We examined whether study practice can cause forgetting. Participants first studied a list of items and then, during study practice, were asked to restudy some of the previously studied pairs along with some new pairs. Participants were then given a category-plus-stem cued-recall test for all originally studied category–exemplar pairs. Although study practice strengthened the subset of items being restudied and facilitated their subsequent recall, it did not cause related unstudied items to be forgotten. We suggest that inhibition may have played a similar role in causing the recognition-based retrieval-induced forgetting. These findings have important implications for understanding recognition processes.

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Picture-authentication system is a novel system that users can identify themselves by correctly picking out pictures registered by themselves, instead of recalling and inputting a password. Although pictures are important keys to maintain the system safe and easy to use, no studies have been executed to reveal characteristics of the pictures and psychological factors that may affect users’ decision to select the pictures. Thus, we asked participants (47 undergraduate students) to register their own pictures to a virtual picture-authentication system, and examined their willingness to actually resister the pictures on the system after a two-months-interval. It was indicated that their willingness was positively related to the feelings of appropriateness, attachments, and identifiability of the pictures, and was negatively related to the feeling of resistance for the system. We discuss that it is important to reduce the resistance for registration and to popularize the models of the new system.

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Taking advantage of the pictorial priority effect, a new type of person-authentication system called picture-authentication is currently being proposed. However, some issues necessary for constructing a safe and easy-to-use picture-authentication system remain unresolved, e.g., effects of repetition on recognition tests or using the same pictures repeatedly as dummies, as well as differences between autobiographical versus non-personal pictures. A long-term recognition experiment was executed with two kinds of pictures: autobiographical (AB; brought in by the participants), and self-selected (SS; chosen from a given set of pictures by a participant). Results of two recognition tests (3 or 6-week-delay from learning), AB pictures showed slightly higher performance than SS, and confidence rate was much better for AB than SS. Both AB and SS showed large improvements in performance on the second test. However, recognition performance decreased when the same dummies were used from previous tests, compared to when the novel dummies were used. 

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The present study examined the self-choice effects on intentional memory and the relationship between the criterion for choosing, and the size of the self-choice effects. Pleasant-unpleasant word pairs were supplied to the participants in either a self- choice or forced-choice condition. In the self-choice condition they were asked to choose one of the words that elicited more pleasant or more unpleasant episodes, and to remember the chosen word. In the forced-choice condition one of the paired words ( pleasant or unplesasant) was underlined to signify that it was the word to remember.  The self-choice effect was observed in choosing a word that elicited more unpleasant episodes, but the effect was not in choosing a word that elicited more pleasant episodes. These results were interpreted as showing that the criterion for choosing determined whether the self-choice effect has occured or not.

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This study investigated how a delay influenced mere exposure effect to the stimuli presented by spaced or unspaced. We used neutral random shapes and controlled learning method (spaced and unspaced), exposure frequency (3, 6, and 9 times), and intervals between learning and judgment (5 min and 1 week). Fifty five participants were exposed to each stimulus, and 5 min and 1 week later, were asked to rate preference, familiarity, novelty, nostalgia, and recognition. The result shows that, in judgments about preference, familiarity, and nostalgia, scores for unspaced presented stimuli rose after 1 week, although scores for spaced didn’t change with a delay.

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The purpose of the present study was to determine whether individuals with Asperger's disorder exhibit difficulty in switching attention from a local level to a global level. Eleven participants with Asperger's disorder and 11 age- and gender-matched healthy controls performed a switching task using Navon-type hierarchical stimuli. As a result, the both groups exhibited the benefit of level-repetition at both levels. In addition, individuals with Asperger's disorder exhibited difficulty in switching attention from a local level to a global level compared to control individuals. These findings suggested that there is a problem of inhibitory mechanism that influences the output of enhanced local visual-perceptual processing in Asperger's disorder.

