The observer needs to estimate the TTC with the approaching vehicle while considering its perceptual information along with the prediction of how the approaching vehicle would change its motion. Seventeen people who had experience in driving a car wore a pair of liquid crystal shutter goggles and viewed a vehicle approaching from the right. After vehicle passed the photoelectronic sensors, the goggles changed from transparent to opaque. Participants imagined how the vehicle would continue to approach and pressed a button when they judged that the vehicle reached their sagittal plane. The temporal interval between the time the vehicle passed the sensors and when the participants pressed the button, corresponding to estimated TTC, was recorded. Participants estimated longer TTC in the cyclist or pedestrian condition than in the driver condition,. The results indicate that perceived vulnerability increases observers’ expectation for drivers to avoid crash risk by deceleration.

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Making a round trip, the return trip often seems shorter, which is called “return trip effect”. We investigated this effect psychologically and physiologically. Ten participants, a round-trip group, watched round-trip walking movies. Different ten participants, a control group, watched two walking movies of different ways. Participants evaluated time by two methods: RP3 and 11-point scale. Heart rate (HR) and cardiac vagal index (CVI) were calculated. On mean RP3, HR and CVI there was no difference between groups, but on 11-point scale only the round-trip group evaluated the first movie was longer, and a significant correlation was found between the difference of CVI and 11-point scale for only the control group. These suggest that the return trip might be caused postdictively as 11-point scale was evaluated afterward, and that time perception might be related to parasympathetic nervous system, but cognitive load might have stronger influence.

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Previous studies have reported that imagining a motor movement from the first-person perspective (1PP) is more embodied than the third-person perspective (3PP). The motor imagery in 1PP is restricted by biomechanical constraints of actual movements. The present study investigated whether biomechanical constraints influence the motor imagery in 3PP using a hand-laterality judgment task. In the task, drawings of hands were presented on a monitor in three different orientations (0°, 90°, or 270°), and the participant was asked to judge whether a presented hand was his/her left or right hand (1PP group) or another person’s left or right hand (3PP group). In the 1PP group, participants showed different RTs in the 90° and the 270° for the left and the right hand, but not in the 3PP group. The result suggests that biomechanical constraints emerge in 1PP, but it is not clear in 3PP due to the difficulty of taking 3PP.

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When observing face-to-face interactions between two people, we can instantly infer which person is more dominant, competent, or trustworthy, from various nonverbal cues. In the present study, we investigated how facial expressions of emotion influence perceptions of dominance in a face-to-face situation. In Experiment 1, participants observed two people's facial expressions presented face-to-face and judged which person looked more dominant than the other. In Experiment 2, we asked participants to rate how dominant each face looked with a single presentation. In Experiment 3, we asked participants to rate how dominant each face looked in a face-to-face situation. The results showed that persons with a happy expression were judged to dominate in face-to-face confrontation scenes, whereas their personal traits were judged to the least dominant. The present study indicates that perception of dominance in face-to-face confrontation scenes does not involve merely a comparison between the personal traits of two persons.

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Group differences in global and local processing between Japanese and Caucasian Canadians were examined using the Navon global-local paradigm (Navon, 1977), a target-search task involving hierarchical figures (e.g., a large “E” made up of small “T”s). To control for dispositional biases, participants were instructed to attend to only the global in one condition, and only the local level in another.  Results showed that Canadians were significantly slower to respond to the global level for hierarchical letters (Exp. 1) and the local level for hierarchical shapes (Exp. 2) than Japanese participants, who did not differ in performance regardless of the attended level or type of stimulus (letter or shape). One possibility is that Japanese participants are more adept at controlling how they direct their attention regardless of the kind of information at each level, whereas Canadians are more influenced by bottom-up characteristics at the global and local level.

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The present study examined the neural mechanisms underlying the inter-brain processing during cooperation in a two-person computer game. We simultaneously measured pairs of participants’ fronto-parietal activations during the game using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). One participant’s task was to build a target pattern by placing disks on a monitor as a builder, while another helped (cooperation) or disrupted (competition) the builder’s process as a companion. The NIRS data demonstrated two findings: (1) The builder showed higher activation in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) under the cooperation condition than under the competition condition, while the companion showed a reversed pattern. (2) The right IFG activations of the builder-companion pairs showed a positive inter-brain correlation under the cooperation condition. These results suggest that the leading player is actively engaged in achieving a goal regardless of task type, but the inter-brain synchronization emerges only during cooperation as their shared attention and/or empathic processing.

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Repeated sequences are implicitly learned; they facilitate responses to a target. We investigated whether implicit learning of a sequence’s location and identity depends on two different tasks (identity-related and location-related) by using the spatiotemporal contextual cueing paradigm. This paradigm involves having objects sequentially presented at multiple fixed locations. Participants were asked to respond to a target among a stream of distractors presented sequentially at different locations. The target was defined as an object belonging to a different category (Experiment 1: identity-related task) or having a spatial offset (Experiment 2: location-related task). In Experiment 1, object identities were selectively learned, whereas in Experiment 2, object locations were selectively learned. Participants did not recognize the invariant sequences in either experiment. These results suggest that the task set plays an important role in deciding which information is implicitly learned.

