[in Japanese]

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After studying the words that were related to a non-presented lure, participants falsely recall the non-presented lure. The present study examined time of the day effect on the false recall in children. In specific, the false recall that was produced in the morning (9:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m.) was compared with the false recall that was produced in the afternoon (3:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.). The present study demonstrated time of the day effect on the false recall: the false recall in the morning was greater than the false recall in the afternoon. The present study suggests that children are more likely to process semantic information in the morning than in the afternoon.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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This study examines the effects of intentional suppression of stress-related thoughts on working memory capacity, using thought suppression experimental paradigm. After the first working memory task, participants were informed to perform a speech task at the last of the experiment. Then, participants were given 5 minutes waiting period. During the waiting period, thought suppression group was instructed not to think about a speech task at all, but control group was not given any particular instruction. Finally, the second working memory task was carried out. The rate of change of working memory capacity from the first task to the second was calculated. The results showed the practice effect of the task which working memory capacity increased in both groups. However, in the thought suppression group, the practice effect was smaller than in the control group. It was suggested that suppressing stress-related thought interfered the practice effect in the working memory task.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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In this study, we examined interference inhibition by the preceding attention switching block using the Simon and the Stroop tasks.The three attention switching conditions constituted of two control conditions in which the participants had to read a digit either exclusively in English or in Japanese and of a switching condition in which they had to read it randomly in one of these languages, being cued at the start of each trial. Each set of the experimental blocks was composed of a switching condition block followed by an interference task (either Simon or Stroop) block. The entire set was repeated several times. The participants were pre-selected according to their subjective well-being (20 each for the high and the low happiness groups) with a questionnaire that included an item for assessing the subjective well-being. It was found that the two interference tasks were affected differently by the switching conditions with the Simon task interference being larger for the English reading condition compared with the other two conditions and the subjective happiness having no effect. In contrast, with the Stroop task interference was reduced when the participants performed the task following the English and the Switching blocks. The findings suggest that different underlying processes are involved in these two interference tasks.

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Two experiments were conducted to examine the effect of stimulus familiarity on preview search. Japanese Hiragana characters were used as the search stimuli. All items were presented in normal orientation in Experiment 1, whereas they were presented with 180-degree rotation in Experiment 2. Three conditions were compared in each experiment: Preview, all-items baseline, and half-items baseline conditions. In the preview condition, 3, 6, or 9 items were previewed and 3, 6, or 9 items were added to the display. In the all-items baseline condition, 6, 12, or 18 items were presented. In the half-items baseline condition, 3, 6, or 9 items were presented. In both experiments, the search performance in the preview condition was almost identical to that in the half-items baseline condition. Results suggest that the preview benefit in visual search occurs independently of stimulus familiarity.

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[in Japanese]

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Driving performance using dual task paradigm in simulator environment was investigated. Results indicated that both the delay in reaction time to detection task and the increase of evaluated score in mental workload when auditory task was required. Furthermore, the reaction time did not delay but the mental workload was increased when there was a preceding vehicle. This related that more attentional resource was allocated in order to compensate for the detection. Reaction time for the detection task increased when the target was presented in most peripheral visual fields. The possibility that is the interference of additional audio-information for the driving task is discussed.

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This study investigated the age-related changes in the attentional function. Both objective and subjective approaches were used to evaluate the data. The objective evaluation was based on the behavioral data from task-switching and the subjective evaluation was based on the self-evaluation using the questionnaires with questions about attentional function in daily life and failure tendency. The results indicated that the older adults, despite of their actual deterioration in the attentional function on the objective rating, reported the state of their attentional function was better and the frequency of their failure was fewer. Also, the lower-attentional function group showed better self-evaluation than that of the higher-attention function group in the older adults. From the results, it was suggested that the problem in the older adults is not only related to the deterioration of the cognitive function itself such as attention but also the deterioration of the self-monitoring function.

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Repeating an errorfull operation is a characteristic phenomenon with older users of IT-based artifacts. Using a simple Kanji-selection task, five experiments were executed to investigate occurrence factors of this phenomenon. Because the dual-task condition caused young adults to make error repetitions in preceding experiments, some new conditions on attention and/or working memory were introduced. The results showed that error repetitions were elicited with task switching condition, but not with "choose the wrong answer" condition, which was enough complicated and difficult, both with younger and older adults (Exp.1-4). These results were confirmed in Exp. 5 in which individual differences of a task-switching test affected error repetitions. These results indicated that the necessity of maintaining multiple goals in working memory, which was common under the task-switching condition and the dual-task condition, should be a main factor for the error-repetition phenomenon, and some implications for cognitive design of IT-based artifacts were discussed.