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Seeing speaker's face is known as a crucial factor to enhance the intelligibility of speaker's voice. We hypothesized that the visual amplification of the speech perception could be realized by the motor prediction in the mirror neuron system for the speech production. Here we measured the human scalp EEG during a voice listening task to elucidate this hypothesis. The task consisted of a voice-lip asynchrony condition, and a mosaic image condition to allow us to elucidate the effect of mirror neuron system. The results showed that the intelligibility of voice perception was enhanced by seeing the speaker's face, accompanying the EEG mu rhythm suppression, which is an index of the activity in the mirror neuron system. This supports our hypothesis that the motor prediction by the mirror neuron system enhances the vocal communication.

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To examine the neural bases of co-speech gesture production and perception, using the animation narration task in a face-to-face condition, we examined the brain activity changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). The prefrontal activity was measured in 34 participant pairs of speaker and listener using NIRS. The speaker’s task was to watch an animation and to narrate the story to the listener. Based on the number of gestures produced by each speaker, 34 participant pairs were divided into two groups (high vs. low gesture groups). The results showed that the left prefrontal activity of speakers in the high-gesture group was significantly lower than that of speakers in the low-gesture group, while the bilateral prefrontal activity of listeners did not show any significant differences between the two groups. These findings suggest that production of gestures functions to reduce the cognitive load of memory retrieval and narrative framing in the left PFC.

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In a gaze cueing task, faces whose gaze directions are always predictive of a target location are evaluated as more trustworthy than those whose are not. In the present study, we examined the process of impression formation of faces by manipulating the frequency of presentation of each face in a gaze cueing task. We found the significant gaze cueing effect except the faces presented only once in the cueing task. Participlants evaluated the valid faces as more trustworthy than the invalid faces. However, this bias decreased as the number of presentations increased. A recognition task confirmed that the participants were not aware of the relationship between the validity of gaze directions and face identities. The descrepancy between the cueing effect and the face impression suggests that the impressions of faces in the gaze cueing task were modulated independently of the attentional guidance by gaze directions.

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The massive earthquake on Japan 2011 was followed by a huge numbers of aftershocks, in even suburbs of Tokyo which is more than 350 kilometers away from epicenter of the earthquake. We conducted an intergroup trial on equilibrium dysfunctions and effects of psychological aftermaths on equilibrium dysfunctions in survivors who exposed versus rarely-exposed repetitive aftershocks. Here we show greater equilibrium dysfunctions in aftershock-exposed survivors without visual compensations. We also show that the equilibrium dysfunction in aftershocks-exposed survivors seems to be a consequence of the disturbance of inner ear, and related to the individual vulnerability to the state anxiety enhanced by the repetitive-exposure of aftershocks per se. Our findings might contribute to risk managements of the massive earthquake for mental and physical health in general, and hold potentialities for a new empirical approach for disaster care against a mega earthquake with aftershocks.

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The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. This effect may be experienced when a visual of the production of a phoneme (/ka/) is dubbed with a sound recording of a different phoneme being spoken (/pa/), wherein the perceived phoneme is often the third, intermediate phoneme (/ta/). In the present study, we examined the potential individual differences in the McGurk effect among healthy students. The results suggested that people with higher scores for autistic traits might report more /ta/ responses (vision-audio fused responses) in the McGurk condition (visually /pa/ but auditory /ka/) over all experiments. This indicates that such people might show a weak support from the motor system for audio- visual speech perception.

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In Experiment 1, 4-, 5-, 8-, and 11-year-old Japanese children (n = 69) and adults (n = 21) explained the reasons for bodily induced reactions (e.g., overeating leads to vomiting) and psychogenic bodily reactions (bodily outcomes originating in the mind, e.g., being frustrated leads to vomiting). Among the children, vitalistic explanations, i.e., explaining causal connections by referring to a vital force, were observed in their responses concerning bodily induced reactions, whereas among the adults these explanations were typically obtained in responses concerning psychogenic bodily reactions. In Experiment 2, 5-, 8-, and 11-year-old children (n = 96) and adults (n = 24) explained bodily induced and psychogenic bodily reactions and psychological behavior, e.g., being frustrated leads to biting nails. As in Experiment 1, vitalistic explanations tended to be observed on the psychogenic tasks, but these were seldom found either children’s or adults’ explanations for psychological behavior. .

