Biological plausibility of bayesian models of cognition

When performing certain tasks, people’s inferences approximate Bayesian inference to a remarkable degree. For example, when people receive both haptic and visual information about the size of an object, they combine this information in a manner that very closely resembles Bayesian inference, taking account of the uncertainties associated with the visual and haptic information (e.g., Ernst & Banks, 2002). This optimality can be observed in many perceptual (Knill & Pouget, 2004) and sensorimotor (Kording & Wolpert, 2004, 2006) tasks and across a range of information sources (e.g., including prior beliefs and multiple sensory inputs). These findings suggest that there must be biological mechanisms that either implement Bayesian inference or implement something that very closely resembles it.
At the same time, there is no consensus regarding how this is done. While there are proposals about how neural populations might perform Bayesian inference (e.g., Ma, Beck, Latham, & Pouget, 2006; Knill & Pouget, 2004; Kover & Bao, 2010), it is difficult to evaluate these proposals at present: the available neuroscientific evidence is quite limited. Moreover, because the most compelling evidence for Bayesian inference is limited to low-level perceptual processes, it is possible that higher-level inferences are implemented by biological mechanisms that do not perform Bayesian inference. Indeed, given the computational difficulty of Bayesian inference in general, it seems all but inevitable that many biological mechanisms will not implement Bayesian inference exactly.
In summary, some biological mechanisms must perform something like Bayesian inference, but researchers have only begun to explore how this happens, and the extent to which high-level perception and cognition rely on Bayesian computations remains unclear.
References

Knill, D. C., & Pouget, A. (2004). The Bayesian brain: the role of uncertainty in neural coding and computation. Trends in Neurosciences, 27 (12), 712-719. [pdf]
Kording, K. P., & Wolpert, D. M. (2004). Bayesian integration in sensorimotor learning. Nautre, 427, 244-247. [pdf]
Kording, K. P, & Wolpert, D. M. (2006). Bayesian decision theory in sensorimotor control. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10 (7), 319-326. [pdf]
Ma, W. J., Beck, J. M., Latham, P. E., & Pouget, A. (2006). Bayesian inference with probabilistic population codes. Nature Neuroscience, 9 (11), 1432-1438. [pdf]
Ernst, M. O., & Banks, M. S. (2002). Humans integrate visual and haptic information a statistically optimal fashion. Nature, 415, 429-433. [link]


Neurotransmitter control via biofeedback?

Firstly, you wouldn't be directly controlling neurotransmitter.  From the human perspective, you'd be controlling higher-level events (and they aren't necessarily describable on more than a phenomenological level).  Of course, this would also lead to some changes in neurotransmitter release, but in a complex way: that's all handled at a lower level by the cells.

That being said, neurofeedback is a (the?) clinical practice that most closely matches your question.  If you look at the references in the wiki page I linked, you will see lots of papers reporting on the findings and techniques.  I do not know the current state of the research.


Tests of Semantic Memory suitable for 10 to 18 year old

This seems difficult for a number of reasons.

First, are you interested in testing the retrieval of pre-existing semantic memories or the ability to form new semantic memories?  It is entirely possible that exposure to nature increases one without the other, so be sure you're testing the one you're interested in (or both, carefully).

Second, semantic memory is highly dependent on environmental exposure (e.g., I know that trains in the Netherlands are blue and yellow, but if you haven't been there, you probably don't), and thus creating an appropriate semantic memory task will vary by demographic (much more finely cut than "10-18yo"), location, etc.  This means that a general test of semantic knowledge is unlikely to be valid over a large set of the population.

Third, semantic memory is extremely susceptible to practice effects (otherwise studying wouldn't work), so figuring out something that can be administered more than once without major order effects is unlikely.  You will probably have to find a task and split it into subsets which can be administered at different times, which will compound your demographic problem above by requiring more items.

If you want to test ability to encode semantic memory, the task in a paper like McKoon & Ratcliff (1986) may be helpful.  If you want to test the ability to retrieve pre-existing semantic memories, something like that used in Patterson et al. (2014) would be more useful.  You may want to repurpose either procedure by substituting scholastically relevant facts for their category recognition and/or new encoding tasks.

Automatic activation of episodic information in a semantic memory task.
McKoon, G., & Ratcliff, R.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Vol 12(1), Jan 1986, 108-115. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.12.1.108

Semantic memory: Which side are you on?
Patterson, K., Kopelman, M., Woollams, A., Brownsett, S., Geranmayeh, F., et al. Neuropsychologia (Nov 22, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.11.024


How does the order of words influence our ability to remember a question once it's asked again?

No influence

There should be no influence given two text forms are semantically identical.

Our memory isn't a tape recorder

Had our brain worked like tape-recorder, storing and retrieving information would be far less efficient - both in terms of resources (amount of neurons) and time (to store or retrieve). Remembering a full sentence gives us little - its meaning is what important.

It is associative

So our brain and memory, being a network, is associative: Everything we remember is represented by a complex sub-network of links and neurons.

The exact words in a sentence quickly turn (as they move bottom up) into higher level verbal models which represent the actual semantics.

Try it yourself, 40 seconds later

You don't remember every word in this answer (doubt you remember the starting word in the previous sentence - 'So'), but you do remember its overall meaning.

So, any changes to the text form, particularly if the exposure time between them does not allow them to stay in our working memory, should have no influence.


Do school teachers demand more from their children than other students?

From Personal Experience, teachers will demand more from their child if their child is in that class for a couple of reasons: To show the rest of the class that there is no favoritism towards the child, as well as to ensure that the child performs exceptionally in the class.

Whether they achieve better/worse results is dependent on the level that this "extra demand" is taken to. For example a child may feel like he's being treated unfairly, and act out as a result, or become overwhelmed by the amount of work. But if it is a reasonable increase in demand, then the student will surely benefit.


Analyzing EEG time-frequency data in a factorial design

It is possible to look at within-subject interactions using cluster permutation tests.
I.e. Eric Maris here: https://mailman.science.ru.nl/pipermail/fieldtrip/2011-January/003447.html

2x2x2 with factors A,B,C has 4 interactions AxB, AxC, BxC and AxBxC and 8 cells

+--------+-------------+-------------+
| C = 0  |    B = 0    |    B = 1    |
+--------+-------------+-------------+
| A = 0  | A0 B0 C0    | A0 B1 C0    |
| A = 1  | A1 B0 C0    | A1 B1 C0    |
+--------+-------------+-------------+

+--------+-------------+-------------+
| C = 1  |    B = 0    |    B = 1    |
+--------+-------------+-------------+
| A = 0  | A0 B0 C1    |  A0 B1 C1   |
| A = 1  | A1 B0 C1    |  A1 B1 C1   |
+--------+-------------+-------------+

2-way: You calculate the difference of differences at the average of missing factor:

$$
interaction_{AB} = \frac{interaction_{AB_{c=0}}  + interaction_{AB_{c=1}}}{2}  = \frac{(A_0B_0C_0-A_1B_0C_0)- (A_0B_1C_0-A_1B_1C_0) + (A_0B_0C_1-A_1B_0C_1)- (A_0B_1C_1-A_1B_1C_1)}{2}
$$

and for the three way interaction is the difference of interactions
$$
interaction_{AB_{c=1}} - interaction_{AB_{c=0}}
$$
(or any of the other pairs, same result)

I wrote a small script that confirms this:

library(tidyverse)
library("ANOVApower")

# simulate simple 2x2x2 design
design_result <- ANOVA_design(design = "2w*2w*2w",
                              n = 10,
                              mu = c(1:8),
                              sd = 1.0,
                              labelnames = c("A",0,1,"B",0,1,"C",0,1))

d = design_result$dataframe
contrasts(d$A) = c(-.5,.5)
contrasts(d$B) = c(-.5,.5)
contrasts(d$C) = c(-.5,.5)

# Cool, the ANOVApower script already gives us a unique column for each cell
# we can forget about subject because everything is balanced :)
d_cell = d%>%group_by(cond) %>%
  summarise(y = mean(y))

d_interactions = d_cell %>% summarise(
                     AB_C0 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_0']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_0']),
                     AB_C1 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_1']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_1']),
                     AC_B0 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_1']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_1']),
                     AC_B1 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_1']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_1']),
                     CB_A0 = (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_0']) - (y[cond=='A_0_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_0_B_1_C_1']),
                     CB_A1 = (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_0']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_0']) - (y[cond=='A_1_B_0_C_1']-y[cond=='A_1_B_1_C_1'])
)

d_2way = d_interactions %>% summarise(AB = (AB_C0 + AB_C1)/2,
                             AC = (AC_B0 + AC_B1)/2,
                             BC = (CB_A0 + CB_A1)/2)

d_interactions$AB_C0 - d_interactions$AB_C1
d_interactions$AB_C1 - d_interactions$AB_C0

# confirm with linear model results
lm(y~A*B*C,d)

Which returns:

> d_2way
# A tibble: 1 x 3
      AB     AC    BC
   <dbl>  <dbl> <dbl>
1 -0.683 -0.827 0.129

> d_interactions$AB_C1 - d_interactions$AB_C0
[1] 1.307831
> d_interactions$AB_C1 - d_interactions$AB_C0
[1] 1.307831

> lm(y~A*B*C,d)

Call:
lm(formula = y ~ A * B * C, data = d)

Coefficients:
(Intercept)           A1           B1           C1        A1:B1        A1:C1        B1:C1     A1:B1:C1
     4.3853       3.8473       1.8056       1.1670      -0.6832      -0.8272       0.1288       1.3078

Identical results.

This is what I would do


What are the internal and external variables for varying levels of self-awareness?

This is just a sketch of an answer.
It is important to clarify how we define "self-awareness".

