Current theories of the psychology of ambivalence

Many studies have examined ambivalence,

  Interest in attitudes and ambivalence has highlighted problems with the adequacy of conceptualizing attitudes as unitary, unidimensional, evaluations...//..
   the hypothesis that ambivalence will attenuate observed attitude-intention relationships (since the evaluations influencing the expression of attitudes are more likely to differ from the evaluations influencing the expression of intentions for people who are more ambivalent. 1

  Negative interactions may occur with ambivalent social partners (i.e., partners involved in both positive and negative exchanges) or exclusively problematic social partners (i.e., partners involved in negative exchanges only), but conflicting views exist in the literature regarding which type of social partner is likely to be more detrimental to older adults' physical and emotional health. 2

Pathological ambivalence appears to be rooted in infancy 3 and/or childhood, and is categorised as an attachment disorder, known as Ambivalent Attachment Disorder or Anxious-Ambivalent Attachment Disorder or a type of Reactive Attachment Disorder 4 under the umbrella of Insecure Attachment Disorders.

It is theorised to be causal, or at least linked to psychopathy 5 and personality disorders, in particular, Borderline Personality Disorder 6. It is theorised to begin in infancy and/or childhood. When a child's needs are met inconsistently.

  The first type of insecure attachment is called ambivalent attachment. This occurs when caregivers are inconsistent – sometimes answering infants’ needs quickly and responsively, and sometimes letting the infant ‘cry it out’. This may also occur if caregivers respond only to the physical needs – feeding, changing, etc, but ignore the infant’s need for human interaction and connection.

  Looking at baby, touching, singing, talking about what we are doing, etc is very important for infants’ emotional development. Without this, babies do not ‘feel felt’, an expression coined by Dan Siegel in his book ‘Parenting From the Inside Out’. It can become very difficult for these babies to develop the qualities of compassion and empathy.

  With insecure ambivalent attachment characterized by ‘only sometimes’ type of caregiving, babies learn that the world and their ability to have an impact on it is basically inconsistent – sometimes things happen, sometimes they don’t – sometimes all their needs are met, and sometimes only some of them are. Infants learn that others are not dependable or consistent. They often also do not learn or understand emotions – their own or others. 3

Being deprived of basic care, the child manifests an ideation that there is not enough to provide for everyone in this world, and so will grab to get their needs and/or wants met.

  AMBIVALENT ATTACHMENT DISORDER (AmAD) children see scarcity everywhere, and therefore what is wanted should be taken as it is not going to be given by anyone. Having to hurt someone to get what is wanted is viewed simply as “the cost of doing business”, and the other person is seen as deserving being hurt for having been in the way.

Attachment, Parental Bonding and Borderline Personality Disorder Features in Young Adults

  Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that parental bonding and attachment scores (especially insecure attachment, anxious or ambivalent attachment, and a perception of a relative lack of caring from one's mother) were uniquely associated with borderline features beyond what could be accounted for by gender, childhood adversity experiences, Axis I disorder, and nonborderline Axis II symptoms. Although relatively modest, these relations suggest that bonding and attachment constructs might be considered in comprehensive etiological models of borderline personality disorder.

Symptoms of Ambivalent Reactive Attachment Disorder are:

  Passion to intimate contact and declarations of love at all times from their partners;
  Show inveterate care giving nature;
  Tend to idealize others;
  Feel themself uncomfortable with anger;
  Show too extreme emotions;
  Very jealous;
  Frequent mood swings;
  Imbalanced relationships with others;
  Never have prolonged relationships;
  Too possessive;
  Feel that their partner is unpredictable;
  Tend to be concerned or have dependence on relationship;
  May show suicide attempts;
  Have a tendency of frequent depression;
  Often feel themself unlovable or undesired by others.

 1.
Br J Health Psychol. 2001 Feb;6(Pt 1):53-68.
Ambivalence about health-related behaviours: an exploration in the domain of food choice.
Sparks P, Conner M, James R, Shepherd R, Povey R.
Source
School of Social Sciences, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK. P.Sparks@sussex.ac.uk
Psychol Aging. 2012 Dec;27(4):912-23. doi: 10.1037/a0029246. Epub 2012 Jul 9.
2.
Ambivalent versus problematic social ties: implications for psychological health, functional health, and interpersonal coping.
Rook KS, Luong G, Sorkin DH, Newsom JT, Krause N.
Source
Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-7085, USA. ksrook@uci.edu
Attachment, Parental Bonding and Borderline Personality Disorder Features in Young Adults
Angela D. Nickell, Carol J. Waudby, Timothy J. Trull, (2002). Attachment, Parental Bonding and Borderline Personality Disorder Features in Young Adults. Journal of Personality Disorders: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 148-159.
doi: 10.1521/pedi.16.2.148.22544
Maryland's Source for
Attachment Disorder Related Information
Reactive attachment disorder
Insecure Attachment


Importing EGI eeg binary format data into R?

While the available R packages for EEG do not seem to support the EGI eeg data format (see Robin Kramer's comment), you might want to try MNE-Python as a free and open alternative to any EEG toolbox implemented in Matlab.

MNE-Python does support the EGI eeg data format among many others. Furthermore, there are several comprehensive examples to get you started.


Like all psychiatric disorers, ADD and ADHD are diagnosed using a set of criteria listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM

The latest version is the DSM-IV-TR. The DSM-V is due out in 2013 and may change these criteria.

Diagnosis is expected to be done by a licensed professional who is able to assess these criteria.

From http://www.mental-health-today.com/add/dsm.htm :

INATTENTION
(need 6 of 9)

- often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, work or other activities
- often has difficulty sustaining attention in tasks or play activities
- often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly
- often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties in the workplace (no if oppositional behavior or doesn’t understand instructions)
- often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities
- often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to engage in tasks or activities that require sustained mental effort (such as schoolwork or homework)
- often loses things necessary for tasks or activities (e.g., toys, school assignments, pencils, books, or tools)
- often easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
- often forgetful in daily activities

HYPERACTIVITY-IMPULSIVITY
(need 6 of 9)

- often fidgets with hands or feet or squirms in seat
- often leaves seat in classroom or in other situations in which remaining seated is expected
- often runs about or climbs excessively in situations in which it is inappropriate (in adolescents or adults, may be limited to subjective feelings of restlessness)
- often has difficulty playing or engaging in leisure activities quietly
- is often "on the go" or often acts as if "driven by a motor"
- often talks excessively
- often blurts out answers before questions have been completed
- often has difficulty awaiting turn
- often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games)

REQUIREMENTS

- Present at least 6 months, maladaptive and inconsistent with development level
- Some symptoms that caused impairment were present before age 7
- Some impairment from the symptoms is present in two or more settings (e.g., at school {or work} and at home)
- There must be clear evidence of clinically significant impairment in social, academic or occupational functioning


Number of exercises and the learning of some subject?

Learning is a very complex process, do not expect to find precise answers like “5 exercises are required to learn a new subject”. There are many factors that affect learning, just to name a few:

Your existing knowledge.
Your engagement with the subject.
How you learn. Deep Vs shallow processing.
The complexity of the subject.
Your personal characteristics e.g. IQ.
Your current state, how much tired you are etc.

With so many factors involved is impossible to give precise answers.


Childhood IQ and pattern of drug use in adulthood

First, thank you bringing that White et al. (2009) paper to my attention -- I am currently accumulating a whole bunch of cohort studies focusing on cognitive epidemiology, or health outcomes associated with cognitive ability. Here I will share with you some of what I have collected so far with respect to drug-related outcomes.

  Is this type of finding, namely positive correlation of IQ with what I'd call experimental drug use [I think the medical term is drug abuse],

To my understanding, I do hear about similar findings from time to time, but this isn't where the research funding goes. You tend not to get research grants unless you can sell drugs = death and destruction.

  negative correlation of IQ with [...] dependency

Yes, this is generally the case. Dependency, and other adverse health outcomes resulting from said depedency. Moreover, the relationship tends to be non-linear. The following data is from a cohort study of 1 million Swedish conscripts, with the health outcomes being the risk for hospital admission for various disorders including alcohol-related disorders and other substance-related disorders as a function of childhood intelligence. Obviously, the use of a hospital admission endpoint means that the disorder was on the more serious end of the disorder:

Gale, C. R., Batty, G. D., Tynelius, P., Deary, I. J., & Rasmussen, F. (2010). Intelligence in Early Adulthood and Subsequent Hospitalization for Mental Disorders. Epidemiology, 21(1), 70–77. https://doi.org/10.1097/EDE.0b013e3181c17da8

Here's another one of a similar vein. This cohort study comprised 1.4 million Swedes, looking at "substance-misuse events" as a function of stanines (this is a way of grouping your cohort into nine groups, each comprising a 1 SD increment in ability).

How these guys defined "substance-misuse events" does warrant further clarification, however:

  Substance misuse events were assessed with an omnibus
  measure combining information about alcohol- and drug-
  related criminal convictions, medical treatments and
  deaths. This measure, which has been used previously
  [10,26,27], captures a wide range of alcohol and drug re-
  lated negative outcomes but does not include all individ-
  uals with substance abuse, as many substance abusers
  are not registered in any medical or governmental registry.

Again, you see that the risk is greatest in the the stanine with the lowest cognitive ability (estimated IQ <74), and the curve is non-linear:

Latvala, A., Kuja-Halkola, R., D’Onofrio, B. M., Larsson, H., & Lichtenstein, P. (2016). Cognitive ability and risk for substance misuse in men: genetic and environmental correlations in a longitudinal nation-wide family study. Addiction, 111(10), 1814–1822. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13440

And last, but not least, some mortality data, again from the Swedes (n = 50,000). This one doesn't examine cognitive ability, but demonstrates that substance abuse and dependency, particularly in adolescence, seems to be a mediating factor in injury-related mortality. We also note that alcohol abuse as an adult also represents a significant risk:

Stenbacka, M., Leifman, A., Dalal, K., & Jansson, B. (2011). Early predictors of injury mortality among Swedish conscripts: A 35-year cohort study. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 43(1), 228–234. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2010.08.014

  generalizable across countries? Or [if this is far too ambitious to ask] at least reproducible in other countries?