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Language systems seem to accumulate and implement at least two types of phonological knowledge for serial ordering. One is knowledge of inter-element associations (e.g., which phoneme tends to follow which) and the other is context–element associations (e.g., which phoneme tends to occupy which position). The present study examined whether and how such phonological knowledge is accumulated and implemented by a computational model for serial order: the simple recurrent network. The model simulated the pattern of behavioral data that demonstrated the contribution of phonological knowledge in a phonological short-term memory task. The model replicated the interaction between the two types of knowledge. It also replicated dissociable effects of inter-element associations, which were evident in later within-word positions, from those of context–element associations. The only point that required further modeling was the early-effectiveness of context–element associations.

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Using fMRI, we investigated reality monitoring for auditory information. During scanning, healthy young adults heard some words in another person’s voice and imagined hearing other words in that same voice.  Later outside the scanner, participants judged words as heard, imagined or new. An area of left middle frontal gyrus (BA6) was more active at encoding for imagined items subsequently correctly called “Imagined” than items incorrectly called “Heard.”  An area of left inferior frontal gyrus (BA45,44) was more active at encoding for items subsequently called “Heard” than “Imagined,” regardless of the actual source of the item.  Scores on an Auditory Hallucination Experience Scale were positively related to activity in superior temporal gyrus (BA22) for imagined words subsequently incorrectly called “Heard.”  We suggest that activity in these areas reflects cognitive operations information (middle frontal gyrus) and semantic and/or perceptual detail (inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, respectively) used to make source attributions. 

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To investigate the effect of harmonization between words' meaning and their expression style (typography and prosody), we conducted a series of multi-modality priming experiments using word-fragment completion task (WFC). At encoding, words were presented both visually as the letters and auditorily as speech, and their typography and prosody were manipulated to harmonize or not to harmonize with the words' meaning. The words' script (hiragana/kanji) at encoding was also manipulated. At test, all WFC items were written using hiragana. The results showed no effect of harmonization between words' meaning and typography on implicit memory, which did not corroborate with a previous study. We conducted another experiment, manipulating typography but keeping all speech sounds neutral at encoding. Results showed an effect of harmonization. These results suggest that when speech information is manipulated to harmonize with the words' meaning, the processing of speech is given the priority over that of visual character information.

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The purpose of this study was to examine whether bilinguals show interference from their relatively less skilled language (L2) during semantic processing in their relatively highly skilled language (L1). In a word-definition judgment task, Chinese-Japanese bilinguals judged if visually presented sets of a word and a definition were target language (Japanese or Chinese). The four types of stimuli pairs appeared in Japanese and/or Chinese dictionaries: both (shared: S), Japanese-specific (J), Chinese-specific (C), and neither (unrelated: U). The false alarm rates for the C pairs in Japanese (L2) condition duplicated the results of bilinguals in Oi et al. (2010) demonstrating higher false alarm rates than Japanese monolinguals. In turn false alarm rates for the J pairs in Chinese (L1) were similar for the C pairs in Japanese (L2) condition. These results suggest that the bilinguals may show interference bidirectionally between L1 and L2 when their scripts resemble each other.

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Despite a detailed function of gestures, such as accelerating lexical access (e.g., Morrel-Samuels & Krauss, 1992) or aiding in conceptual planning (Alibali et al., 2000; Oi et al, 2013), researchers assume that gestures facilitate speech production. To test this assumption, we examined latencies for gesturing and speaking under three conditions: speaking-only (S), gesturing-only (G), and gesturing while speaking (GS). Participants were asked to produce a hand gesture and/or verbalized an action/motion to nine visually presented objects (all objects could be grasped with one hand i.e. a baseball). If gestures facilitate speech production, the GS group would show shorter latencies of speech than the S group. However, speech latencies of the GS group were not significantly faster than that of the S group. This may imply that gesture production fulfill a function of speech aids when utterance content needs ample consideration beyond the simple word level (such as story-telling or narration).

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Explicit and implicit attitudes to Information-and-Communication Technology (ICT) devices by older adults, especially negative attitudes as anxiety and/or avoidance, were investigated in relation with aging, individual differences in cognitive function, and experiences with usage of such devices. Twenty two young adults (undergraduate students), 22 older adults who showed high cognitive performance with task switching task in AIST cognitive aging test battery, and 17 older adults who showed average cognitive performance. Explicit attitudes measured by 6 point rating of anxiety and avoidance to ICT devices, compared with household goods, showed positive correlations with usage experiences of ICT devices only in older adults, especially with average cognitive functions. Implicit attitudes were measured by Implicit Association Test (IAT) toward ICT devices, and showed that only younger adults showed anxiety to ICT devices, and that older adults exhibited some attractions to ICT devises compared with household goods. Possible reasons why older adults showed these results and their implication will be reported.