The self: There is a huge social psychological literature on the self.
For a scientific review, see for example Ellemers et al (2002).
Even the concept of self-awareness is contentious in that it posits that there is a self to be discovered whereas I assume most researchers would acknowledge that the self is at least partially a social construction.

Psychological well-being: A sense of self-awareness also relates to many other constructs such as having a sense of life purpose or meaning. For more information on that you could look at the psychological well-being literature. At the risk of self-promotion, I can point you to Grant et al (2009) where we reported some of Big 5 correlates of psychological well-being where for example we showed that self-reported purpose in life (i.e., a little bit like self-awareness)  correlated well with high extraversion (r=.33), high conscientiousness (r=.45) and low neuroticism (r = -.44).

Self-efficacy: An alternative perspective would be to look at self-efficacy research. Such research often looks at the relationship between a person's predicted and actual performance. Such research often shows that specific performance feedback with practice is important in generating accurate self-beliefs about one's own competence.

Self-other correlations: I imagine also that there is literature that looks at self-other correlations for various characteristics. It would be interesting to see what predicts the size of self-other discrepancies in such domains as personality, and performance. Unfortunately, I don't have any particular references on hand.

References

Ellemers, N., Spears, R., & Doosje, B. (2002). Self and Social Identity*. Annual review of psychology, 53(1), 161-186. PDF
Grant, S., Langan-Fox, J., & Anglim, J. (2009). Big Five Traits as predictors of subjective and psychological well-being. Psychological Reports, 105, 201-231. PDF


What is actually happening with neuron during refractory period?

Here you are confounding the function of a neuron with its implementation (you might want to read about David Marr's 3 levels of analysis). Functionally you can describe neurons and neural networks using information theory, bayesian modelling, causal networks or any other framework makes sense in what you are studying. However keep in mind that a neuron is a biological object.

There are 2 kinds of refractory periods caused by 2 separate mechanisms (see image from physiologyweb.com). Firstly because the potassium channels are slower than the sodium channels, there is a time after the spike where the cell is hyperpolarized. The electrical potential of the neuron is lower than its resting potential. This is the relative refractory period where it is harder to make a neuron spike (because you need a higher depolarization to reach spiking threshold). This is well describe by the Hodgkin-Huxley model. On top of that the sodium channels themselves have a refractory period. After being activated they remain inactive until the cell become hyperpolarized. This is the absolute refractory period.

To go back to this idea of level of analysis, a model is always a simplification of the world. If you wanted to have an exact model of a neuron you would need to model the ions themselves. Instead if you are interested in the flow of ions you can simply model the gates and their dynamics. If you are interested in the electrical potential you can ignore the gates and use the Hodgkin-Huxley model. If you are interested in the spikes you can simplify it even further and use an intergrate-and-fire model. You can even model only the mean firing rate and so on and so forth. From the point of view of the neuron, or the ions being pumped in and out the neuron, there is no "data" to be processed. All you can say is that it functionally behaves as if it was implementing whatever function you are studying. But keep in mind it will always be imperfect as it is a biological object.


Could a painful stimulus be effectively used as a learning aid?

Claparede's Pinprick Experiment

From http://www.fearexhibit.org/brain/memory/claparedes_pinprick_experiment:

  In 1911, a French doctor named Edouard Claparede published his
  observations of an amnesiac patient. Despite repeated interactions
  with the woman, sometimes only minutes apart, Claparede had to
  reintroduce himself every time he reentered the room; the patient
  never recognized him as someone she'd met.

  During one of their "introductions," Claparede hid a tack in his palm
  and pricked the patient when they shook hands. The next time they
  "met," the patient refused to shake Claparede's hand though she
  couldn't explain why since she did not recall ever having met the
  doctor.

  Today, scientists interpret the patient's reaction as proof that
  multiple memory systems are at work within the normal human brain. A
  subconscious memory system in the woman's brain had formed an
  association between shaking Claparede's hand and a painful experience.
  Therefore, despite the dysfunctional state of the memory system that
  would have normally enabled the patient to consciously remember the
  event, another memory system was still working, trying to keep her
  safe from harm.

  A century ago, Claparede's observations were not readily understood as
  such evidence for multiple memory systems. We owe much of our
  knowledge about the brain and memory to studies of animals. Without
  these examinations, scientists might never have properly interpreted
  such observations of human subjects.


Scientifically credible texts on how to perform Hypnosis

For scientifically supported texts, I would recommend the textbooks produced by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (linked here) as a good place to start. None of these are free (legally), though.

They also produce a bibliography of articles and books (currently some 9 pages) that provide some additional handy references.


Inferring relationships between psychological variables in clinical samples and issues in generalisation

I don't know if you can completely remove the selection bias from such a sample.

You seem to be referring (in some sense, at least) to regression towards the mean. This is one of the biggest (if not the biggest) problem with much research on clinical samples.

What I would do (assuming resources) would be to take the same size (or larger) sample from the general population, and administer all of the same measures and tests to them. This would allow you to separate the predictors of the clinical outcome versus the variation due to other factors. I would probably employ matching from the clinical sample to the general sample (Gelman and Hill have a great chapter in their book about the matching, and that entire book is filled with helpful advice to analogous problems.

In my research, (on predictors of placebo response) I took large samples from the University where I was conducting my research on all of my self report measures, and compared my experimental population to them to determine if my sample were representative of the larger populatiom, which is a somewhat similiar approach to a common problem.

Unfortunately, other than the Gelman and Hill book, I'm not aware of any literature on the topic (but that may be my own fault).

I hope this helps.


How can we get rid of the problems of misconception, assumption, and expectation?

I seem to have realized/learned part of the answer:

  For assumptions: the trick is not blocking what you assume; rather the inverse. Most assumptions are implicit. By making them explicit (consciously formulating them) they become more noticeable and open for scrutiny. Enter, rationality and science!

In other words, when solving a problem, you should realize and highlight any assumptions you might have, and then ridicule them (point out to yourself why or why not they hold).

Expectations: this is slightly more challenging (and more vague), but similarly to assumptions, you should analyze which direction you expect the solution to go in and formulate a few other possible hypotheses.

Misconceptions: the solution to this I do not fully understand yet, but maybe one should try to fiddle around with the problem and try to present it in a different way. (For example, with the candle problem, you can rearrange the elements. With a math problem, you can rephrase it or shift the expressions.)


How much sleep is needed for peak cognitive performance?

How much sleep is needed for peak cognitive performance. If some were for >example wake up one morning at 12:30 pm would a sleeping pill help obtain >better sleep required for that performance the next morning at 08:00 am ?

It depends on what pharmacotherapies - per the clinical judgement of their treating physician - one may have consumed. Conceptually, we might consider the two most psychopharmacologically relevant agents to be psychostimulants (coll. "uppers") and sedatives (coll. "downers" aka "goofballs").

Regarding sedatives, one's biggest concern would be a residual hangover effect. This is influenced by the agent's half-life (t½). For future reference, some 8 drug half-lives are needed for complete elimination. A short-acting benzodiazepine such as midazolam (t½ = several hours) is less likely to have residual effects than a long-acting barbiturate such as phenobarbital (t½ = 100+ hours). Non-benzodiazepine sedatives such as zolpidem appear so-so with regards to hangover, zaleplon seems to fair considerably better [1]. sedating antihistamines are horrendous [2]. If one had an enterically-coated "XR" tablet, one might do well to crush it up before swallowing, to ensure a more amenable pharmacokinetic profile.

  Is it perceptable the amount of drawbacks in cognitive performance in
  a situation of 4.5 hrs of sleep vs 7 hrs of sleep?

First, a caveat: individual differences apply here [3]. You know the answer for your own cognitive faculties better than anyone else. Interestingly, here is one paper that shows relatively modest drops in performance after acute sleep deprivation; chronic sleep deprivation, however, appears to have a deleterious dose-dependent effect [4].

Of direct relevance to your actual question, the above study notes:

Based on these findings, it appears that the inflection point (i.e. the minimum amount of nightly sleep required to achieve a state of equilibrium in which daytime alertness and performance can be maintained at a stable, albeit reduced, level) is approximately 4 h per night. [4]

Who'd've thunk, right?

The issue boils down to this:

Will the time you spend attempting to encode new memories into your LTM be more beneficial than the loss in attentional and executive function, as well as loss of potential REM-related memory consolidation and subsequent recall at the time of your examination?

When it comes to one's own therapeutic needs, it is always prudent that one consult with their treating physician. Here are my own reckless thoughts on the matter:

Ideal situation: if one's healthcare practitioner has prescribed them the sedative sodium oxybate (better known as GHB), then per oral administration of 4-5 grams GHB, followed by rapid onset of 4 hours of deep, refreshing sleep, might be indicated [5]. It would appear very unfortunate that GHB developed a reputation as a date rape drug, as anecdotally, some individuals consider it the "perfect sleep aid", particularly during exam periods.
If one's healthcare practitioner has prescribed them any of the following psychostimulants: d-amphetamine [6], modafinil [6] or perhaps methylphenidate they may wish to consider - per the recommendation of their physician, of course - skipping sleep entirely. Obviously, this is contingent upon their ability to recover following completion  of their work, study or family-related responsibilities, but may result in greater performance relative to brief, fragmented sleep.
If one's healthcare practitioner has prescribed them a short-acting benzodiazepine, one may still find that their sleep disorder is refractory and follows this particular clinical course: sleep from 10 pm  to 2-4 am, awakening, titration of caffeine as indicated. They may find that 4-6 hours post-awakening, their cognitive abilities are better than had they slept the same amount of time and awoken closer to 8 am.[7]

Remain valiant, soldier. Some people's best exam performances have come from around 3-4 hours of broken sleep care of a third of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

References

[1] A comparison of the residual effects of zaleplon and zolpidem following administration 5 to 2 h before awakening http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2125.1999.00024.x/epdf

[2] Next-Day Residual Sedative Effect After Nighttime Administration of an Over-the-Counter Antihistamine Sleep Aid, Diphenhydramine, Measured by Positron Emission Tomography http://journals.lww.com/psychopharmacology/Abstract/2010/12000/Next_Day_Residual_Sedative_Effect_After_Nighttime.9.aspx

[3] Inter- and intra-individual variability in performance near the circadian nadir during sleep deprivation. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.2004.00429.x/full

[4] Patterns of performance degradation and restoration during sleep restriction and subsequent recovery: a sleep dose-response study.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2869.2003.00337.x/epdf

[5] Enhancing Slow Wave Sleep with Sodium Oxybate Reduces the Behavioral and
Physiological Impact of Sleep Loss.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2938863/pdf/aasm.33.9.1217.pdf

[6] Modafinil, d-amphetamine and placebo during 64 hours of sustained mental work. I. Effects on mood, fatigue, cognitive performance and body temperature. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2869.1995.tb00172.x/abstract

[7] Personal communications with myself.