As you can tell, the best data seems to come from the Scandinavian countries... no prizes for which country ranks #1. The whole problem with these sorts of studies is that you need to be organised and preferably have national conscription, meaning its simply untenable for most Western countries.

However, if you dig around, the best studies will come from the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians. And to a lesser extent, the Scots followed by perhaps the Unites States.

  And if so, are there other confounding variables that might explain some of it better, e.g. openness to experience for ever having tried an illegal drug?

Good question. Perhaps high cognitive ability results in greater disposable income? Most of the drugs reported are reminiscent of the substances you would find floating around a nightclub, where people are queuing up at the toilets in order to snort lines of coke off a toilet seat. And amyl nitrite is very much a gay party scene drug. However, we also note that even after controlling for adult SES, the effect is attenuated but still remains.

Who knows -- perhaps getting totally fucking high from time to time is part of the normative human experience, while those with lower cognitive ability are too busy drinking the bad thoughts away with alcohol. It is, nevertheless, a great find :p


I think in this case, you should look at 2 graphs of optimal performance. So one inverted bell curve (Yerkes-Dodson Law)for the stimulant, and another for the 'downer'. So in this case, each has their own optimal productivity, and an interaction of the 2 isn't just a simple combination, because this would be a third graph altogether. So unless there is something you know of the exact interation effect of the particular stimulant, and particular depressant,I wouldn't risk mixing them for optimal productivity.


Is spiritual enlightenment a valid way attempting to understand the universe and consciousness

I do have a question though, once you have an awakening, and realize as others have said, that you are in the matrix, aren't you aware of this fact forever? So how can you be not enlightened anymore, but you once were.
Question by tristo in a comment to my previous answer

I'm not sure about the matrix analogy because in the movie they simply replace 'reality' with 'real reality'. This new reality differs in detail from the first but not in nature. It is just one level of illusion down. Illusion hasn't been stripped away altogether.

How can you be enlightened only for a short while? Here's an example:

I stub my toe on a rock. I know intense pain; it's real; it's right now.  A month later I can remember what happened but I am no longer experiencing pain, I'm just remembering it. It's precisely the same with a short-term enlightenment experience.

This highlights the impossibility of communicating the experience. There are some scientifically documented individuals who are born without a sense of pain. How could we tell such a person what pain is like? We couldn't. On the other hand two people who have experienced pain can communicate with each other about it because they have it in common. Two people who have experienced an awakening can similarly discuss it because they both know what they are talking about from their own experience.

I hope this goes some way towards providing an answer.
P.S.
I can accept that some people could be permanently in that state. As I mentioned, I chickened out of staying in it or going even deeper - it was both joyful and scary. Nevertheless what I experienced was immensely powerful.


Is metacognition an affective, cognitive, or behavioural variable?

It seems like there are a lot of ideas out there as to what metacognition really is.  Having done my MS thesis in understanding how people learn in engineering programs, I typically think about metacognition as "knowing how to learn."  It's typically a goal of engineering education to teach students these skills.

Therefore, I would say it's mostly a cognitive variable, but it's also a behavior because it's a set of habits about how one thinks.  How are you planning to measure metacognition?  And why inductive reasoning?  Why not critical thinking in general?


Math understanding: intuitions and proofs

I think it is important here to be clear about what John is really capable of doing.  If all he is able to do is manipulate the axioms of S correctly, this actually does not get him very far, for at least two reasons.  (This is also why theorem proving computer programs have significant limitations.)

1) Suppose we give John a specific theorem P of S and ask him to prove P. Can he do it?  Not necessarily.  There is a set of logical steps based on the axioms that proves P, so it seems within John's reach.  But one problem here is that of computational complexity.  If John proceeds by just, in an undirected fashion, trying to derive new facts of S from the axioms in the hope of eventually arriving at P, the number of paths that he can go down will increase exponentially and it may take longer than the lifetime of the universe for him to arrive at the result.  Master mathematicians in the field of S, on the other hand, have sharp intuitions about what is likely to be an effective path to a proof of P.

2) Mathematicians do more than resolving previously specified open problems.  They also try to generate important new problems.  A mathematician who is not very good at formal proofs may nevertheless make a significant contribution by correctly conjecturing a very interesting result (even if someone else needs to prove it).

1) and 2) overlap somewhat; for example, a master mathematician may conjecture a lemma L in S that is extremely useful for proving P.

If John is not able to do 1) and 2), then it's not clear he is really very skilled at S.  If he is, then it seems that maybe he isn't so different from Lucy after all; somewhere he has the right intuitions.  Maybe Lucy is more consciously aware of her intuitions, perhaps leading into a discussion about what it is like to experience those intuitions.  But many of the intuitions of master mathematicians don't come from conscious processing; certain ways of proceeding just feel right to them but they can't necessarily explain why.


Mushrooms contain psilocybin, which gets converted into psilocin. These act on serotonin receptors, which may play a role in memory. (Edits coming later)


It's been known that Increased Corpus Callosum size was found in musicians who began music training before age 7 and that Training working memory leads to growth in Corpus Callosum.  As for how to train working memory, that's a diverse subject.  There have been a lot of experiments involving Training working memory for ADHD patients, however a meta-analysis has revealed that most of the training from these ADHD-centered programs only leads to short-term gains, not long-term or generalisable gains.

To speculate some, I think taking on new tasks and challenging yourself repeatedly in a wide context (as opposed to isolated tasks "designed" for working memory) is your best bet.  Learn a new instrument, learn to program in a new language, learn new regions (spatial mapping is associated at least with hippocampal cell growth as long as you use spatial strategies, not procedural ones).


Are cortisol measures more reliable than self-reported fear measures for looking at difference scores?

I think the relevant reliability would be the expected test-retest reliability of the measure at the two time points which are otherwise being used to examine difference scores. Thus, if you were looking at difference scores derived from an experiment where measures are taken one day apart where an intervention is applied on one of those days, then you would want to know the correlation between those two days in the absence of any intervention.

In general, I would question your assumption that hormone measures are more reliable than self-report personality measures. I'm not experienced with hormone reliability data, but a good personality scale should have test-retest reliability around .80 or 90. My intuition is that hormone measures have much lower reliability than this, but I'd be very interested in anyone who can cite test-retest reliability measures for various hormone measures.

I found this discussion of cortisol test-retest reliability (Nicolson):

  Test-retest reliability of acute stress response measures appears to
  be low, probably because of both the underestimated noise introduced
  by spontaneous pulsatile activity (Young, Abelson, & Lightman, 2004)
  and the tendency of the cortisol response to habituate following
  repeated exposures. Low reliability of cortisol outcome measures means
  that laboratory stress experiments are particularly vulnerable to Type
  2 error. This issue is important in all studies, but especially needs
  to be taken into account in intervention studies, where stress
  reactivity is compared pre- and postintervention. More analyses are
  needed to determine how many cortisol measures per session and how
  many repeated sessions are necessary to obtain reliable measures of
  stress reactivity for different subject populations and stressors
  (Gunnar & Talge, 2007; Hruschka et al., 2005).

References

Nicolson, N. A. Measurement of Cortisol. http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/17430_Chapter_3.pdf


What is the relationship between fear and desire?

The Atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour (Mobbs, 2020) is able to visualise emotions in two dimensions: affiliation and dominance.  Fear is considered submissive and disaffiliative.  Desire is more dominant and intrapersonal, that is, in itself neither affiliative or disaffiliative.

Reference
Mobbs AED (2020) An atlas of personality, emotion and behaviour. PLOS ONE 15(1): e0227877. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227877
Declared interest
I am the author of the atlas paper.


Why can some drugs make us hallucinate and think the hallucinations are reality?

In my opinion this has to do with how perception works in general.

There are many situations, where you "see" something, that is not there. Optical and other sensory illusions are a prime example. Usually these mis-perceptions result from sensory input that our organs of perception were not built to analyze. For example, the size-weight illusion stems from the fact that we don't have objects of equal size and equal outside material but differing weights in our natural habitat. You will easily recognize that all sensory illusions are induced by highly artificial stimuli such as straight and parallel lines, which have only existed in the most recent past and have as yet not had a big influence on human evolution.

In the case of drugs and hallucinations, your brain is stimulated in a way that is not meaningful for it, and it tries to make sense of what if "perceives" in the context of its evolution and experience. Obviously the stimulation by a certain drug comes close to what the stimulation would be like if outside reality were like you hallucinate it.

A drug induced hallucination is basically a sensory illusion, with the difference that you stimulate the brain directly, instead of the sensory organs.

To "break" an illusion, you need to provide a stimulus that overrides or "corrects" the misperception, e.g. a ruler to show that the lines are parallel (or not parallel) etc. Just knowing the truth (because you drew the lines yourself) doesn't change the effect.

Since drug induced hallucinations originate not in an outside sensory stimulus but in a direct manipulation of the brain, I would guess that touching the elephant head of your friend might not help to break the illusion -- you might even feel differently. But I have no experience with drugs and couldn't find any reports on this.


This section from the Wikipedia page on Neuroplasticity indicates (emphasis mine)

  Reviews of MRI studies on individuals with ADHD suggest that the
  long-term treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
  with stimulants, such as amphetamine or methylphenidate, decreases
  abnormalities in brain structure and function found in subjects with
  ADHD, and improves function in several parts of the brain, such as the
  right caudate nucleus of the basal ganglia.