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To clarify whether Broca's subregions comprising the parts opercularis(Op) and the parts triangularis(Tr) display different roles in syntactic processing, we investigated Japanese infarct patients with selective damage in each subregion. Using the Object Manipulation Task (with subjects required to manipulate a toy animal after listening to a reversible sentence, e.g. "A squirrel gave an elephant to a tiger"), accuracy and error types were compared between patient groups. The Op group displayed difficulty with relative sentences, whereas the Tr group showed more difficulty with dative sentences than with relative sentences. the Tr group tended to posit items in canonical order, while the Op group posited items in random order. Scrambled active sentences were difficult for both groups. Considering the Japanese sentence structure, the results indicate that Op is involved in serial-order aspects in syntactic processing, while Tr is involved in semantic aspects.

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Inui, Ogawa, and Ohba (2007) showed that the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA47) is involved in thematic role processing of Japanese particles. Here event-related fMRI was used to investigate the neural basis of syntactic processing of Japanese sentences. The stimuli were 4 nouns, 3 particles, and 4 verbs. Noun, particle and verb were presented sequentially as a sentence to subjects. In the grammatical condition, subjects were instructed to judge whether the sentence is grammatically and semantically correct or not. In the phonological condition, subjects judged whether the particle shared a vowel sound with the first syllable of the verb. We found that the left BA47 and the left angular gyrus were activated when a particle was presented and that Broca's area and the left premotor area were activated when a verb was presented in the grammatical condition. We will discuss the neural basis of syntactic processing of simple sentences.

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In Japanese sentence comprehension, a noun and a case particle are chunked into phrase with case marker, and then the sentence is parsed into phrase structure. This study investigated the mechanisms for processing cases by comparing the brain regions activated during processing of sentences in canonical word order (SOV) with in non-canonical word order (OSV). The sentences were separated into three phrases. Native Japanese participants were presented with a phrase at a time and then with a picture corresponding to the sentence. They judged whether the sentence matches the picture. The comparison in OSV compared with SOV showed no difference in activation at first phrase, but significant activations in the left medial BA 6/8 at second phrase, and the left BA 44/45 at third phrase. The results suggest that these activations are related to cognitive processes such as imagery, working memory, and syntactic analysis, which are influenced by the non-canonicality of OSV in Japanese.

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Verbal self-monitoring is an essential function in the speech production processes. Under conditions of delayed auditory feedback (DAF), most normal speakers show disfluency. In this study, in order to reveal the characteristics of verbal self-monitoring mechanism, we analyzed speech errors under DAF. Adult nonstutterers were presented with Japanese sentences and asked to read aloud them under 200 ms DAF. Sentences were displayed with a cursor moving at a speed of one Japanese syllabary character per 200 ms corresponding to delay time. In the experiment, we use some types of loud noises and a bone conduction headphone to minimize the effect of original auditory and bone conductive feedbacks. We observed a negative correlation between stuttering probabilities and distances of adjacent syllables in auditory space. Based on this result, we discussed verbal self-monitoring mechanisms.

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Many studies have shown that holistic feature (e.g., shape) is focused more than analytic feature (e.g., color) in visual objects recognition and noun category generalization. In the present study, we hypothesize if object segregation involves with the holistic feature dominance by investigating discovery of artificially defined "object". In experiments, participants need to segregate a target pair of elements (i.e., "object") from a distractor element in order to answer appropriate feature of the target. Target pairs are defined by conjunction of holistic and analytic features. Participants are required to learn a set of target pairs with unknown features based on feedbacks to their responses. The learning patterns suggest that object segregation is relevant to holistic feature dominance, because holistic feature was focused more in a well-separable condition when elements were sparsely distributed, meanwhile, analytic feature was focused more in a ill-separable condition when elements were densely distributed.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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In this study, we examine how difference of schools 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 on their own style. Experimental process was as follows: (1) Impressions of audiences on each video recorded "Musume-Dojoji" were evaluated. (2) Each motional expression was recorded by the motion capture. Through the above process, we got the result: the impressions and the motion-captured data are correlative. We also found that difference of schools made difference of impressions and motion-captured data. Audiences had different impressions even on slightly different motional expressions.

