Thinking too much may be bad

[Riverwolf]

The operational definition has to do with quantifying a variable so that it becomes measurable.

For example, If my hypothesis was that violence on television increases aggression in children, I would have to come up with an operational definition for both violence and aggression, so that both can be measurable. For example, I might operationally define violence as the number of times someone was killed on television, and aggression by the number of times a child (after having watched the violent TV show) hit Bobo the doll. This makes both variables (violence and aggression) measurable, so that it can be computed statistically for scientific and statistical analysis. By using operational definitions, I can test the hypothesis statistically, come up with equations that predict future behavior, etc.

In the case of the first study, thinking too much was operationally defined as difficult decision making and certainty. More specifically, it was measured by how certain a person was, on a scale of one to six. I'm not sure how being certain of something, is a valid measure of thinking too much. Measuring brain activity with an EEG or fMRI would be more valid, as you can actually quantify activity in the anterior prefrontal cortex during a decision task.

Ah, I see. Thanks.

The title doesn't clarify what too much thinking is, and what it is not. Does thinking too much mean critical analysis? Is solving an algebraic thinking too much? Do people think too much by questioning the existence of God, or wonder about how the universe came into existence? Do people think too much when they criticize policies of the government? Am I thinking too much by analyzing the article? The title is an oversimplification which may lead to assumptions and overgeneralizations.

Oh, that's true, it isn't well-defined. But it still says that thinking is good, and since it says it's good, it therefore infers that it should be something to be done, whatever it is, exactly, and that's the point I was trying to make.

What I mean by normal is general decision making. For example, I might go to the grocery store, and make a decision on whether I should buy an apple which is more healthy, or a cheeseburger at the fast food restaurant next door. Deciding whether or not a spot is lighter, does not reflect normal, or general every day decisions that a person makes. It does not reflect financial decisions, decisions on whether or not to have children, or to get married. It does not reflect decisions on which college you want to go to, what law firm to go to, what insurance company is best, what car to buy, whether or not you should ask someone out on a date, whether or not your spouse is cheating on you, etc. These reflect every day decisions. We don't stare at illusions all day trying to figure out which dot is brighter. In this sense, this task would be statistically infrequent, an outlier, (i.e. out of the ordinary).

Huh... the majority of those decisions are very much out of my... ordinary-ness. Then again, I am a nerd. lol

But I do get your point. Thanks.

At most, I would assume that it would take a minute. The arsenal of decision tasks don't usually take that long. If it did, there would probably be issues where you couldn't get a proper measurement (i.e., there would be too much variability). Eventually, I might try and get my hands on the actual study, and then do some real scientific and statistical analysis. It might be that the Journalist is full of BS.

Could be. Happens all the time.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

That doesn't sound good for me. I think so much that I think while I'm in the first two stages of sleep, sometimes the third but I usually only make it a few more minutes before my mind turns off. And I can sometimes turn back on once I'm starting REM.

 

[cynic2005]

That doesn't sound good for me. I think so much that I think while I'm in the first two stages of sleep, sometimes the third but I usually only make it a few more minutes before my mind turns off. And I can sometimes turn back on once I'm starting REM.

Sometimes instead of having dreams, its like my mind performs calculations and formulates hypotheses in my sleep, after a hard day of thinking. Its too bad I usually can't understand them or remember them when I wake up, but I assume its consolidation of the information I had just gone over previously (there is a supported theory that dreams consolidate memories).

You know, I wonder if this is how Francis Crick discovered the double helix structure of DNA.

 

[cynic2005]

Ok. I got a hold of the first study in the article.

UK scientists, writing in Science, looked at how brain size varied depending on how much people thought about decisions.
But a nationwide survey recently found that some people think too much about life.
These people have poorer memories, and they may also be depressed.

As I stated earlier, the Journalist has combined two unrelated studies. This beginning introduction is true, but the first sentence which I've highlighted, has nothing to do with the second. Combined, it deceptively appears as though brain size has been linked with poor memory and depression.

Stephen Fleming, a member of the University College London (UCL) team that carried out the research, said: "Imagine you're on a game show such as 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' and you're uncertain of your answer. You can use that knowledge to ask the audience, ask for help."
The London group asked 32 volunteers to make difficult decisions. They had to look at two very similar black and grey pictures and say which one had a lighter spot.They then had to say just how sure they were of their answer, on a scale of one to six.

