[in Japanese]

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For human object recognition, there is a possibility that recognition for graspable objects becomes possible with an internal hand model acquired through motor experience. From this point of view, we examined whether the internal hand model affects object recognition or not. In the measurement experiment, firstly, participants acquired a novel internal hand model by repeating a grasping task of an object displayed on a monitor, under the condition that geometrically transformed a displayed hand shape. After the training, we measured whether participant recognized a displayed object (cylinder) as a cup or not. As a result, we ascertained that the cognitive judgment depends on the amplitude of the geometrical transformation of the displayed hand. This result indicates that the trained internal hand model affects object recognition. Finally, we conclude that an internal model of the human hand may play an important role for object recognition of graspable objects.

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[in Japanese]

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In this study, we examine how difference of schools and careers of Nihon Buyo evokes different impressions of audiences. We recorded motional expressions of Nihon Buyo by video camera and motion capture to analyze the relations between impressions and motional expressions and to make clear the effects of motional expression. The object of our experiment was a part of "Musume-Dojoji", a masterpiece of Nihon Buyo, which was performed by professional female dancers representing the principal five schools and four careers on their own style. Experimental process was as follows:(i) Impressions of audiences on each video recorded "Musume-Dojoji" were evaluated. (ii) Each motional expression was recorded by the motion capture. This time, we got results of SD method by multidimensional scaling method and correlation analysis for the position coordinates of motion capture data. We examined connection of impression evaluation and the movement analysis for the Nihon Buyo.

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[in Japanese]

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Experiments with the number selection task were executed to investigate effects of aging and time of testing. A trial of the task was constructed with 2 numbers of different sizes, and the instruction to which a participant responded to select the LARGER number ("SIZE" for physically larger one, or "NUM" for numerically larger one). Young and older adults in Tokyo (N=83) and Toronto (N=136) participated experiments, answering 48 consecutive trials on computer with touch-panel display. The correct ratio showed only effects of aging, with no effects of time of testing. In contrast, averages of reaction time showed interaction of two factors, indicating only older adults exhibited time of testing effects. In addition, reaction time of each item was affected by Task switching, instruction, and Congruent/Incongruent differently between with Japanese and Canadian participants. Performance of these cognitive controls will be discussed with various factors.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Although it is known that people who have strong experiences related to music are large in number, it is obscure how does strong experiences arise when listening to music. In this light, we investigated the relationship between physical reactions and strong experiences when listening to music. Our findings suggested that a combination of five physical reactions (goose pimples, lump in the throat, shivers down the spine, tears and arousal) is highly related to strong experiences of music listening. The aim of this study was to reveal a relationship between such physical reactions and acoustic features especially dynamic range in music. The result of a quantitative experiment shows that some physical reactions such as goose pimples, lump in the throat, shivers down the spine and arousal are strongly related to dynamic range in music.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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People identify faces of their own race more accurately than those of other races (other race effect). Several lines of research suggest that our often greater experience identifying faces of our own race leads to a richer perceptual representation for own-race faces compared to other-race faces. However, the source of this effect remains unclear. The present study investigated whether other race effect was obtained with a single facial feature (left eyebrow, right eyebrow, left eye, right eye, nose, or mouth) as well as the whole face. For the whole face stimuli, we replicated the classic other-race effect: identification accuracy was significantly higher for own- (Japanese) compared to other-race (Caucasian) faces. For our single-feature stimuli, we obtained a significant other-race effect for 3 out of the 8 features: Left-eye, right eyebrow, and nose. This result contradicts the holistic processing account of other-race effect.

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Previous studies (e.g. Nisbett, 2003) have indicated strong cross cultural differences in conscious perception, memory and reasoning, such that Eastern people have a preference for a more global perspective and Western people for a more analytical perspective. We investigate whether these biases also apply to unconscious cognition, specifically to implicit learning i.e. the acquisition of unconscious knowledge. Tanaka et al (2008) investigated the role of selective attention in implicit learning, using GLOCAL strings-that is, chains of compound global and local letters. Using Japanese participants, they found an implicit learning advantage for structures presented globally rather than locally. The present study investigated Japanese and English participants asked to freely attend to the GLOCAL strings. The results indicated implicit learning only at the global and not the local level for Japanese, but equal learning of both levels by English. Cultural biases strongly affect the type of unconscious knowledge people acquire.