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In the present study, we simulated concept formation processes that take place at both individual and social levels. At the individual level, people learned about a concept by themselves with corrective feedback, while at the social level people shared knowledge about the concept with others.  The result of simulations showed that when a society had a Small-World-like structure where different clusters had different briefs about what constitutes ”good” concepts, then the society as a whole acquired pareto-optimal knowledge or concepts.           

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The self-choice effect is the superior memory performance observed when participants are allowed to choose the items at the study phase. Kawasaki, Itsukushima and Yama (2011, ICOM5) revealed that as for list words self-choice effect was observed, but as for critical lures no self-choice effect was observed with DRM paradigm. In this experiment, we investigated the effect of duration and self-choice effect on true memory and false memory. Participants studied DRM lists in forced-choice and self-choice conditions and took two recall tests immediately and 1-week later. As a main result, recall of list words decreased, but that of critical lures increased with the duration. Hence fuzzy trace theory was supported.

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The retrieval of a memory can cause forgetting of other memories, a phenomenon known as retrieval-induced forgetting. It has been demonstrated that the semantic retrieval can lead to successful forgetting of episodic memory. However, no study have addressed whether this semantic retrieval induced forgetting is generalized to negative memories. Against this background, this study investigated whether semantic retrieval of a negative word can lead to successful forgetting of episodic memory of negative words. Participants learned neutral and negative words and then engaged in semantic generation of other unstudied words that were associated with a subset of studied words. Finally, a stem-cued recall test for studied words only was administered. The stem-cued recall test indicated that semantic generation induced successful forgetting of studied words that were related to generated words, regardless of emotionality. Accordingly, we propose that semantic retrieval of a negative word can cause successful retrieval-induced forgetting of negative words. 

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Research showing that monetary reward promotes memory consolidation through dopaminergic modulation processes has recently attracted considerable attention in psychology and neuroscience. However, no conclusive behavioral evidence exists given that the influence of monetary reward on attention and motivation during encoding and consolidation processes are inherently confounded. The present study provides the first unequivocal behavioral evidence that monetary incentives enhance human memory consolidation. Participants saw neutral pictures, followed by a monetary or control cue in an unrelated context. Our results demonstrated that the monetary cue predicted a retrograde enhancement of memory for the preceding neutral pictures. This retrograde effect was observed only after a delay, not immediately upon testing. We also observed that interindividual and intraindividual variability in memory performance is consistent with predictions derived from theories addressing dopaminergic activation in the reward system. These results provide strong support for the dopaminergic memory consolidation effect resulting from monetary reward.

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In the real world, people recall cross-categorical information from memory and hold it to optimize future behavior. Here, we investigated the interaction between associative memory and relational binding in visual working memory. After learning single objects and cross-categorical pair associations, participants performed two types of change identification tasks: an associative memory-based change identification task and a visual change identification task. Overall, the performance in the associative memory-based change identification task was similar to that in the visual task. However, in the associative memory-based change identification task, the category type of sample stimuli made a difference in task performance, suggesting the importance of goal direction in associative recollection.

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We investigated recogniton of visual scenes consited of several items. In learning session, there were whole condition in which subjects could observe the whole scene, and item condition in which each item was presented one at a time. In recognition session, the 'New' items were divided into two classes called relevant and irelevant items. The fomer items were objects strongly associated with items learned. Results showed that FAs for the relevant items were higher in the whole condition than that in the item condition and were deteriorated when a relevant item was tested immediately after an "OLD" item.  

