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1500 questions
30
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4 answers
Does learning one discipline improve performance in another discipline?
I have come across a lot of articles that suggest learning across disciplines would improve cognitive abilities. This is more often referred to as Integrative Learning. Also, nowadayas a lot of emphasis seems to be placed on Interdisciplinarity and…
Ubermensch
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Can you catch up on sleep over the weekend?
The lack of sleep has many negative effects associated with it. Maintained sleep deprivation results in a degraded performance over time (in this case reaction time).
Assuming one needs 8 hours of sleep each night, but during the weekdays he only…
Steven Jeuris
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29
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4 answers
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 pedophilia is, or at least should be considered a…
Sonny Ordell
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2 answers
What is an effective metric of complexity for an Artificial Neural Network?
After asking the question What is the most complex neural network... I realized I don't really have a good metric of "complexity" in a general sense. The simplest measure would likely be count of neurons or number of synapses, but that fails to take…
Ben Brocka
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29
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Is there psychoactive music?
Listen to this music for X minutes to observe Y result. Is there something like that that has been demonstrated to work for general public?
The only example of an experiment that is similar that attempted to find out that I could find is:…
Alex Stone
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29
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12 answers
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 programming languages provide one avenue for delivery…
Jeromy Anglim
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28
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3 answers
Why does the human visual system produce a bright patch after staring at a bright light source and looking away?
If a person looks at a bright light source, such as a light bulb or perhaps the sun for a period of time, and then looks away and closes their eyes, they typically see a bright patch in the shape of the light source for a period of time. The amount…
Rajesh D
28
votes
1 answer
Have the abilities of John Lorber's patients with limited cortical mass been further evaluated in adulthood?
Short of minor lesions or infarcts, most high-functioning adults have an intact cerebral cortex. Yet, a surprising result published anecdotally in Science in 1980 caused a lot of scientists to take note of Dr. John Lorber's hydrocephalus patients…
Chuck Sherrington
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28
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5 answers
Perception of time as a function of age
For many people time seems to run faster as they get older. That is, for an old person an hour, a day or a year seems to be shorter than for a young person.
Is there any hard data for such phenomenon?
And if so, what is the cause?
To name a few…
Piotr Migdal
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28
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The effects of bilingualism on colour perception
Peltola et al. (2012) showed that there are two types of bilinguals.
Balanced bilinguals mix their two languages and are effected by linguistic categories from both.
Dominant bilinguals seem to switch on the categories of the language they are…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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27
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3 answers
What are some of the drawbacks to probabilistic models of cognition?
Probabilistic approaches to modelling cognition are increasing in popularity and being encouraged within the field (Chater, Tanenbaum, & Yuille, 2006).
What are some of the arguments against or drawbacks (other than scalability/intractability) to…
Vielle
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27
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2 answers
How is intelligence correlated to beauty?
Recently, I read several interesting questions on the web about the relationship between IQ and general intelligence and physiological symmetry. But more importantly, what explains the correlation? Or is it even true? Because many of the world's…
Yuruk
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1 answer
Is there a term for individuals who can "visualize" numbers and advanced mathematics?
I recently saw an episode of 60 Minutes about Jacob Barnett, a 13 year old boy who is currently attending advanced physics classes at a local university and was portrayed by the show as being a child prodigy/genius. In the interview, he demonstrates…
Josh
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26
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6 answers
Have ideas of "gamification" been applied to education?
Wikipedia defines Gamification as "the use of game design techniques and mechanics to solve problems and engage audiences."
Khan Academy has received attention (e.g., see this post) for incorporating some elements of gamification into its online…
Jeromy Anglim
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3 answers
Is the Neanderthal Theory of Autistic brain a reasonable scientific theory?
I've recently learned about The Neanderthal Theory, that explains autistic (and especially Asperger's) brain functioning as the effect of genetical similarity with Neanderthals.
The author gives a great number of examples of differences between…
FolksLord
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