[in Japanese]

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The Eriksen flanker paradigm was used to clarify how well attention distribution can be controlled in real 3D space. A target was presented at the fixation point (120 cm from the observer), and a flanker stimulus was presented randomly 30, 81, 120, 158, or 230 cm from the observer. Compatible and incompatible conditions in terms of target and flanker shapes were used. The participants were required to identify the target shape while ignoring the flanker stimulus. There was no interference effect for any of the flanker stimuli even though they were presented along the observer’s central line of sight. This indicates that attention can be controlled adequately even if a flanker stimulus is presented in the depth direction. Different fashions of attention distribution between 2D and 3D spaces will be discussed.

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Prior studies demonstrated that compatibility effects observed in the flanker task are modulated by conflict frequency in a trial-block: compatibility effect becomes greater when the conflict frequency in a trial-block decreases. We investigated whether the modulation of compatibility effects arises from the explicit instruction as to the appearance-ratio of compatible trials in a trial-block when the appearance-ratio of compatible trials is 50%. Sixteen students conducted the flanker task in which a letter-array was presented at a left or right visual field. Although the compatibility ratio in a trial-block was actually 50% in each visual field, the participants were told that the compatibility ratio is 75% (low conflict instruction) or 25% (high conflict instruction). The results showed that the compatibility effect was larger in the low conflict instruction than in the high conflict instruction. These findings suggests that the explicit instruction of conflict frequency modulates compatibility effect in a trial-block.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Previous studies demonstrated that observing hand aperture modulates observer's attention to the object that is congruent with its action goal. In this study we investigated whether the concrete tool also modulates the observer's attention. On a simple detection task, pictures of two objects (small and large object) and a hand or a tool were presented on a screen. Then, a target stimulus was presented either over the small object or over the large object. Before the target onset, the hand or the tool were shown in either a precision grip (to grasp the small object) or a power grip (to grasp the large object) as a cue of presenting target. Result showed that the hand aperture facilitate target detection following short delay whereas the tool aperture does not have such effect. This result suggests that especially hand posture may have a role of visual processing in action prediction.

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We examined the effects of cognitive load on the inhibition of emotional task-irrelevant stimulus in older adults. Thirty-seven healthy older adults (aged 61-73 yrs.) performed a 1-back task (low cognitive load) and a 2-back task (high cognitive load) with a digit. A target digit was simultaneously presented with a task-irrelevant emotional photograph in each trial. We used two types of emotional photographs (positive and neutral images). Participants were instructed to press a button when the current digit was the same as 1 or 2 back in the sequence and not to press the button when it was different, while ignoring a photograph. The results showed that the response to go trial was slower with positive emotional photograph than with neutral emotional photograph in the 2-back task but not the 1-back condition. These findings suggested that the attentional control in older adults depends on cognitive load.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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People use a variety of services such as railway  and  communications everyday, thereby, a huge amount of log data  has been generated and accumulated in a social infrastructure. For the  purpose of improvement and optimization of the customer service,  we  develop  methods of extracting daily life pattern and analysing behavioral characteristics of people based on the social life log data. In this paper, we propose the method of extracting daily life pattern from the log data related to mobility and  then show the result of an experiment using urban transportation census.

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[in Japanese]

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Previous studies on effects of background music (BGM) in context-dependent memory suggested that participants’ arousal level was affected by tempo change of BGM, and consistency of arousal level between encoding and retrieval might enhance free recall. In this study we used a musical piece by Mozart as BGM and produced four versions of varied tonality (major or minor) and tempo (fast and slow). In the encoding phase, participants rated pleasantness of 25 words listening BGM of major-fast version twice. After the distraction phase they conducted free recall listening one of four versions of the BGM. Higher recall scores were obtained when the tonality of the BGM was the same (major) between encoding and retrieval, but change of tempo had no effect. Participants in the major versions reported higher pleasant mood than participants in minor versions. It is suggested that high pleasantness evoked by BGM might enhance memory retrieval.

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