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This study examines the mental operations acquired by students to quantify probability in modes of reasoning in two types of Bayesian problems: the Bayesian drawing-of-lots problem (Itoh, 2008) and the Bayesian medical diagnosis problem. The distinction between competence factors and performance factors is needed to analyze reasoning (Itoh, 2008). Competence factors are mental operations essential to quantify probability. Performance factors, such as the contents of problems, influence the functioning of operations. In this study, junior high school students and university students answered the two problems. The content of the former problem is so simple that the influence of the students' competence factors on results can be examined exclusively. The content of the latter is so well contextualized that the results are considered to be influenced by both factors. According to the results, the modes of reasoning in both problems can be explained in terms of the level of acquired operations.

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[in Japanese]

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Choi and Nisbett (2000) reported that Koreans showed stronger hindsight bias than Americans. The purpose of this study was to see whether hindsight bias is stronger among Easterners than among Westerners using a probability judgment task, and to test an 'explicit-implicit' hypothesis and a 'rule-dialectics' hypothesis. We predict that the implicit process is more active among Easterners to generate hindsight bias, and that Easterners are more dialectical thinkers, whereas Westerners are more rule-based thinkers. French, British, Japanese, and Korean participants were asked to make probabilistic judgments in a scenario including conditional probabilistic judgment (Experiment 1) and in a Good Samaritan scenario (Experiment 2). In the results, Easterners showed greater hindsight bias generally, and their cognition was more implicit and dialectic.

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This study aims to investigate how delay effects on false recall occurred in our participants of Japanese-dominant bilinguals. We used 6 lists of 15 Japanese words. Each list consisted of 15 words that could easily make participants associate with non-presented lure word respectively. After presenting each list, immediate recall task was conducted for 2 minutes. Delayed recall task was conducted one week later. As a result, list words were recalled more in the immediate tests than in delayed test. On the contrary, critical lures were recalled more in delayed test than in the immediate test. We discuss about how Japanese participants process and associate Japanese words. Furthermore, we show the differences and similarities of results in Japanese and in English (Kawasaki & Inoue, 2005). The characteristics of language processing in Japanese-dominant bilinguals are also discussed based on the results of our false memory experiments.

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[in Japanese]

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Prospective memory performances of older people are examined by using Virtual Week as a prospective memory task in laboratory. Rendell & Craik (2000) improved at problems in previous studies that materials are too abstract and accidental appearances of targets are lack of predictability, and developed Virtual Week. The task is assumed spending during a day, for example, breakfast, supper, shopping, and going school. In addition, the regulation which is a feature of daily living of repeating the same thing every day is introduced. The condition of task is regular, irregular, and time monitoring. As a result, older people showed good performance under the regular condition.

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[in Japanese]

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Social elaboration refers to the addition of information about a person to the target. The present study investigated the effects of the emotionality and the congruity of person's information on incidental memory. Participants were 38 undergraduates. Each participant was presented a target and a famous person's name, and asked to rate the congruity between the targets and the person's name, and also asked to rate the pleasantness of the person, followed by an unexpected free recall test. The main result showed that targets associated with congruous, pleasant person's name were recalled more often than those with incongruous, emotionally neutral person's name. Thie result was interpreted as showing that the targets elaborated by a person's information were integrated into cognitive structure only if the person's information aroused a strong emotion.

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[in Japanese]

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The effects of shape and presentation position of arrows on a frontal plane were investigated to the direction perception of leftwards and rightwards arrows. Those were a narrow top, a narrow tail, and an equal width stem of arrow; and the left, right, and center positions. As a result, the perception between the leftwards and rightwards arrow was different. Except for the equal width stem arrow, the perception was influenced with the presentation positions. The forwards direction was predominant in all positions for the leftwards arrow but only in the right position for the rightwards one.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Mizuno, Matsu, Harman, & Bellezza (2008) measured attention-switching time, which gets longer at shorter SOAs with within-block design, by simple reaction time, calculated net matching time by subtracting simple reaction time from matching time, and revealed the real encoding times for phonograms of Japanese and English readers. This study was conducted to replicate the experiment with between-block design, which was considered to be free from the bias because of SOAs, to confirm the validity of this design. The result revealed that there was substantially no difference between the change with SOAs of matching time with between-block design and that of net matching time with within-block design, indicating the validity of between-block design in eliminating the bias and the encoding times found in Mizuno et al. (2008).

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