[in Japanese]

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This study is investigated relation between right-left confusion and verbal/visual cognitive style. We researched three questionnaires and one question for ninety nine Japanese university students: 1) Right-left confusion self-reported questionnaire and 2) Verbalizer-Visializer questionnaire, 3) H-N handedness test, 4) question of right-Left decision ability. We had results that male right-left confusion subjects was effected visual and verbal cognitive style, but female right-left confusion subjects was effected only verbal cognitive style.

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[in Japanese]

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Some researches reported that attentional processing speed varies depending on the complexity of form. Here, we investigated whether attentional processing load could be different between visual features (color and orientation) when they were associated to the perception of form using Double Rapid Serial Visual Presentation tasks. In Experiment1, two target alphabets and number symbols were presented with various colors and orientations. Detection performance for the targets was degraded when they were successively presented and their orientations were incongruent. In Experiment2, two target alphabets with a specific color or orientation were presented among alphabets with various colors and orientations. Detection performance for the targets was degraded when they were defined by orientations. These results suggest that orientation would need more attentional processing load than color both when color and orientation are indirectly (Exp.1: form is to-be-detected) and directly (Exp.2: color and orientation are to-be-detected) related to task.  

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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It has been reported that color could affect the judgment of taste. However, it was not fully investigated whether the effects of color were based on cognitive/decisional or perceptual processes. Here, we investigated the effect of color on the judgment of sweetness using taste adaptation method. The judgment became stronger when our participants evaluated the sweet solution colored as subjectively consistent with sweetness, irrespective of before and after the adaptation to a non-colored sweet solution. In contrast, the effect of color was not observed when the participants adapted to a colored sweet solution and judged non-colored sweet solutions. While the judgment of sweetness was modulated by the colored target sweet solution, the colored solution did not affect the magnitude of perceptual adaptation. Thus, we could assume that color could affect the judgment of taste mainly in cognitive/decisional domains.

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[in Japanese]

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In recent years, there has been a rise in changing the visual body image as a method of rehabilitation for chronic pain. However, it has been thought that changing the visual body image gives rise to unpleasant and has little effect in analgesia. Now we investigated, using a rubber hand illusion, whether these unpleasant caused by changing the visual body image of a healthy person are able to modulate pain. In order to create these unpleasant, we created a "injured rubber hand", a "hairy rubber hand", and a "twisted rubber hand". We proceeded to measure the level of unpleasant and the pain threshold in those using each rubber hand. They found that while both the "injured rubber hand" and "hairy rubber hand" created unpleasant in subjects, only the "injured rubber hand" made pain worse. Through this, it became apparent that unpleasant felt in the context of pain can modulate pain.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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A sense of being together with other people, so-called “co-presence”, has great practical importance for the shared virtual reality (VR) system that requires joint operations. Our previous study demonstrated that participants’ prior experience of interaction with their co-actor in the VR enhances co-presence. The present study investigated to what extent mere presentation of co-actor’s movement information can increase co-presence, by using the social Simon effect as a measure. Before performing the social Simon task, half of the participants had a 3-min pre-session to interact with their co-actor in the VR (full communication condition). The other half of participants had a 3-min pre-session to see their co-actor’s movements in the VR (movement presentation condition). Results showed no difference between these two conditions. This suggests that the presentation of co-actor’s movement information alone is enough to evoke co-presence.

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This study was designated to investigate individual differences of executive functions by the Executive Functions Questionnaire (EFQ), and relationship between executive functions and Navon task performances or Big-Five personality. The result revealed as follows. 1) Individual differences of performances of Navon task, which requires shifting a strategy (local or global processing) to perform, were affected by the degree of shifting ability measured by EFQ. Individual differences were prominent in the local processing condition because it was harder than the global processing condition. 2) Correlation analysis revealed that sustaining-attention and planning abilities correlated with Conscientiousness but not with shifting, efficacy nor conversation abilities, and that shifting correlated with four traits of Big-Five personality except Conscientiousness. It was suggested that different aspects of executive functions could be measured by subscales of EFQ.

