Psychology

Trauma Exposure across the News Cycle and the Case for Biotypes of PTSD in War Journalists

Author: Sheeva Azma
Date: October, 2024
Area(s): Biology, Psychology
Text: PDF

This study examines the pervasive nature of trauma exposure in journalism and its impact across all stages of the news reporting cycle. Drawing from a comprehensive literature review, we highlight the significant gap in research on the neuroscience of journalism and journalist PTSD, despite the high prevalence of PTSD among war correspondents and photojournalists. We present a conceptual framework illustrating how primary and secondary trauma exposures occur during news gathering, reporting, and consumption phases. The study also reviews empirical findings on PTSD's effects on brain structure and function, identifying symptom subclusters and their associated brain regions. This knowledge informs the development of biotypes for more personalized and effective treatment strategies for journalists with PTSD while also emphasizing an urgent need for comprehensive support systems for journalists. This interdisciplinary approach uniting research in journalism, neuroscience, psychology, and organizational management, also advances the understanding of trauma in journalism and its broader implications for news consumption and societal trust in media institutions. Interventions that can support journalists’ mental well-being can also enhance the quality of news reporting and contribute to a more resilient and informed society.

A Controlled Experiment Testing the Effect of Unconditional 100% Exam Scores on Long-Term Retention

Author: Andrew Neff
Date: September, 2024
Area: Psychology
Text: PDF

Ungrading is the practice of removing traditional grading systems, often based on the belief that grades do not adequately reflect student knowledge or that they undermine deeper learning. The value of ungrading, particularly considering major assignments like exams, is supported mostly by theoretical scholarship and qualitative studies. This article describes a controlled experiment testing whether it is detrimental to give students an unconditional 100% on a test, in terms of future performance on that same test. These experiments took place over three semesters, at two universities, in two different undergraduate classes (neuroscience and psychology), including a total of 409 students. Results were mixed: during the first two semesters, when comparing students who were originally graded to those who were not, there was no difference in performance on that same test 2-3 months later. However, in the final semester, students who were traditionally graded scored 4-5% better on the same test one week to six weeks later. Consequently, this data supports the broader testing of diverse grading practices, including transcripts that do not contain grades.

A Paradigm for AI Consciousness

Author: Michael Johnson
Date: June, 2024
Area: Biology, Physical Sciences, Psychology, Scientific Ethics, Technology
Text: PDF, Substack

How can we create a container for knowledge about AI consciousness? This work introduces a new framework based on physicalism, decoherence, and symmetry. Major arguments include (1) atoms are a more sturdy ontology for grounding consciousness than bits, (2) Wolfram’s ‘branchial space’ is where an object’s true shape lives, (3) electromagnetism is a good proxy for branchial shape, (4) brains and computers have significantly different shapes in branchial space, (5) symmetry considerations will strongly inform a future science of consciousness, and (6) computational efficiency considerations may broadly hedge against “s-risk”.

Taxonomies of Intelligence: A Comprehensive Guide to the Universe of Minds

Author: Roman V. Yampolskiy
Date: October, 2023
Areas: Biology, Psychology, Technology
Text: PDF, Substack

This paper explores the landscape of potential mind architectures by initially conceptualizing all minds as software. Through rigorous analysis, we establish intriguing properties of this intellectual space, including its infinite scope, variable dimensions of complexity, and representational intricacies. We then provide an extensive review of existing taxonomies for mind design. Building on this foundation, the paper introduces 'Intellectology' as a new field dedicated to the systematic study of diverse forms of intelligence. A compendium of open research questions aimed at steering future inquiry in this nascent discipline is also presented.

Forager Facts

Author: David Youngberg and Robin Hanson
Date: August, 2023
Areas: Biology, Psychology, Social Sciences
Text: PDF, Substack

Using an anthropology database that details many groups, we summarize how our forager ancestors likely lived on a variety of metrics. Though we have long since ceased to live as hunter-gatherers, its psychological shadow likely still shapes us, and so we would try to understand that lifestyle as fully as possible.

We See The Sacred From Afar, To See It The Same

Author: Robin Hanson
Date: June, 2023
Areas: Psychology, Social Sciences
Text: PDF, Substack

68 reported correlates of treating things as “sacred” are listed, and collected into seven themes. Most can be plausibly explained via two hypotheses. The first, taken from Durkheim, is that treating things as sacred mainly functions to bind groups together via a shared view of it. The second hypothesis, suggested by psychology’s construal level theory, is that humans acquired a habit of seeing sacred things as if from afar, even when they are close, to more consistently see those things the same as others in their groups.