The following studies are cited as reference:

Meta‐analysis of structural MRI studies in children and adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder indicates treatment effects (Frodl et al 2012)
Meta-analysis of Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Studies of Inhibition and Attention in Attention-deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: Exploring Task-Specific, Stimulant Medication, and Age Effects (Hart H, Radua J, Nakao T, Mataix-Cols D, Rubia K 2013)
Effect of Psychostimulants on Brain Structure and Function in ADHD: A Qualitative Literature Review of MRI-Based Neuroimaging Studies (Spencer TJ, Brown A, Seidman LJ, et al 2013)

I had a quick read on these papers and they do not appear to isolate Vyvanse (lisdexamfetamine) specifically. The one from 2012 doesn't even mention it; the other two address both methylphenidate and lisdexamfetamine. Each paper has their own limitations, for instance, standardization concerning comorbid conditions, age, etc.

From what I can understand, long-term use of ADHD stimulants in individuals with ADHD (this is important) does not appear to be associated with brain damage, but rather the opposite, they appear to promote "normalization" of certain structural deficiences. Not all deficiences, though (i.e. effects visible on the right anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) but not on the left ACC).

The paper from Spencer et al cites another - Potential adverse effects of amphetamine treatment on brain and behavior: a review (Berman, Steven M. et al 2009). I didn't have a chance to look into that just yet.


Is husband and wife intelligence corelated?

By way of background, Mascie-Taylor (1989) report IQ correlations between husbands and wives in two british samples to be r=.40 and r =.37 respectively. I had a little difficulty discerning the sample size as it's not reported in the 1989 paper. But from another paper I got the sense that each sample might have been in the 100-200 range.

Dufoul et al (2000) measured a range of cognitive measures in 318 couples. The correlation in total cognitive score between husbands and wives was r=0.36.

In reviewing the literature Dufol et al writes

  There is a wide but relatively dated literature on concordance for
  cognitive abilities among couples, which was reviewed by Vanderberg
  and Jensen [in the 70s]. Studies have shown that
  spouses were more similar in terms of global intelligence scores than
  in terms of specific cognitive performances. Indeed, intra-couple
  correlations were of the order of 0.45 for the global intelligence
  scores, as compared with 0.10 to 0.20 for the specific cognitive
  performance scores (Jensen, 1978; Vandenberg, 1972)

Thus, at a basic level it appears that there is a modest correlation between intelligence of husbands and wives. This is thus evidence of assortative matching. The causes of such a correlation are much more complicated. First, there are the many correlates of intelligence which might be an alternative basis for selection (e.g., income, education, values, socio-economic background, etc.). Second, even if intelligence was a directly relevant feature to partner selection, spousal similarity could emerge from multiple mechanisms: (a) economic exchange whereby more (or less) of the trait is sought and those with more to offer are better able to secure more from the partner; (b) explicit valuing of similarity to self. In the case of intelligence, presumably arguments for both mechanisms (and possibly others) could be made to explain the real but modest correlations in spousal intelligence, correlations which would presumably be much lower once other correlates are controlled for.

Nonetheless, this all suggests that intelligence may be relevant to marital satisfaction given that people presumably choose partners who they think will make them happy.

Correlation between intelligence and marital satisfaction

Lewak et al (1985) report the results from 81 couples. They measured intelligence using the WAIS and marriage satisfaction using the Locke-Walace Marital Adjustment Scale.

This is my attempt to represent the relevant correlations taking full scale IQ and marriage satisfaction (MS).

            Male IQ  Female IQ  Male MS  Female MS
Female IQ    0.35
Male MS      0.06    0.14
Female MS    0.05    0.13
Male IQ
 minus
 Female IQ                       0.05    0.10
Quadratic of
 Male minus
 Female IQ                      -0.08   -0.03

In summary, none of the correlations between marital satisfaction and spouse IQ were statistically significant. There was a slight trend for females and males to have higher marital satisfaction if the female was more intelligent. All the correlations between discrepancies in intelligence (either signed difference operationalised as the degree to which the male was more intelligent than the female) or unsigned difference (operationalised as the squared difference in IQ between males and females) were close to zero.

Thus, on the face of it, this study suggests at least within already married couples, such variation in partner intelligence is somewhat unrelated to marital satisfaction, although interestingly there was a slight trend in the data suggesting that intelligence in females was related to both male and female marriage satisfaction.

Nonetheless, a few words of caution are in order. First, this is a small sample. I'd really like to see some larger sample studies. Second, it may be the case that factors influence marital choice, but then once choice has been made they may be less relevant to the ongoing satisfaction.

References

Dufouil, C., & Alpérovitch, A. (2000). Couple similarities for cognitive functions and psychological health. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 53(6), 589-593.
Jensen AR. Genetic and behavioral effects of nonrandom mating. In:
Osbourne RT, Noble CE, Wey N, editors. Human variation: Biopsychology of Age, Race and Sex. New York: Academic Press, 1978. pp.
51–105.
Lewak, R. W., Wakefield Jr, J. A., & Briggs, P. F. (1985). Intelligence and personality in mate choice and marital satisfaction. Personality and Individual Differences, 6(4), 471-477.
Mascie-Taylor, C. G. N. (1989). Spouse similarity for IQ and personality and convergence. Behavior Genetics, 19(2), 223-227.
Vandenberg SG. Assortative mating, or who marries whom? Behav
Gen 1972;2:127–57.


What's the difference between repression and suppression?

Repression is the unconscious exclusion of impulses, desires, or fears from the conscious mind, while suppression is the conscious exclusion of similar thoughts.


Do STDP synapses potentiate AND depress at the same time?

I can't make comments yet, so in the following I will assume that by 'STDP synapse' you mean the model of a synapse using the STDP rule.

The scenario that you are describing is a triplet experiment with a PRE-POST-PRE protocol and to answer your question: Yes, in this case the STDP rule predicts both, weakening and strengthening of the same synapse and given symmetric curves the net change would be zero.

In this paper in Figure 2 C,D they address this scenario (they report a non-zero net change but I guess it's due to asymmetric STDP curves). As they mention, the STDP rule is also symmetric in a different way in that it would predict the same net change in a POST-PRE-POST scenario because it simply adds up the two spike-pair events (PRE-POST and POST-PRE). Also in Figure 2 C,D is shown that experimental results differ from the STDP predictions because they are not the same for the PRE-POST-PRE and the POST-PRE-POST case. This discrepancy is actually the motivation of the more general triplet rule that is described in the reference.


What concepts of perception should designers be aware of when designing?

Not surprisingly, there's a huge load of stuff you need to consider when designing things for users. Here's a good paper written by some perception and vision researchers on the topic that might give you a more detailed introduction that what you have seen so far:

Healey, C.G. & Enns, J.T. (in press). Attention and visual memory in visualization and computer graphics. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

It's open access as well!


The Ben Franklin effect and cognitive dissonance

The Benjamin Franklin Effect is generally cited as being an example of cognitive dissonance, which is when your brain struggles to reconcile your beliefs with your actions.

So let’s say your beliefs about your job are that you deserve to be paid a higher rate, you deserve to be treated more respectfully by your employer and your skills are being wasted in your current role

For every day that you go to work in that same job, your brain has to deal with cognitive dissonance. Your brain is thinking, “you believe this, but you do that—the two don’t gel. What’s going on?”

Dissonance means literally “lack of harmony between musical notes.” In this case, it’s a lack of harmony inside your brain—the thing that controls everything you think and do! So you feel uncomfortable, or uneasy. You carry around a lot of tension. Your body doesn’t like this, and neither does your brain.

David McRaney describes it like this:

“When you experience this arousal it is as if two competing beliefs
 are struggling in a mental bar fight, knocking over chairs and smashing bottles
 over each other’s heads. It feels awful, and the feeling persists until
 one belief knocks the other out cold.”

To compensate, your brain changes your beliefs—after all, your actions can’t be undone. You’ve already gone to work. You’re sitting at your computer, banging your head on the desk. But your thoughts can change. Your beliefs about yourself can change. Because your brain is malleable.

So all of a sudden you find yourself rationalizing your behavior.

Jecker and Lendy verified the phenomenon in a study that challenged participants to an intellectual contest.  The winners were subsequently either:

1. Asked to return their prize money by the researcher
   because he had been using his own money and was running short
2. Asked by a secretary to return their prize money
   because it was from the department and budget was running low
3. Allowed to keep their prize money (i.e. not approached).

Everyone was then surveyed to see how they liked the researcher.

Consistent with the Franklin effect, group 1 rated him higher than group 3 showing that a personal request for a favor increases likeability.

In addition, group 2 rated the researcher lower than group 3 suggesting that an impersonal request decreases likeability.

Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People  where the request for help is explained as a subtle but effective form of flattery.

As Carnegie suggests, when we ask a colleague to do us a favor, we are signalling that we consider them to have something we don't, whether more intelligence, more knowledge, more skills, or whatever.

This is another way of showing admiration and respect, something the other person may not have noticed from us before. This immediately raises their opinion of us and makes them more willing to help us again both because they enjoy the admiration and have genuinely started to like us.


Independence of criterion and d-prime (psychophysics)

Mathematically, we can see that d' is independent of criterion, regardless of the criterion, by looking at the definition

$$d' = Z_D - Z_F.$$

It is tempting to argue that: (1) When the criterion is negative infinity, $P_D$ and $P_F$ are equal to unity. (2) When $P_D$ and $P_F$ are equal to unity, that $Z_D$ and $Z_F$ are equal to infinity. (3) Therefore, when the criterion is negative infinity that d' is undefined since $\infty - \infty \ne 0$. A better way of thinking about it is to keep c in the equations a little longer: $Z_D=(c - \mu_{signal})/\sigma$ and $Z_F=c - \mu_{no signal}/\sigma$ and

$$d' = Z_D - Z_F = (c/\sigma - \mu_{signal}/\sigma) - (c/\sigma - \mu_{no signal}/\sigma) = (\mu_{signal} - \mu_{no signal})/\sigma$$

Since the c's cancel out we don't have to worry about the pesky $\infty - \infty$ business.