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This study examines the relevance of the characteristics of flow experience to intrinsic motivation during piano playing. The theory of task-value is suitable for evaluating an aspect of intrinsic motivation as autonomous learning motivation and the value of fulfillment and satisfaction. Participants who have musical abilities but are not professional musicians, performed music of a subject 5 times for an hour each time. They completed the Academic Task-Value Evaluation Scale before performing and the Flow Experience Checklist afterwards. The interest value had a significant correlation with all of the subscales of the Flow Checklist (r=.581-.846, ps<.01). These results suggest that both professional and non-expert musicians can experience flow, if any task could measure up to their value of interest. We propose to better understand how much value of and interest for a challenging task people have that makes it easier for them to enjoy everyday life.

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It is often observed that older adults showed timidity to use especially to Information and Communication Technology (ICT) equipment. Then we tried to make a scale for the timidity to use new ICT equipment for older adults. Inventory survey were made and executed by the mailing method with 203 healthy older adults as informants, who registered as the voluntary research participants of CUAR (Center of usability and aging research at University of Tsukuba). Results showed that seven of nine items in the survey reflected the timidity to use the artifact. There was no differences between male and female, however, differences of age groups were significant; showing people aged 70’s up rated higher degree of timidity than people of age 60’s. Relations of the scale to other indexes and/ or behavior in the usability testing of ICT equipment will be investigated.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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Relationship between spatial working memory (SWM) ability and the distortion of cognitive distance from memorized maps was investigated. In the experiment, SWM ability of the participants was assessed by the Corsi Block Test. Then they estimated distances between pairs of points on a memorized map. The number of intervening points between the two points varied from 0 to 2. The distance estimate increased with the number of intervening points independently of SWM ability. This result was the contrast to a prior research which demonstrated that the estimate of participants with high visual working memory (VWM) ability did not showed effect of intervening points, while the estimates of participants with low VWM ability showed. These results were discussed in the point that VWM more strongly related to the distance estimates that was visually memorized than SWM.

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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[in Japanese]

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For investigating of the learn process of using new information and communication technology (ICT) equipment, we have executed experiments using Groton Maze Learning Test (GMLT). In this study, we focused on effects of embedded aids in GMLT, which were prominent and easy to understand, and tested their effects on memory after the GMLT. Young and older adults (24 each) were randomly assigned to with/ without-aids groups, and after 5 trials of GMLT, they answered the incidental recall task of the whole correct route of the maze. The error rate of recall was calculated and showed that there were no age differences in the with-aids condition, but huge decrements with age in the without-aids condition. In addition, there were little decrements with aids with younger adults, but large gain with the embedded aids by older adults. Difference of aids’ role between two age groups will be discussed.

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[in Japanese]

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A memory of an identical noun becomes paradoxically lower when memorized as a person name, as opposed to when memorized as a name of a profession. The Baker-baker paradox is often regarded as an example of the difficulty in learning a person’s name. The purpose of this study was to consider whether the paradox appears in Japanese nouns that have different culture background and the diversity as to the person names. In the experiment, 40 participants took part in four tasks including incidental or intentional recall tasks. They were required to learn persons’ face with profiles (first names and surnames or person’s semantic properties such as mottos and favorite things or places). Then they had to recall persons’ profiles using faces as cues. The result suggested the failure of the paradox. Namely, the performances of memory of nouns didn’t show notable differences between the memories as person names and as semantic properties.

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[in Japanese]

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We investigated whether perceptual load theory holds when face distractors are irrelevant to central identification tasks. The present study examined whether human face distractors captured attention under conditions of high perceptual load when the faces were irrelevant to the task. The result indicated that a peripheral face distractor interfere the observer’s task, although load theory predicts no or reduced attentional capture. This finding suggests that attentional capture by an entirely task-irrelevant distractor occurred regardless of perceptual load. Additional experiments revealed that the capture effect was specific to faces; no capture was obtained with inverted face images or meaningful non-face images (e.g., food). Moreover, Experiment 4 replicated face-specific attentional capture even when the distractor did not share the temporal component of abrupt onset with the search array. These results extend the notion that faces are exceptions to load theory when faces and search items share no common display features.

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The prior study suggested that compatibility effect was reduced when proportion congruency (PC) was low than when it was high, using a stimulus-response paradigm. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether PC effect depends on stimuli or interaction between different contexts, using Simon task. We used two types of triangle stimuli. One of these was varied stimuli which PC was 75% or 25% in a given block. Another was constant stimuli which PC was 50% in a given block. Participants were asked to identify a triangle with vertical or horizontal stripes which was presented left or right visual field. PC effect was observed not only in the varied stimuli but also in the constant stimuli. These suggested that PC effect may depend on the interaction between different contexts rather than on each stimulus.

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