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1500 questions
19
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2 answers
Do men and women differ in their desire to have children?
I was reading the comments of the following article on paternal health and birth defects. Someone made the following comment.
The other thing is that mens interest in being a father is nowhere
near a high priority as women's is to be a…
Jeromy Anglim
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Why is storytelling an effective way to transmit information between people?
Parables, fables, myths, whatever you might call them, stories have always been part of human consciousness. Within recent decades, storytelling is recognized as a big component of advertising and marketing. Stories can capture our attention,…
Ana
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What is the term for when too many choices results in inability to decide?
A common problem is that when offered too many choices, consumers give up and make no choice. Too many options results in no sale where fewer options might have resulted in more sales. It's like the cognitive load of so many choices makes the…
Ben Brocka
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19
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Does dream recall interfere with "reverse learning"? (Crick and Mitchison's theory of REM sleep)
I've recently became aware of the idea of "reverse learning" that might happen during REM sleep - the brain's attempt to eliminate pathological attractors that might appear in neural networks. The idea was originally expressed by Crick and Mitchison…
Alex Stone
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19
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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 and emoticons. Anyone have a good recommendation?…
Dan
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19
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How does goal-tracking and sign-tracking behaviour vary across species?
In Pavlonian (classical) conditioning, conditioned responses of an animal may vary. Some animals focus on the unconditioned stimulus (ie. food/location of food) while others may focus on the conditioned stimulus (ie. lever or button). These…
Vielle
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Omitting word(s) when typing
[Reraising a recently asked question that was closed here, but in more cogsci fashion, I hope.]
Some people are more inclined than others to omit a word when typing, but still be unaware of its unintended absence on a (first) proofreading. In…
the gods from engineering
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19
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Does the effect of naturalistic exposure on second language acquisition vary with age?
A while back, I watched the movie The Terminal and the main character played by Tom Hanks learns to speak fluent English while he is stranded in the airport for more than a year. Which seems somewhat superfluous as I was of the opinion that picking…
jokerdino
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19
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3 answers
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 thinking about how she'll do and while wondering…
pasawaya
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19
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1 answer
Kahneman's add one / three exercise
In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes a mental exercise which he calls Add One:
To start, make up several strings of 4 digits, all different, and write each string on an index card. Place a blank card on top of the deck.…
bluenote10
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19
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3 answers
Is back-prop biologically plausible?
One of the common criticisms of Deep Learning is it's training algorithms, back-propagation of error (back-prop), has no biologically plausible implementation, despite evidence of something like it occurring in the brain. The default implementation…
Seanny123
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19
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1 answer
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 in sequence depending on game). Based on the…
Artem Kaznatcheev
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19
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How can I use gamification to encourage people to complete workplace training?
I am looking for ways to improve the likelihood people will perform mundane but required workplace training. I am looking into gamification techniques.
My organisation requires that employees complete short online learning courses (think Health and…
Jay
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19
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1 answer
Is there a region of cortex which over a period of development becomes the seat of self?
Background
Mountcastle's hypothesis, which is based on the observation of uniform cortical anatomy, suggests that the there might be a uniform cortical "algorithm". The only reason that some cortical regions seem to be specialized for particular…
bfrs
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18
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Which schools of psychotherapy are most credible to a hard scientist?
There is a problem in all therapies that if the client doesn't have faith or trust in the therapist then it is unlikely that anything can be achieved. Therefore effective therapy for an extreme skeptic relies on convincing them that the therapist…
Anon1423563
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