An alternate way to see what is going on is to consider your statement

  However if the subject does chose to nevertheless use the very liberal criterion and always answer "signal present", we will be only able to infer that their sensitivity equals zero.

To see why this is wrong consider an estimation problem where you are trying to estimate upper and lower bounds on d' and c from a set of observations. Consider the case where we have N no signal trials resulting in N false alarms and M signal trials resulting in M hits. The upper bound depends of c depends on N and M as well as d' and we don't need to consider it here to make the point that you can only infer that d' equal zero is wrong. The lower bound on c is the key thing to consider. The lower bound is negative infinity. If c is negative infinity the probability of observing at least N false alarms and and at least M hits, give N no signal trials and M signal trials, is equal to unity for all values of d'. Statistically speaking, there is a greater than 1-alpha chance of observing at least N false alarms and M hits regardless of d' when c is infinity. Therefore we cannot rule out, at any level of statistical confidence, any value of d'.


Any ideas about the neural mechanism underlying the ASMR sensation?

I found one study that looked at ASMR and the Default Mode Network (DNM). The DMN consists of the medial prefrontal cortex, medial temporal gyri, bilateral inferior parietal cortices, precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus. In the study, the DMN of 11 individuals with ASMR was compared with 11 controls.

The DMN of individuals with ASMR showed significantly less functional connectivity than that of controls. The DMN of individuals with ASMR also demonstrated increased connectivity between regions in the occipital, frontal, and temporal cortices, suggesting that ASMR was associated with a blending of multiple resting-state networks. This atypical functional connectivity likely influences the unique sensory-emotional experiences associated with ASMR.

Reference:

D. L. (2008). The brain’s default network: Anatomy, function, and relevance to disease. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1124, 1–38. doi:10.1196/annals.1440.011


Emotiv EPOC+ Research Edition can be used on Windows, Linux and Mac.

It has 14 electrodes (+2 reference electrodes) and is used in several publicized studies.
You can access raw data via their software "Testbench" and output it as CSV or use third party software like OpenVibe, BCI2000 and EEGLab.

But the little drawbacks are:

It is a wireless device, so you really should put the usb dongle for wireless signal transmission with a long usb cable directly on the device, to overcome signal distortion
The reference electrode processing is done within the device
It seems to be more intended for consumer use than for medical use

EDIT about realtime usage of EPOC+ and OpenVibe Software:

There are studies and projects using the EPOC+ in realtime with OpenVibe. OpenVibe has a built in driver for the EPOC+ Research Edition

https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiz2c-FpuXJAhVBhA8KHY0tD-IQFghbMAU&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mtg.upf.edu%2Fsystem%2Ffiles%2Fpublications%2FSergio%2520Giraldo%2520-%2520Brain-Activity-Driven%2520Real-Time%2520Music%2520Emotive%2520Control.pdf&usg=AFQjCNEi0w9wT2eMlUUxvUyLj2jsKL1ewg&sig2=eJMv2T_OjE4tHr6JnbV4IA&bvm=bv.110151844,d.ZWU

And in this project two devices can be used, the EPOC+ and the the Enobio, which seems to be an intersting device, too. But I do not have enough knowledge about the Enobio to recommend it. But it might be even better as the EPOC+, as they have models with more electrodes. This is the realtime application for the two devices:
https://github.com/marcelfarres/Play_Your_Mood

By the way, OpenVibe features drivers for quite some EEGs, but it can only be used on Windows and Linux. On Mac you would have to compile it yourself.


Is EEG brain-computer interface reliable?

This very much depends on what, exactly, you're trying to do.

EEG measurements tend to be extremely reliable, but the inferences one may draw on mental state are not necessarily so.

EEG-driven BCI overwhelmingly relies on machine learning to correctly classify signals into a finite number of categories and act upon them.  Typically, you'll do something like this:

Record EEG sessions where people are cued to think of any number of 'triggers' (e.g. turning up the volume of a television set).
Segment the recording into epochs by drawing a window around the time at which the subject was told to think of the trigger.
Extract time-insensitive features from the epochs and label them based on the trigger type.  (e.g.:  something as simple as a rolling-window mean over each sensor).
Train a supervised classifier (usually a support vector machine) on the feature vectors.
Use the classifier to decode future brain activity in real time.

Of course, there are many subtleties and machine learning is a vast topic in and of itself.  The point here is that your question is too ambiguous to be answered directly.

To reiterate, EEG is reliable, but as with most things, it comes with a number of caveats:

Scalp-level voltage topographies can vary massively across individuals because of anatomical differences
EEG is very sensitive to electromagnetic noise
Non research-grade EEGs (e.g.: EMOTIV EPOC) have few channels, tend to be noisy, and often lose contact
Cap placement is hard to do reliably outside of the laboratory


What makes some things difficult or easy to understand?

Part of it has to do with the ability to construct a model of reality. Every developer can relate to that. Visible, concrete things are easy to deconstruct in pragmatic terms. But once you get into abstract concepts, it gets harder and harder to bind it with your existing view of the world.

Some concepts are also very difficult to grasp if you can't connect parts of the concept with things you already understand. This process is called chunking, and it can be understood as dividing the problem until each part already makes sense to you, or is small enough to tackle the question on your own.

On top of this, you have to know what you're really looking for in order to ask the right questions. Some students just ask "How does this work? I don't understand", but the teacher can't answer something so vague. Richard Feynman make a very good statement about this problem in this interview.


Persuasion strategies by Cialdini (why is punishment not there?)

Briefly looking at an article summarizing Cialdini's viewpoints ("The Science and Practice of Persuasion", 2001, free pdf; doi link), he does not include threats of punishment under "authority". By "authority", Cialdini means the status of the influencer, such as being recognized as an expert on the subject-matter.
As far as I can tell, in his book, Cialdini barely tackles punishment directly. The most detailed passage dealing with punishment (as a strategy) seems to be one one child rearing, and even this occurs in a footnote:

The occurrence of the Romeo and Juliet effect should not be interpreted
as a warning to parents to be always accepting of their teenagers’
romantic choices. New players at this delicate game are likely to err
often and, consequently, would benefit from the direction of an adult
with greater perspective and experience. In providing such direction,
parents should recognize that teenagers, who see themselves as young
adults, will not respond well to control attempts that are typical of
parent-child relationships. Especially in the clearly adult arena of mating,
adult tools of influence (preference and persuasion) will be more
effective than traditional forms of parental control (prohibitions and
punishments). Although the experience of the Montague and Capulet
families is an extreme example, heavy-handed restrictions on a young
romantic alliance may well turn it clandestine, torrid, and sad.

So he does include punishment at least under "parental control"... which I don't know where exactly it fits in Cialdini's ontology. Cialdini's book is very narrative with a lot of anecdotes, but he does not engage in a lot of systematization (beyond the chapter-level one which you've mentioned in your question). But from that passage he does seem to consider persuasion as not encompassing punishment. This is a fairly purist view, as I further detail below from the (review) perspective of other authors.
You are correct that other authors (in contrast) do consider punishment as form of persuasion, particularly in legal contexts. Quoting the SEP page on legal punishment:

However, an obvious and crucial question faces any such justification of punishment as a communicative enterprise. Censure can be communicated through a formal conviction in a criminal court; or it could be communicated by some further formal denunciation issued by a judge or some other representative of the legal community, or by a system of purely symbolic punishments which were burdensome only in virtue of their censorial meaning. It can, of course, also be communicated by ‘hard treatment’ punishments of the kinds imposed by our courts — by imprisonment, by compulsory community service, by fines and the like, which are burdensome independently of their censorial meaning (on ‘hard treatment’, see Feinberg 1970): but why should we choose such methods of communication, rather than methods that do not involve hard treatment (see Christie 1981: 98–105)? Is it because they will make the communication more effective (see Falls 1987; Primoratz 1989; Kleinig 1991)? But why is it so important to make the communication effective — and is there not a serious danger that the hard treatment will conceal, rather than highlight, the moral censure it should communicate (see Mathiesen 1990: 58–73)?
One sort of answer to this question explains penal hard treatment as an essential aspect of the enterprise of moral communication itself. Punishment, on this view, should aim not merely to communicate censure to the offender, but to persuade the offender to recognise and repent the wrong he has done, and so to recognise the need to reform himself and his future conduct, and to make apologetic reparation to those whom he wronged. His punishment then constitutes a kind of secular penance that he is required to undergo for his crime: its hard treatment aspects, the burden it imposes on him, should serve both to assist the process of repentance and reform, by focusing his attention on his crime and its implications, and as a way of making the apologetic reparation that he owes (see Duff 2001, 2011; see also Garvey 1999, 2003; Tudor 2001; Bennett 2008; for a sophisticated discussion see Tasioulas 2006). This type of account faces serious objections (see Bickenbach 1988; Ten 1990; von Hirsch 1999; Bagaric and Amarasekara 2000; von Hirsch and Ashworth 2005, ch. 7): in particular that it cannot show penal hard treatment to be a necessary aspect of a communicative enterprise which is still to respect offenders as responsible and rational agents who must be left free to remain unpersuaded; that apologetic reparation must be voluntary if it is to be of any real value; and that a liberal state should not take this kind of intrusive interest in its citizens’ moral characters.