Principles of Categorization: A Synthesis

Author: Davood Gozli
Date: June, 2023
Areas: Metascience, Psychology
Text: PDF

The present article explores the nature of categorization and its role in shaping our relationship with reality. Drawing on Jens Mammen's distinction between sense categories and choice categories, and Eleanor Rosch's principles of categorization, I examine how our attitudes and modes of engagement with categories can reveal important insights relevant not only to psychology but other scientific fields as well. Furthermore, I argue that the connection between sense and choice categories can be traced by examining atypical instances and non-basic-level categories, which highlight the role of subjects embedded in particular situations. In general, categorization is an active process, influenced by our interests and commitments, even though it does not always appear as such. By correcting biases in our treatment of concepts and categories, we can ultimately correct our biases in scientific practices, thus revealing the entanglement of categorization with broader epistemological issues.

Perspective: Focused-Ultrasound Guided Neuropeptide Delivery as a Novel Therapeutic Approach in Psychiatry

Authors: Manjushri Karthikeyan, Ahaana Shrivastava, Andrew Neff
Date: April, 2023
Areas: Biology, Psychology
Text: PDF, Substack

Although drugs are a critical component of mental healthcare, most have modest benefits and significant side effects. One way to develop a superior intervention would be to administer drugs with the spatial and temporal precision that better replicates natural diversity within neurotransmitter systems. A technology called focused-ultrasound (FU) may be able to safely and transiently disrupt the blood-brain barrier with spatial precision, permitting the site-specific delivery of molecules that do not conventionally cross the blood-brain barrier. If this method is proven to be safe and effective in larger human trials, it may trigger a paradigm shift in biopsychology research where the level of precision with which neurotransmitter systems can be influenced is massively increased. In this article, we use the example of oxytocin in the treatment of Autism. We propose that intranasal administration is not highly effective because it leads to oxytocin’s wide dispersion throughout the brain, failing to specifically stimulate oxytocin’s prosocial effects in specific regions. Consequently, we hypothesize that site-specific delivery of oxytocin, particularly in brain regions such as the Nucleus Accumbens and Ventral Tegmental Area, would lead to more consistent benefits.

The Muscle Readers, a Historical Sketch

Author: Leverage Research
Date: February, 2023
Area: Psychology
Text: PDF, Substack

The notion that subtle nonverbal cues play an important role in social interaction is relatively uncontroversial. What the upper bounds of this capacity might be, however—how much and what kind of information can be conveyed through these channels—remains unclear and, at present, under-explored. In the present work, we consider possible answers to the question and ways in which it could be addressed by considering an historical line of investigation known as muscle reading. Spurred by public interest in mentalism and the specific popularity of thought-readers, researchers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries began investigating the possibility that information about our thoughts and inclinations could be “read” from muscle tension, unconscious vocalizations, and other subtle cues. While covering some of the same ground as contemporary research on nonverbal communication, the literature of this era contains many reports that go well beyond this. Feats such as locating a hidden object, guessing the suit of a card, and determining words or names held in another’s mind were said to be achieved in controlled conditions or by academic researchers themselves. In some cases, subtle but telling movements were also said to be captured by early biometric apparatuses. While we believe that such claims should be interpreted with caution, we contend that the reports of these early researchers should not be dismissed merely because of their age and that a better understanding of this literature offers important leads for investigators today.

Notes on the Inexact Sciences

Date: November, 2022
Author: Suspended Reason
Areas: Metascience, Psychology, Social Sciences
Text: PDF, Substack

Popular wisdom warns us against premature optimization. And yet, in a quest for public legitimacy and tidy problem domains, many fields discourage vitally necessary descriptive and conceptual work in favor of statistical analysis and laboratory experiments. Topics of unprecedented complexity are tackled using rote, mechanical approaches, by researchers who routinely fail to realize how much linguistic and conceptual clarification is a precondition of headway. Meanwhile, sociological and professional incentives prevent the sorts of synthetic work that might de-provincialize researchers' theories, and initiate exactly those conceptual refactorings which would advance the discipline.