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In the ensemble performance, it is noted that players use co-performer's body movement in order to adjust the ensemble performance. In previous research, the author has obtained the result of suggesting the possibility that under the face-to-face condition, players use co-performer's body movement as information, and that a time adjustment between co-performers was able to be done better compared with the non-face-to-face condition. On the other hand, the research has shown the result that a time adjustment was done better even under the non-face-to-face condition following after the face-to-face condition. In this research, using dyadic synchronization task of electronic drum tapping, we examine when the body movement becomes important for a time adjustment of ensemble performance. The result obtained from this research is important to clarify the role of the bodily movement in the ensemble performance in detail.

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In music performance, performers don't communicate with only auditory cues (musical sound) but also visual cues. Previous research (Kawase et al., 2006) suggested that performers used various visual communication channels such as body movements and gaze directions. In this research, we focused on performers' visual cues, especially their body movements. We investigated which region of body was considered important to communicate. In addition, we investigated the position of performers at rehearsal and on live performance. This research will contribute to understanding of communication in music performance.

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We experience emotionally moving states and see or hear a word "emotionally moving" on various occasions. Also there are especially many cases of emotionally moving states with listening to music. It is said that emotionally moving states with listening to music consist of 7 categories: "General characteristics" "Physical reactions and behaviours" "Perception" "Cognition" "Feelings/Emotions" "Existential and transcendental aspects" "Personal and social aspects" (Gabrielsson and Lindstrom, 2003). However relationship between emotionally moving states and each category is still obscure. Therefore we focused on "Feelings/Emotions" category and had quantitative experiments to make emotionally moving states more clear.

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It is thought that the player has matched the performance mutually by using a sound and other sensibility information. Breath information that the player used was especially paid to attention in this research. The research example of the quantitative analysis is very few though it is thought that breath information is used to rest while the player is performing and to match timing each other. Then, the performance experiment by two violinists was executed on a facing condition and non-facing condition in this research, and the use of performance sound and player's breath information was analyzed quantitatively. As a result, the part where two players used breath information regardless of the part, facing that two players used breath information only in a facing condition, and non-facing was seen. It was suggested that the player have been using breath information to use breath information for the player and to match timing.

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Remote communications by visual information and auditory information are usually done. The reality of communication is expected to increase by other sense information's being added. The experiment on remote communication is done with haptic and visual information. This task is a cooperative activity with two haptic mouses via LAN. Especially, Kansei is paid attention in the effect concerning the haptic information. The relation between haptic information and sense of reality is discussed about remote communication situation.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Matsuo (2006) examined the delay time and the distance as a factor to feel the followed object living-like appearance. But, the number of subjects is few, then the reliability was not high. Moreover, the judgment of subjects was difficult to answer the rating scale to the adjective pair at each presented stimuli. Then, in this experiment, The group experiment was carried out by using the paired comparison method. The six movie stimulus of about 15 seconds was made. Two combination stimulus were presented by sequential. Subjects were required to choose which the stimuli was more fit to the question items(four adjectives). According to the law of the comparison judgment of Thurstone, it was found that shorting the delay time of the object answered them as feeling alive.

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[in Japanese]

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The Golden Ratio (GR) is deeply related to visual perception and cognition in psychology. The previous studies indicated that the inverted GR plays a part in human performance. We investigated a decision-making when participants had no prior information and had to choose one of identical cells located in a column. This condition forces participants to use their implicit primordial knowledge. The results showed that frequencies with which participants selected each cell could be described by the functions of the GR (GR-proportions). The GR-proportions constantly occurred through out the experimental conditions. This suggests the unique mechanism producing the GR-proportions underlying the process of decision-making. Therefore, we conclude that discovered functions of the GR are intrinsic to human implicit primordial knowledge.

