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The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of individual differences in working memory capacity on the primacy and recency effect in free, forward, and backward recalls when delay between the learning phase and the recall phase was inserted. Working memory capacity was measured by the word span test and the listening span test. The delay was created by the Kanji (Chinese character) test. In the experiment, the predictive power of the listening span test to the recency effect was not significant. Instead, the correlation coefficient between the listening span test and the primacy effect was negative in the forward recall condition. This result suggested that participants with a low executive function could gain a stronger primacy effect.

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Some researchers have argued that retrieving a memory can cause people to forget other, related competing memories. This phenomenon is called retrieval-induced forgetting (Anderson, Bjork, & Bjork, 1994; Tsukimoto & Kawaguchi, 2004). Typically, RIF is examined as a case of 'discrete forgetting,' using verbal stimuli. In the present study, we considered RIF to be a kind of 'memory distortion', and investigated the retrieval-induced distortion of memory as a continuous change. We conducted an experiment in which we used a number of colors designated by RGB (Red/Green/Blue primary colors) values as stimuli and color-generation task.

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Previous study showed that there are three possibilities as deception of eye-witnessed event distort memory. These are interference of memory rehearsal, retrieval induced forgetting, and source monitoring error (Christianson & Bylin, 1999). This study investigated whether deception interfere with original memory rehearsal. Participants were showed video clip and assigned one of three conditions; Deception condition, Genuine condition, and No-Rehearsal condition. We compared memory performance of these three conditions after deception or recalling video clip. Results showed that participant in Deception condition and No-Rehearsal condition has poorer memory performance than that of Genuine condition. So this result suggests that deception of eye-witnessed event might interfere with original memory rehearsal.

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Ninety-six undergraduates were randomly assigned to one of the 2 (familiar or unfamiliar BGM) x 2 (same or different context) between-participants conditions. The undergraduates individually received six sets of four words at a rate of 30 sec per set via a computer screen. They composed and orally reported a sentence by using the four words within each set of words. During the sentence composition task, one of familiar or unfamiliar musical selections was played. Following to the composition task, the musical selection was stopped and the undergraduates engaged in a calculation task for five min. After the calculation task, the undergraduates received an oral free-recall test, during which the same musical selection as (same context) or the same familiarity but different musical selection from (different context) that used at the sentence composition task. The two measures for recall unanimously showed significant context effects but no familiarity effects or interactions.

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A total of 68 undergraduates intentionally learned a list of Italian nouns and the correspondent Japanese nouns twice under the same (same-context repetition condition) or different (different-context repetition condition) contexts with a one-day (Experiment 1) or one-week (Experiment 2) inter-repetition interval. One day (Experiment 1) or one week (Experiment 2) after the second learning of the list, the participants received a written free-recall test for the list under the third neutral context. In Experiment 1, participants learned the list in a large classroom in a group or in a narrow booth alone. In Experiment 2, participants learned the list in a large classroom in a group or in their home alone. Experiment 1 yielded no difference in recall between SCR and DCR conditions. Experiment 2 yielded the superiority of DCR to SCR conditions. The present results suggest that larger difference in contexts produces the contextual variability effects in paired-associate learning.

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Mizuno & Matsui (2007) indicated that the difficulty of attention-switching might be a cause of attentional blink (AB) by showing that the report rate of the second targets correlated with simple RT reflecting the difficulty of attention-switching from the first targets to the second. Matsui & Mizuno (2006) found in another experiment that the effect of the difficulty of attention-switching was not found under a between-block design but under a usual within-block design. Therefore, this study replicated the within-block experiment in Mizuno & Matsui (2007) using the between-block design to explore the effect of the difficulty of attention-switching on AB and simple RT and their relationship free from its effect. The results showed that AB decreased extremely but not completely, and that report rate correlated negatively with simple RT. These results suggest that the difficulty of attention-switching has a large effect on AB, but that it is not a unique factor.

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We investigated the brain activities by functional MRI while evaluating the appropriateness of the human action patterns in receiving objects passed by another person. In this experiment, the participants observed passing and receiving actions performed by two peoples and judged the appropriateness of the receiving actions. We manipulated the viewpoints (the receiver's or the passer's view) and the appropriateness of receiving actions (appropriate or inappropriate ones). As the results, when the participants observed appropriate receiving actions in the receiver's view, the brain areas related to the mirror neuron system (e.g., the inferior frontal gyrus and the superior temporal sulcus) were activated. On the other hand, while observing inappropriate receiving actions in the passer's view, the inferior frontal gyrus and the brain areas related to error monitoring such as the anterior cingulate cortex were activated. These results suggest that the neural bases for recognizing the appropriateness of cooperative actions differ depending on the viewpoint changes.

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Apparent motion perception occurs after the next stimulus is presented. It has been unclear how motion representation interpolated with spatiotemporal delay produces spatiotemporally consistent motion perception. We investigated apparent motion perception in a situation involving the spatiotemporal reversal of motion sequences. In five-points apparent motion display, the motion direction perception of the last two stimuli with the reversal was consistent with three preceding stimuli. This 'misperception' occurred when colors of the forth stimuli were different from the others, when vertical positions of the fourth stimulus were randomly changed, and when one preceding stimulus was presented (three-points apparent motion). The misperception might occur after the registration of temporal interval between the third and fifth stimuli, because perceived velocity with the sequence reversal was faster than that without the reversal. We concluded that, in relatively early processing stage, the flexible completion process of motion representation could postdictively induce spatiotemporally consistent motion perception.

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Emotion colors our sense of time. The present study investigated whether emotional stimuli without awareness affected time perception of coincident visual stimuli. Through a mirror stereoscope, the observers were presented the emotional stimuli (positive, negative, and neutral photographs) to one eye and continuously swapped Mondrian stimuli to the other eye. The continuous flashes of the Mondrian stimuli rendered the emotional stimuli invisible. A white rectangular frame surrounding the Mondrian stimuli was presented for 2700 msec as a target. The observers reproduced the duration of the target. Consequently, the reproduced duration of the target was significantly longer with the negative than positive stimuli. The results suggest that unconscious emotional stimuli influences time perception.

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Recent studies have shown that the facial expressions influence on the judgment of facial impression, that women are better in identifying various displays of facial affect. It is expected that this sex differences in recognition of facial expressions affects the processing of facial impression judgment. Here we compare judged impression and emotion intensity of faces when displaying a positive, neutral, or negative expression. The results suggest that no gender differences in the ability to rate emotional cues in feces. For female, however, the influence of emotional expressions on facial impression judgment is bigger than male.

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Few studies have investigated quantitatively the influence of lyrics on music impressions. These studies analyzed the semantic content of lyrics only together with the singer's voice quality and way of singing. The present study examines quantitatively whether music impressions are influenced by the semantic content of lyrics, excluding the influence of voice quality and way of singing. To this end, we conducted experiments using songs with lyrics the participants could not understand, and their written Japanese translation. 2 songs having different music impressions and semantic content of lyrics impressions were used. 3 experimental conditions were applied: 'music only', 'written lyrics only', and 'music and written lyrics', and the impressions for each condition were measured. The results showed that impressions of 'music and written lyrics' were closer to those of 'music only' condition, the logical information of semantic content being weaker as compared to the kansei information of the music itself.

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