Colorado Boulder study about brain morphometric measures of Cannabis users methodologically weak?

The researchers used a questionnaire to identify daily users, that is, the experimental group contained persons who had used marijuana every day during the past 60 days.

The control group, on the other hand, consisted of persons who had not used marijuana at all during the past 60 days.

The researchers probably felt that 60 days (that is, three months or a quarter year) is a long enough period to establish habitual use and habitual non-use.

Of course it is possible that the 60-day-non-users did use marijuana once or twice every year, just as it is possible that the 60-day-daily-users did not use marijuana once or twice each year. But this should have no massive long term effects either way.

Of course it is possible that the non-users just stopped using 60 days ago, or that the users just started 60 days ago. But it is unlikely that this would be true for a significant proportion of participants, and for most participants it is very probable that the usage pattern over 3 months reflects long time usage.

But basically you are of course right. The worst case could be that the last-60-day-users had all just started 60 days ago, and that the last-60-day-non-users had all just stopped. The researchers might have asked this, but they do not report such a question, which, in my eyes, is a problem. But probability is in their favor.


Is habituation responsible for inaccurate airport security screenings?

The main reason for these failures is mental fatigue and lost of concentration, in conjuction with the weak target signals.

  Vigilance decrement is defined as "deterioration in the ability to
  remain vigilant for critical signals with time, as indicated by a
  decline in the rate of the correct detection of signals". Vigilance
  decrement is most commonly associated with monitoring to detect a weak
  target signal. Detection performance loss is less likely to occur in
  cases where the target signal exhibits a high saliency. ... Under most
  conditions, vigilance decrement becomes significant within the first
  15 minutes of attention, but a decline in detection performance can
  occur more quickly if the task demand conditions are high ... More recent studies
  indicate that vigilance is hard work, requiring the allocation of
  significant cognitive resources, and inducing significant levels of
  stress.

Habituation plays very little role in these failures.

  Early theories of vigilance explained the reduction of
  electrophysiological activity over time associated with the vigilance
  decrement as a result of neural habituation. ... More recent ERP
  studies indicate that when performance declines during a vigilance
  task, N100 amplitude was not diminished. These results indicate that
  vigilance is not the result of boredom or a reduction in neurological
  sensitivity

Training and motivation can decrease failures.

  Training and practice significantly reduce the vigilance decrement,
  reduce the false alarm rate, and may improve sensitivity for many
  sustained attention tasks. Training improvements may also occur due to
  the reduced mental workload associated with task automaticity. In
  pilotage and airport security screening experiments, trained or expert
  subjects exhibit better detection of low salience targets, a reduction
  in false alarms, improved sensitivity, and a significantly reduced
  vigilance decrement. In some cases the vigilance decrement was
  eliminated or not apparent.


What causes a person to be curious, inquisitive and explorative?

We are driven by this need to find answer to our questions.

Many questions arise from one's mind by experiencing new events or feelings, or having to sort out a cognitive dissonance. An example of this would be the need for victims to find the guilty.

  When we can’t immediately gratify our desire to know, we become highly motivated to reach a concrete explanation. That motivation, in Kagan’s conception, lies at the heart of most other common motives: achievement, affiliation, power, and the like. We want to eliminate the distress of the unknown. We want, in other words, to achieve “cognitive closure.”
  http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/why-we-need-answers.html

Going further, there is an intimate relationship between open mindedness and curiosity. Someone thinking he knows it all will never seek for new information or experiences; he will probably stick to denial to protect his intellectual integrity, his homeostasis. Most religions are providing a preconceived cognitive model to answer all that is beyond our understanding.

Skepticism is also correlated to curiosity, as it reopens questions many thought answered for years and it's the base of scientific research. Like Scott Peck (and probably many others) said, science is the religion of skepticism.

And I must say, the feeling of satisfaction is a great motivator for one to answer questions. These eureka moments, when you know you found something, is what drives me to solve problems. The Pleasure Of Finding Things Out is a great interview with Richard Feynman that will inspire many on the subject.

In conclusion, curiosity (and scientific research in general) is a cycle that arises when one connects dots when analyzing new answers, which most of the time leads to more unanswered questions.

One makes connections with different sources of data
Questions arises from these new connections
Research is done until a plausible answer (rational and provable for scientists) is found
One uses this new answers to explain some phenomenon, and then the cycle restarts

But not all questions can be answered, because there is an infinite amount of them in all directions. When we accept this fact, curiosity becomes voluntary based. We then have to choose which answers we are able to answer within our limited lifetime.


What is the test-retest improvement in Block Design test?

Ronnlund and Nilsson (2006) studied performance on the WAIS block design test in a large sample of adults both longitudinally and cross-sectionally. The time difference was about 5 years. They wanted to tease out age related changes from practice effects. I believe they estimated the 5-year practice related improvement to be about 0.6 of a T score (i.e., about .06 of a standard deviation).

Benefits of practice presumably decay as a monotonically decreasing function of time between practice and retest. Thus, presumably, any practice effects would be a fair bit greater at two months than they would be at five years.

Dikmen et al (1999) performed a study involving 384 adult participants who completed several test including the WAIS Block Design on two occasions separated by between two and twelve months.
Specifically see Table 2 that reports time 1 and time 2 results:

Time 1 M (SD): 11.3 (3.0)
Time 2 M (SD): 12.0 (3.2)

Thus, the standardised increase was $d = 0.7 / 3.0 = 0.23$.

The study also reports in Table 5 practice effects for various test-retest intervals (less than 3 months, 4 to 9 months, and > 10 months). See Table 5 for more information, but in general greater practice effects were observed for WAIS performance IQ for shorter time periods. Thus, you might expect, given your two month period a slightly larger effect than the overall effect (perhaps $d=.30$ or some such).

References

Dikmen, S.S., Heaton, R.K., Grant, I., Temkin, N.R. & others (1999). Test--retest reliability and practice effects of expanded Halstead--Reitan Neuropsychological Test Battery. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 5, 346-356.
Ronnlund, M. & Nilsson, L.G. (2006). Adult life-span patterns in WAIS-R Block Design performance: Cross-sectional versus longitudinal age gradients and relations to demographic factors. Intelligence, 34, 63-78.


How can one estimate the excitability or mood of general public on a specific day?

In psychology, you have two types of measurement: either a trained observer judges the behavior of the subjects without them having to actively partake in any kind of test or experiment; or the test subjects fill in a test (self-report) or take part in an experiment.

Obviously the mood in a city cannot be re-created and measured in an experiment, but you still have the two other options:

1) If you want to estimate public mood without the cooperation of members of the public, all you need is an experienced observer. His observations will become more reliable, if he creates a scale of symptoms to watch out for (similar to the diagnostic tools in clinical psychology), instead of letting his gut-feeling decide. It would take a comparison of many observations over a long period of time to "normalize" or "standardize" these judgments. You could take objective data into account, like amount, speed and movement patterns of traffic, number of accidents, medical emergencies and their type (heart attack), public activities like street music, sunbathers etc. How these relate to certain moods I don't know, but a long term observation might show relations.

  Pines and Maslach developed a matrix to calculate the resources
  required to support a public event and use the audience profile for
  assessment of crowd mood. Their model is two-fold. First, they use
  descriptors to clearly identify separate groups (for example,
  families, young adults, children, elderly, and rival factions).
  Second, they attach a rating scale (1–5) to these groups. This rating
  scale is used to grade the amount of verbal noise, physical movement
  and overall audience participation. ...

  Using this model to assess 35 events, Zeitz et
  al found that crowd mood was an important factor in predicting medical
  workload at a mass gathering event, although it did not significantly
  affect the work of other emergency services, such as police or fire
  and rescue. ...

  Practical strategies to monitor and measure crowd mood
  and type, along with the resultant behavior of a crowd, have received
  limited attention. (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1049023X12000155)

2) Similar to the example from Vilnius, Lithuania, given in a comment by Damien, or television audience measurement, you can select a representative sample from the population in question and measure their moods or relevant behaviors through self-report or objective measures (biophysiological measures, tracking mobile phone location etc.). Similar techniques have been used in a multitude of psychological experiments, from using mobile phone data to analyse friendship networks, to people reporting their behavior to the experimenters in real time using apps.

I am not aware of any research done on public moods in this way apart from the example from Vilnius, but I have not been looking very hard and I think something might be found, if you do a more thorough search. Relevant keywords might be "assessment, monitoring crowds, mass gatherings, mob psychology".


