Questions tagged [cognitive-psychology]
For questions focusing on the interaction of many internal mental processes. If your question involves only one of memory, attention, language, decision-making, or perception then use the associated specialized tag instead of cognitive-psychology.
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What makes people easily subscribe to pseudoscientific theories?
There are many theories/disciplines that have been categorized as pseudoscience in the scientific community.
The list includes many things that are regularly even quoted in media like graphology, ...
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Is "brain training" effective?
We've had quite a few questions about "brain training" on this site (see questions tagged brain-training). And the effectiveness of "brain training" has been touched on in several questions (this ...
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What is the current "accepted" science behind dream interpretation?
I'm doing some casual reading about dream interpretation (meaning I'm reading the wikipedia entry) and the article mentions that there are several ways of thinking about dreams from a psychological ...
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What are the main theories that account for why some people like X and others not?
For example, how does psychology account for why some people like peanuts and others hate them? This is a serious question, although perhaps naive.
Sure, there can be some physiological explanations ...
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Word for naming your negative self-talk to overcome it
I'm trying to find some research - or at least a professional analysis - on the concept of naming your negative self-talk so that you can "take away its power" - that is, separate it from yourself and ...
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Is multitasking a myth?
Often, the term 'multitasking' is applied to very busy and 'wired' people. There is an adage that women multitask better than men.
My question is, do we actually multitask? If so, what are the ...
user3554
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Is post-traumatic stress disorder preventable?
Victims of abuse, people exposed to violent situations repeatedly, and people in war zones can develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result. PTSD is very common and has lifelong effects ...
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What is the psychological term for disregarding correct but unwanted information?
Sometimes people seem to be very resistant to information that is in conflict with prior beliefs, even when this new information is very plausible.
For example, a patient might change a doctor, ...
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Which is the scientific name of stubbornness?
Some people are stubborn, with strong, absolute beliefs, and it's really hard to change the ideas. They tend to see just the evidence that confirms their ideas.
What is the scientific name of this ...
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What is the most comprehensive system of describing human emotions or states of mind?
Reading about the human mind, I sometimes come across attempts to classify human emotions using various scales. The one that comes to mind most often is the 6 scale circle model shown below.
Is ...
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Standard Academic set of emotions, and cognitive functions
As far as modern psychology is concerned, do we have a "standard" set of emotions agreed upon by academics? For example, happiness, anger, sadness, etc. Is there a single list that contains all ...
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What is the name of a cognitive bias by which existing facts are tailored to fit a personal hypothesis?
What is the name of a cognitive bias where a person takes all of their knowledge of a particular subject (at a point in time) and arranges it in a hypothesis or world model that makes sense to that ...
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Does evidence support Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?
Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs (shown below) is a popular concept and is often taught in basic psychology courses, and often less objectively taught in Business and Marketing courses.
A common problem ...
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How valid is Lumosity's Brain Performance Index and what normative information is available?
Background
There is a test called Lumosity's Brain Performance Index.
A sample profile of scores might be:
...
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How to refer to the phenomenon of people only absorbing evidence which confirms their beliefs?
I knew a psychologist who was calling it self-referentiality.
People are always trying to see only the sentence which confirm their beliefs.
What's the correct name for this?
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Why do you sometimes write down one word while actually intending to write another?
I've caught myself writing (typing) "possible" instead of "possibly" a few times over the past few days, while I do intend to write "possibly". Only upon rereading the sentence I notice my mistake.
...
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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 ...
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How well can a human-generated "random number" be predicted?
For example, if i ask an individual to write a 20-number-long sequence of random numbers from 0 to 10. How well can I predict the 20th number from the initial 19?
More generally,
How well can ...
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Does chess enhance cognitive abilities?
Some texts advise playing chess with children and mature people. Should I take them seriously, and why should chess boost intellect?
For instance, I would like to be able to read and understand ...
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Is there a reasonable scientific backing for Carl Jung's type theories?
I have read a lot on how most psychologists reject the Myers Briggs Type Indicator for its lack of scientific backing, but I have yet to find much information on the acceptance of Carl Jung's theories,...
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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 ...
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Are psychologists more immune to psychological problems?
Does knowledge of a psychological problem prevent (or enable one to better defend) the development of psychological issues? For example, if a person has studied about depression and is familiar with ...
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Comprehensive list of cognitive techniques in CBT
I'm not a cognitive science student, but I'm interested in CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) and I'm using it to overcome some of the problems I have.
However, I have difficulty in finding resources ...
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What are the neural substrates of retrieval induced forgetting?
Retrieval-induced effects
It is well known that practicing retrieval of remembered items increases the probability of correctly recalling that item in future tests: the testing effect. Retrieval-...
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Does fixing cognitive biases do more harm than use?
The Kahneman–Tversky interpretation of biases as deviation from rationality was challenged by Gigerenzer on the basis that heuristics help making decisions and, thus, rational from the evolutionary ...
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What is it called to think without language? Are there studies around it?
I think there are two types of thinking:
with and without language.
For my entire life, in my opinion, I have always thought without language. Some people say it's impossible and that we think with ...