From that I gather that it is controversial whether punishment can be considered true persuasion though, i.e. some other authors disagree.
I suspect that in psychological terms, those who argue for punishment as persuasion are behaviorists, in that they don't care what's going on in the mind of the punished as long as the desired outcome (e.g. non reoffending) happens. On the other hand, cognitivists would probably argue that if the outcome does not also include the target internalizing/adopting the viewpoint (that is being communicated) then it is not actual persuasion, but mere compliance-- a sort of machiavellian behavior basically. An exam flashcard says:

What is the difference between persuasion and compliance gaining?
Persuasion is a change in attitudes, beliefs and values whereas compliance gaining is focused on changing behavior, getting someone to do what you want.

That's probably based on some intro 101 book. The research monograph by Seiter and Gass (Perspectives on Persuasion) has a three-page table with definitions of persuasion by various authors... and they don't really agree.  Seiter and Gass have their own view (of course):

Our position is that many of the definitional vagaries can be clarified, if not resolved. by
focusing on two considerations. The first is whether a given scholar or researcher is attempting
to define "pure" persuasion- what Simons (1986) and O'Keefe (1990) have labeled
"paradigm" cases of persuasion-versus all of persuasion, including its periphery.
which we term "borderline" cases of persuasion, By pure persuasion. we refer to clear-cut
cases on which almost all scholars in communication and related disciplines would agree.
As examples. nearly everyone would include a presidential debate, a television commercial.
or an attorney's closing remarks to a jury as instances of persuasion.
Other instances. though, lie closer to the boundary of what we normally think of as
persuasion. Not everyone would agree that a derelict's mere appearance "persuades" passersby
to keep their distance. Nor would everyone agree that when city planners install
speed bumps on a street where speeding is common. they are "persuading" motorists to
slow down. Such cases are less clear-cut. Much of the disparity in definitions. then. is
rooted in the fact that some scholars and researchers are concerned with "pure" persuasion.
whereas others are concerned with borderline cases as well.

Comparing this summary with the passage from Cialdini's book I cited in the beginning, it seems clear enough to me Cialdini was/is preferring (or at least implicitly using) a "pure" definition of persuasion.
Seiter and Gass also have a textbook (with a similar title but less research oriented), which repeats their view form their monographs, augmented with a pretty illustration (well, the illustration is present in the monograph as well):

As you can see the "coercive" form of persuasion, which would include punishment (or at least the threat thereof) is in the borderline bin/area. And in the textbook they further drive that point with a cartoon:

accompanied by an elaboration that coercion and persuasion lie on a continuum, and that pure forms are rarely encountered in everyday life experiences:

we would suggest that  most influence attempts we encounter in daily life include both persuasive and coercive elements. Rarely in life is one free to make a a completely unfettered choice. There are almost always strings attached. This is particularly true of face-to-face encounters. If a  friend asks to borrow 20 bucks, we can say "no," but there may be relational consequences for declining.
Rarely, too, are influence attempts completely coercive. For example, holding a gun to another person's head would seem to be an obvious example of coercion. We readily admit that this situation is primarily coercive. But what if the victim doesn't believe the gun is loaded? Or what if the victim thinks the threatener is bluffing? To be successful, a thread--even a threat of violence--must be perceived as credible. Thus, even in what might see like a clear-cut case of coercion there are persuasive elements at work. And conversely, even in what appear to be cut-and-dried cases of persuasion, there may be coercive features operating. In out view, the isn't so much whether a situation is persuasive or coercive as how persuasive or coercive the situation is. [emphasis in original].


I will take a stab at this question, because lucid dreaming is somewhat of an area of expertise of mine.

The first thing that you will notice as you explore the lucid dreaming is that the phenomenon is poorly recognized by modern sleep science. There are hundreds of articles that use scientific methods to study sleep disorders, like sleep apneas, restless leg, delayed sleep phase, etc. But I've yet to find a scientific, peer reviewed article that has touched upon lucid dream induction with external devices.

Outside Dr. LaBerge and another scientist whose name escapes me at the moment, the majority of lucid dream induction research is done by independent agents, like myself. Such people have very little formal scientific education, poor access to tools, and are unlikely to publish papers to scientific, peer reviewed journals. Did I mention that a night of laboratory sleep study with Polysomnography costs somewhere around 3000$ ?

There's a lot of anectodatal evidence and other first hand accounts of what works and what does not, but if science is a subject to publication bias, then such self reported experiences are extremely affected by the desire to find an approach that works.

This is why you hear a lot about methods that worked once or twice, but cannot be demonstrated to work reliably over extended periods of time, and for different people.

Lucid Dreaming Masks are a good example of technology that was developed outside the mainstream science. It uses primitive methods of detecting rapid eye movement sleep, which are still effective, but are disconnected from the data analysis tools. I'm not aware of any sleeping masks that log data, so the user cannot even look at when the signaling took place to adjust the signaling. It is like stabbing blindly with random patterns and hoping that something will happen.

But detecting REM sleep is only the first part of the equation, the good thing is that REM detection is getting to be practically free with iPhone and inexpensive lucid dreaming masks.  The second part is that a stimulus must be found that is effective at "inducing a lucid dream".

My own experiments can hardly be called laboratory, and most of them use iPhone actigraphy. I can tell you that I tried various types of audio, light and vibration cues, which were delivered as close to REM as I could manage.  As much as I wanted to say that they work, they don't. My lucid dreaming smartphone apps have been published to the app store and have tens of thousands of users.

For all the customization options that I included in the apps, I've yet to hear a single "Yes, I'm absolutely certain that an external cue has triggered a lucid dream for me" from the users.

Occasionally there may be some connection noticed or something that happens in a dream may be linked to the external cue playing in the real world. But the majority of lucid dreams that are experienced by the device users can just as well be linked to the fact that a user is more interested and aware of the phenomenon of lucid dreaming.

If you read about first hand experiences with lucid dream inducing masks, then you will find out that the statements above are echoed many times - once in a while there's something that flashes in a dream, but it is very difficult to recognize. This is what people who spent 500$ on a mask say over and over again.

To conclude, I'd say that regardless of what you look at - Remee, NovaDreamer, REM Dreamer or various iPhone/Android apps for lucid dream induction, there's nothing currently at the market that can put a novice into a state of lucid dreaming on the first night, without training.

I would love to test them in a real lab though.


Is there any scientific literature on the "shower principle" (i.e., taking a break from a task leads to unexpected insights)?

That moment is often called the "aha moment", the Eureka effect, or more generally, insight.  There is literature on it, but as you might expect, it is a pretty difficult thing to produce in a lab.

Some references:
The AHA! experience: Creativity through emergent binding in neural networks.
Thagard, Paul; Stewart, Terrence C.. Cognitive Science35.1 (Jan-Feb 2011): 1-33.

Gaining insight into the "aha" experience.
Topolinski, Sascha Reber, Rolf. Current Directions in Psychological Science19.6(Dec 2010): 402-405.

The aha! Moment: The cognitive neuroscience of insight.
Kounios, John; Beeman, Mark. Current Directions in Psychological Science18.4(Aug 2009): 210-216.

Neural correlates of the “aha” experiences: Evidence from an fMRI study of insight problem solving.
Qiu, JiangView Profile; Li, Hong; Jou, JerwenView Profile; Liu, Jia; Luo, Yuejia; et al. Cortex: A Journal Devoted to the Study of the Nervous System and Behavior46.3 (Mar 2010): 397-403.


ML/Neuroscience: TensorFlow vs PyTorch vs Keras for bulding NN models of the nervous system?

If you want to build a neural network as a biological simulation, maybe none of these are the best options, since they are more suitable for deep neural networks. If you want to mimic synapses using some model as Hodgkin and Huxley, you must use some different approaches. For that, you may use NEURON environment (https://neuron.yale.edu/neuron/), which has some implementations of the theoretical models behind action potentials. It comes with a gui, but personally I don't like it, so I just code everything using their python's library.

On the other hand, if you are just looking for a way to model a network, without adding too much complexity, then any of your examples are probably are ok to build directed graphs.


Does Andler's (2012) article on 'Mathematics in Cognitive Science' provide an accurate picture of mathematics in cognitive science?

Thoughts on the paper

The paper appears to provide a high level overview of the role of mathematics in cognitive science. I'm not a sufficient expert in the overall field of cognitive science where I'd feel comfortable to truly judge the accuracy of the overall synthesis that Andler (2012) provides. That said, much of the paper is about providing examples of how mathematics integrates with cognitive science. And the examples seem reasonable. I could think of other examples that pertain to my work, but their absence does not really detract from the paper.

Andler also makes a number of distinctions about how mathematics can integrate with cognitive science. For example there is the kind of integration that statistics has with many experimental disciplines which is both fundamental and not very specific.

So in short, I think the paper provides a thought provoking big picture overview of the issues of interfacing maths with cognitive science.

Implications for you doing advanced work

This paper could potentially be motivating, but it might also be discouraging. It's so high level that it creates a vision, but the vision is so large that it might be overwhelming.

To do ground breaking research in cognitive science (or any area for that matter), you need to specialise. If you want to do research interfacing maths with cognitive science you would also specialise. The result is that you would only need a small subset of mathematics and cognitive science mentioned in the article. I use mathematics and statistics a lot in my research, and there's plenty of mathematics mentioned in that paper which I know little about.

If you are wanting to do research in this area, exposing yourself to a good undergraduate curriculum in mathematics, statistics, computing, and cognitive science would be a good start along with exposure to research. Then pursue a PhD with an appropriate advisor where you can hone your skills in a particular domain.

In terms of mathematics my own bias would favour learning calculus, linear algebra, probability, and statistics, but that's just my bias. It's also useful to learn how to code.