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It is known that interpersonal behaviors are affected by the cue received from others, such as appearance and voice. On the other hand, it is considered that the physical environment which surrounds us, for example, music, a scent, influences behavior and feeling. However, it is not shown clearly until now whether interpersonal behaviors is affected from physical environment. In this study, we examined whether interpersonal impressions would be changed by the operation of background space using questionnaires. It became apparent that a background space impressed us pleasantly gave attractive impressions, moreover a background space impressed us spaciously and brightly gave good and gentle (not cold) impressions, respectively. It shows that interpersonal impressions are influenced by not only psychological aspects of background space but also physical aspects directly. It is suggested that the operation of physical environment improves interpersonal behaviors.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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The compromise effect warrants specific investigation in multi-attribute decision making as it violates the principles of rational choice. In order to investigate the underlying mechanism of the compromise effect, we examined participants’ information search and acquisition while recording their eye movements. 10 undergraduates were requested to solve 12 hypothetical purchase problems that had three alternatives described along two attribute dimensions. A time-series analysis of saccades between two options revealed the dynamic temporal aspects that important saccades increased while unimportant saccades decreased.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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The present study investigated differences in incidental memory between participants with a high level of ability managing and regulating emotions (MR) and those with low MR. Targets were presented twice, and participants were asked to rate the pleasantness of episodes elicited by each target on each presentation. This was followed by an unexpected free recall test. For targets with spaced presentations, participants with high MR recalled more targets associated with pleasant episodes than those associated with unpleasant episodes. In contrast, participants with low MR recalled more targets associated with unpleasant episodes than those associated with pleasant episodes. These results suggest that MR suppressed the stronger unpleasant emotions, preventing them from being used as a retrieval cue, but did not suppress the weaker pleasant emotions.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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  This study aims at adding examination by taxometric analysis about the vulnerability of elders to fraud crimes. For 332 healthy elderly adults, survey was conducted as a contrast group with 246 college students. The scenario was created out of "many consultations to elderly people" posted on the homepage of independent administrative agency National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan, and the vulnerability measure was constituted. As a result of conducting two taxometric analyses, MAMBAC and MAXLOPE, by setting vulnerability scale score and age to indicators, it is a discrete quantity and it became clear to be classified into two of a highly vulnerable group and a low vulnerable group in the elderly people. Therefore, it is suggested that the measure against fraud crimes should be mainly performed to the elderly people belonging to a highly vulnerable group.

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[in Japanese]

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In this study, we focused on Ease-of-Learning (EOL) judgment, a monitoring activity of memory in the learning phase. Participants made EOL judgments (EOL condition), phonological judgments (phonological condition), and familiarity or other judgment (memory strategy condition). Result indicated that the recognition test performance in the EOL condition was equivalent to the performance in the memory strategy condition. This result suggests that participants use item intrinsic cue (for example, familiarity, described familiarity, concreteness) to make EOL judgments, thus the Cue-utilization-approach (Koriat, 1997) can apply to metacomprehension judgment in learning phase like EOL judgment.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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 This research combined the intentional/incidental learning paradigm and the DRM paradigm to examine false recognition. In intentional/incidental learning paradigm, participants are presented pairing words, and one side is learned intentionally and another side is learned incidentally. Using this paradigm, more intentional process and automatic process are examined simultaneously within participants. As a result, false recognition was influenced highly by intentional processing. On the other hand, automatic process also influence false recognition. On the other hand, automatic process also influenced false recognition. Furthermore, in this research, participants were asked to recollect the attribute about the word at the time of learning. As a result, the participant remembered also about the attribute of falsely recognized word. As a result, participants remembered about the attribute of the word to be falsely recognized. This suggests that the participant forms false memory including various attributes.

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We examined the effects of competition on inhibition in retrieval-practice paradigm. In retrieval-practice paradigm, retrieving target items (Rp+) impairs subsequent retrieval of competitors associated with the same cue (Rp-) compared with baseline items (Nrp). This impairment might be caused by inhibition. A purpose of present study was to determine whether inhibition and retrieval process share same resource. We manipulated number of competitors that changes resource-demands at retrieval. One group learned 2 items per cue at study phase, and the other group learned 10 items. As a result, Rp- was slower latencies for Yes/No recognition than Nrp and Rp+. Also, latencies for recognition were slower as a function of number of competitors. In addition, there is no difference in effect sizes of inhibition between numbers of competitor. Thus, we assumed that inhibition in retrieval practice paradigm might be independent to resource that required to retrieval processes.

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We investigated the age-related decline of working memory functions, such as processing time, processing accuracy, and storage accuracy in older participants (N = 110; aged 60-84 years), by using complex span tasks. Participants were divided into three age groups: early 60s (n = 30), late 60s (n = 45), and over 70s (n = 35). There were no significant differences in the years of education between the groups. All participants completed complex span tasks that were automated versions of the operation span task, the reading span task, and the symmetry span task. Results indicated that there were no significant differences in processing accuracy and storage accuracy between the groups. However, the processing time of participants in the over 70s group was longer than that of the other two groups. These results suggest that processing time, or speed, influence the age-related decline of working memory functions in older adults.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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