I believe this is inaccurate. The perceptual task involves the flashing of two screens, which lasts for 200 ms each with a 300 ms blank pause in between. The subjects see two striated blips while staring at the screen, and then decide which screen had the higher contrast blip. This is not a difficult task at all, and that is not really what this study is about. This study has absolutely nothing to do with "too much thought." It has to do with metacognitive ability in determining the accuracy of our decisions. This was measured by a scale of 1-6 in the metacognitive task, in which the subject rated how confident he/she was in his or her decision. This variable was correlated with anatomical volume of grey and white matter. A significant positive correlation between subject confidence and brain volume in the PFC was found.

People who were more sure of their answer had more brain cells in the front-most part of the brain - known as the anterior prefrontal cortex.
This part of the brain has been linked to many brain and mental disorders, including autism. Previous studies have looked at how this area functions while people make real time decisions, but not at differences between individuals.

Both of these statements are true. However, the journalist has again combined two unrelated things, which deceptively gives the appearance that more brain cells in the anterior PFC equates to brain and mental pathology. If anything, the researchers in the first study linked brain lesions in the PFC with a compromised metacognitive ability:

Consistent with prefrontal gray-matter volume playing a causal role in metacognition, patients with lesions to the anterior PFC show deficits in subjective reports as compared with controls, after factoring out differences in objective performance

The study is the first to show that there are physical differences between people with regard to how big this area is. These size differences relate to how much they think about their own decisions.

True, as I stated, a pretty considerable correlation was found.

The researchers hope that learning more about these types of differences between people may help those with mental illness.

This may be true, but in the context that people who have lesions in their PFC are suffering from neurological deficits, not the other way around.

Co-author Dr Rimona Weil, from UCL's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: "I think it has very important implications for patients with mental ill health who perhaps don't have as much insight into their own disease." She added that they hope they may be able to improve patients' ability to recognise that they have an illness and to remember to take their medication.
However, thinking a lot about your own thoughts may not be all good.

Again, there is a combining of two unrelated studies. In the first study, it is likely that Dr. Rimona is referring to people who are suffering from a metacognitive deficit due to a lesion, tumor, or something else. It is possible that thinking a lot about your own thoughts may not be all that good, but this premise has nothing at all to do with the first study. Metacognition, for example, is the realization that the memory of what you ate for last nights dinner may not be accurate. It is being aware of your own thought and memory processes. To suggest that being aware of your own thoughts and cognitive processes may not be all that good, is absurd [edit: not necessarily]. A Metacognitive deficit in memory for example, would lead to an inability to tell whether or not your memory of an event is vivid and accurate, or that perhaps your memory is not a memory at all--perhaps you dreamed it and only mistook it for a memory. When we say things such as, "I'm sorry, what's your name again? I'm very bad at memorizing names," we refer to our memory and how bad it is. This realization, of how good or bad our memory is, is metacognition. People who suffer from Alzheimers, exhibit metacognitive deficits (as well as memory deficits), which is who Dr. Rimona might actually be referring to, as they also exhibit anosognosia, a lack of awareness that they are suffering from a condition.

Cognitive psychologist Dr Tracy Alloway from the University of Stirling, who was not involved in the latest study, said that some people have a tendency to brood too much and this leads to a risk of depression. More than 1,000 people took part in a nationwide study linking one type of memory - called "working memory" - to mental health. Working memory involves the ability to remember pieces of information for a short time, but also while you are remembering them, to do something with them.
For example, you might have to keep hold of information about where you saw shapes and colours - and also answer questions on what they looked like. Dr Alloway commented: "I like to describe it as your brain's Post-It note." Those with poorer working memory, the 10-15% of people who could only remember about two things, were more likely to mull over things and brood too much. Both groups presented their findings at the British Science Festival, held this year at the University of Aston in Birmingham.

The Journalist failed to cite or place a link for this study. Various things in this section of the article is true, and is most likely referring to the well known phenomenon called rumination. Rumination and metacognition or introspective ability are not the same thing [edit: though they may be inter-related. For example, rumination may involve metacognitive processing]. Working memory and metacognition are also not the same thing.

[edit: after doing some more research on metacognition and rumination I have changed my mind concerning the article. There are studies that have linked the two (click here for an example). This leads me to drop the assertion that the article was deliberate convolution. Instead, I believe it to be neglect on the journalist's part to write a more well thought out and scientifically accurate article. It appears that the journalist was trying to link metacognition with rumination and depression (but did so poorly). If anyone is interested in this subject matter, I suggest using these three terms when performing a search].