Determining the position of the calcium ion in the three dimensional space

It is generally not possible to measure where a single calcium ion is in three dimensional space. However, it is possible to measure relative calcium ion concentration across a population of neurons using Two-Photon-Microscopy.

I stress relative because it does not give you an exact concentration of Calcium in terms of micro-molar concentration. However it is good enough to extract relative spike times of a individual neurons within the population.

The way "Calcium Imaging" works is the experimenter loads a neuron or population of neurons with a fluorescing dye that "lights up"  in the presence of calcium. There are many such chemicals which are listed in this article here. The one I personally see being used in articles a lot is FURA-2.

As for frequency it depends on the experiment typically range from 60Hz to 490 Hz.Be aware however the faster the sample rate is the more noise in the measurements.

Do note that these methods are highly invasive, and require brain slices in vitro or opening the skull in vivo. As far as I am aware no study has been done on live humans. Typically rats are used.


Can you get sad by sniffing onions, just like you can get happy by forcing yourself to smile?

I assume you're referring to the experiment by Strack, Martin, and Stepper (1988) in which people rated a cartoon as funnier when they had to hold their face in a smile shape by gripping a pencil in their teeth.

This has been applied to negative affect by Larsen, Kasimatis, and Frey (1992) who had participants furrow their brows during an activity. Golf tees were attached to their eyebrows such that furrowing the brow caused the tips of the tees to touch together. Participants showed more negative emotion in the brow furrowing condition (in which they were instructed to keep the tips of the tees touching).

Both studies, however, hypothesize that the effects are due to facial expression, specifically, to sensations of activating the muscles associated with positive or negative emotions. In the onion paradigm that you propose, it is unclear which (if any) emotion-relevant muscle activations would happen in conjunction with eye irritation.

Nobody that I know of has studied whether eye irritation or production of tears (independent of the accompanying facial expressions associated with sadness) will lead to an increase in sadness.

A competing theory might be that since crying can be cathartic, tear production might make people feel better rather than worse. However the research support for crying and catharsis is mixed and depends heavily on the context of the crying (Bylsma, Vingerhoets, & Rottenberg, 2008).

References
Strack et al., J Personality Social Psych (1998); 54(5): 768-7

Larsen et al., Cognition and emotion (1992); 6(5): 321-338

Bylsma et al., J Social and Clinical Psych (2008), 27(10): 1165-1187


What is the meaning of the peak polarity in EEG data?

Short answer
The peak polarity of an EEG is arbitrary.

Background
Positive and negative in an EEG measure is arbitrary. If you measure the EEG between two electrodes and you flip the wires, the polarity of the signal will reverse too.

Only when standard EEG montages are used, in which the active and reference electrodes are strictly defined, then signal polarity makes sense, but only because a certain convention is followed.

If you are interested in peak amplitudes - they are independent of polarity, as long as the peak latencies are defined and absolute values are reported.

If you are interested in peak latencies and wish to compare those with others, then you do need to be aware what polarity your signal has. If you find out the polarity is reversed due to whatever reason - multiply every sample simply with -1. Problem solved.


Name of the bias where someone really needs something after they find out it exists

It's not a bias. It is natural human nature. At least the 2 year old's case is.

It's just like how you would not have thought of going to Six Flags (An amusement park) unless it was mentioned to you.

When the 2 year old hears ice cream, the kid thinks of the sweet taste, or the pleasure ice cream brings. In the kid's case, the case is impatience or inability to defer gratification.

For the employee, it is simply that he thinks the cycling of the tank and fish delivery would take less longer than a week or two.

The two examples are both different things. I am positive that the 2 year old's case is NOT a bias. The employee's case may simply be surprise.


What is the most effective maximum work duration per day?

This is a part-answer to your question and it doesn't come from occupational psychology, but from expertise research.

Findings from Expertise Research

In their seminal paper on the role of deliberate practice for the acquisition of expert performance, Ericsson et al. (1993) report a number of constraints that play a role in the acquisition of expert performance. One of these constraints is the effort constraint. What is meant by this is that, in order to improve one's skill, one has to engage in deliberate practice, which by definition is an effortful activity that requires full concentration. It is clear that such an activity cannot be kept up for very large amounts of time. Ericsson et al. cite works by Welford (1968) and Woodford & Schlosberg (1954) (which I haven't read) that compare the efficiency of practice durations ranging from 1-8 hr a day. These studies find that there is

  essentially no benefit from durations exceeding 4 hr per day and reduced benefit from practice exceeding 2 hr. (Ericsson et al., 1993, p.370)

The authors then report that studies on the aquisition of typing skill by Baddely & Longman (1978) and Dvorak et al. (1936), and studies on other perceptual motor skills (Henshaw & Holman, 1930) which

  indicate that the effective duration of deliberate practice is may be closer to 1 hr per day. (Ibid.)

Finally, they cite a study by Pirelli & J.R. Anderson (1985) that found

  no increased learning from doubling the number of training trials per session. (Ibid.)

Thereafter, Ericsson et al. (1993) turn to more intellectually demanding domains. They report on data from financially independent writers, who

  tend to write only 4 hr per day, leaving the rest of the day for rest and recuperation (Cowley, 1959; Plimpton, 1977). (Ibid., p.371)

In their own study 1, which investigated violinists at music college, the authors found that the best students practiced on average 3.5 hr per day.

Maximum vs. Typical Performance

From these findings it seems that the optimal duration lies somewhere between 1 and 4 hours. But it's important to note that this only holds for conditions of maximal effort and full concentration. Furthermore these studies investigate the acquisition, not the execution of a skill, which presumably is more important in the workplace. I would still argue that they can still be relevant in a work context.

In io-psychology there is the distinction between maximum and typical performance. Everything I have said so far obviously refers to maximum performance. The intellectual work of a scientist that you mention in your question might fall into this category. I can also imagine that a software developer needs full concentration. Probably, though, periods that require maximum performance and those that "only" require typical performance alternate. The time limit for typical performance may be much longer.

So my answer is only a part answer in at least two ways: First it only provides information about the time limit for maximum performance. Second, the studies that I cite have not actually been done within an occupational setting.

References:

Baddeley, A. D., & Longman, D. J. A. (1978). The influence of length and frequency of training session on the rate of learning to type. Ergonomics, 21(8), 627-635.
Cowley, M.(Ed.). (1953). Writers at work: The Paris review interviews, second series. New York: Penguin Books.
Dvorak, A., Merrick, N. L., Dealey, W. L., & Ford, G. C. (1936). Typewriting behavior. New York: American Book Company.
Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100(3), 363–406. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.100.3.363 PDF
Pirolli, P. L., & Anderson, J. R. (1985). The role of practice in fact retrieval. Journal of experimental psychology: Learning, memory, and cognition, 11(1), 136.PDF
Plimpton, G. (Ed.). (1976). Writers at work: The Paris review interviews. New York: Viking Press.
Welford, A.T. (1968). Fundamentals of skill. London: Methuen.
Woodworth, R. S., & Schlosberg, H. (1954). Experimental psychology. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.


The effect of learning/expertise on cognitive control

Sure.

I'll update this answer as I come across more papers, but here:

Alves, H., Voss, M. W., Boot, W. R., Deslandes, A., Cossich, V., Salles, J. I., & Kramer, A. F. (2013). Perceptual-Cognitive Expertise in Elite Volleyball Players. Frontiers in Psychology Front. Psychol., 4. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00036

  The goal of the current study was to investigate the relationship
  between sport expertise and perceptual and cognitive skills, as
  measured by the component skills approach. We hypothesized that
  athletes would outperform non-athlete controls in a number of
  perceptual and cognitive domains and that sport expertise would
  minimize gender differences. A total of 154 individuals (87
  professional volleyball players and 67 non-athlete controls)
  participated in the study. Participants performed a cognitive battery,
  which included tests of executive control, memory, and visuo-spatial
  attention. Athletes showed superior performance speed on three tasks
  (two executive control tasks and one visuo-spatial attentional
  processing task). In a subset of tasks, gender effects were observed
  mainly in the control group, supporting the notion that athletic
  experience can reduce traditional gender effects. The expertise
  effects obtained substantiate the view that laboratory tests of
  cognition may indeed enlighten the sport-cognition relationship.

It isn't a precise confirmation of the statement; after all, it only finds a relationship between cognitive control and expertise in a particular domain. But it definitely supports the statement.

This article here:

Voss, M. W., Kramer, A. F., Basak, C., Prakash, R. S., & Roberts, B. (2009). Are expert athletes ‘expert’ in the cognitive laboratory? A meta-analytic review of cognition and sport expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 24(6), 812-826. doi:10.1002/acp.1588

performs a whole meta-analysis on athlete expertise and cognitive performance and offers a lot of results confirming increased attentional performance, but specifically states (in the year 2009!):

  we found no studies that have examined classic executive function
  measures such as task-switching, dual task performance, or inhibition

The article found here found that:

  Fencing experience and physical fitness facilitate a person's ability
  to withhold action when necessary. The interactive nature of aerobic
  fitness and sport expertise on action inhibition suggests that
  cognitive control benefits most from the combination of physical and
  mental training compared to when each is administered singly.

and I think I'm bored now! Hope this helps.


"Daddy issues" is not a well-defined term, however, the extrapolation of attachment style theory answers to this question somewhat.

Relationship outcomes of different attachment styles

(this is not clearly cognitive science, and more precisely "family issues" instead of "daddy issues")

Stack Overflow thread about the topic

(I'm new here, and amazed how well written are the answers :O )


What is the most comprehensive system of describing human emotions or states of mind?

There a are globally two perspectives

the discrete perspective uses a categorization system. There are many different systems, with more or less core emotions and sub-emotions. As the one shown in your post.
the dimensional perspective considers one, mainly two, sometimes more, scales to identify an emotional value. Valence (happy/sad) and arousal (sleepy/excited) are quite frequent for those models.

