answer is a bit below my normal referencing standards, but hopefully helps you with some things you're missing and motivates further reading...

Thalamus (at least parts of it) projects directly to frontal cortex (and everywhere in neocortex). Just one synapse from thalamic cell to cortical cell. Neurons send long projections (axons) from region to region. So, with your assumption of 4 presynaptic neurons per cell (which is probably on the low side, but see 2 and 3 below) that would mean just 4 cells in thalamus, rather than 400 million.
In the CNS, especially in the brain and even more especially in neocortex, connections are one-to-many (divergence) and also many-to-one (convergence). When one cell fires, it influences many other downstream cells (for order of magnitude you can assume "thousands"). The strengths vary: some cells get larger inputs than others from the same cell.
Most connectivity is local, and the entire brain is constantly active. For typical neocortical cells, you might see a minimum firing frequency of around 1 Hz in normal in vivo conditions. There are billions of cells each connected to thousands of others, so any one cell is receiving many many inputs at any one time. Other inputs arrive on this background of activity.

I'd recommend starting with a basic neuroscience textbook; Purves' Neuroscience is a good one as is Kandel's Principles of Neural Science. If you're coming from a more computational background, Dayan and Abbott's Theoretical Neuroscience is also a good book, but I'd suggest pairing it with something more rooted in biology as well.


Why does the brain skip over repeated "the" words in sentences?

A study by Rainer et al. (2011) has shown that words are skipped and apparently filled in mentally quite often (in the order of 8 to 30% of times).

Two important factors that increased skipping rates were the length of the word and the predictability of the word due to contextual constraints. Both cases apply on the word 'the', because it is short and highly predictable, being a common adjective and in fact one of the most used words in the English language. In other words, besides being short and predictable, it is also a very common word that has relatively little impact on the meaning of a sentence.

Reference
- Rainer et al., J Exp Psychol Hum Percept Perform (2011); 37(2): 514–28