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While 3-dimensional vision (3Dv) technology is now sufficiently pervasive for 3D television sets to exist in homes, its advantages are not so clear beyond entertainment values. On the other hand, for medical technology, 3Dv is believed to enhance comprehension. To investigate the advantages of 3Dv for cognitive processing, an experiment directly compares task performance with 2Dv and 3Dv. Four types of cognitive tasks, such as perspective memory, are presented to young and older adults via either 2Dv or 3Dv presentation conditions. The results indicate that young adults construct complex blocks with less error in the 3Dv condition, although it elicited more negative subjective evaluations; especially ‘easily-fatigued’ comments. In contrast, older adults did not exhibit facilitated performance in the 3Dv condition and did not give lower subjective evaluations. These findings suggest that effective 3Dv usage is strategic with high cognitive loads, which warrants careful consideration when utilizing 3Dv within medical system.

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This study tested the hypothesis that while language comprehension processes such as structural analysis and initial semantic analysis are highly learned and automatic in first language (L1) while those processes are more controlled and therefore consume more cognitive resource in second language (L2). The reading time data showed that both L1 and L2 speakers took longer to read a more complex text than a simpler text. However, self-evaluation data suggest that the native speakers were not aware of the difference in text difficulty while the L2 learners clearly indicated that the more complex texts were harder to read. These results seem to suggest that whereas cognitive demand due to text difficulty leads to more controlled processing in L2 whereas in L1 the change of reading process due to text difficulty is subconscious rather than consciously controlled.

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In this study, letter search task was used to investigate the process to extract sound from Japanese characters. Participants were instructed to find a character with given pronunciation among eight characters placed randomly on the screen (character set) and to judge whether the character with given pronunciation is exist or not. Character sets were constructed in four conditions; (1) kanji characters with pronunciation which correspond to many kanji characters ( VH-kanji ), (2) kanji characters with pronunciation which correspond to few kanji characters ( VL-kanji ), (3) hiragana characters with pronunciation which correspond to VH-kanji condition (VH-hiragana), and (4) hiragana characters with pronunciation which correspond to VL-kanji condition (VL-hiragana). The results showed that (1) Mean RT is shorter for hiragana trials than kanji trials, (2) Mean RT is shorter for VL-kanji trials than VH-kanji trials, and (3) Mean RTs are not differ for VL-hiragana trials and VH-hiragana trials.

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Origami is Japanese traditional culture. A characteristic of the origami is to transform a superficaial thing to a three-dimensional thing. This cognitive activity is very interisting. However, the study of issue is few. The aim of this stdy is to exzamine what kind of cognitive factor affect to origami folding.

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Thirty-four third-year junior high school students and 61 university students solved questions that required consideration of the probability of an entire event. One of the questions asked the probability of a regular die falling with any of its six sides facing upward. A total of 44% of the junior high school students and 84% of the university students answered correctly (P = 1). The most frequent wrong response in both groups was P = 1/6; the percentage of the junior high school students who gave this answer (29%) was higher than that of the university students (11%). The participants seemed to answer P = 1/6 because the probability of one side of the die facing upward is 1/6, although they were asked the probability of the entire event. These results suggest that students, especially those from junior high school, find it difficult to evaluate the probability of an entire event.

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Yamamoto, Kawahara & Ohtsuka(2008) explored basic-level picture-word serial matching task, and found that superordinate similarity effect (SSE) occurs only when prime words precede target pictures. In this experiment, we systematically manipulated SOA intervals (within participants design) and found that (1) only SOA effect was significant when prime pictures preceded  target words; (2) only SSE effect was significant when prime words preceded target pictures; (3) no interaction between SSE and SOA effects was observed in both conditions.

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The body-specificity hypothesis predicts that emotional concepts are differently allocated on the bodily horizontal plane, i.e., while left-handers allocate negative concepts on the right-hand side, right-handers allocate such concepts to the left-hand side. The present study investigated whether the body-specific space-emotion association occurred in a conceptual realm, with comparisons of performances between vertical and horizontal planes. In Experiment 1, various participants from diverse linguistic backgrounds were asked to rate the spatial words: "up", "down", "left", and "right". In Experiment 2, participants from two linguistic backgrounds were asked to allocate emotion words into a four-cell grid. Together, the results suggested a higher saliency of the space-emotion association in the vertical plane over the horizontal plane and a salient body-specificity in emotional evaluation for spatial concepts.

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