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[in Japanese]

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Studies on perspective taking for mental attribution/representation have been reported greater activities in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and temporoparietal junction (TPJ) during performing tasks from third-person perspective (3PP) than first-person perspective (1PP). However, because they used different stimuli for each perspective condition, different mental processes might be involved in each condition. To directly investigate the perspective specific activity, we focused on reasoning with same stimuli for each perspective and compared brain activities with fMRI. Participants were presented with four-panel cartoons panel-by-panel, then judged the appropriateness of the fourth panel from each perspective. Consequently, in MPFC, rostral areas were significantly more activated in 3PP, and caudal areas in 1PP. Furthermore, TPJ was significantly activated bilaterally in 3PP. These results suggest distinct brain regions for perspective specific processing of reasoning.

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Humans can acquire new skills through imitation. To imitate novel actions that are not stored in their motor repertoire, dynamic matching between the observed action and self-action including temporospatial movement pattern is important. The purpose of this study was to identify brain regions involved in dynamic matching processes using fMRI. We employed a 2*2 design, with factors of type of stimulus presentation (dynamic or static) and task (imitation or observation). First, meaningless gestures were displayed in either dynamic movie from first- to end-state or in static pictures showing only first- and end-state. Subjects then either imitated or did nothing indicated by a color of fixation (red/blue). Results showed significant interaction of activation with higher responses in dynamic imitation in the right lateral occipital cortex, right parietal operculum and left superior parietal lobule, indicating that these areas are involved in dynamic matching between observed and self-actions.

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Although we previously modeled the aperture component of grasping movement, yet we've not explained the mechanism of the transport (reaching) component. In general, reaching movement shows symmetric bell-shaped velocity profiles, and contrarily, the peak velocity appears earlier in grasping movement. This early peak velocity is also observed in reaching movement to small-diameter goal, and has not been explained by previous optimal models for reaching. In this study, we modeled a velocity profile with a beta distribution function, and optimized distribution parameters by minimizing a cost function which superposes the predicted final reaching variability with the Kalman filter and the energy consumption of motor commands. As a result, the peak velocity was shifted earlier when the contribution of the predicted variability to the cost is larger. This result suggests that the predicted accuracy is important in the control of the transport component, as well as the aperture component in grasping movement.

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[in Japanese]

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This study examined event-related potentials (ERPs) during evaluating the appropriateness of cooperative actions performed by two persons. The sets of two photos were used in which one person passed an object in the first photo and another person received it in the second photo. Participants made judgments for receive-actions whether the sets of the photos were appropriate or inappropriate. Viewing inappropriate actions elicited larger ERP negativities than viewing appropriate actions in the following two time periods. The first negativies (300-500 ms) were largest in the parietal area, while the second negativities (700-900 ms) were largest in the frontal area. It is known that N400s and N700s tend to be elicited in response to semantic priming and to mental imageries, respectively. Thus, the first negativies may reflect the priming process of appropriate receive-actions induced by viewing pass-actions. The second negativies can be considered to reflect the mental modification of inappropriate action images.

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Serotonin (5-HT) has been reported to have a wide range of biological effects on behavior, and dysfunctional 5-HT neurotransmission in the central nervous system may cause behavioral diseases that are characterized by impulsivity. We investigated a possible role for the serotonergic system in human impulsive behavior by measuring how 5-HT2A receptor gene polymorphism (A-1438G in the promoter region) affects inhibitory motor control-related brain activity in a reward-punishment Go/No-go task using fMRI. Participants were instructed to learn to respond to active stimuli and inhibit their response to passive stimuli. During the No-go responses, right ventral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) activation was relatively higher in participants for AA allele compared with participants for GG allele. The hyperactivity of VLPFC of AA allele carriers can be interpreted as a need of greater cognitive control to compensate for decreased behavioral inhibition efficiency. While activation of reward circuit, such as striatum, nucleus accumbens and hypothalamus show no differences between genotypes. Our finding shows the role of serotonergic neuro-modulation in human impulsive behavior.

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In recent years, non-contact type IC cards are commonly used as train-tickets and an electronic money devise. They look easy to use but still very different from conventional ways of use, and also look difficult to understand the concepts and mechanism and to get adequate mental models. In order to investigate how older adults learn usages and concepts of the non-contact IC cards, a field experiment was executed with 26 healthy older adults. While an initial instruction, three functions of the card (a commuter pass, an electronic train ticket, and electronic money) were progressively showed, and each function was accompanied with similar conventional artifacts, only for half of the participants. Behavior observations of gate-passing showed that most of participants learned the skill 'touch' from use, however, gaining information from the display and the charging were much more difficult and were effected by the knowledge of the similar artifacts.