The Rise and Fall of the Dot-Probe Task: Opportunities for Metascientific Learning

Authors: Benjamin T. Sharpe, Monika Halls, Thomas E. Gladwin
Date: November, 2022
Area: Psychology
Text: PDF, Substack

Much of the extensive literature on spatial attentional bias is built on measurements using the dot-probe task. In recent years, concerns have been raised about the psychometric properties of bias scores derived from this task. The goal of the current paper is to look ahead and evaluate possible responses of the field to this situation from a metascientific perspective. Therefore, educated guesses are made on foreseeable but preventable future (repeats of) errors. We discuss, first, the issue of overreactions to the disappointing findings, especially in the context of the potential of a new generation of promising variations on the traditional dot-probe task; second, concerns with competition between tasks; and third, the misuse of rationales to direct research efforts. Alternative directions are suggested that may be more productive. We argue that more adequately exploring and testing methods and adjusting scientific strategies will be critical to avoiding suboptimal research and potentially failing to learn from mistakes. The current articulation of arguments and concerns may therefore be of use in discussions arising around future behavioural research into spatial attentional bias and more broadly in psychological science.

What does it mean to represent? Mental representations as falsifiable memory patterns

Authors: Eloy Parra-Barrero, Yulia Sandamirskaya
Date: May, 2022
Areas: Biology, Psychology
Text: PDF

Representation is a key notion in neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI). However, a longstanding philosophical debate highlights that specifying what counts as representation is trickier than it seems. With this brief opinion paper we would like to bring the philosophical problem of representation into attention and provide an implementable solution. We note that causal and teleological approaches often assumed by neuroscientists and engineers fail to provide a satisfactory account of representation. We sketch an alternative according to which representations correspond to inferred latent structures in the world, identified on the basis of conditional patterns of activation. These structures are assumed to have certain properties objectively, which allows for planning, prediction, and detection of unexpected events. We illustrate our proposal with the simulation of a simple neural network model. We believe this stronger notion of representation could inform future research in neuroscience and AI.

The Cult Deficit: Analysis and Speculation

Author: Roger’s Bacon
Date: May, 2022
Areas: Psychology, Science Education, Social Sciences, Technology
Text: PDF, Substack

Using a dataset derived from the long-running “Cults” podcast by Parcast, I find that the number of new cults began to increase in the 50s, peaked in the 70s-80s, and has been in steady decline in recent decades. I discuss various factors (historical, technological, cultural, pharmacological) that may have played a role in the rise and fall of cults since the 1950s and speculate on what the future may hold.

Building a Brain: An Introduction to Narrative Complexity, a language & internal dialogue-based theory of human consciousness

Author: R. Salvador Reyes
Date: April, 2022
Areas: Biology, Psychology
Text: PDF, Substack

Narrative Complexity is an internal dialogue-based looping model of consciousness & behavior—one that provides a framework for effectively defining the specific (and central) role of language and inner speech within consciousness & cognition, and in turn, within the mechanisms of emotion & decision-making that consciousness & cognition help to govern. This introduction to the theory lays out some of its primary premises and outlines the model enough to demonstrate that it is novel, plausible, systematically comprehensive, and worth exploring in greater detail.

Function of “Memes” in Adolescent Communication: A Theoretical Review

Authors: Rachel Myers
Date: February, 2022
Area: Psychology
Text: PDF

“Twenty years ago, distracted boyfriend, grumpy cat, and Kermit the Frog would have been three terms that had nothing in common. Today, they are instantly recognized by many as characters of some of the most popular memes. As technology rapidly progressed at the turn of the century, memes evolved to become a crucial aspect of internet culture. What remains to be seen, however, is how this influences communication, and whether or not there is a generational gap in understanding of this new way of communicating. This paper reviews the definition and a brief history of internet memes before discussing the common characteristics of memes. Research related to possible reasons for the popularity of memes, such as human preference for analogy and the inherent desire to belong to an ingroup, are also examined. Possible explanations for the generational divide in understanding and use of memes are considered. It is hypothesized that future experiments would reveal a discrepancy in fundamental understanding of memes across age groups.”

Randomness in Science

Authors: Roger’s Bacon, Sergey Samsonau, Dario Krpan (example article)
Date: May, 2021
Areas: Metascience, Psychology
Text: PDF, Substack

“Could we improve science by exploring new ways to inject randomness into the research process?"

Stories as Technology: Past, Present, and Future

Authors: Roger’s Bacon, Sergey Samsonau, Dario Krpan (example article)
Date: May, 2021
Areas: Psychology, Technology
Text: PDF

“What is it about a good story that causes it to have life-changing effects on one person and not another? I wonder if future technologies will enable us to develop the type of truly deep and fine-grained understanding of stories as social, cognitive, and emotional technologies that might allow us to answer this question with a high-level of precision.”