For questions where the author needs to know specific articles/surveys/books on a given topic.
15
votes
5answers
556 views
What are good examples of applying dynamical systems in cognitive science?
I'm a mathematics and physics student very much interested in cognitive science. Recently I've been hearing about "a new approach" in cognitive science via dynamical system theory.
What are some ...
15
votes
0answers
161 views
How do emotions influence the language structures we use?
What are the verbal signs of subjectivity?
I am doing research about the linguistic content of media (debates, talk-show, sport comments). It occurs that once the participant gets nervous or excited, ...
14
votes
1answer
408 views
Is there experimental support for John Perry's “Theory of Structured Procrastination”?
John Perry's theory of structured procrastination can be summed up as follows:
Some people are inherently predisposed to be procrastinators across a wide range of domains
Such procrastinators are ...
13
votes
5answers
388 views
Can response time be incorporated into signal detection theory?
In signal detection theory, one typically uses "signal" and "no signal" responses to analyze the data (that is, the analysis is based on a discrete choice for each trial, effectively generating the ...
13
votes
2answers
260 views
How to classify and understand emotions of people using chat and text messaging lingo and emoticons?
I am looking for scholarly, peer-reviewed articles that discuss natural language processing (NLP) involving chat or text messaging lingo/acronyms and the affect of chat participants based on language ...
12
votes
2answers
2k views
Is pedophilia a sexual orientation or a mental disorder?
There are some different claims being made that pedophilia is a sexual orientation rather than a mental disorder.
At the moment there seems to be a growing group of psychologists advocating that ...
12
votes
1answer
265 views
What concepts of perception should designers be aware of when designing?
Visual perception is a huge topic, much of which is relevant to the work of a designer. I have identified topics in visual memory, visual cognition and colour perception that are relevant, and I'm ...
11
votes
2answers
450 views
What tasks does Bayesian decision-making model poorly?
Bayesianism has been a relatively successful paradigm for modeling decision-making. However, not every psychologist is a bayesian, and there are tasks such as the Tversky & Shafir (1992) ...
10
votes
2answers
397 views
What are current neuronal explanations and models of 'consciousness'?
I would like to understand more about consciousness from a neuroscientific perspective. I have a limited understanding of it in the philosophical/psychological sense through lectures.
Although it is ...
10
votes
1answer
381 views
Effect of words highlighting on reading comprehension
I'm interested if there are studies dealing with text understanding and POS (part of speech) coloring, or coloring syntactic/semantic information. The studies should solve the questions like:
Which ...
10
votes
1answer
214 views
Modern replacement for Panksepp's “Affective Neuroscience” book?
Jaak Panksepp's book (Amazon link here) is a phenomenal and highly readable systems-based introduction to not only affective neuroscience, but the neuroscience of motivation in general. The problem ...
9
votes
4answers
30 views
What are the key algorithms for learning optimal behavior of economic agents?
I'm playing around with social learning of near-optimal behavioral rules on a set of agents. The idea is roughly that given an income process (or technology process, depending on the question) an ...
9
votes
1answer
165 views
Is there any Personality theory that uses scientific methodology instead of subjective interpretations?
Background
I have come across a number of Personality theories. There are even disciplines of personality theories, dividing these theories according to the assumptions they are based upon. The most ...
9
votes
1answer
142 views
Is there an effect of visual expertise on eye movements when examining an image?
In the following linked image, you can see the eye movement traces of a subject examining a bust of Nefertiti (I came across this image while reading the following blog).
When I was in grade ...
9
votes
0answers
73 views
Human behaviour in one-shot perfect information games
Background
A one-shot game is one where two participants have some set of actions $\{1, ... , n\}$, they make their decision on which option to take (without knowing the decision of their partner, or ...
9
votes
0answers
141 views
Evolutionary game theory in the cognitive sciences
Game theory models something very relevant to psychologists (in particular social psychologists): conflict and cooperation between decision-makers. Unfortunately, classical game theory demands that ...
8
votes
3answers
178 views
Can experience alter one's preferences for beauty?