There could be a correlation between negative emotions, such as anger and hostility, and muscle strength (Tolea et al., 2012). This, however, is a post-hoc examination around the relationship between personality traits and muscle strength and may not infer that 'body strength' actually increases during anger and hostility.

  "In spite of the evidence for relationships between personality,
  physical activity, and muscle strength, to our knowledge, only one
  study reported on the association between personality and muscle
  strength (Jorm et al., 1993). In that study, Jorm and colleagues
  investigated correlations between neuroticism and extraversion and
  muscle strength in a sample of older community-dwelling Australian men
  and women. Neuroticism but not extraversion was found to negatively
  correlate to strength in women only."

A study conducted on physical performance and anger could support that there are positive correlations between anger and physical performance (Davis et al., 2010). Note that this only focuses on physical performance and does not necessarily indicate that anger directly increases actual body strength (i.e. cardiovascular, resistance level, power).

  "Consistent with previous research (e.g., Woodman et al., 2009), anger
  facilitated performance of the peak force task. The signiﬁcant
  inﬂuence of trait anger and anger-out on physical performance provides
  additional evidence of the role of anger’s action tendency in
  performance (Smits et al., 2004). This ﬁnding supports Lazarus’s
  (2000b) proposed inﬂuence of anger on performance; that is, the action
  tendency of anger appeared to align with the task demands and
  performance was facilitated by the induction of anger."

This may well tie well in addressing your question:

P1. There is evidence to show that anger facilitates performance of a peak force task.
P2. Breaking a brick involves a peak force task.
P3. X is angry and required to break a brick.
C. It is likely that anger would facilitate X's need to break the brick.

As for anger regulation, the same article touches upon the significance of anger regulation strategies towards anger and physical performance. My intuition would be to say that a response such as anger is more likely to help one "break a brick" when ordered rather than being in a controlled state. Anger is more likely to increase reactive motor skills which could maximise power exerted. I'm not an expert on physical fitness but emotional states of mind would seem to impact physical behaviours in my view.

References

Toleaa, M.I., Terracciano, A., Simonsick, E.M., Metter, E.J. & Costa
Jr., P.T. (2012). Associations between personality traits, physical
activity level, and muscle strength. Journal of Research in
Personality, 46, 264-270
Davis, P.A., Woodman, T. & Callow, N. (2010). Better out than in: The
inﬂuence of anger regulation on physical performance. Personality and
Individual Differences, 49, 457-460


What are shortcomings of query bases tools for measuring Situation Awareness?

Short Answer

The SAGAT is incredibly intrusive and relies on the subjects' memory, which is fallible. The SPAM is less intrusive and is less dependent on the subjects' memory. However, it is difficult to match the SPAM questions to the decision making process of an operator. More complete explanations of the methods can be found in papers of Pierce (2012) and the review of Endsley (2013).

Long Answer

SAGAT
The most well known query based tools are the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Tool (SAGAT; Endsley, 1988). The SAGAT is used by periodically asking a set of questions about the situation at hand, thereby covering each of the three levels of SA (See Table 2 for examples in the Train Traffic Controller domain). The amount of correctly answered questions is the measure for the quality of SA.

The main drawback of the SAGAT (or any query based method) is that situation specific questions need to be formulated. The researcher must thus know what will happen in the simulator and how the subjects will try to gain SA and tackle the problems.
Secondly, the SAGAT requires that the task is frozen for a while. The task is thus incredibly intrusive and is not well suited for field studies, because you cannot pause the task in real life. In simulators, the freezes may greatly impact the flow of the task and, subsequently, how the task is performed.
Beside the freeze, the screen is also made blank, to prevent the subject from looking up the answers. The subject is thus entirely reliable on his memory. Memory is fallible, however, and it may very well be possible that the subject was aware of a cue a couple of minutes ago, but at the moment the SAGAT questions are shown not anymore. On top of that, it isn't even necessary to remember every piece of information; the operator perceives the information, acts on it, and can then forget about it an focus on other parts.
Finally, with the SAGAT you only get a general idea of one's SA, because of two reasons: (1) without asking hundreds of questions you cannot capture the entire SA of the operator and (2) you only get one score of SA (the sum of correct answers). In other words, you will never understand how SA varied throughout the task.

SPAM
In an attempt to simplify SA measures, Durso et al (2004) developed the Situation Present Assessment Method (SPAM; see also Pierce et al, 2012). The SPAM uses the same questions as the SAGAT but presents them while the task is ongoing. Instead of a large list of questions, only one or two questions are presented at a time. The questions are in general presented every two to three minutes. The correctness of the answers plus the response times (RTs) are measures of SA. The idea is that when RTs are short knows (where to find) the answer and is therefore aware. Conversely, when RTs are long, the operator did not know the answer or where to find them, and is therefore considered to be less aware.

The first and foremost shortcoming of the SPAM is that it is extremely difficult to formulate the questions and plan them at the right moments. Decision processes may vary between subjects. Some questions may thus be shown too early for some subjects (they had not attended that information yet), whereas it would be too late for others (it may have been forgotten already).
Moreover, some subjects may find the content of the question irrelevant; One's SA may thus differ from another, which is not necessarily better or worse. One or two question can also impossibly capture the entire SA. To minimize these issues, it is again extremely important to understand what happens in the scenario and how the subjects will tackle the issues.
The temporal resolution is also still lacking. Only one or two questions can be asked every two-to-three minutes. Although this is much better than the SAGAT, it still leaves room for a lot of interpretation.
Finally, because the questions are presented while the task is ongoing, it can greatly increase the amount of workload. Moreover, it may fundamentally change the dynamics of the task; the questions may probe the subjects to focus on particular aspects, thereby losing the natural way of performing the task.


Short answer:

  ... on the balance, most people tend to view themselves positively.

Longer answer:

Not much is clear about self-image.  One thing that is clear is that self-image is not one thing.  In the research literature, it can refer to a conglomerate of fairly independent / mildly correlated constructs, such as body image, self-schema, self-valuation, self-esteem, self-perceived physical attractiveness, self-worth, etc...  That is to say, one can score positively on some of these measures and negatively on others, with little relationship between the scores.

Culture may indeed play a role as well:

  More recent research investigating self-esteem in other countries
  suggests that illusory superiority depends on culture. Some studies
  indicate that East Asians tend to underestimate their own abilities in
  order to improve themselves and get along with others.

The uncertainty between positive and negative self-image is underscored by the existence of both an above-average-effect, and a worse-than-average effect.  Each may refer to different aspects of self-image, but may even refer to the same aspects!

  For example, while college students rate themselves as more likely
  than average to live to 70, they believe they are less likely than
  average to live to 100. People regard themselves as above average on
  easy tasks such as riding a bicycle but below average on difficult
  tasks like riding a unicycle.


How to calculate absolute power for EEG from power spectra density?

I had to do some searching to be able to answer this question. As a matter of fact, a similar questions was once asked on Signal Processing.

To make the explanation more laymen-like, I think the answer means the following:

With pwelch or an FFT analysis you can calculate the amplitude of sinusoids with particular frequencies (see this answer ).
These amplitudes squared, result in the absolute power within these specific frequencies. The resulting power per frequency is the power spectral density (PSD). In neuroscience, people do not often work with individual frequencies but work with frequency bands, such as the alpha band (8-14 Hz). This can be calculated by taking the average or the integral.

The absolute power (W), you referred to, is the power of the entire signal. It thus does not make a distinction between the different frequencies. This can be calculated, by summing the power of each frequency (i.e. taking the integral of the signal). By summing, you have the total amount of power within the signal.
The absolute power can be used to normalize the PSD, by dividing the PSD by the absolute power (as described in the answer on Signal Processing).

Average vs integral

It seems that it is possible to calculate either the average or the integral of a frequency band. But when would you take the integral and when would you take the average? The average is an easy way of calculating how high the power is in a specific frequency band. This way, it does not matter how large the range of a frequency band is. The alpha band average will not be more inflated then the delta band (0-4 Hz) because of a bigger range.

When you take the integral there will exist differences that are affected by the size of the frequency band, because you do not divide the sum by the amount of samples (i.e frequencies). However, it does allow you to normalize the PSD with the absolute power. Say, the integral of the alpha band results in 2W, the integral of the delta band results in 1W, and the absolute power of the entire spectrum equals 10W. Then we know that the alpha band plays a 20% part and the delta band a 10% part in the total signal. With mere averaging, this would not be possible because we 'neglect' the size of the range.

I think it depends on what exactly you are after. I haven't work with the absolute power and am not familiar with it's user. Perhaps it has something to do with comparisons between exp. conditions (within frequency-bands, i.e. alpha vs alpha) or within exp. conditions (between frequency bands). If an actual expert could elaborate on why one method is beneficial over the other, that would be great.


I think the answer to your questions is, yes, probably, and almost definitely.

Not necessarily, but likely yes. "I will try to guess what sport you played based on your body type," is essentially turning a person into a guessing game. The fact that he is doing it based on the person's body (i.e., their concrete form and not their feelings or personality) only makes this more apt a description for what he's doing. Whether the person wants to be objectified (which is doubtful in this case) is a different matter.
It depends on his internal motivations and feelings. Did he do it because it excited him sexually at all? If so, then yes, of course it is sexual objectification. I suppose it could also be the case that he wasn't sexually motivated, but she interpreted it as sexually motivated. Strictly speaking I guess you could say that he wasn't sexually objectifying her in that case, but in another sense, it should be recognized that a man looking a woman up and down and then commenting on her body is suggestive enough that the man's intent is not the only factor in whether his objectification could at least be interpreted as sexual. That is, if he wants to later claim that it wasn't sexual, I think the burden of proof is on him.
Probably. If he says things like this to women only, then it was definitely sexist. Even if he says things like this to men just as frequently, he failed to recognize that his comments are made in a societal context of which he is a part, and cannot be interpreted separately from that context. It is (or should be) well known that the history of women in the workplace is fraught with men commenting on women's bodies in an unprofessional if not outright sexual and harassing manner. In that context, there is simply no way for a man to randomly comment on the body of a woman he just met at a conference and claim that it's appropriate. He ought to recognize how it sounds, and that it understandably sounds much different to a woman than it does to a man.


