8
votes
3answers
262 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
2answers
682 views
What transient factors affect performance on IQ tests?
While performance on intelligence tests aim to measure an underlying relatively stable trait, there are presumably a range of transient factors that could temporarily lower or possibly even raise ...
8
votes
4answers
514 views
Difference between parallel processing done by human brain and by computers
I am asking a question regarding parallel processing as done by billions of Neurons inside our brain and parallel processing done by our computers in a cluster for example or even on a Graphics ...
8
votes
1answer
198 views
What are the major structures of the medial temporal lobe?
Basic question here from a behavioral researcher: What are the major structures of the medial temporal lobe (MTL)? Can anyone link to a good diagram of these structures?
8
votes
2answers
165 views
Is it possible to run multiple thought processes concurrently?
For example, let's say I have a friend sprinting a 50m distance and that friend wants me to time the race, but I don't have a stopwatch so I have to count "manually". Can I count while simultaneously ...
8
votes
1answer
92 views
Does teaching a bird an artificial task like eating from a feeder hurt its performance in the wild?
Can training a wild animal through operant conditioning somehow cause the animal to forget or be unable to perform tasks which it had perviously learned?
Is it likely that training wild animals ...
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
2answers
128 views
Does self-rated performance predict objective performance over and above other-rated performance?
Context:
I was at a talk today where data was presented where a group of sports people ranked their own performance and everyone else in the group. This enabled self-rated performance to be ...
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
2answers
163 views
What is the “static” in human vision called?
Sort of like a cheap digital Camera, the human eye has certain feedback that's perceived but doesn't actually exist in the real world; a little layer of Static that's especially noticeable in pitch ...
8
votes
2answers
2k views
How to temporarily induce low latent inhibition?
As the Wikipedia article says,
High levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine (or its agonists) in the ventral tegmental area of the brain have been shown to decrease latent inhibition. Certain ...
8
votes
1answer
133 views
Is there a database of emotional stimuli available?
For my research I need to use emotional stimuli to use for habituation to certain emotion.
Are there any databases available (preferably free or not expensive) of non-linguistic stimuli I could use? ...
8
votes
3answers
234 views
Is it possible to create a false memory by trying to remember something that eludes you?
Sometimes I have difficulty remembering the specifics of an event, specifically if I'm tired or possibly have recently consumed alcohol. A close friend of mine has gotten me in the habit of ...
8
votes
1answer
341 views
What is the most complex artificial neural network created to date?
A few years ago I wrote a research paper for college on neural networks. At the time IBM's Blue Brain was the clear winner. Some rumor went around that they were close to emulating a brain the ...
8
votes
4answers
1k views
Open source software for running Internet psychological experiments that collect reaction time data
I've often used Inquisit to run psychological experiments online. The software enables delivery of stimuli (e.g., text, images, etc.) and collection of reaction times.
Obviously general purpose ...
8
votes
1answer
80 views
What happens when a person “imagines” how food could taste like just from looking at it?
What processes are triggered by imagining the taste of food (let's assume it's sealed so that its smell doesn't reach the test subject's nose) only by looking at it, based on memories of food with ...
8
votes
1answer
131 views
Which statistical test should I use when there are multiple latent predictors and multiple latent outcomes?
Which statistical method should I use when Predicting organization commitment (composed of 3 latent variables) using the five factors of personality?
Its a cross-sectional design with survey data. ...
8
votes
1answer
151 views
How to measure group differences incorporating reaction time / accuracy trade-off?
In a psychological experiment I am measuring subjects' reaction time as well as their error rate. Now I would like to compare two groups (males & females). There might be a bias in the sense that ...
8
votes
1answer
106 views
Computational Model Linking Neural Activity to Behavior
A big question in neuroscience is how neural activity represents knowledge. We can use modelling to explore how different levels of neural activity- subthreshold currents, action potentials, local ...
8
votes
1answer
95 views
How to measure well-being without using an extensive questionnaire?
I'm trying to create an iPhone app for music therapy (or other kinds of experimental therapy). Such app would help a music therapist keep track of sessions and evaluate progress. One of the issues ...
8
votes
2answers
167 views
How can the success of Bayesian models be reconciled with demonstrations of heuristic and biased reasoning?
In recent years, Bayesian models of cognition have been used - with considerable success - to explain human reasoning in a variety of inferential tasks (Chater, Tenenbaum, & Yuille, 2006). These ...
8
votes
1answer
125 views
Why do participants prefer to give input values that are “round numbers”?
Background
I have just been analysing some data where participants attempt to control a dynamic system with integer numeric inputs between 0 and 100. I've noticed that there is a general tendency for ...
8
votes
1answer
213 views
Spurious attractors in Hopfield networks
A classic "Hopfield network" is a type of artificial neural network in which the units are bi-stable and fully interconnected by symmetrically weighted connections. In 1982, Hopfield showed that such ...
8
votes
2answers
236 views
Does Facebook activity predict job performance?
I've seen a little bit of discussion in the media about Facebook being used in selection and recruitment settings.
Assuming an employer can gain access to a person's Facebook profile, have any ...
8
votes
1answer
200 views
How do Hemispatial Neglect patients react when told of their disability?
Hemispatial Neglect patients are known to have Anosognosia meaning they don't recognize their disability. These patients neglect either their left or right field of vision entirely, as if they ...