 

[cynic2005]

BTW, I personally feel that people suffering from depression have poor metacognitive ability. That is, they don't have introspective insight into how irrational and erroneous their thought processes are. Better metacognitive ability, that is introspective insight into one's own thought processes, is something that I personally consider necessary for good mental health. To recognizing that you are "thinking about thinking" too much, would itself require metacognition (i.e., thinking about thinking).

Secondly, I feel that some people have falsely attributed the cause of depression to "too much thought," when I would consider it a symptom (where the underlying cause of both "too much thought" and depression is poor self-regulation and poor metacognitive insight). If someone cannot regulate their own thoughts well, let alone not understand their own thought processes, it can certainly lead to "too much thought" of the neurotic and compulsive type. The act of thinking itself, whether a little or a lot, is not itself pathological, or necessarily the result or cause of mental pathology. As Kilgore Trout suggested, it depends on the quality of the thought. Some lead to depression, and some do not. All this thought I have given to this thread, is not making me depressed at all, or putting me into a stupor. But too much of the wrong type of thought, poor self-regulation, and poor self awareness, may lead to a depressed mood and even clinical depression. That is my final (educated) opinion.

 

[cynic2005]

Interesting, I found a blog entry written on this study. It was written by a psychologist. Anyways this entry more accurately explains the recent study concerning the neural correlates of introspective ability:


" Our ability to introspect, in other words, to think about our thinking, is a key aspect of human consciousness and is important in all sorts of activities. Just think about a student studying for a test, her ability to introspect on whether she has understood the material in the textbook is imperative for ensuring a good grade on the exam. If our student finishes reading the textbook without knowing she hasn't understood it, her likelihood of acing the exam is not very high. Or, how about in the hospital? If a doctor has high confidence that she has made the right diagnosis of a patient, but this confidence is not actually justified (i.e., the diagnosis is wrong), this may prevent her from seeking additional tests or that second opinion that could save the patient's life. In short, our ability to accurately introspect on our understanding is essential for the appropriate guidance of our decisions and actions in most facets of life.
For some time now, psychologists have know that some people are better at judging the accuracy of their knowledge and decisions than others. A paper published last month in Science shows where this introspective ability is rooted in the brain. It also provides some interesting insights into whether or not we can actually improve our ability to think about our own thinking.
Dr. Stephen Fleming and his colleagues at University College London asked people to engage in a visual decision making task in which the goal was to chose which patch in a series of images was brightest. Because some people are better at this type of decision than others, the researchers programmed a computer to give harder trials to the better observers, and easier trials to the poorer observers. This meant that everyone's performance was at roughly the same accuracy level. People were also asked to rate how confident they were in their decisions which gets at our ability to introspect. The more of a match between people's decision-making accuracy and their confidence, the better their introspective abilities.
The researchers then related this introspective ability to the structure of people's brains. They used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to do this. They found that introspective ability correlated with increased gray matter volume (which implies more neuron cell bodies) in the anterior prefrontal cortex. In people better at introspection, the researchers also found enhanced integrity and efficiency of the neuronal fibers (white matter tracts) that connected the anterior prefrontal cortex to other brain regions. The anterior prefrontal cortex shows marked evolutionary development in humans. It sits at the top of the information processing hierarchy and is thought to be involved in linking information about performance and confidence.
It's too soon to tell whether these findings reflect innate differences in brain anatomy or are the result of experience or learning. Indeed, the current findings can't settle this issue. However, this research does hint at the intriguing idea that we may be able to train introspective ability by capitalizing on the malleability of the prefrontal cortex. Other work suggests that practice can change how the brain is wired to support exceptional performance. This might be true in terms of introspection as well.
Take London cab drivers, for example. They learn every street in a city because they practice. London cab drivers spend several years memorizing various ways to navigate their crowded metropolitan area before they are allowed to set foot in their own cab. Scientists have shown that this route-finding practice changes these cab drivers' brains.
The hippocampus, which is important for navigating and recalling complex routes, is enlarged in London cabbies compared to non-drivers. Even more telling about the role of practice in changing the brain is that the size of cab drivers' hippocampus varies with years spent behind the taxi wheel. The longer a driver has been on the streets, the larger the part of the hippocampus involved in successfully finding the correct city route.
Just as experience changes the brains of cab drivers to support exceptional navigation, training regimens designed to mold the prefrontal cortex to support exceptional introspection might be possible as well. If so, then in addition to doctors practicing in the operating room, brain training designed to increase doctor's ability to accurately introspect on their own knowledge and decisions may help ensure optimal performance in the medical field."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...-grounding-introspective-ability-in-the-brain