There are several MedLine search engines, some of them requiring an (academic) account. You may want to use

ISI Web of Knowledge - http://isiknowledge.com/medline,
EbscoHost - http://search.ebscohost.com/login.asp?profile=web&defaultdb=cmedm,
ProQuest - http://search.proquest.com/medline/advanced
Ovid - http://gateway.ovid.com/autologin.html

By searching PubMed with "all databases" selected, you will notice all the different databases PubMed is linked with, including the "Literature" section (PubMed database alone). Searching with the PubMed database alone will usually give the exact same results as the engines mentioned above.


What is the difference between drug withdrawal and sleep deprivation effects?

This reminds me of something one of my psychology professors said to me: "the body needs rest, but the brain needs sleep" (it's a common enough saying, but that's where I heard it). And this is pretty well borne out by extensive research in a variety of fields.

First, is sleep a habit or addiction that can be kicked? Well, people have managed this, actually. And the results are quite clear: severely reduced performance, PTSD, hallucinations, psychosis, and eventually catatonic states. The military and old psychiatric studies do a thorough job of cataloguing the more severe end of the spectrum wit real world examples.

In common parlance, lack of sleep can be attained, and it universally drives people stupid right up until it drives them insane. This is the result not just of sleep-deprivation torture techniques, but with pharmaceuticals that interfere with the drive or ability to fall asleep. There are naturally occurring illnesses that make people unable to sleep, and these all end the same way: if a person does not sleep they lose their ability to function first effectively, then rationally, and finally one cannot function at all.

In this way, sleep is like eating, and far harder to find an alternative. Some research I recall studied meditation and some methods to induce a sleep-like state that partially reduced the need for sleep - but it was a minor reduction that did not even hint at the possibility of elimination.

But why do we need to sleep? Well, not being a sleep scientist myself, I defer to a nice Harvard write-up that says, in short "we don't really know for sure." But there are plenty of theories supported by research, and one of the most recent (and perhaps critical) is the role in brain plasticity:

  One of the most recent and compelling explanations for why we sleep is
  based on findings that sleep is correlated to changes in the structure
  and organization of the brain. This phenomenon, known as brain
  plasticity, is not entirely understood, but its connection to sleep
  has several critical implications. It is becoming clear, for example,
  that sleep plays a critical role in brain development in infants and
  young children. Infants spend about 13 to 14 hours per day sleeping,
  and about half of that time is spent in REM sleep, the stage in which
  most dreams occur. A link between sleep and brain plasticity is
  becoming clear in adults as well. This is seen in the effect that
  sleep and sleep deprivation have on people's ability to learn and
  perform a variety of tasks.

As to why the symptoms you experienced seem similar to drug withdrawal, this is partly a coincidence; there are many illnesses and body states that produce the exact same symptoms - ask anyone who's experienced "abdominal pain". This is actually how medicine use to work up until the modern age, where illness and disease was categorized based on symptoms. It just 'feels' like a good system, but this is also why looking up any system online will indicate you might have cancer; a fever has dozens of common causes, twitches even more, and pain has countless more.

As an aside, this is also a major area of growth in the clinical psychology/psychiatry field, where someday in the future we may learn enough about mental illness to no longer define conditions according to systems but by underlying causes and treatments. But I digress...

There is also partial similarity due to underlying physiology/psychology. Pain, for instance, has an extremely strong mental component (some would argue that it is the largest component on day-to-day pain), but also sleep seems to have a role in bodily maintenance tasks like tissue/muscle repair as well. So if you aren't sleeping you are miserable, and that makes pain worse and seem to emanate from everywhere, and if your body is repairing muscles at a lower rate than normal then you are experiencing a genuine increase in communicated muscle/tissue pain to make things even worse.

Finally, I would note that sleep is an addiction - but so is breathing. Just because it is an addiction doesn't mean it's something you can - or at least should - try to defeat :)


Cognitive turn and social turn approaches in cognitive psychology

There isn't a single, simple answer to this question. Instead, I would expect as many answers as there are theoretical foundations/schools within psychology. From a point of view grounded in Theory of Action I maintain:

Behaviorism posits that behavior is learned in response to both combinations of stimuli (Pavlov) and reinforcing stimuli (Skinner). The processes inside the individual are reduced to the concept of reaction.

The cognitive turn opened the so-called "black box" of the subject, reasoning, feeling and so on. Scholars left the "reliable terrain" of directly observable attributes of behavior and gave birth to theories which aim to both describe and explain the invisible internal psychic processes. One subjectively important milestone is the work by Miller, Galanter and Pribram: The individual is an actor. As such he/she doesn't just behave in reaction to external stimuli. He/she tests (plans) various alternative ways to act in a given situation within a cognitive representation of the environment.

One example for a social turn in psychology is Social Cognitive Theory by A. Bandura. The actor does not just rationally plan the best way to reach a goal – he/she also reproduces the ways of acting experienced in the social system. Rationality is bounded by the norms of the social system. In other words, an actor acts in a particular way, even if it is dysfunctional, because it mirrors what significant others have done before.

References: Literature about the cited works is readily available in both university libraries and the Internet. (Also: One of the textbooks by P.
G. Zimbardo et al.)


What is the effect of gradual increase of speech speed on speech comprehension?

The ability to understand speech at increased voice rates is all about learning. A notable example in this regard is the use of text-to-speech software like Jaws used by blind folks unable to read the written word. Jaws is able to convert text on screen into the spoken word using a speech generator. After people get used to read on-screen content through speech, they are often able (and happy) to increase the voice rate settings to scan over the (often cluttered) computer screens more quickly. A recommended incremental step for Jaws in speech rate is 5%. I have experienced the speech rates deployed by some blind folks and the resulting speech was totally unintelligible to me.

With regard to the learning curve you describe: I bet that after repeated exposure to higher speech rate settings you wouldn't feel the necessity to start at a slower pace. Assuming you have normal vision, you are probably not too inclined to practice this for hours, though.


Why is toilet paper out of stock around the world during the coronavirus outbreak?

In simple terms, demand for toilet paper increased and supply was unable to scale up.

The supply chain for toilet paper is unable to rapidly scale up production to the levels required to meet the large increase in demand.
Most supermarkets (at least where I live) seem to be unwilling to increase the prices of toilet paper in order for supply and demand to equalise. Presumably, if the price of toilet paper in supermarkets was increased by 4 or 5 times (or perhaps more), we would eventually reach a point where toilet paper would be in stock. However, supermarkets would be accused of price gouging in a crisis, which would be bad for publicity (as well as people unable to afford toilet paper).

So why did demand increase?

Toilet paper is not perishable. Thus, people can buy huge amounts of toilet paper and they will eventually be able to use it.
There are few substitutes for toilet paper. There are items like tissues, paper towels,  wet wipes, and bidets, but these are not great substitutes for most people, and in some cases, these are out of stock also.  In contrast, while food is essential, people are able to eat a wide range of different foods.
Toilet paper is also an essential item.  For most people the perceived cost of being without toilet paper is quite high. Thus, if people perceive there is a chance that they could run out, this is more likely to trigger an increase in their demand (to stock up).
As noted below, more people are using toilet paper at home rather than at outside the home (e.g., work, school, etc.).

Presumably, the increase in demand is triggered by the sum of the knowledge and motives of the many economic actors in a society.

Some people might be rationally thinking that it would be wise to stock up on toilet paper if they might be going into lockdown soon.
A desire to stockpile will further increase when people see that if they don't stockpile, they are more likely to run out of toilet paper. Presumably, international media and social media would help ignite the stock-piling and then the empty shelves and the associated media coverage further increase demand. So, shortages create even more shortages.
I'm not really clear on whether third parties are stockpiling toilet paper to sell at inflated prices. But it seems like normal rational behaviour (perhaps selfish when taken to extremes) can explain what is going on without the need for reference to such third party actors.

So, I'm inclined to think that normal rational economic behaviour combined with failures in the supply chain and an unwillingness to raise prices in response is the main explanation.


Is it usually worthwhile to argue to try to convince someone?

Plenty. The elaboration likelihood model compares the efficacy of persuasive argument under various conditions – this wouldn't be worthwhile if its efficacy were zero. Attention plays an important role: if an audience is inattentive, the semantic content of an argument may matter less than other factors involved in persuasion.

Reactance is also relevant in that arguing with a particularly resistant audience may result in even less compliance and more opposition. This has been studied empirically. It is also not universal; reactance varies with personality and other developmental factors. Thus both compliance and resistance exhibit variation empirically – enough to make persuasive argumentation viable with some people some of the time. This conclusion is also the corollary of a popular (if unscientific) aphorism:

  You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. — Paraphrased from Jacques Abbadie


Is love from families a necessity for children to form nornal relationship?

not being an expert in developmental psychology i cant give precise information but i have recently been listen several of "the great courses" on human development and personality.

i think the consensus of modern (and a large extent of more "vintage" research) would support the idea that we need affection and the security that having a relationship with caregiver provides. (bowlbys monkeys etc). any diusruption to this kind of input will have an affect on development. i did read an interesting study (i think it was an Italian university) on the development of psychopathic traits in abused children, so i think its probably safe to say that the trend certainly lies in the direction that says forming relationships needs some reciprocal affection.

i wouldnt go as far as to say that authoritarian parents  = less love-capable offspring, people are to complex for such a basic interpretation. there is also the issue of CBT and other treatments in helping to develop these bonds. i think most parents would probably agree that they didnt really know as much about love as they thought until they had children to care for.