8
votes
1answer
219 views
Do children show top-down processing as much as adults do?
There has been much research into how top-down processing works, such as the suggestibility of patients to mishear lyrics based on what the patients are told they are.
Is there any research to show ...
8
votes
1answer
207 views
Why are most people right handed?
How did right handedness win over left handedness in numbers?
Is it only a coincidence that there are more right handed people than left handed ones? Or, has some effect in nature explicitly made ...
8
votes
1answer
138 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
107 views
Problem understanding the calculation of normative (Bayesian) base rates
I am having trouble understanding Table 1 of Gigerenzer, Hell, and Blank (1988, PDF, table on page 516):
Focusing on the Jack row, it is stated that the mean probabilities of Jack being an engineer ...
8
votes
1answer
124 views
What explains variability in the mean firing rate across biological neurons?
Biological neurons have a trade-off between high information transfer (high firing rate) and energy conservation (low firing rate). One would suspect that the maximization of this function has a ...
8
votes
1answer
307 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
2answers
154 views
Can mental exhaustion be measured?
I asked this question a long while ago, but I never got an answer to whether mental exhaustion can be measured. If mental exhaustion could be measured, it would mean that I would have a way of knowing ...
8
votes
1answer
138 views
What causes short-term dysphoria following intense pleasure?
I'm interested in the phenomenon of short term Dysphoria:
Dysphoria is a state of feeling unwell or unhappy; a feeling of emotional and mental discomfort as a symptom of discontentment, ...
8
votes
1answer
85 views
What is the support for a global personality factor?
The Big 5 is a popular framework for describing major factors of individual differences in personality. More recently, I've been hearing people talking about the utility of conceptualising personality ...
8
votes
1answer
90 views
Could Fitts Law be used to measure difficulty in platform genre games?
I've been learning about Fitts' law and am wondering if it's applicable to measuring the difficulty of platform type games where the challenge is to hit the platforms?
If so, this could be used to ...
8
votes
1answer
216 views
Why might a stutterer not stutter when talking to themselves, whispering, or singing?
Background: I'm a stutterer myself and have always wondered what caused my stuttering. There have been reports of the effects of certain genes and environmental factors that causes stuttering. But ...
8
votes
1answer
190 views
What is the test-retest improvement in Block Design test?
Background:
My lab is conducting a research on perceptual training. We train participants on different tasks, and assess them pre- and post- training on a large battery of tests. Obviously, people ...
8
votes
1answer
102 views
Hearing first but understanding later?
I have experienced this phenomenon several times and checked with other people as well.
It goes like this: you hear something, but it's just a sound with no meaning. Some seconds later, you ...
8
votes
2answers
97 views
What cognitive strategies diminish bias in decision-making beyond those outlined by Larrick?
Larrick (2004; pdf) offers a small number of suggestions for strategies to diminish bias in decision making, which he breaks down into four categories.
"Consider the opposite". Tell decision-makers ...
8
votes
1answer
91 views
What is the role of traveling waves in circuit formation during cortical development?
Propagating waves of activity have been characterized in various regions of the brain such as the visual cortex (Nauhaus et al., 2012). Recently they have been reported for the first time to occur ...
8
votes
1answer
145 views
What is the effect of high expectations on long-term happiness?
Are there any studies about the long term effects of having high expectations of oneself on one's happiness? Does crashing after failing to reach unrealistic goals significantly impact long-term ...
8
votes
1answer
106 views
How are people able to wake themselves up after a pre-specified amount of time?
Auto-suggestion seems to work. Several people I know seem to be able to tell themselves "I'll wake up after 'N' hours/minutes", and do so within a minute or two of that duration.
I thought for a ...
8
votes
1answer
146 views
What causes laughter?
I was looking at this video from VSauce: "Why did the chicken cross the road?", where several facts about this old joke are exposed and explained.
At some point, (6:59) Michael explains that there is ...
8
votes
1answer
146 views
Do ability tests predict maximal more than typical job performance?
I have often read that ability tests are indicative of what people "can do", but that job performance also depends on what people "will do".
For example, Ackerman and Beier (2012) wrote that:
...
8
votes
1answer
211 views
Is positive self-talk beneficial for those with low self-esteem?
According to the paper Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others by Wood (2009) positive self-talk is beneficial when the person has a reasonable level of self-esteem in the ...
8
votes
1answer
217 views
What are the current suggested models for Primacy Effect in memory recall or personality impression?
What are the current suggested normative, mechanistic or phenomenological models for explaining primacy effect as was observed by Solomon Asch (1946) on personality impression, list-of-words memory ...
8
votes
1answer
222 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 ...
8
votes
1answer
118 views
Does typical duration of Short Term Memory differ between tasks?
The duration of Short Term Memory is a fuzzy thing; Wikipedia notes several disputes over it's length and I recently alluded to this fuzziness myself.
However, I wonder if part of the apparently ...
8
votes
0answers
72 views
What is the bias/thought process that results in distrust of “formal” knowledge in favor of “folk” knowledge?
An interesting effect I've noticed is that certain groups of people seem to accept "folk knowledge" and value it over significantly better founded "formal" or scientific knowledge. In particular this ...
8
votes
0answers
31 views
What is the influence of “effort put into pursuing wealth” on happiness?
As presented in the TED talk by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (3:30) repeated research has been unable to show a correlation between happiness and level of material wealth (above a certain minimum ...