My friend (a woman) is convinced that all men who find those posters of "women scantily clad in their bathing suits or thongs and big breasts (often fake)" attractive are simply brainwashed by ...
8
votes
3answers
260 views
Introductory resources on bayesian modeling for cognitive sciences
On Cross Validated there is a great question about best introductory books for bayesian statistics. Also, Jeromy Anglim blogged recently about use of JAGS, rjags, and Bayesian Modelling, with some ...
8
votes
1answer
131 views
Are there any journal articles in psychology that have promoted and discussed reproducible data analysis?
I consider reproducible analysis to be really important.
In particular, I'd like to see more researchers in psychology:
sharing their data
producing their journal articles using literate programming ...
8
votes
1answer
125 views
Are there additional animal studies about superstitions?
In one particular case, Skinner decided to go random on his hungry
pigeons. He dropped food into the box at completely random times,
independent of any behavior on the part of the pigeons. But ...
8
votes
1answer
136 views
Origin of the SEEV Model of visual attention distribution
What's the original source of the SEEV (Salience Effort Expectancy Value) Model for predicting the distribution of visual attention? I've seen it mentioned in many papers and presentations but ...
8
votes
1answer
305 views
What is the current status of tetrachromacy in humans?
Tetrachromacy is a condition of having four colour channels. There is a hypothesis that some women posses 4 different types of cone cells (each with different opsin responsible for different ...
8
votes
1answer
218 views
Attention Theory: is it impossible to avoid distraction?
I remember reading at some point in the literature that humans are unable to avoid distraction from a certain primary task if this task isn't using up close to all available 'resources' - basically ...
7
votes
2answers
201 views
Study on commitment and follow-through
I'm faced with a UX problem of looking for ways to position a website to increase attendance at future "real world" events, and I'm remembering a study once conducted along these lines (details a bit ...
7
votes
1answer
196 views
References for biologically plausible models of knowledge representation?
I'm looking for references that deal with the issue of how various kinds of semantic knowledge is (or might be) neurally represented. Most of the discussion of this topic seems skewed by social ...
7
votes
1answer
86 views
Who first used the term 'heuristic' in a cognitive science context?
I seem to recall that Herbert Simon borrowed the term from computer science, but I cannot remember the initial paper in which he made use of this borrowing.
A google scholar search reveals some ...
7
votes
1answer
93 views
A study about preference for making relatively vs. absolute more money?
I remember reading about a study. I forgot the actual details of it, but the gist of it was: people were asked in what situation they would prefer to live, one where they make \$100,000 dollars and ...
7
votes
2answers
71 views
Differences in willingness to correct errors made between human and computer interactions
I have a design where I present participants with a series of decisions, and then ask them about some of these decisions later. Similar work has found that even when the particular decision was made ...
7
votes
1answer
65 views
How repeatable are cognitive science findings within the same individual?
Thanks to this website, I've seen a number of papers and scholarly articles that deal with cognition. I'm interested in how repeatable the findings are that are discovered as a result of experiments.
...
7
votes
1answer
107 views
Method for evaluating how emotionally evocative a question is?
I would like to measure the change in emotional state in response to a question. For example, asking the question, "What is your favorite color?" would be fairly benign; I would not expect any change ...
7
votes
2answers
230 views
Behaviorist interpretations of decision field theory
Decision field theory is usually presented as a dynamic cognitive model of decision making. However, in its basic form, the theory seems to only be concerned with behavior (decisions) and stimuli ...
7
votes
1answer
98 views
How to efficiently locate existing psychology and social science measures?
Whenever I start a new research project, I typically have to find questions and scales that have proven validity in measuring constructs of interest (e.g., psychological / political science / social ...
7
votes
1answer
99 views
Judgments of similarity between samples of writing
I was thinking last night about the possibility of an experiment that investigates the factors contributing to peoples' judgments of 'stylistic similarity' between two samples of writing.
For example, ...
7
votes
0answers
79 views
Do the students that report “friendly” teachers perform better on standardized tests?