Are representations of unattended objects "bound"?

Assuming that the perception enters consciousness as a gestalt with all attributes bound, then when attention is diverted and the apple no longer present, then the decay of memory sets in. The two models neural-net, and "holographic" suggest different parameters for how to approach a measurement.

Under a "holographic" model, the connection might become more vague, but I think it could still be recalled, perhaps with the assistance of a tertiary related stimulus: viz. recalling a memory from an scent.

In a weighted-feedback neural-net model, you'd be looking for the moment when the physical link between the attributes decays, I think. Literally, the moment it becomes subliminal.

I'm thinking of McCulloch/Pitts nets specifically, as described in Marvin Minsky, Finite and Infinite Machines, a classic, but not recent source.

A cortex would be connected through layers to shape detectors and redness detectors, and these would connect to associative areas. The strength of the association would be dependant upon the weights of the neural connections between the two areas, and would begin to decay after the stimulus is discontinued.

... Or maybe I'm rationalizing with big words to save face after being foiled at a snarky answer?? Does any of this make sense? Does it help? I'm sleepy.


I had a look on scopus and there were no hits for "High conflict people".

So I imagine you'd want to turn to other literature; a few thoughts:

Dark Triad
Agreeableness from the Big 5
Conflict styles literature
Personality disorders literture
Literature on aggression


People with dead nerves cell, can they feel pain/emotions?

In the limit, if all your cells are dead, well, you won't feel anything. For the rest, it is both a question of quantity and their relations in a network of cells. One individual cell, in a large array of neurons, has very little influence on the overall behavior of the network. So remove one, you won't notice anything. Remove an important proportion of the cells, and emotions (or anything that is being processed by these cells) will degrade. Some have proposed that degradation of "performance" is "graceful", although this is not a proven fact. Past a critical number of destruction, plausibly, the system will just make erratic behavior (or here, non-sense emotions, whatever it might look like).

Some have also argued that non-nervous cells play a role in some of our cognition. So just destroying neurons may not be the whole story.


Is there a technical term for when the brain recalls an incorrect, but almost correct answer when trying to recall a word/name?

If you want a very technical term, you could use "paraphasia", but most people just call it a "speech error" or "naming error". These are usually categorized according to error type: such as semantic (cat --> dog), phonological or "formal" (cat --> mat), mixed (both semantic and phonological: cat --> rat), nonword (cat --> kag), unrelated (cat --> log), etc. Your example would probably be considered a mixed error because it was semantically similar (another common female name) and phonologically similar (shared at least 2 phonemes). Tip of the tongue refers to a more specific case where you have a strong sense of knowing the name and some aspects of it, but not being able to recall it.

If you're interested in the neural correlates of these errors, Myrna Schwartz, Gary Dell, and their colleagues have published a series of articles investigating naming errors in stroke patients with language deficits (aphasia). A recent paper mapped aspects of their computational model of word production onto lesion locations in the left hemisphere (Dell et al., 2013, Cognition, 128:3, 380-396).


Why does society interpret "manliness" differently?

Most of society can't agree entirely on how to define manliness. Two broad ways come to mind as to how it might be done though. The first way would be to use gender or sex (depending on one's reasons for asking, I suppose) as a criterion variable for exploratory analysis of related variables. A statistical analysis like multiple logistic regression could be used to identify what information about people's other characteristics can help predict whether they're men or women. This would be the more objective, empirical way of defining what it means to be a man (or woman), at least probabilistically. The second way is by defining gender roles, as @caseyr547 did.

The second way definitely implies a choice to attend primarily to social constructs rather than empirical reality. It's important to appreciate that gender roles do not define the actual behavior of people, so the extent to which people really follow their gender roles is limited; the first way I mentioned would produce a better description of actual behavioral profiles and sex/gender differences.

However, it's also important to appreciate that gender roles are, by definition, socially normative expectations based on gender, and therefore society imparts causal force to these constructs. People generally (society) want other people to fulfill their expectations, so gender roles also define what is socially desirable. Socially normative attitudes about what behaviors are desired, not merely expected, may even define gender roles, depending on whom you ask. People have very many ways of motivating others to care about their opinions, and to ultimately agree with and adopt/"internalize" them, so there is overlap in and feedback between the empirical reality of sex differences and the cultural context of gender roles.  That is, gender roles, being defined as expectations, change to suit how the genders actually behave, and people change the ways they behave to suit their cultures' gender roles. Thus some overlap is maintained dynamically, but still limited by human error, among other factors.

Besides human error (failing to calibrate expectations to reality, and failing to calibrate behaviors to expectations), one major factor that limits the overlap of expectations and reality is cross-cultural variation. Gender roles may vary widely across cultures, but mostly operate within cultures (due to too much ethnocentrism and not enough travel, among other factors), so each culture's specific gender roles may generalize poorly to other cultures realities, and influence them very weakly. If I had to choose one reason to bet you're right in saying "most of society" perceives manliness differently, it would be cultural differences. Still, there are other reasons.

Another major factor that limits the applicability of gender roles is counterculture, which does not simply represent the alternatives that society rejects. Counterculture is better defined as representing those who reject their cultural norms for various reasons. When imperfect norms are especially popular, their popularity may actually reinforce the popularity of the opposition as well, because exposure to an idea increases opportunities to become opinionated, explore counterarguments, and either agree or disagree rather than remaining neutral by default. Therefore subpopulations of intentional norm-violators are also maintained dynamically. Some may disagree simply because they like to disagree or differentiate themselves from others. Others may have principled objections to specific norms; their viewpoints gain popularity among dissenters when the majority exerts conforming pressure (which it pretty much always does). In this way, countercultural movements can become very stable and widely influential.

However, many may only be as stable as the norms they oppose. If the norm changes (and not necessarily for the better), the opposition may change in the opposite way to remain directly defiant. This may not suit the original principles of the opposition, but when such movements are dominated by leaders who focus more on defiance than their principles, they may sacrifice integrity to maintain popularity through their parasitic relationship with the mainstream. This sort of power motivation further reinforces a limited amount of norm violation regardless of what norm is in question. Note also that power carries sex appeal, so even if women didn't have other reasons to find effeminate men attractive, they would be attracted to effeminate men who belong to a powerful counterculture (and vice versa regarding men's attraction to masculine women). This (and other influences) means countercultures find support among people who may nevertheless adhere to norms in their own behaviors (e.g., feminine men may attract women regardless of the women's own femininity).

These dynamic processes make manliness very hard to pin down by the second way that focuses on gender roles. To recap, reality influences them somewhat, so they reflect reality somewhat, and real people try to follow them somewhat, so reality reflects them somewhat...but some people also try not to follow them. This all plays out somewhat independently within separate cultures, so plenty of "errors" in the accuracy and influence of gender roles arise naturally from these two factors alone (not to mention others). Thus plenty of disagreement exists, and even gives rise to bizarre inversions of the normative archetype, such as the brave and (not so) thoroughly manly Brony meme, which like many countercultures is commonly, thoroughly misunderstood.

Nevertheless, this is not to say psychologists haven't tried to pin down gender roles. A fair amount of consensus may even exist on some essential aspects, especially in Western culture (probably because America and Europe have particularly active psychology programs). An interesting list of gender-linked traits by a philosophy author with a fairly sophisticated perspective on gender-personality literature gives a decent picture of how gender roles might be measured in detail (among other ways, which probably are less detailed), as well as an opportunity to assess one's own alignment with Western gender roles. There are also Wikipedia pages on masculine and feminine psychology, which may be of interest. If nothing else, I find it funny that the masculine psychology page is tagged with disputes that suggest an egotistical tone, and the feminine psychology page is tagged for cleanup in a way that suggests scatter-brained writing. Both "egotistical" and "scatter-brained" fall under Park's respective lists of "regrettable" gender-linked personality traits! I'll let you decide whether you think they're manifesting on Wikipedia through real differences in the writing, or maybe through some other influence like stereotyping and confirmation bias (maybe even on my own part)!


How valid is Lumosity's Brain Performance Index and what normative information is available?

General thoughts on brain training:
Lumosity is a commercial tool that aims to improve brain functioning. In general, I am sceptical of the potential for "brain training programs" to improve cognitive functioning in a generalised way (e.g., see this Nature discussion). Practice is powerful, but tends to be domain specific. So if you want to become skilled in brain training tasks, then do brain training exercises, but if you want to become skilled in a particular domain of life, then study and get experience in that domain. While I can see the value in researching the topic, I can also see the potential for sellers of "brain training" programs to exploit people's concerns about their mental shortcomings or about fears of mental deterioration with ageing.

Normative data: From what I can gather from this review, Lumosity has lots of normative data based on existing users which you can use to compare your performance. However, I imagine this is proprietary information that they would be reluctant to publish in a useful form.

There was an unpublished report I found by Cruz et al based on a small sample of young adults. The following summarises Table 2:

Number of days        4.75 ± 3.18
Number of sessions    10.79 ± 9.31
Median (IQ R )        9.00 (2.25‐17.75)
Minimum‐Maximum       0 ‐ 34
Overall BPI           676.93 ± 323.94
Lumosity points     173.43 ± 158.89

Validity of the BPI:
The website writes:

  Your Overall BPI is your average BPI across each of the four cognitive
  areas: attention, memory, processing speed and cognitive control.