It's not so easy to choose between the two perspectives. And there are different models for each perspective. Discrete based models are easier to handle by anyone because they make use of usual names. But it suffers a bias of interpretation of those names meaning.
In this way, indicating a level of valence or arousal is maybe more accurate,  but less user-friendly.

For the dimensional perspective, Scherer's Component Process Model version (2005) is quite comprehensive,  based on the updated model of Russell (2003).

Depending of the model, some tools are developed to assess the emotion.

References:

Scherer, K. (2005) What are emotions and how can they be measured?

Russell, J. A. (2003). Core affect and the psychological construction of emotion. Psychological Review, 110, 145-172.


What safeguards are in place to prevent abuse of power?

As @ArnonWeinberg mentioned, clinical supervision, detailed in my answer to the previous question will prevent abuse of position.

Clinical supervisors have a duty of care, not only to the supervisee (the therapist), but also the supervisee's clients, and if the supervisor feels that abuse of power is occurring they must refer it to the governing bodies to remove their licence to practice.

If they feel there are any mental health issues preventing the supervisee from acting effectively, then the supervisor will refer the supervisee for therapy. If necessary, they may also take further action to prevent the therapist from causing harm to their clients whilst undergoing therapy. I have added this point to my previous answer mentioned here.


Is pleasure synonymous to positive reinforcement?

Before I even start to try answering this question, it should be said that there is no clear and definitive answer. Endless debates are everywhere on the subject of consciousness but nothing has come close to becoming concrete, since many fields of knowledge have very different thing to say (like biology, philosophy, and of course, psychology).
So, as a psychologist, I will give information to try to give the best answer I can from my perspective:
Going to early psychology, in behaviorism (the works of mostly Pavlov, Skinner and Watson) have come to the conclusion that human behaviour will always steer in direction of receiving rewards and avoiding punishment, in other words, yes: our decisions are always in search of pleasure and escaping,reducing eliminating and (preferably) staying away of stressful stimuli.
The feelings of pleasure are tied to the neurotransmitter of dopamine, as it is well known, and the feelings of stress and discomfort are tied to cortisol (It is a lot more complicated than that, but I am trying to be simple and to keep it short). These hormones are released when the enviroment interacts with a person in a certain way, meaning that the objects or actions themselves are not what bring these emotions, but our perceptions and appreciation of the stimuli in question. This is the foundation of the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations.
Thanks to everyone's definition of pleasure and stress being different, and our own definitions of these terms can evolve and change (Mostly to our ever-changing perspective and more accurately, our neurotransmitter receptors adapting accordingly to the amounts of dopamine or cortisol being received) is that we don't make the same choices than the rest of humanity or even that our decisions are not always constant, since we make decisions are in the moment, and our solution to the problem "What is going to give me the most pleasure?" is made somethings in the split of a second.
These hormones have been guides to ensure our survival as a species, making us feel good about things that are good for us (Like good food and sex) and making us flee or solve bad situations (Like the pressence of a predator, or being socially rejected). But as we grew smarter, we learn to "cheat" our innate reward system to make us feel good a in much more ways and situations. Smoking, drugs, and junk food does sure give a rush of dopamine, but the pleasure it gives surely contradict the effects they do to our health, so dopamine and cortisol are no longer reliable indicators that we are doing a "good choice."
We can even make this MORE complicated if we start bringing in to this discussion the psychodinamics theories of Consciousness and the Unconscious, since if these ideas are to be believed, we could be making decisions that bring us stress and discomfort subconsciously, trying to appease the desires that we are not aware, giving some form of pleasure that we do not even accept.
And bringing this wall of text to a conclusion, you COULD try to make a formula of behaviour with the variables of stress and pleasure, but would it be scientifically accurate and consistent? I don't think it can be done, by the very nature of biology and neural science, there is an constant evolution of pleasure and our understanding, and too many variables to be an effective algorithm to be applied to a considerable size of persons. But it surely has been theorized.
So far my links have been Wikipedia articles, to make researching a bit simpler if you are not willing to read entire books and articles, but I do not recommend this if you are serious about your learning of the subjects. Here I will list some books and explain how they relate to your question:

The Principles of Learning and Behaviour by Michael Domjan. This detailed book can help you understand every facet of the more earlier works of behaviorism and some of the more present ideas.

Neurochemistry of Consciousness by Elaine Perry. It surely is a heavy read, but very insightful and detailed if you are for the task.

Unconscious Influences on Decision making by Géraldine Coppin. While I am not usually font of psychodinamics theories of decisions, I feel obligated to link at least an article to let you read on it and make your own conclusions.

Hope this helps.


Do action video games have an effect on spatial skills?

The concept of mental rotation was introduced by Shepard & Metzler (1971). The 3D assemblages of cubes were part of their original experiment. Vandenburg and Kuse (1978) later developed a paper-and-pencil test based on this prior experiment, named the Vandenberg and Kuse’s Mental Rotation Test (VMRT).

The study which Bavelier most likely refers to is one done by Feng et al. (2007). [PDF]

  In Experiment 2, we compared spatial attention and cognition in men
  and women before and after 10 hr of action-video-game training. A
  control group trained for 10 hr with a non-action game. [...] In
  addition, we assessed higher-level spatial abilities using a mental
  rotation test (MRT; see Fig. 1b). We expected to ﬁnd enhanced MRT
  performance as a by-product of improvements in spatial attentional
  capacity after training.

The games played were Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault by the experimental group, and Ballance, a 3-D puzzle game by the control group.

  We had not originally
  planned a follow-up testing session; however, we were able to contact
  and retest all 20 subjects after an average interval of about 5 months
  (16–24 weeks).

Results

  Both males and females in the experimental group improved, but there
  was no signiﬁcant change from pretest to posttest in the control group
  [...] furthermore, the improvement in the experimental group was larger
  for females (2.0 to 2.7) than for males (2.9 to 3.2), F(1, 8) 5
  5.193, prep 5 .87, Z 2 5 .39, and the performance of the females on the posttest was indistinguishable from that of the males in the
  control group. Although the gender difference on the MRT was not
  eliminated, its size was much reduced (see Fig. 3, lower left panel).

Although not the exact study which Bavelier demonstrated, a study done by Isabelle D. Cherney (2008) demonstrates similar results using the VMRT test. A huge section of the paper reviews existing relevant research which might be interesting to look into. The focus of this particular study is to ...

  ... examine whether the type (3-D vs. 2-D) and
  delivery (massed vs. distributed practice) affect the degree of
  improvement of males’ and females’ mental rotation performance and how
  individual differences such as anxiety, prior spatial experiences such
  as computer game play, and mathematical performance might affect
  performance. Two existing visuospatial tests, Vandenberg and Kuse’s
  (1978) mental rotation test and the card rotation test (CRT;
  Educational Testing Services Sanders et al. 1982) that have shown
  gender differences and that are of different levels of difficulty,
  were used.

Tested games were The 3-D Antz© racing computer game, the 2-D Tetrus© computer game, or several paper-and-pencil logic games.

  An equal number of men and women were then randomly assigned to [the games] for a half hour. Participants returned to the laboratory for
  another three times for 1 h of practice each. About half of the
  participants in each practice condition were randomly exposed to
  either: (a) distributed practice sessions (they completed the three
  1-h practice sessions over more than 2 weeks) or (b) massed practice
  sessions (they completed the three 1-h practice sessions within 3
  days). During the final session, after a half hour of practice,
  participants completed the two mental rotation tests as a posttest.
  Participants were exposed to a total of four training hours. They were
  asked to abstain to play any computer games between the practice
  sessions.

Practice effect analyses

  Bonferroni adjusted paired sample t-tests on both mental rotation
  pre-and posttest scores showed that, for the VMRT there were
  significant improvements for women, t(30)=−3.6, p=.001, but not for
  men

Shepard, R. N., & Metzler, J. (1971). Mental rotation of three-dimensional objects. Science 171, 701-703.
Steven, G. V., & ALLAN, R. (1978). Mental rotations, a group test of three-dimensional spatial visualization. Perceptual and motor skills, 47(2), 599-604.
Cherney, I. D. (2008). Mom, let me play more computer games: They improve my mental rotation skills. Sex Roles, 59(11), 776-786.
Feng, J., Spence, I., & Pratt, J. (2007). Playing an action video game reduces gender differences in spatial cognition. Psychological Science, 18(10), 850-855. [PDF]


What indicates an extreme worry about privacy?

I'm by no means an expert or qualified, but here's my thoughts.
I believe there are a few factors at play:

Our Privacy

The first is the perception that the information carries some threat to their lifestyle or reputation, e.g. an adult who views pornography or a cheating spouse, for both of whom this causes that initial concern of the threat of exposure (and we may over-estimate their impact upon exposure as a form of impact bias).

Second, narcissism: they're worried their actions could be considered damaging to their image and believe that those who invade their privacy (a government / a social network selling aggregate topic stats to marketers, etc.) would take great delight in exposing their behaviour. Of course they wouldn't, but people generally like to think their own lives are of importance to everyone, and so why wouldn't their "important" secrets be of importance to everyone else?

Others' Privacy

First I'll throw in that the person may remember the last time they were burnt by their privacy being invaded by others (such as malicious gossip), which may serve as a negative reinforcement to not infringe on others'. You remember the last time and how much it hurt you and don't wish to knowingly inflict that on someone else, especially for no personal gain.

There is also the thought that if we do a good deed that others will reward us for it...or if we deem ourselves to have done something selfless, we derive gratification from it. This is also closely linked to narcissism. I read something ages ago that inferred there is never a truly selfless act, as we often do it to feed our ego.