I'll preface this by saying that I've been considering this question in light of the "Summer of Love" initiative and subsequent blog posts, which are looking at the extent to which comments are ...
6
votes
2answers
109 views
The current recommended text for statistics in behavioural sciences
I have an old book: Statistics for the Behavioural Sciences (4th ed.) by Gravetter & Wallnau. I want to transition my textbooks to eBook format, but this book doesn't come like that (as far as I ...
6
votes
2answers
337 views
What articles use structural equation modelling in a meta-analytic context to model mediation?
I'm interested in structural equation modelling (SEM) meta-analysis and its application to modelling mediation relationships.
Mike W.-L. Cheung has written a few articles on the topic of SEM ...
6
votes
1answer
111 views
How people choose at random
This question is inspired by one asked at MathOverflow. (These questions at Cognitive Sciences and at Cross Validated might also be relevant.)
Are there any studies on what choices humans ...
6
votes
1answer
71 views
Picture of eye promotes good behaviour
I remember a study about how a picture of an eye made people more well behaved. The experiment was in an unsupervised coffee room where there was a box where participants were expected to deposit ...
6
votes
1answer
118 views
Introductory resources on developmental psychology/neuroscience
I'd like to be able to answer questions such as:
What neuro/psychological functions underly competences such as empathy (or others - see background below)?
What neurotransmitters are of particular ...
6
votes
2answers
102 views
What is the sleep study that showed that a percentage of humans have a biological clock that is ~28 hours or greater?
There was an article published some years ago about a sleep study (I think from Germany) that showed about 10-20% of people (European's I think) are genetically predisposed to function on a 30-hour* ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
Do we recognize ourselves better when we see our mirror image?
A friend of mine recently noticed that we both have a birthmark on the face. He looked at me and said that we have exactly the same mark. But he has it left and I right. But, when looking in a mirror, ...
6
votes
2answers
38 views
What term describes the discrepancy in reported intention to vote and actual voting behaviour?
I am interested in prediction markets, where traders have a monetary incentive to bet on who they think would win in an election. I think that the financial incentive in prediction markets makes them ...
6
votes
1answer
97 views
What is the effect of mindfulness practice on cognition?
The following article by ScienceDaily reported on a paper in Psychological Science (Mrazek et al., 2013), claiming that mindfulness training led to improved working memory and GRE scores. These ...
6
votes
1answer
49 views
Effect of paper type on evaluation of resumes
I heard about an experiment that have shown an effect of the type of paper a resume was printed on, on the evaluation of the resume. If I remember correctly, resumes printed on heaver paper, or ...
6
votes
0answers
59 views
What research exists in the areas of formulating questions and “problem shaping”?
After recalling Eric Steven Raymond and Rick Moen's How to Ask Questions The Smart Way and a discussion in a systems engineering course regarding the impact of the proper formulation of a problem in ...
5
votes
3answers
45 views
What is the field that studies community responses to incentives?
Having recently read Freakonomics I was particularly interested by the idea of the responses of a community to incentives - as an example, the tale of a school which tried to introduce a financial ...
5
votes
1answer
51 views
What is the study which shows that babies can teach young children empathy?
I saw a fascinating segment on the PBS NewsHour which said that studies have shown that young children (ages 5 - 8 years of age) can be taught empathy by having a class where they observe and learn to ...
5
votes
1answer
74 views
Is there a canonical reference for behavioral, attentional, and memory tests?
In researching another question, I read a few review articles that were testing behavioral and attentional variables in response to different sleep parameters. I was curious about some of these ...
5
votes
2answers
81 views
Summary of meta-analytic correlations between self- and other-report measures
It is well known that the correlation between personality measures obtained from self-ratings and ratings by others are imperfect. There are many different traits that could be rated (e.g., ...
5
votes
1answer
181 views
Do action video games have an effect on spatial skills?
I've just watched a TED talk by Daphne Bavelier, who seems to be a major researcher on plasticity and video games. In it she presents results from a controlled lab study in which participants needed ...