It also states

  "We then evaluate your game scores and use a proprietary algorithm to
  derive your BPI"

Performance on almost all cognitive tasks are intercorrelated to some extent, and if you take the average, or preferably the first principal component, of a battery of cognitive tasks, it will tend to have a general factor, which will have some loading on g. Of course, if the tests are of a particular type, this might lead to different outcomes.

I could not find any validity data on the website whereby BPI scores are correlated with other measures. Thus, it is unclear what relationship BPI has with other ability measures, or IQ for example.

In general, practice effects on cognitive tests are seen as a source of error variance. What a test measures after people have taken the test many times may be very different. In particular, the degree to which the test correlates with a domain general quality of interest may be reduced. Instead, the test may start to reflect a domain specific adaptation. Also, if people differ in the amount of practice, this would compound the measure of a domain general ability.

Overall thoughts:
In general, the target market for Lumosity's product seems to be consumers. In contrast, tests like the WAIS or the CANTAB have a target market which is researching and applied psychologists. In the consumer market, it is typical for companies to use "proprietary algorithms" and for there not to be a test manual with extensive validity data. While this might make commercial sense, it limits the scientific value of such instruments.

References

Cruz, A., Canelas, A., Machado, F., Pedreira, J., Barroso, J., Beir\~ao, L., Freitas, L., Belo, L., Seabra, M., Portero, M. & others (). Brain Fitness--Clinical Trial to Measure the Effect of Cognitive Training in Brain’s Capabilities. PDF


Is the process of long term potentiation (LTP) definitively linked with brain plasticity?

Although LTP might be necessary for brain plasticity, I would doubt that it is also sufficient. There is quite a lot of literature about homeostatic plasticity (for a review, see Turrigiano & Nelson, 2004) and synaptic scaling (for another review, see Turrigiano, 2008) which seem to be necessary to keep LTP working in the long run.

References
Turrigiano GG, Nelson SB (2004) Homeostatic plasticity in the developing nervous system. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 5, 97-107. Full text

Turrigiano GG (2008) The self-tuning neuron: synaptic scaling of excitatory synapses. Cell 135, 422-435. Full text


Is mutually consensual BDSM a symptom of a sick mind or an expression of freedom from social constraints?

If your question is, whether practitioners of BDSM are in some way pathological, then Pamela Connolly (2006) answered it. Her abstract summarizes her research and findings nicely (emphasis added):

  A demographic questionnaire and 7 psychometric tests were administered
  to 32 self-identified Bondage/Domination/SadoMasochism (BDSM)
  practitioners. Although psychoanalytic literature suggests that high
  levels of certain types of psychopathology should be prevalent among
  BDSM practitioners, this sample failed to produce widespread, high
  levels of psychopathology on psychometric measures of depression,
  anxiety, obsessive-compulsion, psychological sadism, psychological
  masochism, or PTSD. In fact, on measures of clinical psychopathology
  and severe personality pathology, this sample appeared to be
  comparable to both published test norms and to DSM-IV-TR estimates for
  the general population. There were, however, some exceptions to this
  general pattern, most notably the higher-than-average levels of
  narcissism and nonspecific dissociative symptoms found in the sample.
  This study also raises significant concern about the appropriateness
  of the diagnosis of sexual masochism and sadism in the Diagnostic and
  Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association or,
  minimally, the diagnostic criteria of these disorders.

But BDSM practitioners aren't only normal, they feel "more better", too: An Australian study (Richters, De Visser, Rissel, Grulich, & Smith, 2008) found that "men who had engaged in BDSM scored significantly lower on a scale of psychological distress than other men" (emphasis added).

This higher level of well-being may be explained by conscious and systematic "relationship management", including no-holds-barred open communication and clear agreement on mutual relationship roles, resulting in highly functional relationships, as well as a commitment to personal growth, both of which are common among BDSM couples (Cutler, 2003). Contrary to common views of BDSM, Cutler states, BDSM activities include non-sexual motivations: "hormonal studies have shown BDSM activities to be more similar to sports than sex, complete with stress relief qualities" (emphasis added).

Today, BDSM is a best-selling mainstream media phenomenon, and it has become increasingly difficult to draw a clear distinction between "deviant" and "normal" sexuality. When a little rope play is just another practice for the average couple, BDSM certainly isn't deviant any longer, and many practitioners are as "normal" as you and me. The difference in practice is, I believe, gradual: BDSM couples indulge in "normal" sex just as normal couples pay visits to the land of bondage and submission (and other kinks).

Connolly, P. H. (2006). Psychological Functioning of Bondage/Domination/Sado-Masochism (BDSM) Practitioners. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 18, 79-120. doi:10.1300/J056v18n01_05
Cutler, B. (2003). Partner Selection, Power Dynamics, and Sexual Bargaining in Self-Defined BDSM Couples (Doctoral dissertation, Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality). Retrieved from http://www.niu.edu/user/tj0bjs1/bdsm/Cutler%20(2003).pdf
Richters, J., De Visser, R. O., Rissel, C. E., Grulich, A. E., & Smith, A. M. A.
(2008). Demographic and psychosocial features of participants in bondage and discipline, "sadomasochism" or dominance and submission (BDSM): Data from a National Survey. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 5, 1660–1668. doi: 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.00795.x


How to estimate eye-in-head rotation (degrees of visual angle) from a 2D video of the eye?

In theory you can use the geometry of your setup to transform your data to the orientation reffered in the paper you mentioned using Scheimpflug Principle and then use the methods provided in it.
Practically, you can only approximate the geometry of your setup. If you have some idea about angles in something like this

please let me know, I might be able to do the math for you.
EDIT: The lens plane is parallel to image plane in cameras so now it is just the question of orientation of subject plane and lens plane(camera plane).


In SDT, how is an increase in detection sensitivity conceptualised in terms of the movement of the distributions?

Technically it can go either way, and both situations would be conceptually and statistically equivalent. But it is conventional to fix the mean of the noise distribution at 0, so that increased discriminability corresponds graphically with the signal+noise distribution moving rightward along the latent axis.


Good question, and no one really has a definitive answer, but it is generally considered that a system, as you described, is not a metamind as you call it, or a singular being.

First lets define what a being is:

A being is a system that works together to collectively maintain all characteristics of life. These are:

being made up of cells
the ability to reproduce
the ability to react to a stimulus
Organization
Metabolism
Growth
adaptation

A swarm of ants contains all of these characteristics, so it could be classified as a 'being'.

Though the problem is that the reactions and actions taken by a swarm of ants is not considered as adaptable or as self sufficient as a single being. For example colonies of ants are able to effectively create short paths, though this is due to the physiological structure of the ant colony itself, and not its intelligence. Artificial ant networks are based off this structure, is this simulation a metamind too?

Another scenario to consider is if you placed an ant colony in a particular unknown situation. Would the ant colony be able to fight off predators, look for food and other life related characteristics? Ant colonies do not particularly work in this fashion.

This problem casts doubts as to whether an ant colony is a metamind.

On the other side of the coin though, the mind body problem has not been resolved and therefore there is no definitive answer to your question. For example monism states that consciousness is singular.

Overall though a swarm of ants is not considered a 'being' or a metamind in contemporary psychology.


Concept for 'too much exposure to a bad idea can make it seem normal'?

Are you thinking of desensitization?

From wikipedia: In psychology, desensitization is defined as the diminished emotional responsiveness to a negative or aversive stimulus after repeated exposure to it. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology))

Desensitization seems to match the question as posed in the title, but maybe not the question as posed in the text.  Desensitization occurs based on mere repetition.  In the body of the question, it seems like you're referring to repetition that takes place in the context of otherwise normal (non-negative or aversive) context, so that the once-negative subject acquires some of the normalcy of the context.


How can I run a placebo medication pills study? Practical advice needed

Ethical procedures are specific to your country and even differ between universities and sometimes even per department. Of course you know everything about the Declaration of Helsinki, being immersed in the city of its origins (you seem to (have) be(en) affiliated to the University of Helsinki). You seem to be located in NY now, but I'm unsure to your affiliation. So I started wandering on the sites of the uni of Helsinki and the New York University for some information. But note you should look into the local requirements yourself (although your study has likely long since started :-)

First, you need to find out the IRB (or here for NY) you will be dealing with, often operating under a university, or affiliated hospital. These folks can tell you anything you need to know. Here is a site of the IRB with all the specifics you need to submit an IRB proposal to NY Uni. Note that the best thing is for specifics such as pill bottles and placebos is to talk to the IRB, or try to find investigators that have done such a thing recently in your neighborhood.  For example, there's a study from Segal et al (2017):

Randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial with azithromycin selects for anti-inflammatory microbial metabolites in the emphysematous lung,

that was conducted by the New York University School of Medicine and by the looks of it it is exactly the thing you are planning to do. These guys can likely help you out, and reading the papers and related ones may help you as well. For example the linked paper says in the Methods:

  Both placebo and AZM were prepared in an opaque capsule by the NYU pharmacy...

Hence, the NYU pharmacy, apparently, assists in these kinds of matters - the place to go!

Reference
- Segal et al., Thorax (2017); 72 :13-22


What is the correlation between feeling superior and well-being?

Diener et al's (1999) review in Psychological Bulletin provides an excellent entry point into the well-being literature. It reviews the literature with regards to the many causes and correlates of well-being.

Individual Differences

First, individual differences explain a lot of variance in well-being. This is often seen in terms of personality traits such as neuroticism and extraversion (e.g., see the huge meta-analysis of DeNeve and Cooper, 1998). People with low neuroticism and high extraversion tend to experience more well-being. In relation to social comparison, it may be that these personality traits influence lenses of social comparisons both in terms of the standards that are set and how circumstances are appraised relative to those circumstances.