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In aged- and information society, there are emergent calls for user-centered designs of Information Technology (IT)- based artifacts for older adults. However, it is still not understood how people learn to use novel IT-based equipments, especially in daily lives. Based on the hypothesis that the learning and usage of novel equipments are socially supported by people around the user, a series of research were executed about mobile-phones usages by older adults. The questionnaire with 297 older adults revealed that people living with only spouse used mobile-phones less than people living with a lot of family members, but also showed that solitary people used most effectively. The long-term usability testing by new users revealed that participants living with grandchildren and solitary participants used mobile-phones better than participants living with only spouse, with various indexes. The process how social supports by family members facilitate learning of novel artifacts will be discussed.

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Facial expression and gaze direction are important signals for social communication which may also serve as useful cues in memorizing the faces of others. In this research, we investigated whether the effect of gaze direction on recognition memory for faces may be modulated by the facial expression worn by these faces. In three experiments, we found that recognition memory for the faces of individuals with angry expressions was better when these faces maintained a direct rather than an averted gaze, but for faces wearing happy expressions, memory was unaffected by the direction of gaze. We suggest that individuals with angry faces represent a potential threat if their anger is directed toward us and consequently their faces are better encoded into memory than are the faces of individuals whose anger is directed elsewhere. Remembering people with happy faces, in contrast, may be potentially rewarding regardless of their direction of attention.

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We classified participants into delusion-prone and non-delusion-prone groups, further subdividing them into positive and negative delusional groups, and investigated the relationships between positive and negative delusions and memory. When positive adjectives were presented, negative adjectives associated with the positive adjectives were more likely to be activated in negative-delusion-prone participants, while when negative adjectives were presented, positive adjectives associated with the negative adjectives were more likely to be activated in positive-delusion-prone participants. However, the activation of learned items was still stronger than that for non-learned items in the immediate test. However, as time passed, participants were increasingly likely to depend on their internal condition (positive vs. negative) for recall, revealing that activation in the encoding process was not dependent on the learning phase of the delayed test. (126 words)

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Using Semantic Differential factors (Osgood, et al., 1957), we have found that the congruity of the impressions relating to Activity and Potency facilitated recognition, whereas incongruity of the impressions concerning Evaluation enhanced recognition in our previous studies (Sakuta & Gyoba, 2003, 2006). In our previous studies, we measured recognition performances by immediate recognition task. In the current study, we examined the longer-term effects of the impression congruity/incongruity on memory based on delayed recognition task. As the result, it was revealed that the pairs with congruent impressions relating to Activity/Potency showed decreased recognition performances after 3-days retention periods, while the pairs with incongruent impressions concerning Evaluation showed intact recognition performances after the retention. It can be assumed that the impression congruity on Evaluation, which seems to be more subjective and affective than the other two factors, would evoke more elaborative processes to interpret or resolve the incongruity.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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We conducted 2 experiments to investigate an effect of repeated presentations of digit sequences that numbers from 1 to 9 were arranged at random. Subjects were asked to memorize 9 colums of numbers one by one, and then to recognize a test digit sequence comprise 3 colums. Some sequences were presented 4 times at every 6, 12, or 24 trials in each experimental session. The other sequences were not repeated. Results showed that hit rate significantly deteriorated at the third presentation with the lag of 24 trials in the condition of the duration 600ms(exp.1). In the duration of 200ms(exp.2) , however, the deficit of hit rate was not obtained. These results imply that the deficit of hit rate occurs in a specific elapsed time from a prior trial of a digit sequence to current trial of the sequence.

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[in Japanese]

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Classification images (CIs) can reveal observers' strategies in a variety of visual tasks. However, one weakness of the CI method is that many trials are needed to obtain stable data (Sekuer etal., 2004). We examined whether CIs can be obtained with fewer trials, thereby making it possible to use the method with clinical populations. With not entire but sampled faces presentations, we obtained CIs from seven typical and eight autistic observers. Although normal, or raw, CIs based on 1,450 trials could not show face processing strategy of individual observers, the squared CIs after smooth filtering did clearly show it. Typical observers strongly used the region of eyes and eyebrows. In contrast, autistic observers did not strongly used that region, but some of them used forehead area.

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