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Is there a difference between physiological stimulations and psychological stimulations?
From what I understand, physiological stimulation (or stimulus or sensation) "refers to sensory excitation, the action of various agents or forms of energy (stimuli) on receptors that generate ...
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Can calmness happen during the fight-flight response?
In the question How do certain individuals, like Quang Duc, develop the ability to remain calm when enduring significant nociceptive pain?, one answer says that it was the high level of cortisol that ...
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Why are people inclined to praise or fear the unknown?
Human beings are inclined to "praise" the unknown, and are often afraid of the unknown. This inclination has led to the creation of mythology and many gods. To this date we are still carrying this ...
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What is the primary source of the "mount stupid" graphic?
Online descriptions of the Dunning-Kruger effect are often accompanied by a "mount stupid" graphic similar to the below - from a Psychology Today article:
However, the research paper does not contain ...
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Cognitive models for transfer of skills
Recently a question was asked about the benefit of playing chess on cognitive abilities. More specifically, how chess would improve understanding technical texts. Many other questions are also focused ...
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Research on aversion to cognitive effort?
I was reading Danny K's recent book for fun (Thinking Fast and Slow, 2011), and he suggests briefly that some people's reliance on their intuitions (i.e., "System 1") might sometimes indicate a sort ...
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What cognitive processes occur during a mental exhaustion or 'burnout'?
Mental burnout - or mental exhaustion is not very pleasant, when one feels completely overwhelmed, something 'snaps' and it is hard to concentrate and maintain motivation. What are the cognitive ...
user3554
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Does practicing Ravens Progressive Matrices tests inflate your IQ score?
I'm 16 years old and a year ago I got obsessed about IQ. I took a Raven IQ test and scored 115. Then during the autumn and winter of last year I took some more IQ tests using RPM and scored 126 on ...
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Is there a term for a person who moves from one field of expertise to a new field and has an inflated belief in their competence in the new field?
Person A has led a successful career and is very well renowned in field A.
Later in life, person A moves to field B, a field they're curious about but have very little experience in.
Person A ...
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Does the brain have a 'debugging mode'?
In computer programming we have a debugger that we can use to execute a program step by step. In that mode, the program can be suspended and we can analyze the state of the hardware, modify the state ...
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Why do certain activities seem to co-occur with well learnt skills (aka dual tasks)?
I have discovered that while I am doing certain activities, fully immersed in them, I am inclined to perform other activities, as well. Those other activities, come naturally to me and they do not ...
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Is there a difference between visual short term memory and visual working memory?
As far as I can tell the two terms are used interchangeably. Do these two separate terms exist for historical reasons, or is there a distinction I'm missing?
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Brainwave audio recordings and beta waves: how do they affect positivity?
I know a little bit about negative and positive energies of human bodies and how it all works.
Recently, on Facebook, I saw an ad promoting some sort of audio recording and that it has something to do ...
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Can a person be hypnotized to act drunk?
I was wondering if a person could be hypnotized to act drunk? That is, can a person totally lose all his inhibitions while in hypnosis (similar to being drunk)?
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Brain Right hemisphere is random and left hemisphere is linear? really?
For long I've seen uncountable number of blogs, websites, tutorials, booklets about career-guide, self-improvement, meditation, parenting etc. claiming;
"Right hemisphere loves to work random, ...
user13859
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Any research on brain's processes involved in evil actions? [closed]
I'm reading Zimbardo's The lucifer effect: understanding how good people turn to evil in which he describes the famous Stanford prison experiment
that investigated the psychological effects of ...
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Where would a cognitively separated person get their brain signals excited from?
I suppose there's nothing wrong about the idea that a cognitively separated person could cognitively function as anybody else. But brain as I understand it always needs a potential from some sense. If ...
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By learning to read and write upside down, what did I do to myself?
If you've ever read Encyclopedia Brown books, you'll be familiar with the backwards writing in the back of the book that explains the solution to the case.
When I was in my mid-late teens (I don't ...
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Is it possible to think in a second language?
Those who have learned a second language are guaranteed to consciously think of words and their corresponding meaning in your native language or vice versa.
This is common with more "complex" ...
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Why do people fear statistically unlikely things?
Over 10 times more people die in circulatory diseases than accidents (source). Nevertheless people (in general) fear accidents more than circulatory disease. There are statistically even more ...
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How is a young child able to learn language so easily?
It's a well known fact that the earlier children are exposed to languages the better, as young children have a better ability to learn new languages than adults.
Why is this?
At what age does a ...
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Does any evidence show that Smartphone users have poorer memory?
An ages old complaint is that new technology harms memory. Why remember something when you can look it up?
In a course on Human Memory I distinctly recall an interesting discussion on phones and ...
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Is psychology a science?
I've read some books from behavioral economy to emotional intelligence, and it kind of makes sense, but when it comes to psychology it feels to me a bit like astrology, where there are some things ...
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Is Behaviorism incompatible with Cognitive Psychology?
Both disciplines have historically been at each other's throats, and Radical Behaviorists like B.F. Skinner often completely reject cognitive psychology at a philosophical level.
It seems that today ...
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