Discrepancy theories and social comparison

I recommend reading page 282 and 283 of Diener et al (1999) where the authors review discrepancy and social comparison theories in relation to subjective well-being. First the authors mention an early discrepancy theory by Michalos:

  According to Michalos's theory, individuals compare themselves to
  multiple standards including other people, past conditions,
  aspirations and ideal levels of satisfaction, and needs or goals.
  Satisfaction judgments are then based on discrepancies between current
  conditions and these standards. A discrepancy that involves an upward
  comparison (i.e., where the comparison standard is higher) will result
  in decreased satisfaction, whereas a downward comparison will result
  in increased satisfaction.

The authors then discuss how subsequent research has shown the situation to be more complex than originally conceptualised: e.g.,

There is a degree of flexibility in which social comparisons we adopt.
Adopting high expectations and thereby creating a discrepancy does not necessarily induce lower well-being, especially if people feel like they are making progress towards theirs goals.
Comparisons are not just social, but can come from a variety of sources.
There's a difference between short-term and more enduring effects on well-being.

Superiority versus positive social comparison

It is also worth making a distinction between a positive social comparison and superiority.  We might see a positive social comparison as an evaluation of  life circumstances as better than some comparison group. In contrast superiority can be quite close to arrogance. Taken to its extreme we can see superiority as an element in narcissism (e.g., "Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements" DSM IV-TR). When the basis of such positive self-evaluations is fragile, I believe this can be related to lower or more volatile self-esteem.

Various factors

Although you mention that it is perception, there is research on various measures that you mention. To take a couple:

intelligence: Several meta-analyses suggest the relationship is fairly minimal (e.g., Sigelman, 1981; Wilson, 1967)
social status - income: Diener et al discuss how the relationship between income and well-being is modest at best.

Primal Factors and Brains

I'm not sure how necessary it is to think of the process in terms of brains. Certainly the process of well-being at some level must be explained in terms of biological processes, but I'm not sure if such a level of explanation is required to understand the relationship between social comparison and well-being.

You might want to read about evolutionary perspectives to well-being.
For example, Grinde (2002) discusses this perspective (See reference and PDF below).

Activating without external circumstances

There is a lot of research in positive psychology on how to attain happiness.
A starting point could be to look at Seligman's ideas around three paths to happiness. Perhaps check out this TED talk by Martin Seligman

References

DeNeve, K.M. & Cooper, H. (1998). The happy personality: a meta-analysis of 137 personality traits and subjective well-being.. Psychological bulletin, 124, 197. PDF
Diener, E., Suh, E.M., Lucas, R.E. & Smith, H.L. (1999). Subjective well-being: Three decades of progress.. Psychological bulletin, 125, 276. PDF
Grinde, B. (2002). Happiness in the perspective of evolutionary psychology. Journal of Happiness Studies, 3, 331-354. PDF
Michalos, A. C. (1985). Multiple discrepancies theory (MDT) Social
Indicators Research, 16, 347-413.
Sigelman, L. (1981). Is ignorance bliss? A reconsideration of the folk
wisdom. Human Relations, 34, 965-974.
Wilson, W. (1967). Correlates of avowed happiness. Psychological Bulletin, 67, 294-306.


Neural basis of primitive (newborn) reflexes

It seems that there is not much research concerning the anatomical localization of primitive reflexes. For instance, Schott & Rossor (2003) state in the conclusion of their review

  The complexity of
  many of these responses makes it perhaps unsurprising that
  detailed anatomical localisation, despite the availability of
  structural and functional imaging, has in general not been
  possible.

However, at least for the grasp reflex, they discuss an involvement of frontal areas.

References
Schott, JM Rossor M (2003). The grasp and other primitive reflexes. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 74(5): 558–560. [DOI] [PDF]


are serotonin levels higher or lower in dominant vs. non-dominant primates and humans?

It seems Maté simply misread the research that he cited. The study on this, from 1984, says that

  Dominant male adult vervet monkeys have whole-blood serotonin concentrations approximately twice those of subordinate adult males.


This is homework. But it's still interesting.

However, I'm not sure if this would be classified as classical or operant conditioning because although it's a voluntary behavior, it's prompted by a stimulus. I think it's operant conditioning,

There are multiple learning processes involved. Some of them have already been established e.g. asking your friend for something is already a salient motivational cue.
Anyways, what you're describing is reminiscent of the learning phenomenon classical-to-instrumental transfer (CIT), which is also referred to in the literature as Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT). Essentially, its the phenomenon by which a conditioned stimulus (CS) eventually acts as a signal or a predictor of a reward contingency (or vice-versa). Think of it as motivation/focus/salience modifier.
It has particular relevance to relapse in drug dependency after a period of abstinence. An individual who has quit smoking, for example, would be more likely to relapse after years of abstinence if they are exposed to any stimuli that were present when they typically smoked. In fact, there is nothing stopping an anti-smoking billboard acting as that stimulus.
CLIFF'S NOTES SUMMARY
This is how you would break down your homework problem. However, you should note that this is NOT the way you would want to structure the training of CIT.
Also, I'm going to assume that the end game here is to get your friend to sharpen your pencil through mere desk tapping.
1. INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING
Sharpening your pencil results in receiving a cookie.  By linking a desired behavioural repertoire with a positive outcome, you increase the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated:
[response-outcome]   pencil sharpening => cookie

Your friend will eventually learn that pencil sharpening is something that is rewarded.
2. CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
Now it's time to add additional stimuli to the learning condition.
There are two parts to this. First, your friend will learn that you asking her to sharpen your pencil will be rewarded, but in its absence, she won't. It would be done along the lines of:
CS+ (asking)   sharpening => cookie

CS- (no asking)   sharpening => [no reinforcement]

Then, through simple conditioning of the two stimuli, tapping and asking will also become paired:
[classical conditioning]   tapping => asking

                                      sharpening => cookie [operant conditioning]

CLASSICAL-TO-INSTRUMENTAL TRANSFER
I will spare you the intricacies of how the training is performed, but needless to say, eventually you could expect to observe the following:

Tapping alone should instantiate the sharpening behaviour.

Ditto asking.

As a motivational cue, sharpening should become more vigorous  in the presence of tapping.

I suspect, but am not certain, that asking while tapping would have some effect on the vigour of sharpening observed in #3.

Tapping should produce spontaneous recovery after extinction of the sharpening => cookie contingency.

Below is an outline of how classic-to-instrumental transfer is demonstrated experimentally. If you note, you have an additional stimulus pairing (tapping=>asking) but it does not make this any more different to the following:

References
Domjan, M. (2014). The principles of learning and behavior. Nelson Education.


Do neurons fire at a faster rate during dreaming?

In REM sleep, the EEG is remarkably similar to that of the awake state (Purves et al., 2001). Although the EEG represents the synchronized activity of many neurons in the cortex, it does give us a clue whether they are firing faster or not.

Wakefulness is mainly dominated by  beta and gamma waves (source: Scholarpedia), i.e. 12 - 100 Hz. REM sleep is characterized by low-amplitude mixed-frequency brain waves, quite similar to those experienced during the waking state - theta waves, alpha waves and even the high frequency beta waves more typical of high-level active concentration and thinking, i.e. 4-30 Hz (table 1) (source: Sleep).

Table 1. EEG bands. source: Neurosky

So if anything, I would say REM sleep, being largely devoid of the gamma band, is associated with slightly lower-frequency oscillations and hence lower neural activity overall.

References
- Purves et al. (eds). Neuroscience. 2nd ed. Sunderland (MA): Sinauer Associates (2001)


How do you form a rationale to justify choice of time windows in ERP analysis?

Short answer
Electrophysiological responses in general often come in waveforms. These are characterized by a number of peaks and troughs. Dependent on the specific response, arbitrary naming conventions are used. Generally something along the lines of P1 (positive peak #1), N1 (negative peak #1), P2 etc. Sometimes latencies are used as a subscript too to indicate which peak it is.

Background
The timing of ERP peaks is more of a convention than anything else. In fact, electrophysiological responses often have specific latencies, but only specified in a certain range. Age, medical conditions, random recording variability, equipment and analysis method may all affect the specific peak latencies.

Generally spoken, there are three main methods to characterize positive (P) and negative (N) deflections in electrophysiological responses.

The 1st method simply denotes the first positive peak as P1, the first negative peak as N1, the second positive peak as P2 and so forth (Fig. 1). Auditory CAP recordings are designated this way, for example.

Fig. 1. Peaks in an auditory oddball ERP. source: Chernyshev et al. (2013)

Alternatively, deflections may be designated a number that indicates their approximate latency. For example the P300 is an often encountered wave in oddball-paradigm ERPs. The P300 relates to the subject's attention to the task at hand. Given the higher-order processing involved, it appears relatively late in ERP recordings namely around 300 ms or so (Fig. 2), hence the name P300.

Text book ERP example showing N200 and P300 peaks. source: Pattel & Azzam (2005)

Another commonly applied notation are Roman numerals; PI, NI, PII etc. ABR peaks are often designated this way (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Auditory brain stem response. source: UNSW

In the end, the rationale you are talking about is all about conventions, approximations and generalizations. In fact, when people investigate specific responses that are not yet characterized by generally accepted conventions, the authors often just make something up along the lines pointed out above. As long as you define it specifically in your report whether it is a longstanding accepted scientific convention, or a simple customized numbering devised by your lab, it's all OK, really.

References
- Chernyshev et al., Psychol Neurosci (2013); 6(3)
- Pattel & Azzam, Int J Med Sci (2005); 2(4): 147-54