If legislative changes are made to protect privacy generally (e.g. social networks' usage of private messages are tightly controlled), then we also could benefit from this, so there is also potentially some selfish gain in concern over other people's privacy, and we can project how we are annoyed at a particular company doing something with our data on "behalf of a friend".

Finally, if we believe strongly that our own "privacy" is important (when in reality most people are just referring to morally questionable behaviour they would like to suppress), then we also see others' as just as important as some way to justify that our own belief in the protection of our privacy is founded. A "bias blind spot" and "confirmation bias" appear in the list of cognitive biases.


Why do people like to listen to sad songs?

Maya Tamir's work probably sheds the most light here.  Her work suggests that we're not merely trying to avoid bad feelings and promote good ones.  Instead, we want to feel what's most useful to us.  We want to feel emotions that help us realize our goals (Tamir, 2009).  If we think sadness has some positive behavioral value, then we'll try to upregulate it.

Rumination is an extreme example of this kind of focus on negative feelings, where chronic ruminators share metacognitive beliefs about the positive value of focusing on negative feelings and thoughts (e.g., Papageorgiou & Wells, 2001).  They think that rumination helps them to understand their feelings and prevent future mistakes, even though it's ultimately maladaptive.


Is there evidence for cross-cultural differences in problem solving skills?

A bit of a broad question as a full answer will really depend on the specifics of the problem being addressed.

In short though, yes, cultural factors, and probably to some extent linguistic factors as well, do impact on problem solving processes.

One of the main cross-cultural factors that can alter problem solving is the whole individualism/collectivism distinctions between broader cultural systems and they promote the use of analytic vs holistic perceptual styles. The answer in this post perhaps answers the question in a slightly more applied manner. Another thing to consider can be how certain cultural norms can promote logical vs intuitive reasoning processes as well (see Buchtel & Norenzayan, 2005).

As for language, the general consensus is that it is not the language in and of itself that shapes cognition, but rather the cultural norms or ways of being associated with any given language as a means of cultural communication (See Earle, 1969 for an example).


In this answer, I'm going to use "self" to describe the person who is empathizing and "other" as the person who is the target of that empathy (the person who's trying to be related to).

The most advance model of empathy (in terms of affective empathy and emotional contagion) that I know of is featured in "A Recipe for Empathy" by Lim et al. which is based on the idea that mirror neurons provide the body of the "other", the insula which associates the action to the emotional state and the somato-sensory cortex which represents that emotional state in the robot's own state.

She demonstrates the effectiveness of this model by first having a robot learn associations between it's own state and emotions (via motherese-like training), and then seeing if when the robot was exposed to other data, if it had the appropriate response, in terms of classification and internal-mapping. Results showed an adult-like empathy level.

In the paper, Angelica notes that one of the limitations of her model is that it does not address cognitive empathy as Hideki Kozima's model does. I will update this answer with how Hideki does this once I finish reading his paper.

Although both of these models use purely statistical models (Angelica uses Gaussian Mixture Models and Hideki uses) with only vague references to the functionality of various neural areas, they are somewhat biologically plausible, since the computations they are doing are not unfeasible for something like the Neural Engineering Fraemwork to perform.

For further information, I would recommend reading the Handbook of Research on Synthesizing Human Emotion in Intelligent Systems and the Journal on Synthetic Emotion, both which seems to contain further resources for this path of investigation.


Empirical proof for social network models

Existing Papers
I found three papers in the same vein with considerably more empirical evidence.
1. Modeling the Size of Wars
In the paper, provinces and conflicts are modeled to justify Richardson's observation that the proportion of conflict severity in relation to their frequency is described by a power law. In other words, the more space there is between each conflict, the more casualties will result. The models uses a lot of detail. A geographical map is created and conflicts (down to technological advancement, political structural change and resource allocation) are simulated in models with dozens of parameters. More importantly, the level of detail in the paper allows parameters to be set to test historical scenarios to disprove or give further evidence to the model.
2. The Dynamics of Polarisation
The focus of the paper is modeling the change of public opinion in the United States as a way to provide explanation for two phenomenon:

Polarization of opinion is rare despite being perceived otherwise
Opinion homogeneity is rare, despite being perceive otherwise.

To model these phenomenon, a network similar to that of the Opinion Dynamics paper from the question is built, with imposed homophily. However, the paper grounds it's parameters in reality (for example, take-off issues that stimulate much discussion are considered rare). In contrast, the Opinion Dynamics paper creates parameters for skepticism and empathy, without giving much consideration for the mechanisms behind these attributes and how they might change over time.
3. A Psychologically-Motivated Model of Opinion Change with Applications to American Politics
This paper justifies modeling 2D distributed agents using the psychological parameters Influence, Susceptibility and Conformity and their interaction. The model is then validated on American political opinions as they shift over time.
Conclusion
There are papers with empirical basis in the domain of social network models. Typically, this realism is achieved by basing parameters on empirical evidence, rather than simplification of cognitive phenomena.
Reply from author of Social Network papers
The author of two of the papers I cited in the question, Alan Tsang, was kind enough to provide a rebuttal to my scepticism via personal correspondence:

The premise behind both the papers was to examine the effects of a
particular psychological phenomenon by examining it in isolation.  We
base our work on more conventional agent models from economics, which
assume completely rational actors.  We want to see what happens when
the rational behavior is tweaked to incorporate a behavioral
component.  In particular, we are interested in the qualitative
effects that are produced, and the mechanisms by which these are
achieved.  An agent based simulation is the ideal way of studying
this, because it allows us to drill down and take measurements that
would be impossible or very difficult to do in an actual community.
So what we are doing is more mathematics and less science.  The
results of the papers provide qualitative insights on what are
plausible effects of these behaviors on a larger system.  The next
step could certainly be to validate the model against real data, but
the goal of the paper is not to perform "full stack" science.  Rather,
we hope it would prove useful component in a more detailed model to be
used on data collect in the wild.
That said, we are also interested in validating our model against real
data as well, but they are difficult to come by.  For instance,
Facebook almost certainly has access to data that can be used to
detect homophily in networks, and how they might affect opinions over
time.  But the data is very proprietary and, even if we were to get
it, ethical concerns might limit how it can be used.  As you've
pointed out in the follow-up post, there are a few papers that examine
political affiliation, and those could potentially be useful ground
truth.  But I don't have the background to properly assemble such a
data set from scratch (as it would need both a time series of
opinions, and the underlying network structure).  Moreover, there are
sure to be other effects at work as well, which may confound the
analysis.  We're giving some thought to gathering data for the last
Canadian election, since strategic voting was so widespread and
successful, but any data we collect will likely be disconnected from
social network structure.  Maybe some aggregate network properties
could be inferred (ex: based on region), but it would be a
multi-layered problem.


How to calculate IQ score based on raw score and adjust for age?

IQ scores in general: An IQ score is a normative score. The norm group is typically defined as the general population, and where the respondent is a child, the norm group is defined in terms of the general population of children of that same age. IQ scores typically have a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15.

In order to get an estimate of performance on the test of a norm group, it is necessary to get a sample from that population. Large and unbiased samples from the population are preferred.

Before discussing how to get IQ scores for children, let's focus on adults where there is no age adjustment. Assume we get a sample of 1,000 adult participants that is hopefully representative of a given adult population and we administer the intelligence test to the participants. We score the test and we then get a set of raw test scores. The most common scoring system is one point per correct question, but many other systems are possible including penalising for incorrect answers, weighting some questions more than others, and so on. Once you have raw scores, there are now several options for creating a norm table that converts raw scores into IQ scores. The simplest approach is to get the raw mean and standard deviation, convert to z-scores, and then convert to IQ units:

$$\begin{array}{c} {z_i}{\rm{ \;=\; }}\frac{{{\rm{x}}_i}{\rm{ \;-\; }}{{\rm{MEAN}}}}{{\rm{SD}}}\\ {\rm{IQ}_i}{\rm{ \;= 100 }} +{\rm{ }}{z_i}{} \times {\rm{ 15}} \end{array}$$

Where MEAN is the mean of the normative sample, SD is the SD of the normative sample, $x_i$ is the the score of respondent $i$, $z_i$ is respondent $i$'s z-score, and $\rm{IQ}_i$ is participant $i$'s IQ score.

Angoff (1984, the text is available online for free from ETS) calls this the linear transformation (standard scores) approach. There are more advanced methods which you can read about in Angoff (1984) such as percentile-derived linear scale, percentile rank scale, normalised scale.

Age adjustments: Angoff (1984) also discusses how to construct age equivalent norms.

In summary, if you want to get IQ scores for children, then your aim is to estimate the distribution of raw test scores in the general population for each age group of interest. There are various ways of doing this. The simplest approach is to get large samples of children at each year age of interest, and get means and standard deviations, and use them as above as appropriate. A more sophisticated approach involves smoothing the data to get an estimate of the systematic changes in both the mean and the standard deviation with age. Such a smoothed model can also be applied to get more fine grained estimates of a child who is say not exactly 10 years old, but rather 10 years and 5 months. There are many variations on this approach, and there are many issues to consider regarding the applicability of the same intelligence test to adults and children, especially as you get towards early childhood.

See also this earlier question about Raven's Matrices and age adjusted norms.

References

Angoff, W. (1984). Scales, norms, and equivalent scores. Educational Measurement: Origins, Theories, and Explications, 2, 121. PDF


Does explaining a visual guidance system affect visual attention distribution?

Whether you tell them is going to depend on what you are trying to accomplish. What is the nature of the cues? If they capture strictly exogenous attention, what you tell won't affect how they allocate their attention because orienting is completely involuntary. However, if the cues involve your participants having to decide to redirect their attention, explaining it to them will affect how they allocate their attention and will likely lead to them relying more on your cues.